A writing, a thinking.

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For future reference

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/the-new-york-knicks-its-the-hope-that-kills-you-in-the-end/

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A Good Feel: Two Interjections on David Foster Wallace’s Both Flesh and Not

David Foster Wallace is chief among the writers that inspire me to hold onto humanism. The aim here is to elucidate his humanism and ask some questions about it by way of two comments on essays in Both Flesh and Not. 

“Kafka’s fictions are expressionist, projective, and personal; they make artistic sense only as manifestations of Kafka’s psyche. But Borge’s stories are very different. They are designed primarily as metaphysical arguments*; they are dense, self-enclosed, with their own deviant logics.

*This is part of what gives Borges’ stories their mythic, precognitive quality (all cultures’ earliest, most vital metaphysics is mythopoeic), which quality in turn helps explain how the stories can be at once so abstract and so moving.” (Text and Footnote, David Foster Wallace, Both Flesh and Not. Back Bay Books. 288)

David Foster Wallace’s humanism is encapsulated in this footnote. It’s pretty bold to say that all cultures’ earliest, most vital metaphysics is mythic, but I think he’s generally right. It certainly makes sense of the Christian narrative's appeal to me. But why else should we accept that metaphysics loses its vitality as it becomes formalized, universalized, and rationalized? 

DFW’s humanism may be guilty of idealizing the origin of culture as a locus of clarity and meaning, and of disparaging modern efforts to distill and formalize what matters most from these stories. Spinoza seems to make it clear that if we are going to build a fair and just society, we are going to have to come up with an interpretation of metaphysical stories that is clear, careful, universal and dare-I-say rational. Without this project, we are susceptible to fundamentalism and persecution of the other, which seem like they cannot be the products of vital metaphysics.

To return to DFW, what is the point of calling mythic metaphysics the “most vital” kind? I’ve mentioned the resonance this has for me with my experiences of origin myths. We could also gain a kind of universalist humanism. If we read Ovid, Genesis, and the Epic of Gilgamesh side by side we see a common human nature and distinct interpretations of that nature. Our hope would work on the principle of Archimedes: from these fixed points we could move the cosmos. 

To this end, DFW criticizes fundamentalist suppression of science and materialist suppression of humanism in the name of a realistic interpretation of actual facts about the universe. In particular, he attacks the absurdly simplistic psychologizing of Borges’ writing, and this makes sense because obviously Borges is way more complex than a jilted lover. The obvious-ness of this fact is evidence that there is an essential human reaction to psycho-babble, at least.

The idea of essential human reactions brings me to my second interjection, on one of a magnificent collection of word notes that DFW made for the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus. DFW informs us that ‘Unique’ is an ‘uncomparable’ which means that something cannot be ‘more unique’, just as something cannot be ‘more false’. I want to argue that these uncomparables depend on a universal human experience: normally reasoning of the form ‘A is incorrect because it is incorrect’ is tautological. That said, DFW’s point essentially boils down to something like ‘Don’t use “more false” because it’s impossible for something to be more false.’ But we accept this assertion because we share DFW’s essential human reaction to mis-modified adjectives.

However, DFW uses one example that reveals some slippage. “Their cost estimate was more accurate than the other firms” is deemed incorrect, and to fix this DFW suggests “Their cost estimate was more nearly accurate.” (BFaN 269) This ‘fix’ reveals that DFW has classified accuracy as an absolute Platonic value: either the estimate is an accurate representation of the cost or it wasn’t, because the cost is a real, exact, determinable thing. 

A problem of the universalist project is that it doesn’t fit with the immense variability, detail, and chaos that materialist physics reveals. If we look closely enough, we discover complexity in simplicity. For example, the world’s most nearly perfect sphere, a silicon crystal, has a surface so smooth that if the sphere were the size of our planet, its worst imperfection would be only ten feet deep. That’s pretty precise, but the fact that we have to express precision in terms of imprecision at a larger scale helps us to admit that nothing is actually, really precise unless we declare it so by fiat. I’ll explain more with a story from Voltaire.

"Micromegas" is a hilarious and clear picture of the problems of accuracy. Micromegas is a giant from a planet of Sirius who is a philosopher and an observer of the universe. On his arrival at Saturn, he meets a ‘dwarf’, who is only 6000 feet tall. This is minuscule compared to Micromegas’ 120000 foot height. 

After beginning to reason together about what things exist in the universe, they travel to Earth, which seems utterly empty and chaotic to them. 

“The dwarf, who was sometimes a little hasty in his judgement, decided at first that there was no one on Earth. His primary reason was that he had not seen anyone. Micromegas intimated to him politely that this was a rather poor way to reason. 

‘For’, he said, ‘with your eyes you are unable to see certain stars of the fifth magnitude which I can make out quite distinctly. Do you conclude from this that these stars do not exist?’

‘But’, said the dwarf, ‘I had a good feel.’

‘But’, replied the other, ‘you must have felt badly.’” (Voltaire, Candide and Other Stories, OUP, 96)

The problems of scale and accuracy become manifest here: just as a giant could tell nothing of our existence, and would need a microscope of “two thousand five hundred feet” to make out our appearance, we would discover what could be infinite layers of complexity as we improve our measuring instruments.

This indicates that precise knowledge is a matter of scale and convention. Scale, because we can choose to round to certain numbers and work with them as if they accord exactly with reality; and convention, because we can create language games like finance and theoretical math that only use round numbers and therefore give us complete referential ‘accuracy’. However, in both these situations artifice and convention play such an important role that reference seems like an unconvincing model for measurement. 

Without reference to reality, are we completely lost in a frictionless universe of chaos? Maybe. The geometers that the interstellar travelers meet are able to calculate the giants’ height and width, and to inform them of some physical properties of their world. This impresses the giants, who decide that this kind of precision in physics must correspond with precision in the knowledge of the soul. This doesn’t work out so well, since (surprise) the philosophers all disagree with each other. 

One follows Malebranche, and insists that God is the cause of all: “‘It is God who does everything for me. I see everything in him, and I do everything in him. It is he who does everything, and I have nothing to do with it.’” (CaOS, 105) [Philosophical Note: This kind of monism has become appealing to me in the last few years because it seems like the only way to unite empiricism, atomism, and theology. As a theoretical ontology, heavily tempered with Levinas and medieval Christian metaphysics, I think it’s compelling.] Micromegas responds to the Malebranchist that “One might as well not exist”. This is the trouble with giving up on the reference model. If no reliable empirical knowledge of something immaterial like the soul is possible, and if we are confined to empirical knowledge, we’re stuck.

When a Thomist philosopher weighs in that, whatever else we think about the world, we know that it was made for man, the giants and Voltaire fall over laughing. This is the ultimate problem with DFW’s claim: to assume that reference is possible because humanism requires it simply begs the question. Voltaire is still not done with his critique: Micromegas submits a book written in “tiny” script to the Academy of Sciences, but the secretary there finds it full of blank pages. “‘Aha’, he said, ‘just as I thought.’” His humanism prevents him from knowing the secrets of the universe, and makes him susceptible to confirmation bias. Was the script too small for him, or too big? The problems of scale go all the way down, and all the way back up.

What does this mean for DFW? Accuracy is not so universal a concept as he would have us believe. This does not mean that all of his ‘real facts’ are ultimately meaningless, but it at least throws a shadow of doubt over whether or not his humanism can succeed in defining a set of real facts and meanings that we’re all supposed to agree about.

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I currently have an exhibition, “Dwell” on at Gallery4 in the Hamilton Public Library (central).

I am in New Zealand right now and wasn’t able to see the set up in person but my dear father went and took a panoramic shot of the set up with his Iphone. Thanks Dad!

The gallery is between the Jackson square doors to the library. Go check it out if you’re downtown. 

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Check out my lady's work!

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On Jan Patočka's Analysis of Decadence

“History is the conflict of mere life, bare and chained by fear, with life at the peak.” - Jan Patočka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History

What is decadence? This is a timely question, and one that makes sense in the context of Matt Vandervecht’s essay on Alain De Botton’s definition of envy and Steve Pypker’s essay on vitalism in the architectural theory of Christopher Alexander. The value of this present essay hangs on the following thesis: 

We want to be able to critique the apparatus by which consumerism encourages us to think of our lives as consisting in the abundance of our possessions, and the reductive materialism that treats place as thin. These critiques hinge on an assumption that authentic life is opposed to 1. a consumerist definition of success and 2. the theoretical reduction of life to inert matter. We need a sense of value, of what matters, if we will be able to oppose systems of thinking that put philosophical emphasis on what is not actually valuable. And we can do this in a kind of via negativa by ruling out what does not count as valuable. 

Jan Patočka’s philosophy can help us to lump consumerism and reductive thinking into one category: decadence. His vision of history puts the conflict between decadence and the holy at the centre of human progress and of religious history. Patočka accepts a definition of decadence that resonates well with St. Paul’s understanding of the earthly mind: “Their god is their stomach”. This formalization of the spirit of decadence allows Patočka to identify it in every epoch. Whenever humans live as if their life is ultimately only responsible to itself, to the basic human needs of food, shelter, and clothing, their life is decadent. Notice that decadence applies equally to the subsistence farmer, the hunter-gatherer, and the haute-couture socialite. They all live “mere life, bare and chained by fear”. 

What opposes decadence is revealed in intellectual history. History proceeds according to Hegelian “sublation” (German: aufheben) which is the simultaneous annihilation and preservation of a given thesis through history. Changes in historical epochs are marked by the the sublation of the formerly dominant thesis, which is sublated/raised up from the mess of historical change to an elevated position even as it is sublated/overrun by the forces of the stronger antithesis. All of this elevation and annihilation is denoted by forms of the same German word.

There are three stages of sublation that Patocka notes in his essay “Is Technological Civilization Decadent, and Why?”. They are all opposed to decadence, which persists throughout history. 1. The orgiastic/the demonic/the sexual is the original opposite to decadence. The pagan holiday, on which transcendence is revealed, becomes the centre of human culture. In spite of bodily needs, pagan spirituality emphasizes ascetic practices, sacrifice, and the experience of a transcendent world of capricious divinities to whom our work must be devoted, and from this devotion arises the dominant theme of the orgiastic stage: responsibility. Bodily needs are made inferior to responsibility to others, and a transcendental value system is born.

2. This system is not complete, however, and does not fully destroy decadence. The next stage in this history is Platonism, where the gods are made responsible to reason. Socrates is condemned for two things: corrupting the youth and introducing strange gods. Why were his gods so strange? Because they acted according to reason. Platonic cosmology/theology subjects divinity to rationality, such that in this stage the capricious nature of the orgiastic is sublated.

3. Rationality is not the completion of history though: Patočka does not follow Hegel’s logic that “the real is the rational and the rational is the real”. Instead, in Christianity, the rational is sublated under the personal: God is defined as a Person. Although this definition is not filled out in Patočka’s opinion (“what a Person is, that really is not adequately thematized in the Christian perspective.”), it represents a narrowing of the rational in the same way that the rational narrowed the orgiastic. In this era, reason is no longer a universal classification for human souls but is rather enfleshed in a God who “sees into the soul without itself being accessible to view.” In Christ, God’s reason applies to us, but our reason does not apply to God.

Are these stages of sublation successful in banishing decadence? No, because sublation is both annihilation and preservation. How are bare appetitive existence, orgiastic responsibility, and reason preserved? As technocratic decadence. In 20th century society, Patočka identifies technology and the reductive naturalism that makes effective use of it not as the answer to decadence but as decadence in a new form. 

Decadence is a key moment in the mood of our time, and may be the fundamental character of European responsible life. Patočka ends up proposing that the answer to his the question of his title must be obscure. His argument is as follows: authentic life would be to deal adequately with our own problems and to understand our own meaning. This is impossible because of an irresolvable dilemma: to embrace the pagan by refusing to suppress it is to be stuck in a decadence of subsistence, but at the same time, to suppress the pagan, the orgiastic and the rational means that they come back again and again as challenges to Christianity. 

Therefore, Patočka has shown that decadence should not be predicated of us as a culture because it is the return of a past that was not European/was not ours/that we foreswear by being ‘Christian’ and ‘modern’. However, it should be predicated of us because our foreswearing is sublation/repression, not complete and total elimination, of the past. This is the ultimate, intractable ‘conflict between mere life and life at the peak’.

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The Nature of Order: The Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe by Christopher Alexander (2002)

I'm excited to welcome another guest post, this time by Steve Pypker, who is finishing an MA in Urban Planning at York University in Toronto. Christopher Alexander is best known for writing A Pattern Language (1977) – a go-to manual for do-it-yourself homeowners and placemakers – which proposes an entire syntax of practical, archetypal patterns for the built environment. These range from the layout of rural roads to row houses to room interiors. In The Nature of Order: The Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (2002), Alexander has finally provided us with his overarching theory of just how these patterns function in space, which include some astonishing claims about the very nature of the universe. Alexander argues in book one—The Phenomenon of Life—that life itself is not merely a biological reality, but also an empirically measurable attribute of physical space. Based on decades of observing commonly shared human perceptions of space, he argues for the existence of “living structure” (or what he calls “wholeness” in A Pattern Language) that appears in the recursive arrangements of "centers" in space. According to fifteen fundamental properties, including “levels of scale”, “alternating repetition”, “local symmetries”, and “not-separateness”, the physical structure of these centers create measurable degrees of life in tables and chairs, trees and fields, buildings and streets. Central to Alexander's theory of living structure is the process by which we can create this life in our environment. Book two of The Nature of Order, The Process of Creating Life, asserts that a user-led process is far more conducive to this life than a top-down expert design or vision. Alexander describes this "living process" as a gradual, step-by-step unfolding of space, where centers are adapted one-by-one to the existing environment, preserving and forming a coherent and harmonious whole over time. For the planning of urban places, Alexander proposes a method of land-use zoning for “generative” sequences of development, instead of rigid conceptual methods of zoning that stifle organic adaptation to a site’s idiosyncrasies. A Vision of a Living World applies the theory of living structure and process to the difficult task of making buildings, streets, and neighbourhoods that allow people to feel like they belong to that place. Alexander argues that emotional investment and ownership of one's environment is necessary for this belonging, which comes about naturally through adaptive living processes. He paints a picture of a world created by means of these living processes with both ancient and modern examples. His escape from imposed planning is made via a phenomenological account of public spaces, streets, land use patterns, consensus driven neighbourhood planning, and individual dwellings that function “as the continuation and completion of the land” (vol. 3, 678). Underlying Alexander's observations about the built environment is a strong distrust in what he calls the present mechanistic picture of the universe. In the final book, The Luminous Ground, Alexander's astounding claim that all matter contains relative degrees of life is taken to its cosmological conclusions. He proposes a new basis for empirical scientific inquiry that aims to heal the Enlightenment rift between objective and subjective. By taking human experience of environment at face value, Alexander avoids these pitfalls and rediscovers the vitalist account of the universe that comes naturally to children. ​The Nature of Order is the culmination of Alexander's life's work. It provides a complete, rational account of how the built environment actually works, based on decades of careful observation of the “ninety percent” of human feeling and experience that Alexander claims we share with one another. Full of beautiful illustrations and photos of streets, buildings, and artifacts, it provides straightforward direction for people to make places they can belong to. For those in the planning profession, book three offers particularly practical insights for human-scaled street networks, new methods of land-use zoning, and ground-related high-density housing reaching nearly 200 units per hectare. Alexander has also toned down his criticism of planners (in A New Theory of Urban Design (1987) he asserted that planning is essentially unnecessary), recognizing planners' vital role as consensus builders of a community. Alexander's greatest contribution to planning theory is his unwitting harmonization of three divergent theories, identified by Susan Fainstein in New Directions in Planning Theory (2000): the communicative model, which stresses the role of the planner as mediator and facilitator in the development process; New Urbanism, which focuses on the importance of design; and the just city, which looks at planning in relation to social and economic inequality. Alexander’s wide, holistic theory of the built environment accounts for the aesthetic, physical and social qualities that make a great place. ​While it is unfair to criticize an author for what he did not write, Alexander's failure to directly engage with his contemporaries in planning, architecture and design theory is an unfortunate omission. His unwillingness to enter the wider academic conversation does not help to dispel his persona as an idealistic, esoteric crank. Length is also an issue. This may not faze Alexander’s admirers, but at almost 2,200 pages – not to mention its rarity and price (over $300 for the set) – it becomes rather inaccessible to the curious weekend reader who might otherwise thoroughly enjoy and benefit from its contents. Alexander continues to inspire, spanning a diverse range of topics from the minutia of furniture design to zoning laws and public consultation meetings to the grand picture of the universe that vitalizes his entire project. The Nature of Order offers a comprehensive account of what constitutes “good” in the built environment without settling for the limited theories that only emphasize having everyone's voice at the table, imitations of a past aesthetic, or socio-economic outcomes. The process and the end result matter equally – the crux of Alexander’s thesis is that they are inextricably linked. Living structure that awakens life in human beings can only be brought about through living processes where people have the chance to shape their places. The job of urban planners – and placemakers of all sorts – is to encourage the kinds of processes that create life in the built environment, by paying attention to the life already revealing itself.

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De Botton and Social Psychiatry: On 'Status Anxiety'

I’m really excited to welcome our first essay by my kiwi friend Matt Vandervecht, who had the idea for this blog in the first place. Please submit comments and responses! Without further ado:

We can all confess to keeping up with the Joneses. Even though I have never wished for a greener lawn or a larger car than my neighbour, maybe, just maybe, in the timeless words of Skee-Lo, I have had moments of thinking:

I wish I was little bit taller, I wish I was a baller I wish I had a girl who looked good I would call her I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat and a ‘64 Impala

This wishful thinking is a clue about us as a culture of envy. What do we envy? In ‘short’ a ‘higher’ status, no pun intended. Advertising tells us to wish for what others have, and we feel compelled to obey. Why is this the case, and what can we do about it? This is the subject of Alain de Botton’s book Status Anxiety, a secular sermon on envy.

De Botton argues that the closer you are in status to someone the easier it is to identify the differences between your respective statuses and therefore the easier it is to envy. The false equality of the west is a myth through which we can all achieve our own ‘American Dream’, provided that we work hard enough. We have more and more ways to compare ourselves to each other than ever before. The facebook ‘status’ may be an example of how we can, like never before, compare ourselves to such a large number of other people, instantly.

In past times people assumed that differences in status were natural. In some sense, people in medieval society benefited from a rigid class distinction between nobles and peasants. A peasant didn’t have to explain why he was a peasant, and hence had no need to worry about it. Today, we have lost our excuse for not being rich, techy, happily married with 1.5 children, or basically having a 50%+1 status level. We have no excuse because equal opportunity means that success comes to those who deserve it. In a twisted application of modus tollens, we say “if I deserve success, then I’ll be successful. Because I don’t feel successful, I must not deserve success”.

Accept for a moment that this cultural tendency is true. In this picture, we would have to fear how others see us. Our status is a marker of how well we have developed the opportunities we have been given. Our ranking will open or close doors on the basketball court, in jobs, relationships, even friendships, hence it creates a fear with “an exceptional capacity to inspire sorrow”, according to de Botton.

An example of anxiety and escape is found in Skee-Lo’s catchy song, I Wish. He describes himself up as a low-status basketball player in the neighborhood, always picked last, or excluded. His lack of baller skill is assumed to be the reason why he has failed to attract a particular girl, Leoshi. The expression of his anxiety is his wish for a few extra inches and bit more skill, or even better, to get a new car. His current one isn’t cutting it with …an 8-track and a spare tire in the backseat, But that’s flat…

The causes of status anxiety, as outlined by de Botton, can be found in these lyrics. Skee-Lo is lacking romantic love from Leoshi and brotherly love from the neighborhood basketball players. He is the victim of snobbery, the practice of judging a person based on a limited vision of who he is. The lack of romantic and filial love, high-status, new cars, or freedom to change position all contribute to status anxiety, creating sorrowful rap songs and a wider cultural feeling of despair and anxiety. It is common to feel helpless about our current position in life, and this is what de Botton wants us to talk about and understand.

The book’s first half deals with these causes of status anxiety, while the second half looks at solutions to the problem as it has been addressed by art, politics, philosophy, religion, or bohemia: a social movement that could be described as being hipster before there were hipsters. These are not de Botton’s solutions; he doesn’t preach fire and brimstone but instead relies on a therapeutic approach. He won’t tell us the answer, but implicitly asks us “how does this information make you feel?” He wants us to solve the problem for ourselves … which means you have to read the book for yourself and not take my word for it.

There are two realizations I made about envy while on de Botton’s psycho-literary couch. First, that we make odd decisions based on envy, and second, that envy costs us more than we think. We can compare Skee-Lo’s anxiety over his baller status with a medieval moment de Botton sees as important for the discussion: dueling gentlemen. Early modern men would fight to the death over the slightest infringement upon status or honour. The choice to face death rather than let a perceived insult slide is almost equally as baffling as wanting a new car to establish a romantic relationship: neither has a great probability of success.

The issue with both dueler and baller is that they lose more than they gain. The one man is reduced to a performance on a court, the other to a performance with a sword or gun. To be envious is to be so focused on an abstract ideal of honour or success that you cannot see the forest for the trees, or the man for the status. Acting on our status anxiety causes us to lose the ability to enjoy a mundane full life.

De Botton’s counsel helps us re-contextualize status in a way that we can still appreciate excellence and understand failure. We can choose not to fight to the death or rely on an antique car to bring a crowd of supporters (though it does work for Skee-lo in the music video). Through conversation we can keep this status anxiety from being as pervasive in moments of our life where we feel like failures, and we can affirm each other as people with skills and value. No matter how bad my car or cross-over dribble is, someone can remind me I have an enviable side. Let’s talk about it.

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Fiction and Banality: On Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom"

I'm going to arrive at a question and hypothesis about Freedom by a roundabout way. Franzen was, famously, one of David Foster Wallace's lowbrow companions. (Disclosure: DFW is a literary hero of mine.) DFW has an interesting take on the banal and the quotidian. The reason for our overuse of "practice makes perfect" or "third time's a charm" is a deep truth that we've learned to express in these phrases. By extension, the everyday should not be avoided in fiction because underneath what may seem boring or empty or repetitive, there is a genuine moment of humanity. DFW parlays this into exquisite but painful descriptions of the everyday.

The best example is an AA meeting where a sober trucker whose Irish accent takes about 20 seconds/line to read out loud and understand describes his first "rail tard . . . conestroocted instaid've sprayed." (Infinite Jest, 351) The sober members of the meeting laugh uncontrollably, but the narrator also tells us that "the lightless eyes of certain palsied back-row newcomers widen with a very private Identification and possible hope, hardly daring to imagine. . . ." (352) To be clear, we are talking about shit here, and DFW has turned us from the difficulty of working out the Irishman's accent to the hilarity of the fact that a solid turd is the symbol of this man's freedom to the heart-rending realization that for newcomers to the group, this symbol is adequate. The banal, then, occurs as a process - work, farce, revelation - that expands my literary imagination, makes me laugh, and teaches me to see myself as no less addicted and no less dependent on a sign from a "har par" (Higher Power) than our Irish trucker.

Jonathan Franzen's Freedom is a quest to discover freedom in the banal. He accurately predicted that his audience would resemble the Berglund family (the main characters listen to NPR, are on track with various forms of social liberalism and white guilt and the American dream) and therefore sets out to demonstrate that freedom, if it is absolute, is the freedom to rebel against these values. Hence Walter Berglund's working for a multinational coal extraction company, Patty's interest in a boob job, Joey's republican politics and refusal to break up with his girl next door high-school sweetheart when he goes to college, and Jessica's complete disinterest in anything social or political. 

But for each of these main characters, freedom is defined, at its root, as a discovery of his or her individual humanity in the act of having sex with whoever he or she wants to have sex with. Thus, Walter can only truly love Patty with the animal ferocity she needs after he screws his assistant. Patty can only move past her boredom with Walter by sleeping with his longtime best friend, who she'd always been more attracted to than Walter. Joey can only acknowledge his devotion to Connie, the hometown sweetheart who is undereducated and uncultured, by finding the prettiest girl he can and failing to make love to her. His failure validates his attachment to Connie, and his parents' 'successes' are the only thing that can validate their attachment to each other. In Franzen's universe, the path to self-knowledge is screwing multiple people. (I believe this thesis makes sense for The Corrections, too.)

Is this a ridiculous picture of life? Or is it a focus on the usually obscure humanity beneath the banality of sexual attraction, the likes of which would make DFW (and Freud) proud? 

I think DFW and Franzen are fundamentally opposed in their definitions of banality. For Franzen, the ubiquity of sexuality means that the core truth of human flourishing must be sexual, and this is why sex gets so much attention in his work. Various acts are graphically described as occasions for the realization of a character's own special needs and talents. I think this is an oversimplification of sex, which has a meaning much more obscure than Franzen supposes. 

For DFW, the blunt repetition of daily acts like defecating hides some human meaning that we can only see through the eyes of an alcoholic. Fiction is a method of getting outside our own special identity to see the truth behind the banal that makes us work, entertains us, and then enlightens us. Critically, the everyday does not help me discover my own special self but puts me into society. Repetition sets me in a world occupied by other people who are like me, giving me "a very private Identification and possible hope, hardly daring to imagine . . . ." This reminds me of C.S. Lewis: "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . ." (The Four Loves)

To point to the difference between sex and defecation as the cause for the difference in focus in these two definitions of banality is a red herring. Franzen's characters use their freedom to define and discover themselves, while DFW's characters uncover their essential similarity to other people. "We are all of us brothers."

Underneath Franzen's version of sex is a petit bourgeois understanding of identity that is boring and empty. Freedom does not make us work, its entertaining moments prove to be empty, and it leaves us alone, unfree to pursue the closeness of a brotherhood of creatures. As such, it cannot be considered an adequate study in banality.

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Response from Keegan Lodder

"To exemplify your interpretation, Ben, here is a quote that came to mind from the third chapter of Orthodoxy titled 'The Suicide of Thought'. 'Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn; the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether'."

I think this accurately summarizes the problem, too. Will skepticism really make us stop working? I get the prima facie force of that argument, but I also think its time to move on from this 'foundational' approach to thinking.

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Intro + The Man who was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton

This blog is meant for discussions of books selected by friends of mine for us to read. We will hopefully all be posting and discussing books as we get to them.

First on the list, we had G.K. Chesterton's The Man who was Thursday. This was suggested by Matt Vandervecht for me to read during his extended absence in NZ. 

Initial thoughts are the following:

I like Chesterton, and I use the word like in pretty much its exact sense: Chesterton, as I imagine him from the little reading that I have done, seems like a wise man who I like. I've read Father Brown, bits of Orthodoxy, and now TMwwT. Each of them seems to sustain my theory that Chesterton is a likeable writer. 

That would be a good thing if books are always supposed to confirm me in what I think. Chesterton, with his common sense and reasonability, should appeal to readers like me who overcomplicate questions with scholastic answers. And as a simplifier of theological positions that are somewhat obscure, Chesterton is delightful. For example, Father Brown always checks what could be seen as supernatural for the basic facts, and the mystery is always solved because of his unique mien as a trustworthy priest. His approach to the world means that he can often confirm catholic morality as he solves the crimes that he somehow constantly stumbles on. A slew of facts, justified beliefs, and even converts lies in his wake. I think that TMwwT achieves basically the same thing. 

TMwwT's focus on a would-be ring of revolutionary anarchists is no less polemic than Chesterton's theological works. Though all of these anarchists swear their commitment to the cause, at the end of the book (SPOILER ALERT?) it becomes obvious that a principle of order has been functioning all along. Even Sunday, the leader of the ring, who is the target of Thursday's mission, is revealed to be "the Sabbath . . . the peace of God". Anarchy, as Augustine might say it, doesn't exist. There is merely order and the absence of order, and the absence of order, as non-existent, can only cause events insofar as it can affect order (some classic Structure/Direction stuff for you there, Matt!). The ring of anarchists depends on the order of creation for its efficacy in the attempt to destroy order. In fact, when we see the world through Chesterton's eyes, this order is even the sine qua non of anarchy. 

In the post-script to the book, Chesterton shares the fact that the book is to be read as a nightmare that describes the state of philosophy at his time: "It was intended to describe the world of wild doubt and despair which the pessimists were generally describing at that date; with just a gleam of hope in some double meaning of the doubt, which even the pessimists felt in some fitful fashion." 

My question is whether this acts as an interpretive key that opens up the text to us, or as a pin that deflates the souffle Chesterton has cooked up. Sure, things do have to resolve. But Chesterton, in my opinion, lacks the ability to let problems confront us. This is what I mean by comparing Father Brown with Chesterton and with an orthodox confirmation of facts, morality, and Christianity. There is always some explanation behind the curtain, and if we are reasonable enough and good enough people, we'll find it.

I wonder if Chesterton included Hegel in the list of 'six philosophers' that his polemic is directed against. I doubt it. For Hegel, the problems of history exist only to be overcome, but because there needs to be problems for there to be overcoming, the horrors of history are basically necessary truths. This is unfortunately the same force that drives Chesterton's approach to questions: the troubles of doubt and pessimism are basically nothing compared to the wonders of orthodoxy and catholic morality, and with the right understanding of the facts, we will just get over the skepticism that haunts philosophy.

And can we fault him for believing this? Not according to his own standards. But as an example of his fiction, TMwwT falls short of a compelling appeal to my experience of philosophical skepticism.