"Idiots and Machines"

That's What you've got to say to people; that's the lesson you've got to teach the young. You've got to persuade everybody that all this grand industrial civilization is just a bad smell and that the real, significant life can only be lived apart from it. It'll be a very long time before decent living and industrial smell can be reconciled. Perhaps, indeed, they're irreconcilable. It remains to be seen. In the meantime, at any rate, we must shovel the garbage and bear the smell stoically, and in the intervals try to lead the real human life.

-- Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point

I won't say much about the book itself since we'll do plenty of that in the coming month or so, but I can't say enough how much I love the book and how much my life has been changed as a result of the ideas of Huxley.  Here, the character Mark Rampion sits in Sbisa's (a restaurant/bar) speaking to his friend, Maurice Spandrell.  Rampion believes he's figured out the secret to living, which he tries to extend to Spandrell who has tried just about every different philosophical view looking for meaning and purpose, and ultimately proof that God actually exists (which he later tries to prove to Rampion aesthetically, but we'll cover that later).  

Rampion argues, in essence, that man must live a life of strict dualism -- the mechanistic life of capitalist society in his working hours, and the "real and complete" human life in one's leisure.  As a result of this view, it would seem that man spends 1/3 of his day as something other than himself, 1/3 as himself (potentially -- I'm not sure I'm convinced entirely that 'leisure' is where one is a real human being necessarily), and the last 1/3 (if one is lucky enough to have normal hours) asleep. If we apply this to the sum total, that still qualifies as over half one's life lived being not-oneself (if you account for weekends, vacations, childhood, and retirement, generally).  That seems like a horrible waste of time, to me.

We talked today about the difference between waste and expenditure first period.  Doing one's work can be viewed either way -- as an expenditure of time and energy, or as an utter waste.  Rampion's view above, suggests that it is a waste -- something only to be done that is meaningless in order to get to that which we deem meaningful:

Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there.

If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am.

What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two.

-- From the island of Pala's treatise, "The Notes on What's What"

Aldous Huxley, Island

Huxley's true position is given in his final novel, published posthumously in 1963 called Island, where he rectifies the dualism explained by Rampion in the previous example.  Rampion advocates for the Manicheeistic dualism that Pala here rejects -- he believes that we must by necessity split ourselves in half and be two people (or one person sometimes and a machine the other times), and only live or those times when we get to be the full person. Above, the document of Pala explains that we should know who in fact we are -- and this includes ALL experience, not just the experience of our 'full and complete' selves in leisure, because this is actually NOT in fact full and complete at all.  Leisure is only part of the equation, and an incomplete one at that. Instead, we must learn to accept all experience.

The key here is the conscious perception involved; we can choose to view our lives and our time as half a waste, and half meaningful.  OR, we can choose to view ALL of our experiences -- good, bad, indifferent -- as meaningful.  Am I always going to like the things that happen in my life? No.  Am I always going to find pleasure or interest in all the things that happen in my life? Maybe not -- but again, it's a personal choice.  I can always choose to find value in everything that happens.  I can choose to value the loss of a friend who may not have really been a friend -- there is something to be gained in that experience, even if its just knowledge for the next time I try to make a friend, or meet someone like that individual. I can choose to find value in the chemistry class I had in college, where my teacher was fun but not exactly effective in helping me learn chemistry, and thus I had to teach it to myself -- I gain the knowledge and self-confidence that I can succeed in a situation where the odds were more-or-less stacked against me.  I can choose to view the pain of waiting in line at the DMV for hours only to be sent home many ways.  I can view just about every experience I have in many ways.

So really, I guess it's a matter of personal choice, a type of yoga of life, where I pay attention to the "here and now," to the moment, to the awareness of all the values that can be given to anything I experience, to find value in all of my experiences. It's not even just about personal purpose and meaningfulness; it's about making every one of my twenty-four hours an expenditure of time and energy, and not just a 'waste.'

Sample Kierkegaard Either/Or and The Stranger One-pager!

“One tires of living in the country, and moves to the city; one tires of one’s native land, and travels abroad; one is europamüde¨and goes to America, and so on; finally one indulges in a sentimental hope of endless journeyings from star to star. Or the movement is different but still extensive. One tires of porcelain dishes and eats on silver; one tires of silver and turns to gold; one burns half of Rome to get an idea of the burning of Troy. This method defeats itself; it is plain endlessness.”  -- Kiekegaard, Either/Or (page 25)

Kierkegaard’s speaker, “A” (the ‘Aesthete’) aims in this segment of Either/Or to describe his personal philosophy, his way of life. Throughout the segment, he argues that boredom is the root of all evil, in that it is the human condition that propels man to act, and generally to act destructively.  He blames social and political evils on boredom, but at the same differentiates boredom from what he considers to be essential good: idleness.  In the above passage, he describes the way in which people tend to stave off boredom, which is to constantly change one’s interests. The only problem is, this does not solve the problems of boredom ultimately – eventually, one runs out of things to change to, and the boredom is just being ‘run away from,’ rather than habitually treated – thus, the ‘crop rotation’ method only works when one perpetuates a perspective change rather than a full object-of-interest change.

Meursault, in Camus’ The Stranger, seems to have mastered the perspective change. Or, maybe not.  Meursault seems to be very good at the emotional detachment aspect of boredom.  In order to be bored, really, one must be conscious of it, which is clear in Kierkegaard’s section as well – conscious awareness is what might make idleness (a ‘virtue’) into boredom (a ‘vice’). Meursault does not really change object-interests, as evidenced by his routine of going to the same restaurant, talking to the same people, living in the same room with the same objects, etc. He goes with the flow of his life, without making any conscious change outside of effect of environment. Expression of boredom would mean a conscious desire to make a change – Meursault does not desire a change, at least, not a physical one.  In fact, he is not aware that he can continue his same path – doing those same routines, or at least in the end, the prison routine – day in and day out happily until he makes a conscious thought-change, the perspective change ‘A’ really advocates.  This conscious perspective change, for Meursault (and really, for ‘A’ as well) is what allows us to do the every day cycle (which we all do) without feeling meaningless, repetitive, and pointless.  We continue to find interest through our own conscious will to find interest, which does not need an object.

Heads!

Guildenstern: My honoured lord!
Rosencrantz:  My most dear lord!
Hamlet:          My excellent good friends! How dost thou,
                       Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
Rosencrantz:  As the indifferent children of the other.
Guildenstern: Happy, in that we are not over-happy;
                       On fortune's cap we are not the very button.
Hamlet:          Not the soles of her shoe?
Rosencrantz:  Neither, my lord.
Hamlet:          Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of 
                       her favours?
Guildenstern: 'Faith, her privates we.
Hamlet:          In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she
                       is a strumpet. What's the news?
Rosencrantz:  None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.
Hamlet:          Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true.
                       Let me question more in particular: what have you,
                       my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune,
                       that she sends you to prison hither?
Guildenstern: Prison, my lord!
Hamlet:          Denmark's a prison.
Rosencrantz:  Then is the world one.
Hamlet:          A goodly one; in which there are many confines,
                       wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.
Rosencrantz:  We think not so, my lord.
Hamlet:          Why then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
                        either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
                        it is a prison
Rosencrantz:  Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too
                        narrow for your mind.
Hamlet:           O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count
                        myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
                        have bad dreams.
Guildenstern: Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very
                        substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
Hamlet:           A dream itself is but a shadow.
Rosencrantz:  Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a
                       quality that it is but a shadow's shadow.
Hamlet:          Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and
                       outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we
                       to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act II scene ii

One doesn't usually think of Shakespeare right off when discussing Existentialism, but there are elements of his tragedies that not only suggest Existential themes, but live them.  Hamlet is easily my favorite Shakespearean play.  In fact, I hate most of his comedies, and love several of his tragedies, but Hamlet just speaks to me in a way that good philosophical literature only can.  It was really this scene above -- Act II scene ii -- that got me to really look at the play as more than just a sad story about a prince in Denmark whose dad was murdered, and who could hardly do anything to act upon the revenge he desperately needed. Here, Hamlet -- distraught by his father's death and the plot he believes (and, rightly) to be the truth behind it -- meets with his two childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who have been sent for by Hamlet's mother in an attempt to distract him enough to hopefully bring him out of his despair.  And yet, nothing seems to work -- his melancholy is just as obvious here as it is in his soliloquies and asides, albeit cryptic here.  He speaks of his home as a 'prison' but in the subjective way of Existentialism, as nothing is "either good or bad, but thinking makes it so," recognizing that it is his own mind which really produces that prison and not a product of actual physical experience ("... I could be bounded in a nut shell and count myself a king of infinite space").  Hamlet is plagued by an inability to get outside of his own head -- it paralyzes him to the point of inaction, and that inaction continues to pull him further into his own despair, and ultimately his own demise (and that of almost everyone else around him).  

Recognizing the existential quality of Hamlet, Tom Stoppard (in 1966) wrote his famous absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead turning the plot inside out and telling the story through the eyes of the secondary characters.  As seen in the selection above from Shakespeare's play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are barely distinguishable -- they speak the same, utter similar lines, and are generally place-holder characters simply there upon which Hamlet bounces his lines -- they have little utility in and of themselves.  Stoppard plays with this fact through out his play, as both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern struggle with identity, often forgetting which of the two each of them is, are often confused by other characters just as often as themselves, and who generally run as empty vessels of existential nonsense.  So often, they seem on the brink of an epiphany, be it personal, subjective, artistic, or scientific (the clay pots that almost act as "Newton's cradle" apparatus that is supposed to show momentum), only for it to fall apart tragic-comically at the last moment of expectation (because life is meaningless, and hope and expectation in any outcome is utterly pointless).  The play (turned to film in 1990 starring Gary Oldman -- who I still can't figure out how he hasn't won an Oscar -- and Tim Roth) is hilarious and thought-provokingly witty at each turn -- but, like any philosophical work, subtle and demanding of focused attention. For example, one of my absolute favorite scenes in the play, here both characters prepare for the discussion they will have with Hamlet, as shown in the above passage from Shakespeare's play (from the perspective of 'behind the scenes') -- it is absurdly hilarious when you realize the game the play is like tennis (hence the scores like "one-love"), in which the player stays in 'volley' by continuing to ask a question; keep reading through the scene for the establishment of rules:

Rosencrantz:  We could play at questions.

Guildenstern: What good would that do?

Rosencrantz:  Practice!

Guildenstern: Statement! One-love.

Rosencrantz:  Cheating!

Guildenstern: How?

Rosencrantz:  I hadn't started yet.

Guildenstern: Statement. Two-love.

Rosencrantz:  Are you counting that?

Guildenstern: What?

Rosencrantz:  Are you counting that?

Guildenstern: Foul! No repetitions. Three-love. First game to...

Rosencrantz:  I'm not going to play if you're going to be like that.

Guildenstern: Whose serve?

Rosencrantz:  Hah?

Guildenstern: Foul! No grunts. Love-one.

Rosencrantz: Whose go?

Guildenstern: Why?

Rosencrantz: Why not?

Guildenstern: What for?

Rosencrantz:  Foul! No synonyms! One-all.

Guildenstern: What in God's name is going all?

Rosencrantz:  Foul! No rhetoric. Two-one.

Guildenstern: What does it all add up to?

Rosencrantz:  Can't you guess?

Guildenstern: Were you addressing me?

Rosencrantz:  Is there anyone else?

Guildenstern: Who?

Rosencrantz:  How would I know?

Guildenstern: Why do you ask?

Rosencrantz:  Are you serious?

Guildenstern: Was that rhetoric?

Rosencrantz:  No.

Guildenstern: Statement! Two-all. Game point.

Rosencrantz:  What's the matter with you today?

Guildenstern: When?

Rosencrantz: What?

Guildenstern: Are you deaf?

Rosencrantz:  Am I dead?

Guildenstern: Yes or no?

Rosencrantz:  Is there a choice?

Guildenstern: Is there a God?

Rosencrantz: Foul! No non sequiturs, three-two, one game all.

Guildenstern (seriously): What's your name?

Rosencrantz: What's yours?

Guildenstern: I asked you first.

Rosencrantz:  Statement. One-love.

Guildenstern: What's your name when you're at home?

Rosencrantz:  What's yours?

Guildenstern: When I'm at home?

Rosencrantz:  Is it different at home?

Guildenstern: What home?

Rosencrantz:  Haven't you got one?

Guildenstern: Why do you ask?

Rosencrantz: What are you driving at?

Guildenstern (with emphasis): What's your name?!

Rosencrantz:  Repetition. Two-love. Match point to me.

Guildenstern (seizing him violently): WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Rosencrantz:  Rhetoric! Game and match! (Pause.) Where's it going to end?

Guildenstern: That's the question.

Rosencrantz:  It's all questions.

Guildenstern: Do you think it matters?

Rosencrantz:  Doesn't it matter to you?

Guildenstern: Why should it matter?

Rosencrantz: What does it matter why?

Guildenstern (teasing gently): Doesn't it matter why it matters?

Rosencrantz (rounding on him): What's the matter with you?

(Pause.)

Guildenstern: It doesn't matter.

Rosencrantz (voice in the wilderness): ... What's the game?

Guildenstern: What are the rules?

-- Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead Act I

I geek-out so hardcore when I read this play -- there are so many crazy little intricacies.  Of course, it's meant to be absurd; the game they're playing reminds me so much of the old episodes of the comedy show, Who's Line is it Anyway, where the comedians did this exact same game -- two would play, and all they could do is ask questions. If they couldn't answer in a question, or couldn't think of how to respond, they'd rotate out to the next player -- great improv activity. Yet here, it isn't just about the game; it's not about simply coming up with a question, but the questions themselves are SO existential in nature: "What is your name?" "Why should it matter?" "Am I dead?" "Is there a God?" "What are you driving at?" And the best part of it all, is that there are no answers -- another existential point.  There are never any answers, simply a random juxtaposition of constant questions which all have meaning in and of themselves, but no satisfaction in a definitive statement.  The rules are fascinating too.  

So here is a small snippet of both pieces -- I would love to continue this conversation with anyone, but obviously you have to watch/read the pieces beforehand (I've given the links in this post to the text, it would be good to have the text in front of you while you watch too, so you can refer to specific lines in each).  For the extra-credit experience, comment on this post -- tell me what you like about either or both plays, and connect to the existentialism we've been covering as of late.  Also, bring it up in the Socratic Seminar and any conversations we'll be having in class -- I'll be impressed (and count that, somewhat, as well!)

"Where Did I Go Wrong?" [Teacher Edition]

My need and desire to expound on this particular post today actually fills my heart with much sadness, especially within the context of the class that I teach, itself: Philosophy. And, not just philosophy, but a large part of it (the entirety of the fourth unit, and quite a bit weaved within the first three) on ethics and behavior and looking at the Good and Truth and Beauty, and all that.  So maybe I'll start with my goals as an educator in a Philosophy-based classroom before I work back to what's going on in my head regarding other things.

Philosophy, for me, was something I was always interested in, but never had a chance to pursue until college -- my first exposure to pure philosophy (though in an extremely limited capacity) was through my AP English Lit teacher my senior year of high school; and really, it was through existentialism, of course (our reading of the same text we're covering right now in class, The Stranger by Camus).  But, I've always been the kind of kid that looked at things differently, that saw beyond the obvious.  Often, this got me in trouble -- on standardized tests, especially in verbal sections, like the SAT for example (ugh my scores were so 'meh'), I could sit and rationalize answers for hours by just looking differently at the text or the question, or the semantics of it all.  I wish we would have had the writing section when I was in high school -- it would have been my only saving grace (it was on the GRE -- the graduate-level equivalent to the SAT -- where I got a 6/6 on the writing, which is actually apparently very hard to do).

When I started college, it was very easy for me to fall right in love with the subject.  And, it was easily one of the most worthwhile decisions I've made as an adult in going back to get a Masters in Philosophy.  Honestly, in looking back at the essays I wrote in high school, then as an undergrad, then as a graduate student, I can see just how insanely far my own thinking has come in so relatively short a time (really about 10 years... sounds like a lot to you, but when you get old like me... not so much haha).  Without philosophy, I seriously don't know what I would have even written about -- I look back at high school papers about symbolism and that kind of nonsense, and see what naivety was coming out of my fingers and brain, and realize I had nothing of substance to offer until Philosophy.  And it's not just my writing -- my life has so much depth and meaning as a result of the things I get to think about, having been so exposed.  I thirst for it, every day.  And I can't even begin to tell you what a joy it has already been to be able to spread that to people -- even if no one in my classes get it or care, at all, though it would be nice to reach even just one other person and give them that eye-opening experience that's been so foundational to my own being.  Teaching this class has been phenomenal, and I can't wait until I've done it a few times and become good at it so that I know what I'm doing is the right thing (it'll take time to make the mistakes and fix them, my apologies -- it's just how things work).  I want to be able to help guide others -- be that "Socratic teacher" -- toward becoming not just better students (which in the traditional sense of 'task-performing drones' I could absolutely care less about), but better learners and more importantly, better people.

Which brings me back to the Ethics thing, and my dismay as of late.  I try to build this class around open-mindedness, free speech and expression, creativity, personal intrigue, and philosophy's inherent intention: love of knowledge/wisdom.  That love should be genuine, sincere, and personal (ah, the personal individual subjectivity of Kierkegaard).  And yet, there is still the external pull of grades, of scores, of letters and numbers... and I wish I could do away with it. Unfortunately it's the system in which we operate and thus I can only do so much to emphasize what I think is important (i.e. the learning and its intrinsic value in making us better people), while being up against the forces of college apps, transcripts, student competition, and scholarship awards.  Inevitably I'm David against a massive Goliath... though that might be a more than hopeful analogy to make (as it would assume that ultimately, I will win; I'm not so confident).

Writer, fellow teacher, and author Jessica Lahey of the New York Times and Atlantic wrote a couple of articles a few years ago on the prevalence of student academic dishonesty in all academic levels -- high school and up -- which I found intriguing, and places some of the blame on teachers too (or at least, on the school system), which I also believe have much validity (much to my own chagrin).  She enumerates several failings which contribute to compelling students to take dishonest measures: 1) performance-based tasks vs. mastery-based encouragement; 2) prevalence and pressures of high-stakes testing; and 3) lack of student personal self-efficacy and esteem (something which teachers can mould within the classroom -- something I like to think at least that I work hard to give students; I hope I say enough how much I believe in my kids and how much I value them and love them etc).  She offers up a bit of a conclusion to this, though I'm not ultimately satisfied with how we are to do this in an individual classroom without a serious culture change nationally:

In order to earn our place at the front of a cheating-free classroom, educators are going to have to own our share of the blame for the atmosphere of high-stakes testing and extrinsic rewards that we've created. Cheating is not solely the fault of our students or the declining ethical standards of the millennial generation, but a product of our testing-oriented and performance-obsessed culture. The American educational system should focus on the handing down of knowledge and skills rather than test preparation and administration. The same conditions that encourage cheating discourage our students' mastery of content and skills. And while we waste our time attempting to catch cheaters in the act of deception, we are distracted from our higher goal: catching students in the act of learning.

-- Jessica Lahey, "A Classroom Where No One Cheats"

This is all and well, and I completely agree with everything she says... and yet how? How can one teacher in one classroom stand up against an entire culture of sentiments? What can I do -- in my one hour a day -- to reverse an entire 13 years of educational folly that does just those things mentioned above? How can I begin to show my students that they are too smart and too good to use the internet as a crutch when writing their papers, to go without citations and copy/paste because of a need to get a certain score or complete a certain task just to turn in a piece of paper for points? 

And I know it's not (or at least, I hope it's not) entirely personal -- I know how hard my students work, how involved they are, how stretched they are, and how their time is allotted; I was a student once too -- an AP student, at that.  In fact, my senior year schedule was nothing BUT AP classes, while also the drum major of band and involved in a bunch of other things, too.  I've felt the stress of college applications and essays and acceptance letters and the complete stress of the unknown future. And, it wasn't even that long ago. I'm not that old.  I have been my students (just in a different city, with a different family -- I've always been the one to put more stress on myself).  So I understand the way in which lack of time, or fear, or whatever else can get in the way of learning, and the strength of the temptation to make my life just a little easier by using some 'help' to get by.  After all, "it's a one page assignment, who cares?"  It's so interesting that often, this is the talk and behavior of students who are exceptional -- who are dedicated to multiple avenues of study and activity, who are great people in and out of the classroom, who are incredibly bright and capable, and who frankly, know better.

Jessica Lahey also did some research for another article, where she actually got one of those bright, capable, ambitious students to philosophize on the need for his cheating.  She summarizes:

This student felt justified -- even ethically obligated -- to cheat when he felt he had been denied a good education. His teachers, he argued, had cheated him of the education he deserved and promulgated the very system I blamed for the rise of academic dishonesty. He'd responded by cheating right back in retaliation. Most journalists are thrilled when evidence comes to light that support their argument. I, however, was divested. It's one thing to read the statistics of cheating, but it's quite another to be faced a real-life example of a student cheater.

-- Jessica Lahey "I Cheated All Throughout High School"

What is scary about this is that responsibility for ethical behavior is totally surrendered.  And, with all of the discussion of choice and responsibility currently happening in my class, I can just hope and pray to whatever God we want to call upon at the time (we've covered so many versions this year, pick one eeny-meeny-miney-mo), that this isn't the case in my classroom -- that I'm not failing to provide my students with the education they think they deserve, or that they actually do deserve and hopefully appreciate.  The above student-cheater-representative goes on to rationalize his behavior, claiming that "It should be expected that when a student goes to school, he or she enters a social contract with the teacher, one that demands teacher expertise, devotion, and instructional talent in exchange for the student's discipline and commitment."  I completely agree... but is it always a result of the teacher's failing of that contract? What of it when it is the student's failing? What then? Who is to blame? Like Lahey argues, "the teachers and administrators who heaped accolades on this student's shoulder, wrote the letters of recommendation that secured his admission to a top university, and placed their faith in his intelligence and character [my emphasis] deserved more."  

I really hope, that by the end of the semester -- any of them present and future -- that my students will realize my passion and dedication to the eye-opening experience of testing their own limits, measuring their own worth, exacting their own individual primacy, and the gratification and satisfaction of becoming a whole, true, and Good human being. Even just a little bit.  I hope that ultimately, the realization will be that philosophy isn't something to cheat -- because ultimately, all you're doing is cheating yourself out of the chance to make a choice that really defines you as something meaningful, individual, and more important than just a cheater.  For me personally, ethics isn't just an 'ends-justify-the-means' game -- but maybe I'm too much of a classical virtue ethicist for this day and age.  

To my students: aim to be more than just followers, perpetuating a broken education system that says complete the task and get in line makes you a drone -- not a person. Be people. Be responsible people, and know that how you act, and what you do, even on the SMALLEST of things, becomes who you are.  You are loved, and valued. Thank you for taking the time to read my rant. <3

A Long Post on Kierkegaard: on how we come to the 'occasion' of the Paradox

In another of his major works, Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard seeks to utilize reason -- as exemplified in the example he uses throughout the text, Socrates -- in order to explore the logical implications of epistemic Truth.  This thought-project of his is written under a different pseudonym, this time Johannes Climacus, who's name is borrowed from a sixth-century monk of the same name who wrote Ladder of Paradise, which details in thirty chapters the steps toward raising one's soul to God.  The meaning of the name -- 'climax' or 'ladder' -- mirrors the logical strucure through which Climacus entertains his 'hypothesis' -- central to his writing is Cartesian thought (i.e. the philosophies of skeptical doubt of René Descartes), and it is through its logical method that he concludes, "coherent thinking was a scala paradisi."

The work follows the Socratic model, in that "man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; ... and man becomes like God when he becomes just and pure with understanding." Despite his adherence to the rational, Climacus is not, however, satisfied with stopping at the well-received ideals of Socratic understanding; instead, he aims to go beyond Socrates, which then engenders the tension between ideality (as inherent to the rational/ethical, and ultimately limited aim of the Socratic) and the actuality of the individual subjective nature of the paradox with which Climacus engages his interlocutors throughout the dialectic.

Climacus begins the first part of the Fragments with the Propositio -- proposal, or 'hypothesis': "The question is asked by one who in his ignorance does not even know what provided the occasion for his questioning in this way" (PF, p. 9).  This statement indicates Climacus' own awareness that he himself has been given some idea, and that this idea is not of his own invention. It is precisely this awareness of question that leads to the hypothesis.  The hypothesis, then, provides the basis for the thought-project in which Climacus seeks to understand how a person acquires knowledge.

 He begins with the Socratic conception of Truth as recollection (as explored by Plato in his dialogues, which we discussed in class).  Socrates' basic assumption rests on the idea that the Reality of things is what is most True of things; the soul participates in this intelligible, true Reality, and thus, the intelligible is inherent within the individual.  The soul can be aware of the True through the use of reason. Learning is then 'uncovering' that which is hidden or has become 'dim' by sense perception, which also acts simply as a reminder in that "we refer all the things we perceive to that reality, discovering that it existed before and is ours" (Plato's Phaedo 76d-e). Therefore, knowledge is never new, but eternal, and learning is recollection of those already-present realities.

In terms of his own system, Socrates as the teacher defines himself as the "midwife" who assists in bringing about learning in his followers.  He does not himself give new knowledge, but simply aids his followers in discovering "within themselves a multitude of beautiful things, which they bring forth into the light" (Plato's Theaetetus 150c).  Climacus in Kierkegaard's Fragments warns that it would cause confusion to the individual for the teacher to present himself as if he were the give of knowledge, which coincides precisely with his own warnings in the Preface above.  Because he cannot give new knowledge, the teacher is only of historical importance, as he is as much as the learner particular to the temporal and "influenced by circumstances." At this level exists a reciprocal relationship in which the teacher is both teacher and learner, which is itself the highest relationship humans can achieve -- each acts as an occasion for the self-understanding of the other (in fact, this is also pretty consistent with Hegel's dialectic as well, in which two subjective selfs serve as means for self-discovery).

However, as Climacus points out, knowledge must have been, at some point placed within the individual by someone or something else.  If recollection is how truth is learned, then learning from anyone can only be of historical concern, because truth is universal and eternally present within.  This fails to address the part of Climacus' original question, in which he asks: "Can a historical point of departure be given for an eternal consciousness?" The point of departure addressed in the Socratic, is no departure at all, and has no bearing on the self's eternal consciousness:

because in the same moment I discover that I have known the truth from eternity without knowing it, in the same instant that moment is hidden in the eternal, assimilated into it in such a way that I, so to speak, still cannot find it even if I were to look for it, because there is no Here and no There, but only the ubique et nusquam. (PF p.13)

The event of historical importance still resides in the realm of the ethical, and the moment of its departure is insignificant as it raises recollection of the universal into which the moment itself is assimilated.

It becomes Climacus' purpose, then, to go beyond the Socratis to answer the second question he raises: "How can such a point of departure be of more than historical interest?"  To do this he must address the following concern: How can one seek Truth, if the idea of recollection is not sufficient for explaining the origin of Truth; and how is it possible for one to know whether one even has Truth if awareness of it becomes lost to the universal? If the situation is to be different (namely, if it is to be the movement not from individual to universal but from universal to individual, as the 'leap of faith' past the paradox of the Ethical into the Religious would suggest), then the moment (the specific paradox itself) must have decisive significance so that it will not be hidden or forgotten (or dismissed back) to the universal.  This presupposes a few things: 1) the individual must not possess truth (so that it is not available to recollection); and 2) the individual must not be looking for it, as he would not be aware of not having it and so no knowledge of the need to look in the first place.  Tehrefore, under these presuppositions, the individual must be outside of the utmost truth, or what Climacus labels as 'untruth.'

In this situation, the Socratic definition of the teacher is no longer sufficient.  If the truth is not innate nor given, the teacher is only the occasion that reminds the learner that he is untruth, which in turn further excludes the learner from the truth that when he was in ignorance.  If the learner is to obtain truth, he must also have the condition for understanding it.  The learner himself cannot be that condition, as this would revert back to the idea of recollection. The presence of the condition, however, is essential to the process of learning. In order for the moment to have decisive significance, the learner must lack the condition, and then receive it; this cannot be an act of God (as this would be contradiction to his character), cannot be accident (which would have no essential significance), but must be an act of will of the learner.  In this understanding, the learner has chosen to forfeit the condition, believing himself to be in freedom when in fact he is slave to 'unfreedom' unconsciously and acts within it.  Thus, the teacher must save the individual from himself by providing truth and the condition for understanding it.

The learner who is in untruth, upon receiving the condition and the truth, becomes a new self -- this process is what Climacus labels as 'rebirth.' The learner here owes no human teacher anything (as they are just an occasion), but owes the divine teacher everything; thus, he must not forget this moment of rebirth and must continually choose to assimilate the truth into his eternal consciousness. He again raises the difficulties of the Socratic, saying that recollection would produce no significance in the defining of the self, in that the moment of self becomes ware of being,' he recollects that he was already 'being' and would continue as he was. Therefore, in line with the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum, it must be so that the self was previously 'not-being' and can only be aware of having been 'not-being' once he has received the truth and condition for understanding it by God, and experiences that rebirth.  Thus, he shows that "only with Christianity does eternity become essential" (Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety p. 84).

As a result, Climacus looks specifically at the relationship of God as the Teacher who is beyond the Socratic.  He argues that the relationship between teacher and learner is not similar to the Socratic, which produces the occasion for mutual self-understanding, as "God needs no pupil in order to understand himself" (PF p. 24).  Nothing moves God to appear int he teacher-learner relationship but himself. Climacus hypothesizes that the movement is of a love that is self-directed and for the learner within which "the different [are] made equal, and only in equality or in unity is there understanding" (PF p. 25).  It is this love which serves as the moment; it must be from eternity, but itself fulfilled in time (hint: he's alluding to God's love of man, out of which he gave his only begotten son, upon the cross, to die for the sins of all creation and atone all in the moment of the crucifixion and of which salvation lasts for all eternity).  It is not, however, a low in equality, as the learner has yet to be brought to 'Absolute relation with the Absolute,' and so it is an unhappy love based in misunderstanding (think about John chapter 1: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God ... and they knew Him not) -- and the unhappiness belongs only to the one who is ware of the existence of the misunderstanding (i.e. God).  It is in the unequal love that man owes God everything, as God (through this love) is providing something for him (namely truth and the condition for understanding it) which cannot be reciprocated (there is nothing I can give God that is even remotely equal to what he's giving me, here).

Unfortunately, Climacus' problem in the form of his hypothesis inherently contradicts its content.  The Religion, which as shown in our discussion of Fear and Trembling, is incommunicable, irrational, and not something that can be or should be understood, and vastly inwardly personal (which is why we can never truly understand Abraham, or his moment of the paradox -- it's only his own moment, not our own).  And yet, it is the Religious that ironically the philosopher makes attempts to understand in Philosophical Fragments through the use of logical dialect.  It is particularly in the moment, "simultaneously historical and eternal" (PF 134-135) that philosophy meets its biggest challenge; and its attempt to rationalize such produces "old-fashioned orthodoxy in its rightful severity" (Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript p. 275) and is an obstacle to establishing a proper relation to the paradox (and thus, be able to make the 'leap of faith' to 'Absolute relation to the Absolute').  Climacus is not immune from this contradiction, in his need to attempt to rationalize the religious standpoint, leading to the perversion of understanding that he himself warns against (and which, as a human is unfortunately impossible to get away from if we're going to make any attempt at communicating the concept to each other -- language inevitably fails us).

The question, however, remains: who can attest to the idea of the religious, one who is reborn, or not? Climacus concludes this rhetorical question by answering that it must be the one who is reborn (the one who is in the Absolute relation to the Absolute, the one who has embraces the religious standpoint) as they would be the only ones aware of the transition from not-being to being. This conclusion places a level of doubt over Climacus' own mental processes in Kierkegaard's Philosophical Fragments, as one who is not himself 'reborn.' Climacus does exactly as the philosopher should in his willingness to "lay down life simply in oder to solve it" (as quoted in the historical introduction to the text) but comes to the same limited that any in the ethical face when approaching the religious -- namely, the futile attempt to 'solve' something which cannot be rationally solved: "If he abandons this extreme position, he may very well arrive at something, but in doing that he would have to also abandon his doubt about everything... Life has not acquired any meaning for him, and all this is the fault of philosophy."

A Short Post on Kierkegaard (more to come)

Kierkegaard grew up and was educated in a society dominated by the main-stream thought of Hegelian philosophy.  Much of his ideas seem to coincide decently with Hegel’s, though there are some points against which he argues.  In sections of his work, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, (particularly section II chapter 2 on subjective truth) Kierkegaard argues that objective truths cannot guide one to knowledge of what he finds fundamentally important: God.  Hegel’s metaphysical arguments for the dynamics of relationship place the subject, the “self,” as the important over the object, which he generally classifies as “the slave.”  However, Kierkegaard maintains that a relationship with a dynamic being cannot be reduced to objectivity, as both the subject and “object” are really subjects in both lights. 

For Kierkegaard, the knowing subject relates himself to his relation to truth; yet, truth is not an object for Kierkegaard, but outside of the Hegelian system.  Truth, rather, is achieved when the self relates itself to what it thinks to be true, and then ascribes actions based on this.  The self must commit itself to what it believes to be true, and whether it is objectively true is neither provable nor objective. 

The best example Keirkegaard gives for this set of metaphysical ideas is found in the second chapter of section II, in which he discusses the relationship between the self and knowledge of the existence of God.  Though one may never know objectively the truth of God’s existence, one may do so subjectively; in order for this to be subjectively true, the self must understand his relation with God subjectively, and the truth of this is understood when one makes it true for one’s own life by committing oneself indefinitely to living and believing that God exists in truth.  Truth, understood this way subjectively, is just what Kierkegaard calls it, a “paraphrasing of faith.”  His theories, however, are not what would be classified as relativism or subjectivism, but rather an inner understanding of subjective truths which cannot be understood or guided objectively.