Philosophy Now

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ISSUE 45 Mar/Apr 04
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4 Editorial What is Virtue?

5 News in brief
THE VIRTUES
7 Arte Philip Vassallo

Editor-in-Chief Rick Lewis

Editor Anja Steinbauer
Reviews Editor Bryn Williams
Online Editor Bora Dogan
Film Editor Thomas Wartenberg
Marketing Manager Sue Roberts
Advertising Manager

9 The Virtues of Self-Help Phil Cafaro

OTHER ARTICLES
14 Love and Logic Nancy Bunge
18 Bohr & Kant & Zeno Tony Wagstaff

Tony West, 01277 655999

tony.west@philosophynow.org

24 Popular Bogus Questions Stephen Doty

UK Editors

Rick Lewis, Anja Steinbauer,

Bora Dogan, Bryn Williams

26 Darwin Meets Socrates Steve Stewart-Williams

US Editors

30 The Burden of History Tim Madigan

PETER ZAPFFE
33 The View from Mount Zapffe

Pow! Zapffe!
A most singular character
p.33

Gisle Tangenes

Prof. Raymond Pfeiffer (Delta College),

Prof. Charles Echelbarger (SUNY),
Prof. Jonathan Adler (CUNY),
Timothy J. Madigan, Andrew Chrucky
Contributing Editors

Alexander Razin (Moscow State Univ.)

UK Editorial Advisors

Chris Bloor, Paul Gregory, John

Heawood, Kate Leech, David Papineau

35 The Last Messiah

US Editorial Advisors

Peter Zapffe, trans. Gisle Tangenes

Prof. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, Toni

Vogel Carey, Prof. Rosalind Ekman
Ladd, Prof. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong,
Prof. Harvey Seigel.
Cover Picture Chris Madden

LETTERS
40 Letters to the Editor

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44 Welfare and Rational Care by Stephen Darwall

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COLUMNS
23 Dear Socrates
43 Moral Moments Joel Marks
48 Philosophy & Film:
Mystic River Tom Wartenberg

The opinions expressed in this magazine

do not necessarily reflect the views of
the editor or editorial board of
Philosophy Now.

REFERENCE
52 Society Columns meetings & events

Philosophy Now is published by

Anja Publications Ltd

POETRY AND PROSE

ISSN 0961-5970

53 Short Story: Gravity by Mairi Wilson

54 Poem: On Real and Artificial Flowers
by Chengde Chen

In Search of

Virtue

back issues p50

subscriptions p51

Special feature on p.7

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 3

Editorial What is Virtue?

You are a citizen of a great and powerful nation. Are
you not ashamed that you give so much time to the
pursuit of money and reputation, and honours, and
care so little for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul? Socrates, The Apology *

ocrates said that we should be concerned

with the improvement of our souls, and
this is, after a manner of speaking, the focus
of one of the two special features in this
issue. For the subject of our first two
articles is the nature of virtue, and how can
the development of virtue be described
except as the improvement of ones soul?
One of the classic questions of philosophy is
what should I do? However, from the
earliest times some have argued that this
question is less important than the question
of what kind of people we should be. If we
can become better people, they say, then
good actions will follow naturally.
This approach to life is known as virtue
ethics, and was first advocated by
Confucius, but in the West it is particularly
associated with Aristotle. Recently it has
enjoyed a bit of a revival. This may be
partly a backlash against all the ethical
systems so earnestly discussed in the past few
centuries which have attempted to lay down
sets of rules for how we should behave.
Whether Kants idea about our having duties
founded on the categorical imperative, or
Bentham and Mills utilitarianism, which is
based on considering an actions consequences, the aim has been to work out how
people should behave in different circumstances. In other words, the focus has been
on peoples consciously-chosen actions. But
some have found this kind of rule-following
ethics to be desiccated they claim that it
doesnt take enough account of the emotions
and affections of the moral agent, for
instance, or encourages people to do good
deeds grudgingly, even resentfully. Virtue
ethics by contrast doesnt look at morality in
isolation but as something which is
inescapably in the context of our lives and of
society. Virtue ethicists suggest that we can
acquire virtues in two ways. The first is by
following the example of inspiring
[* with friendly acknowledgments to the philosophy TV
show No Dogs Or Philosophers Allowed, which uses this
quotation as its motto.]

4 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

individuals (a soldier might be inspired with

courage by the example of some great hero;
or somebody might be inspired with
tolerance and benevolence by the example of
Gandhi). The other way is through practice
for instance, if one practices the virtue of
patience, over time one becomes more
patient (Or so Im told. Ive never tried it
myself, actually).
But what exactly are the virtues that we
should cultivate in this way? Kindness?
Honesty? Courage? Diligence? All of the
above and more? There are many virtues, so
what is the nature of each, which are the
most important and how do they interrelate
with one another? Our first two articles in
different ways both look at what virtue is.
Philip Vassallo (p7) examines the gradual
development of the idea of virtue or arte in
ancient Greece. And Philip Cafaro (p9)
examines some thoroughly modern conceptions of virtue with the aid of a shelf-full of
self-help books. (This is a genre at which
philosophers tend to sneer; but Cafaro points
out that their vast sales suggest they reflect
well some popular notions of virtue, and
besides, he says, they also contain some very
good insights and arguments.)
The other special feature in this issue is
about one of the great 20th century existentialists, namely Peter Wessel Zapffe (18991990). Zapffe was and is well known within
his native Norway, partly due to his other
careers as a humorist and mountaineer, but
has been rather neglected elsewhere.
Thanks to translator Gisle Tangenes, we are
delighted to bring you the first-ever English
publication of Zapffes classic 1933 essay
The Last Messiah. Zapffe was clearly a
remarkable thinker and a wonderful prose
stylist, and Tangenes lively translation really
does him justice. An introductory article by
Tangenes sheds some light on Zapffes
colourful and engaging personality as well as
on his ideas. Tangenes remarked that as a
philosopher, Zapffe is reminiscent of Camus,
but not so optimistic.(!) He also reminded
me that there are a lot of fascinating
thinkers around whose work remains buried
in less-spoken languages, and it is nice to be
able to do something about one such. Well
obviously have to keep a lookout for more
such so as usual, all suggestions welcomed!

Philosophy in a nutshell
Philosophy (Philo = love; sophia =
wisdom) is often translated as the love of
wisdom or the love of truth. One way to
get a vague idea as to what philosophy is
about is to dissect the subject and investigate its skeleton. Here is a short guide
to some of the bigger bones!
Metaphysics
after-physics: the
books found after Aristotles books of Physics
The investigation of the underlying
nature and structure of reality as a
whole. Includes questions about the
nature of time, about the different categories of existence and about whether
there is a God.
Epistemology
Episteme = knowledge
logos = explanation of
What is knowledge? What is the difference between knowledge, belief and
opinion? Can we really know anything?
How could we know that we did?
Logic
logos = explanation of
This subject consists of two different
topics. (1) an analysis of what is meant
by logical consequence. (2) an analysis
of the validity of arguments, which
nowadays employs a sort of algebra
which can be used to crunch logical
problems.
Philosophy of Mind
What is the human mind? How does it
think? How is mind related to body?
Ethics
from Ethikos
How should we live? Why should we
live like that? What is good and
bad/evil? How should we decide that an
act is unethical? What is happiness?
Aesthetics
aisthetikos = concerning feeling
What is art? What is beauty? Is the
beauty of music beautiful for similar
reasons to that of a landscape?
Political Philosophy polis= city state
What would utopia be like? Is utopia
possible? How should society be organised?
Other areas include philosophy of
mathematics, of science, of religion, of
language, of social science, of history.

Easy reads
The Problems of Philosophy by
Bertrand Russell. A short and stimulating
introduction to philosophy
History of Western Philosophy by
Bertrand Russell. A long, detailed and
readable history of philosophy. Although
dated, it gives a good introduction which can
then be built upon.
Philosophy and Living by Ralph
Blumenau. Another general history of
philosophy, but with an emphasis on relating
ideas to modern life.
Dictionary of Philosophy by Antony
Flew. Covers an immense variety of subjects,
people etc. Really useful.

 $1 million prize for scholars attack of the

clones philosophy radio hits airwaves
Immanuel Kant bicentenary celebration

News

News reports by Sue Roberts in London and Lisa Sangoi in New York.
Kluge for Kolakowski
The first-ever John W. Kluge Prize
for Lifetime Achievement in the Human
Sciences has been awarded to Leszek
Kolakowski. The award was presented
by the Librarian of Congress, Dr James
Billington. Professor Kolakowski is a
Polish anti-communist philosopher and
historian of philosophy. Thoroughly
conversant in both the analytical and
Continental strains of Western philosophy, Kolakowski is the author of more
than 30 books and 400 other writings in
four languages: primarily in Polish, but
also in French, English and German. His
main lines of inquiry have been in the
history of philosophy and the philosophy
of religion. Born in Radom, Poland, in
1927, he now resides in Oxford, England.
The Kluge Prize , of one million dollars,
is intended for lifetime achievement in
those areas of the humanities and social
sciences for which there are no Nobel
Prizes. These disciplines include philosophy, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, religion, linguistics
and criticism in the arts and literature.

Fischer Honours Kant

The 200th anniversary of Immanuel
Kants death was commemorated with a
trip by Germanys foreign minister
Joschka Fischer to the philosophers
home town of Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad
is the Russian Baltic port where Kant
spent all his life when it was Knigsberg,
in what was then East Prussia. Several
German philosophers accompanied Mr
Fischer. He led the Kant anniversary
celebrations by laying a wreath on the
philosophers memorial. Three new
biographies, which highlight the partyloving facet of the young Kant before his
fame, have been recently published in
Germany ahead of the bicentenary.
They are the first Kant biographies for
half a century Kants World by Manfred
Geier, Immanuel Kant by Steffen
Dietzsch and a third by Manfred Khn.
Kant has traditionally been portrayed as a
dutiful ascetic moralist in other words

as rather a bore but according to the

three new biographies, the great metaphysician was not such a square after all.
He enjoyed drinking wine, playing
billiards and wearing fine, colorful
clothes. On occasion, Kant drank so
much red wine that he was unable to find
his way home, the books claim.

Philosophy Talk
Philosophy Talk, a pioneering radio
show hosted by Professors John Perry
and Ken Taylor of Stanford University,
and produced by Ben Manilla, debuted
January 13, 2004. The live show, which
airs Tuesdays at noon on the San
Francisco public radio station KALW,
serves as a forum addressing issues of
contemporary society such as race,
marriage and politics. Perry and Taylor
aim to bring the methods of philosophical discourse to the general public,
hoping to incite others to think more
deeply about the issues surrounding
them. One can tune in to Philosophy
Talk on KALW 91.7FM or live on the
internet via www.philosophytalk.org.

Clone Zone
Panos Zavos, the US fertility doctor
who had earlier caused outrage among
the scientific community when he
claimed to have implanted a cloned
foetus into a 35 year old woman, has now
revealed that the pregnancy has failed.
Ignoring the approved procedure of
presenting his work in a scientific journal
or at a conference, Dr Zavos broke the
news at the end of a press conference in
January.
He claimed that the cloned embryo
was grown from skin cells taken from the
womans husband and that the
implanting was filmed. No evidence was
forthcoming but he insisted that if the
pregnancy resulted in a birth, DNA tests
would confirm that the procedure was
genuine. The woman stood a 30 per
cent chance of becoming pregnant,
according to Zavos.

He was roundly condemned also by

religious leaders, politicians and pro-life
groups for falsely raising hopes among
those desperate to have children. Dr
Wolf Reik, a cloning expert at the
Babraham Institute in Cambridge, is
reported as saying that In every single
experiment, 99 per cent of clones die in
the womb and the other one per cent has
problems. It remains irresponsible to do
it in humans.
On being questioned over the ethics of
cloning Dr Zavos replied When people
call me a criminal, you should know that
I do not even have a speeding ticket. I
never break the law. People are my
business, the world is my market.
However, Zavos is not content to
place all his eggs in one basket, so to
speak. It is reported that, together with
the UK fertility specialist Dr Paul
Rainsbury, he is close to announcing a
plan to offer prospective parents the
option of embryo splitting. This would
entail an embryo being divided into two,
with one part being implanted in hope of
fertilisation and the other part being
frozen and stored to be used as a source
of stem cells for future use. This,
according to the doctor, would be an
insurance in the event of the child developing any genetic abnormalities, deformities or illness.

Clone Zone Clone

Scientists from South Koreas Seoul
National University reported that they
have successfully created human embryos
through cloning and extracted embryonic
stem cells. They state that the goal of
using stem cells is to advance the understanding of the causes and treatment of
disease. Although their work makes birth
of cloned babies more feasible, they say
that they do not want to clone humans.
Their work will be published in the
journal Science in a paper that will provide
detailed descriptions of how to create
human embryos by cloning. Their
research is likely to incite fierce debate
over the ethics of human cloning. This
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 5

News
development surprises members of the
US national ethics commission, which
recommended 18 months ago that there
should be a three to five year moratorium
on human cloning research.

Zeno Vendler
The philosopher and linguist Zeno
Vendler passed away in January, at the
age of 82. He died from kidney failure
while visiting his family in Hungary.
Vendler had retired from the University
of California but also taught at Cornell,
Brooklyn College and the University of
Calgary, where he was a founding
member of the philosophy department.
One of Vendlers great passions was
language; the others being travel and
photography. Raised to speak both
German and Hungarian, he later
acquired fluent Latin and Dutch and
eventually studied English too. He was
naturally drawn to the philosophy of
language and later to the field of modern
linguistics under the tutelage of Zellig
Harris, with whom he worked on grammatical transformations. His contribu-

Philosophy Now
Issue 45 edited by:
Rick Lewis founded
Philosophy Now in
1991 in his spare
time while working
as a physicist for
British Telecom.
He thinks that
everyday life throws
philosophical
problems at us all, and the only question is
whether we tackle them badly or well.
Anja Steinbauer
says The uniqueness of the western
philosophical tradition has often been
pointed out, but
neither being unique
nor being philosophical is unique to
the western tradition. Anja is editor for
Continental, non-Western and feminist
philosophy in the magazine.
6 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

tions eventually led to the establishment

of some of the basic tenets in linguistics.
However, Vendlers interest in
language was never merely academic.
Said to be a delightful and delighted
conversationalist, he loved language for
its role in the enjoyment of friendship.

Atheism stalks school system

The previously uncontroversial issue
of religious education in British schools
has been rudely shaken up by a report by
a government think-tank
The report by the Institute For Public
Policy Research, entitled What is
Religious Education For? is being
considered by education ministers as they
draw up the first national guidelines on
religious instruction. At present R.E. is a
compulsory subject in English and Welsh
schools but is not part of the national
curriculum. It is proposed that lessons
should be renamed religious, philosophical and moral education, and teach about
different belief systems such as
humanism and agnosticism.
The Campaign for Real Education has
reacted angrily, saying Atheism is not a
religion. To change religious education
into spiritual education would be quite
wrong. We would deny children their
Christian heritage. R.E. lessons should
be about the teachings of Christianity,
and possibly other religions but not
secular beliefs. Its straying down the
road of philosophy.
By contrast, the Church of England
and the Muslim Council of Britain have
taken a more phlegmatic approach.
Canon John Hall, the Church of
Englands chief education officer, is
quoted as saying It is very important that
other faiths are taught as well as
Christianity, because we need to respect
and take into account other worldviews.
Furthermore, It is appropriate that religious education recognises that some
people do not believe in God.
Tahir Alam, chairman of the Muslim
Council of Britains education committee
stated that atheism was already discussed
in religious lessons.

Miracles and wonders corner

A suspiciously clever African Grey
parrot called Nkisi has been reported in
the BBCs Wildlife magazine. Allegedly,
Nkisi has a vocabulary of around 950
words and can use the correct tense of
verbs. Most remarkably, he is said to be
capable of producing new phrases if the

situation demands. Attempts to teach

chimps to communicate in human
language have revealed a very limited
ability to create novel utterances.
He also has a lively sense of humour.
When another parrot hung upside down
from his perch (as they do!) Nkisi is said
to have commented You got to put this
bird on the camera!
However, he has a potential rival in
Sunny, another African Grey, who is
ships mascot aboard HMS Lancaster.
After a life on the ocean wave, Sunny has
accrued a considerable vocabulary, most
of it unrepeatable; also some catchphrases
such as you aint seen me, right? and
Zulus! Thousands of them!
The Queen and Prince Phillip will
soon be dining aboard the Lancaster after
its return from the South Atlantic. Sunny
is to undertake compulsory shore leave
during the visit ... for fear of some
embarrassing exchanges?

More lab-rats wanted

An EU measure called Reach
(Registration, Evaluation and
Authorisation of Chemicals) will involve
laboratory tests on hundreds of thousands
of animals in order to comply with the
intended stricter regulation of the
European chemical industry.
Concern has been expressed by politicians and scientists that many tests will
replicate those already carried out by
private companies on chemicals that have
been in use for many years. 30,000
separate chemicals are currently
produced by companies in the European
Union.
In reply to a recent question in the
House of Commons, rural affairs minister
Alun Michael revealed that Reach
required that 20,000 chemicals each be
tested on at least 25 animals a total of
500,000 tests. A further 4,000 substances
would require 1,500 animal tests each.
Requirements for the remaining 6,000
chemicals were not revealed. Tony
Trewavas, biochemistry professor at
Edinburgh University, with a background
of testing chemicals on animals, has
stated It is a waste of time and will teach
scientists nothing.
Bob Spink, a Conservative member of
the parliamentary select committee for
science & technology, is reported as
saying This will lead to a massive outcry.
This testing is not based on any perception of hazard and might result in no
benefit at all. We should be testing chemicals based on real hazard and real risk.

Arte
Introducing our section on the nature of virtue, Philip Vassallo describes how the
ancient conception of arte arose and developed.

n discussing arte, Plato leads the examination of

times (800BC) to illuminate the glorious knightly culture of
humankinds quest for excellence. Henry Marrou
aristocratic warriors that thrived magnificently through to the
describes arte as the ideal value to which even life
era of the military state of Sparta; (2) assumed a new definition
itself must be sacrificed. Although Marrou considers
through Plato (circa 400BC) during the period of the scribe
culture of classical Athenian education, which was reserved for
ludicrous the translation of the word from ancient
a privileged ruling class and based on a search for truth; and
Greek to mean virtue (he prefers valor), virtue is the term used
(3) finally it expanded its essential characteristics through the
by translator W.K.C. Guthrie in two of Platos dialogues to
writings and oratory of Isocrates (circa 350BC).
describe this quality that is made and not born in us, the
quality of excellence toward which we
Homer: The Noble Warrior
strive in our daily conduct in society.
The warrior of the Homeric era was
In Protagoras, Plato asks what virtue
no barbarian. He was skilled in the art
is, and in Meno, he asks whether it can
of warfare and athletic activities such
be taught. Protagoras tells a doubting
as boxing, jousting, running and
Socrates that virtue is a single whole
throwing. But also, through the
and qualities such as justice, selflegends of Homers great poetic works,
control and holiness are parts of
Iliad and Odyssey, Greek warriors
it.(Guthrie p.61) In brilliantly
learned the chivalrous rules of
conceived arguments, Socrates proves
engagement in combat and ideals of
to his colleague that: (1) some of the
social conduct. Those epics offered
most valiant Athenians have failed to
the model of the young nobleman
bequeath their virtuous qualities to
achieving arte at the feet of an elder
their offspring, suggesting that virtue
to whose training he committed
is not inherited; (2) a person who
himself. For instance, Achilles was
posseses some of the parts of virtue
raised to a state of grace by the wise
listed so matter-of-factly by Protagoras
centaur Chiron and counseled further
may not fully acquire some of the
by Phoenix.
other parts; thus Socrates asserts that
The young heros responsibility his
if virtue is indeed a single whole, it
moral imperative was not to simply
cannot be realized without all its parts;
attain personal glory above all others
(3) if virtue is to be learned, then those
in military exercises and speech, but to
who lack it are not necessarily bad but
attain it at the service of the State.
rather ignorant of what virtue is, just
Homers legacy was so profound that
as those who are virtuous have simply
Virtue personified: statue of Arte in Ephesus
Alexander the Great read him
exploited what they have mastered.
thoroughly and enthusiastically during his military campaigns
When Meno asks Socrates whether virtue is something that
and his works remained the basic educational textbook for
can be taught, the philosopher replies that he does not know
centuries.(Marrou p.9)
what virtue is nor has he ever met a person who does.(Guthrie
The Homeric ethic demanded that a man set himself apart
p.116) Later, Socrates paradoxically summarizes his position
spiritually and physically from his peers, and for inspiration he
when maintaining that if virtue is knowledge, then it must be
could turn to the poet, who through mythmaking would
taught; however, while he has found many seekers of virtue, he
suggest the means to this end.
has never found any teachers of it. Virtue, then, is not
knowledge.(Guthrie p.144)
Plato: The Philosopher
In his History of Education in Antiquity, Marrou considers
The democratic ideal preceded classical education; thus,
arte a heroic morality of honor,(p.10) a term by which we
notions of the collective good and of performing heroically
can trace the essence of educational theory in antiquity
for the State were firmly grounded in Greek society by the
through three distinct phases. It (1) originated in Homeric
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 7

fifth century B.C. At

this time, however,
Homeric warriors? Greece experienced a
Replica wooden deep philosophical
horse in Troy. divide. Sparta
remained a military
culture while Athens
evolved into a scribe
culture, one in which
intellectual character
was valued as highly as
physical prowess.
Pedagogy as we know
it today took root
during this period.
The Sophists became
the first professional
educators, and Platos
philosophy would
stand as an educational model for centuries to come.
Reading Platos dialogues is the best way to understand the
moral ideal of arte. He does not set out to definitively answer
universal questions about what is necessary to embody arte;
rather, all his works suggest that to utterly dedicate oneself to
the quest for arte is, in a sense, to be in possession of it. Plato
believed that philosophy was best expressed and could best be
cultivated in the public arena. By writing dialogues featuring
his teacher Socrates, he documented his dialectic method in
order to (1) examine questions about virtue, justice, and
beauty, (2) present the views of the dominant thinkers of his
time, and (3) demonstrate the manner in which debates might
be properly conducted. In employing the Socratic dialogue,
Plato offered no universal answers to the fundamental philosophical questions of his contemporaries. He chose instead to
suggest ways of asking uncompromising questions that would
subject all hypotheses to intense scrutiny. In effect, arte
became more an intellectual struggle for truth and wisdom in
ones daily conduct than a mastery of physical skills and an
accomplishment of heroic deeds.
Though Plato intended his philosophic training for the
aristocracy to prepare them for their place in politics and law,
his ideas represented a revolutionary departure from the traditional foundations of education.
Full of noble

By his vigorous contrast between philosophy and poetry, and by breaking

with the settled tradition that Homer was the basis of all education, Plato
put the Greek soul in a dilemma: should education remain fundamentally
artistic and poetical, or become scientific? (Marrou p.72)

Thus, while Platos aims were political, his insistence that

the truly wise king be well-versed in science, his assertion that
mathematics awakened the mind and his imagined landscape
on which each man seeking truth would cultivate his own
garden in a heroic solitude demonstrate that arte was to him
a moral ideal, an ideal for a man who was vastly different from
the noble warrior whom Homer had conceived.
Isocrates: The Orator
Isocrates was a pupil of the Sophists and a teacher who was
influenced by Socrates and Plato. He offered the Athenians of
his time an education that cultivated the whole man,
8 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

preparing him for political, intellectual, and moral leadership.

(Proussis p.56) Unhappy with Platos ideal that arte was to be
found in the city (man) bears within himself, Isocrates
resolved to find Truth through the virtue of speech.
Like the Sophists, Isocrates sought to train orators to
choose subject matter of great consequence and to compose
and deliver practical, compelling arguments in the service of
Greece. While he shared Platos skepticism about the
teaching of arte, Isocrates hoped that through devotion to the
art of rhetoric and lifelong application of its principles, his
students would strive toward excellence. His educational
model depended upon the art of oratory to solve everyday
problems that Athenians experienced.
Isocrates is credited with inspiring the literary tone of
Western education, which still lasts to this day.
Unquestionably, we can see his deep influence on Cicero and
Quintilian in Roman education nearly half a millennium later.
His educational objective was more pragmatic than Platos,
whose philosophy Isocrates saw as more a culture than
pedagogy. Isocrates education was one that demanded a
responsible social life devoted to community interests.
(Chambliss p.19) In this way, he benefited from the Socratic
criticism of those Sophists who boasted of an ability to speak
and to train others to speak persuasively for its own sake and
not necessarily to benefit their fellow citizens. He demanded
of rhetoric high values and a moral eloquence that stood on
an even ground with the poetic mastery of Homer and the
philosophic command of Plato. Perhaps by embracing each of
these masters as Isocrates work suggests he does the
naturally talented student can learn and apply the practical
principles of oratory in the service of his countrymen and,
thus, move toward arte.
Conclusion
Marrou calls Plato and Isocrates the two pillars of the
sanctuary of classical education (p.91), noting that the
paradigm of each complements the other and immeasurably
enriches the tradition that has served Western culture through
modern times. In many ways and forms most notably, the
subject of their inquiry, the references that they used to
support their logic and challenge their detractors, and the
literature that they employed in their pedagogical practices
these Platonic and Isocratic columns have stood as indestructible monuments over the passage of time because of the
foundation which anchored them: the Homeric ethic, from
which they learned to continuously strive for arte, whatever
that meant to succeeding generations.
DR PHILIP VASSALLO 2004

Philip Vassallo holds a doctorate in educational philosophy from

Rutgers University and writes the column The Learning Class at
EducationNews.org. He accepts e-mail at Vassallo@aol.com.
Books cited
H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George
Lamb, (University of Wisconsin Press, 1982)
Plato, Protagoras and Meno, trans. W.K.C.Guthrie (Penguin, 1956)
Costas M. Proussis, The Orator: Isocrates, in The Educated Man:
Studies in the History of Educational Thought, edited by Paul Nash,
Andreas M. Kazamias and Henry J. Perkinson (John Wiley, 1965)
J.J.Chambliss, Educational Theory as a Theory of Conduct (SUNY 1987)

The Virtues of

Self-Help
Philip Cafaro asks what virtues are prized today, and why, and finds inspiration in
a place few philosophers look.

he resurgence of virtue ethics in the past

twenty years has been tied to a number of
different philosophical projects. In my opinion,
its most important achievement has been to
reopen Aristotles central ethical questions
What are human excellence and flourishing? How can we
achieve them? as major questions in philosophical ethics. In
doing so, virtue ethics has reclaimed this neglected half of our
ethical lives for intelligent consideration.
In 1993 the philosopher Julia Annas perceptively remarked
that in our time as opposed to Greek and Roman times
those interested in questions concerning personal development or the pursuit of happiness are more likely to consult
the popular self-help literature than works of philosophical
ethics. Other writers on virtue ethics, such as Rosalind
Hursthouse (1999), have noted in a line or two the
overlapping concerns of ancient ethical philosophy and
modern self-help books. But philosophers tend to condescend
to this literature, when they notice it at all. For example,
Stanley Cavell in his 1990 Carus lectures on ethical perfectionism remarked that false or debased perfectionisms seem
everywhere these days, from bestselling books with titles like
Love Yourself to the television advertisement on
behalf of Army recruitment with the slogan, Be
all that you can be. Cavell implies that such
books are hogwash. Other philosophers may
not say this, but neither do they explore this
material in any depth.
In my opinion, this condescension and
neglect are unjustified. The self-help literature,
in fact, is filled with intelligent discussions of
central issues in virtue ethics (along with a
certain amount of hogwash, it must be
admitted). The proper roles of pleasure and the
pursuit of knowledge in a good life; the right
attitudes toward money and material possessions; the proper boundaries between concern
for the self and concern for others; the issue of
weakness of will (akrasia): these and other key
issues in virtue ethics are staples of discussion
and exhortation. That these concerns are often
treated less as theoretical than as practical
problems allows for different, complementary
insights that philosophers may find valuable.
Another benefit of looking at the self-help
literature is that it focuses our attention on

popular, current conceptions of human excellence and flourishing. Early in the virtue ethics revival, many proponents
called for an increased empiricism in ethics, but more recently
this goal seems to have been forgotten. In his Nicomachean
Ethics, Aristotle considers popular conceptions of eudaimonia,
or human flourishing, partly because such popular beliefs are
likely to contain some truth and because they are necessarily in
competition with any doctrines that philosophers may
propound. But contemporary philosophers are much more
likely to write about Aristotles own ethical theories than to
follow his example and review popular ethical beliefs.
Consequently they miss opportunities to learn from (and
influence) popular opinion.
In this article, I will analyze the conceptions of human
virtue and flourishing in five popular self-help books.
Checking New York Times bestseller lists for the past thirty
years (at half year intervals) allowed me to select the following
blockbusters for reading and analysis: Wayne Dyer, Your
Erroneous Zones (1976); Robert Ringer, Looking Out for #1
(1977); Leo Buscaglia, Love (1972); M. Scott Peck, The Road
Less Travelled (1978); and Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul
(1992).

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 9

Each of these books stayed on the list for many months, or

in some cases years, and sold in the range of 4-12 million
copies. All of their authors subsequently had from one to four
other books on the bestseller list; the combined sales of all the
books by these authors undoubtedly topped 100 million copies
(and counting!). Given these books popularity and influence,
I believe they can tell us a lot about current notions of virtue
in our society particularly among its more literate and
earnest segments.
I found that these authors delivered new insights on a
whole range of topics in virtue ethics. I shall focus here on
their notions of virtue and the relationship between virtue and
human flourishing.
Virtue
The meaning of virtue is of course a contested point in
virtue ethics. Following Martha Nussbaum (1993) and
Rosalind Hursthouse (1999), I here define a virtue as any
character trait that makes a human being a good human being
(however one defines that) and that helps him or her succeed
in characteristic human activities. The possession of the
various virtues, thus defined, makes it more likely though it
does not guarantee! that a person will achieve a good life
(again, however one defines a good life).
Of the five authors surveyed here, only one, Thomas
Moore, consistently uses the word virtue to denote those
character traits or personal qualities he praises. Virtue is my
word for such qualities. Interestingly, these authors get by
without any single general term for the traits they are
praising, but those of us who want to analyze and compare
their views need such a term and virtue is the natural and
traditional choice. The qualities they discuss do indeed fit the
definition of virtue given above: they are praised because these
authors believe they are qualities that make a human being a
good human being, help him or her succeed in characteristic
human activities and make it more likely that a person will
achieve a happy and fulfilling life.
My procedure in identifying the virtues in each of these
books was simple. I read each of them, noting every personal
quality or character trait praised by their authors. Then I
read them through again, identifying those qualities that they
repeatedly praised and discussed in the greatest detail. It is
this subset of traits that I identify as virtues in the summary
table on page 11. Especially important (cardinal) virtues are
boldfaced.
Much could be said about the conceptions of virtue
revealed here. I shall restrict myself to three points.
(1) One way that todays self-help authors appear to be
the true heirs of the ancient ethicists is in their emphasis on
self-knowledge. Four of these writers treat self-knowledge as a
cardinal virtue, making it by far the most widely accepted
cardinal virtue. For Peck and especially Moore, selfknowledge is an end-in-itself: perhaps the most important
activity in which we can engage. For Dyer and especially
Ringer, self-knowledge is among the most important means for
fulfilling ones desires or achieving personal goals (Buscaglia
mentions self-knowledge once or twice, but his focus on
loving others makes it relatively unimportant).
Many contemporary virtue ethicists, with their concern to
justify or ground ethical judgments, look to a general
knowledge of human nature as key. Examples are Nussbaum
10 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

(1993), Hursthouse (1999) and Philippa Foot (2001). The selfhelp writers, with their more practical bent, emphasize the
need for personal insight. General knowledge of human nature
cannot tell you what goals to pursue in your own life, or show
you how to resolve your repeated problems with anger or
unsatisfying relationships. But self-knowledge can. These
writers also give many convincing examples of how lack of
self-knowledge can undermine happiness, often drawn from
their practices as therapists. I think the Oracle at Delphi
would be pleased to see its injunction held in such high
esteem after so many centuries.
(2) The self-help literature tends to put forth conceptions of virtue that are less moralistic than much of the
contemporary philosophical literature. Although there are as
many accounts of virtue as there are philosophers writing on
the subject, one key distinction is between those such as Iris
Murdoch (1997) and Michael Slote (2001) who see virtue
solely as moral excellence and those such as such as Richard
Taylor (1988) and Martha Nussbaum (1993) who define virtue
as general human excellence, with moral excellence
(understood primarily as kindness, concern for duty, and
respectful behavior toward others) making up a more or less
important part of it. This difference is roughly that between
common and philosophical usage of arete in the ancient
world, and common and philosophical usage of virtue in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries (but see Sherman (1997)
for a sustained argument that the ancient and modern conceptions of virtue are not as distinct as I am suggesting). My sense
is that for every contemporary virtue ethicist who embraces
the wider ancient conception of virtue, there are four or five
who are wedded to the narrower, modern conception.
Of course, this brief summary makes a number of gross
simplifications. Nevertheless, these simplifications preserve
an important disagreement in contemporary ethical
philosophy which more nuanced accounts tend to obscure.
The key questions are: What makes a person a good person?
Is being moral enough? Or must one also be intelligent,
accomplished, or other things as well?
My analysis of the self-help literature revealed that it
propounds a non-moralistic view of human virtue. Not
immoralist: all but one of these authors recognize the need for
morality and many emphasize moral virtues such as
compassion, dutifulness and self-discipline. However, they all
praise non-moral character traits, as well.
Thomas Moore lauds a suite of intellectual virtues such as
imagination, attentiveness, intelligence and creativity, because
they help us to know ourselves and the world around us, thus
making life more enjoyable and interesting. While Moore
also believes these qualities (and the knowledge they further)
help us to feel compassion for others and to treat them better,
that is not his only or even primary reason for valuing them.
Rather, self-knowledge, pleasure, the play of the imagination
in art or science, are all valuable in themselves. The qualities
that make us more likely to engage in or achieve these things
are virtues.
Leo Buscaglia and M. Scott Peck are the most moralistic of
the five authors, albeit in very different ways. Peck is the
Kantian, emphasizing the need for discipline, rationality, a
keen sense of responsibility and absolute honesty with oneself
and others. Buscaglia sticks up for aspects of ethics that
philosophers tend to neglect, emphasizing feelings of

BOOK

CONCEPTIONS
OF VIRTUE

CONCEPTIONS OF HAPPINESS

(cardinal virtues in bold )

Wayne Dyer
Your Erroneous Zones

Self-love, self-reliance, selfknowledge, freedom,

confidence, creativity, adventurousness, spontaneity, a
sense of humor, enthusiasm,
honesty, realism, living in the
present.

People who are free from erroneous zones are ... enthusiastic about life, and
they want all they can get out of it ... free from guilt and all the attendant
anxiety ... they seek out experiences that are new and unfamiliar to them ...
They know how to laugh, and how to create laughter ... These are people who
accept themselves without complaint ... They have insight into the behavior of
others ... insight into themselves too ... They have self-discipline but no need to
have things and people fit into their own perceptions of how everything ought
to be ... Organization then, for these people, is simply a useful means rather
than an end in itself ... They are motivated by a desire to grow, and they always
treat themselves well when given the option ... they live and happiness is their
payoff. (pp.222-234)

Robert Ringer
Looking Out for #1

Honesty, freedom, rationality,

courage, flexibility, selfknowledge, selfishness,
self-esteem, self-discipline,
self-respect, realism, integrity,
being organized.

Looking out for Number One is the conscious, rational effort to spend as much
time as possible doing those things which bring you the greatest amount of
pleasure and less time on those which cause pain. Everyone automatically
makes the effort to be happy, so the key word is rational. (p.10)

Leo Buscaglia
Love

M. Scott Peck
The Road Less Travelled

Thomas Moore
Care of the Soul

What is joy? Rather than go around in a circle of technical definitions, I think

you and I inherently understand what it means. When you experience pleasure
or an absence of pain, you know one thing; youre feelin good ... Happiness
isnt a mysterious condition that needs to be dissected carefully by wordologists or psychologists. (p.12)

Acceptance (of self and

others), ability to love,
respect for others,
compassion, being observant,
sensitivity to others, tolerance,
honesty, tenderness, concern
for others, knowledge, flexibility, sense of wonder,
spontaneity, positive thinking.

We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in
the world to be is what you are, what you feel ... and this loving person is also
one who sees the continual wonder and joy of being alive. (p.38)

Discipline, maturity, sense of

responsibility, intelligence,
self-knowledge, courage,
openness, friendliness, rationality, honesty, competence,
strength, independence, being
organized, being healthy,
commitment, love, wisdom.

Believing that the growth of the human spirit is the end of human existence, I
am obviously dedicated to the notion of progress ... I make no distinction
between the mind and the spirit, and therefore no distinction between the
process of achieving spiritual growth and mental growth. (pp.56, 11)

Imagination, attentiveness,
intelligence, self-knowledge,
capacity to be affected,
devotion, intensity (passion),
creativity, forcefulness, individuality, courage, strength, depth,
insight, self-acceptance,
wisdom, reverence.

We know intuitively that soul has to do with genuineness and depth ... it is tied
to life in all its particulars good food, satisfying conversation, genuine friends,
and experiences that stay in the memory and touch the heart. Soul is revealed
in attachment, love, and community, as well as in retreat on behalf of inner
communing and intimacy. (pp.xi-xii)

[The Lovers] main function is to help unfold his true Self. Equal to this is
helping others to become strong, and perfect themselves as unique
individuals. (p.195)

If someone is determined not to risk pain, then such a person must do without
many things: having children, getting married, the ecstasy of sex, the hope of
ambition, friendship all that makes life alive, meaningful and significant.
(p.133)

Fulfilling work, rewarding relationships, personal power, and relief from

symptoms are all gifts of the soul. (p.xiii)
The goal is a richly elaborated life, connected to society and nature, woven into
the culture of family, nation, and globe. (p.xviii)

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 11

compassion, tenderness and love, and the need for acceptance,

tolerance and gentleness in our relations with others. Yet
despite their moralism and concern for positive relations with
others, both authors also praise non-moral virtues and the
value of moral virtues for achieving non-moral or personal
goals. Buscaglia talks a lot about the need for spontaneity
in life and for cultivating a sense of wonder and appreciation of the world. Peck talks as much about
putting discipline and commitment to work in
pursuing personal goals, as about how they help us
recognize our obligations and treat others well. He
also praises character traits such as intelligence,
competence and being organized qualities that
have little or no connection to acting morally, but
a lot to do with happiness or success out in the
world.
Wayne Dyer and Robert Ringer, in contrast,
provide much less morally-focused accounts of
human excellence; Ringer can even be read as
hostile to morality. Both believe that our primary
responsibility in life is to make ourselves happy.
Both argue that focusing on whether life or other
people are treating us fairly leads us to abdicate this
responsibility to secure our own happiness.
Reviewing their lists of virtues, we see a preponderance of hyphenated self virtues: self-esteem, selfreliance, self-knowledge, self-respect. Dyer adds those
qualities that he believes add zest to life: creativity,
spontaneity, a sense of humor, living in the present.
Ringer, who has a sort of heroic me against the world
outlook, emphasizes discipline, organization, integrity and
courage, virtues that foster success and maximum self-reliance.
We thus see wide differences in how these authors treat
morality, ranging from Pecks moralism to Ringers sustained
hostility to the claims of morality. (Incidentally, I did not find
any difference in the relative moralism of American self-help
books over the past thirty years. Pecks and Ringers books
were published one year apart). These differences in emphasis
and attitude to morality make it even more impressive that all
five authors go beyond morality in specifying the virtues. It
seems that even moralists, in telling people how to lead better
lives, must move beyond moralism in order to give good
advice!
(3) Philosophers such as Philippa Foot, Rosalind
Hursthouse and Martha Nussbaum have argued that there is a
necessary connection between virtue and human flourishing;
they see elucidating this connection as the best grounding for
virtue ethics. Others have looked to some other foundation
for virtue judgments: sometimes transcendental (Louden
2000), sometimes religious, sometimes common-sensical
(Wallace 1978). For these latter philosophers, grounding
virtue in personal flourishing seems too selfish. Proponents of
the virtue/flourishing connection sometimes respond that
virtues help further the flourishing of whole societies. This
remains a key, inconclusive debate within contemporary virtue
ethics.
My analysis of these self-help books suggests that
grounding a conception of virtue in a view of human flourishing is, indeed, both a common and a convincing way to go.
In the final column of the table on page xx, I quote key
passages summarizing each of our authors conceptions of
12 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

happiness or human flourishing. Comparing the virtues

column with the happiness column, you can see a tight
connection between an authors conception of human
happiness and the virtues he praises.
For Dyer, happiness shows itself above all in a zest for
living, a fullness of experience, and an acceptance of
oneself and others that allows one to avoid anxiety
and moralism. Self-growth is not particularly
painful, but rather a continuous opening up to
happiness. Given Dyers focus on living in the present
and exploring new, pleasurable experiences, virtues such
as confidence, spontaneity and enthusiasm are
important. Given his sense of the pitfalls of moralism,
a basic self-love is key.
Ringer is a hedonist and psychological egoist, as the
quotations indicate. He elaborates these positions
at great length and about as plausibly as they can
be presented, in my opinion. Given his belief that
shortsightedness and poor planning often
undermine a rational hedonism, his emphasis on
virtues of effectiveness, such as rationality and
discipline, makes sense. Given his apparently
genuine belief that a widespread rational selfishness
would lead to the greatest happiness of the greatest
number of people, it isnt surprising that the moral
virtues have little place in his scheme of things.
Leo Buscaglias soft, gentle outlook on life is about
as far from Robert Ringers libertarianism as one
can get. While Ringers ideal is to turn all human
interactions into value for value contractual types of relationships, Buscaglia insists on the redeeming power of love, sent
out as often and as widely as we can. Love and others will
love you back, he believes. Even if they dont, you will reap
rich rewards. Given this view of human flourishing more
love equals more happiness it makes sense that Buscaglia
eschews the intellectual virtues almost entirely. Instead, he
emphasizes feeling virtues: compassion, tenderness, sensitivity to others. Given Buscaglias relatively undemanding
ideal, it makes sense that acceptance of others and oneself will
be a key virtue. The capacity to love remains the cardinal
virtue, since nothing else so greatly improves our lives.
M. Scott Peck, on the other hand, emphasizes the
arduousness of the attempt to understand and improve
ourselves, his great desiderata. Therefore both intellectual
virtues and the virtues of personal discipline are important for
him. Just as convinced as Buscaglia that good interpersonal
relationships are key to happiness, he takes a more skeptical
view of the power of love to sweep all difficulties before it.
He reminds his readers more than once that we must do what
is right even when we do not want to do so even in the
absence of love. While he would probably not deny the
importance of Buscaglias feeling virtues, he emphasizes
instead virtues of duty, such as a sense of responsibility,
discipline and commitment, and virtues of effectiveness, such
as being organized.
Thomas Moores list of virtues show his emphases on the
pursuit of self-knowledge and engagement with the world.
Believing as he does that our modern problem solving mode
tends to lead us away from self-knowledge, he emphasizes
such intellectual virtues as imagination and creativity, rather

than logic and linear thinking. This makes an interesting

contrast with his more analytically-inclined fellow therapist
Peck. Attentiveness and curiosity are virtues for all sorts of
artists, naturalists and others who care for their souls by
creating or appreciating beauty. Since Moore shares some of
Dyers worries about how moralism harms life, he too makes
self-acceptance or self-love a key virtue. Since he believes
along with Peck that some sort of spiritual life is a sine qua non
of living a happy life, he includes reverence and devotion as
virtues. Moore often speaks of the need to add depth or
meaning to our lives, so he emphasizes what we might call
the hermeneutic virtues of imagination, playfulness and
attentiveness.
To sum up: all these books show a tight connection
between their accounts of virtue and flourishing. In
explaining why we should cultivate a particular virtue, these
authors always refer back to the fact that it will make us
(sometimes, us and those around us) happier or more fulfilled.
They suggest that grounding virtue in the lives we actually
lead or want to lead is the key to developing plausible
accounts of virtue.
Conclusion
By now, though, some readers may be impatient with my
use of this material. Assuming that I have accurately
portrayed the views in these books: so what? Can we really
prove anything about the nature of virtue by showing that lots
of people share (or were willing to pay $12.95 to read about) a
particular conception of it? Well, no. However, I do think,
along with Aristotle, that common beliefs are the best starting
point for speculation concerning human flourishing. These
books popularity strongly suggests that they express or
resonate with widely held beliefs. In addition, the fact that so
many people with at least some interest in bettering their lives
found them helpful, argues for taking these books ethical
positions and practical suggestions seriously.
The commonalities I have described in these books their
emphasis on self-knowledge; their lack of moralism in
specifying the good life; the connection they make between
virtue and human flourishing should command our
attention, partly because these books really are focused on the
key questions in virtue ethics. What are human excellence
and flourishing? How can we achieve them? Philosophical
ethicists have had to fight their way to a place where they
could ask these questions, and their positive accounts of virtue
remain, for the most part, implausibly moralistic. (An
important exception is Thomas Hurkas Perfectionism (1993).
That Hurka takes seriously commonsense, pre-philosophical
reflections on happiness helps account for the plausibility of
his account of virtue.) Since the authors canvassed here start
from a concern with virtue and flourishing, they might be
more likely than academic philosophers to articulate plausible
accounts of them.
People need help to think clearly about virtue and human
flourishing. Over the past hundred years, philosophers rarely
provided this help. But questions concerning how to live well
remained as vital as ever how could they not? and a
prodigious self-help literature sprang up to fill the void.
Philosophers have much to learn from these writings, both as
a source for common ethical beliefs and at least in some

cases as a source for intelligent discussions of central issues

in virtue ethics. At the same time, these self-help authors
sometimes suffer from philosophical navety, or muddled, lazy
thinking. Bringing rigorous analysis and philosophical
perspective to this literature could lead to an ethics with more
depth and more practical value for human life than we have
seen in centuries.
PHILIP CAFARO 2004

Philip Cafaro is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Colorado

State University. He thanks Greg Boettcher and Southwest
Minnesota State University for assistance in researching this article.
Works Cited
Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford Univ. Press, 1993.
Buscaglia, Leo. Love. Fawcett Crest, 1972.
Cavell, Stanley. Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution
of Emersonian Perfectionism. University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Dyer, Wayne. Your Erroneous Zones. HarperCollins, 1991/1976.
Foot, Philippa. Natural Goodness. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001.
Hurka, Thomas. Perfectionism. Oxford Univ. Press, 1993.
Hursthouse, Rosalind. On Virtue Ethics. Oxford Univ. Press, 1999.
Louden, Robert. Kant's Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human
Beings. Oxford University Press, 2000.
Moore, Thomas. Care of the Soul. HarperCollins, 1992.
Murdoch, Iris. The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts, in
Roger Crisp and Michael Slote (eds.), Virtue Ethics. Oxford Univ.
Press, 1997.
Nussbaum, Martha. Non-Relative Virtue: An Aristotelian Approach,
in Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (eds.), The Quality of Life. Oxford
Univ. Press, 1993.
Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Travelled. Simon & Schuster, 1978.
Ringer, Robert. Looking Out for #1. Fawcett Crest, 1977.
Sherman, Nancy. Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on
Virtue. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Slote, Michael. Morals From Motives. Oxford Univ. Press, 2001.
Taylor, Richard. Ancient Virtue and Modern Folly, in Peter French
et al. (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, volume 13: Ethical Theory:
Character and Virtue (University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
Wallace, James. Virtues and Vices. Cornell University Press, 1978.

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 13

Love

& Logic

After he fell in love, John Dewey became one of the greatest of American thinkers.
Nancy Bunge describes Alice Chipmans impact on Deweys Psychology.
To-night, my own darling, brought me your sweet letter from that
heaven which your presence is and makes and brought with it...all your
own love and peace and sweetness of life and also such a longing by me
for you, my darling. I want you, sweet love; I want your heart against my
heart; I want your sweet lips and your sweet arms and your sweet hands; I
want you, my own love, for, dearest one, I am yours: to be yours, is my
being, and without being yours I am not.
Letter from John Dewey to Alice Chipman March 29?, 1886.

ince John Deweys intelligence and insight attracted

his biographers to him, they understandably prefer
to step around his many love letters to his wife. Alan
Ryan, a Dewey scholar brave enough to express his
opinion of the letters, writes: He seems to have
found that being in love deprived him of the power of
articulate speech to about the same degree that being
struck by a freight train might have done. (Ryan p.80).
Indeed, to the disinterested observer, they seem like
the repetitive ramblings of a lovesick young man as
reluctant to bring the discussion to a close as a
teenage girl who must do her homework as soon as
she hangs up the phone. But Dewey began these
letters in 1885, while a twenty-six year old philosophy
professor at the University of Michigan, writing them
to a twenty-six year old undergraduate student there.
And when examined carefully, the ostensibly adolescent
love notes document the revolution Deweys relationship with
Alice Chipman precipitated in his intellectual development as
well as in his personal life.
Alice Chipmans surviving letters indicate that she had to
struggle against familial indifference in order to cultivate her
talents. In 1882, Alices sister, Maria proclaims that Alice could
write as well as George Eliot, but since she and Alice can
expect no encouragement from their family to implement
career plans, they need to pursue their aspirations independently. Maria does not anticipate that their relatives will
actively try to obstruct them because experience has shown
them how utterly futile it is; so, she urges Alice to join her in
taking on the world: We will both have to fight and meet
with discouragements but twill be all the more glory when
we get up. (January 29, 1882).
Later, Alice turns to Professor Dewey for courage. She
describes the atmosphere at her home as fatal to her
scholarly efforts and looks to him for the support she needs to
keep working (April 3, 1886). While Alice must struggle to
persuade her relatives that her mind matters, the highly
educated and intelligent Professor Dewey signals that he
respects her abilities by taking her suggestions. During their

14 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

time apart, he plans to read the literature she prefers to

philosophy (June 25, 1885). Understandably, the professor
who values Alice Chipmans insights provides a more
comfortable home for her than a family blind to her capabilities.
No evidence suggests that Deweys family resisted his intellectual ambitions. Moreover, his father, Archibald Sprague
Dewey, seems pleased to learn that John Dewey has fallen in
love with Alice Chipman, assuring him that If I could write a
letter that would not shame you I would gladly introduce
myself to the chosen girl of your manhood. (January 6, 1886).
But when John Deweys mother, Lucina Rich Dewey, first
learns that her son may marry, three months after her husband,
she points out that such a move seems inappropriate before
he has repaid his aunt the money she loaned him for his
education. And Mrs Deweys letter only gets to the
topic of her sons marriage after complaining about
her own bad health and weak finances. She seems
determined to drown her sons joy in guilt: I do
not want to be w[e]ighted down by debt, as last
summer & I want to warn you my dear son, for I
am sometimes afraid that none of you are as
forecasting or as sensitive to the thought of debt
as you will one day wish you have been. Mrs
Dewey consoles herself with the possibility that her
son might marry a frugal woman: A prudent wife is
however the main point in this matter. (April 1886).
Despite the energy his mother brings to the subject of
finances, Johns letters to Alice urge her to trust that they will
find the money they need (April 1, 1886). Alice, perhaps
mindful of Mrs Deweys reservations, persistently urges
caution on the passionate John Dewey: You are so very
hopeful, Johnnie but I I dont know. (April 2, 1886). In
response, he urges her to have faith. They marry July 26, 1886
in Michigan; John Dewey informs his parents afterwards.
His father takes the news calmly, declaring: No more
than I expected. His astonished mother assures her son that
she has managed to cope: Well, it almost took my breath
away, but twenty four hours since the news came have passed,
and I am still in the possession of my normal strength and
faculties, and for aught I see, nature is keeping on her old way,
the world is not off its axis, the sun did not forget to rise, the
breakfast bell to ring. (August 1886). She does condescend to
admit that she is deeply and tenderly moved on your account,
dear son, but goes on to announce that shes not entirely
certain whom he has married: Now the first thing to be done
to relieve one natural anxiety on my part is to know whether
Miss Chipman be Miss Hitchcock or not, & how I shall distin-

guish in the future which is which any better than I have in

the past, is quite a problem in my mind and I can think of
no way to solve it but for you to send me Miss C photograph
You surely do not need it now, and it would be a vast
comfort to me for beside showing me it was not Miss H, I
should learn better who she is. (August 1886).
Mrs Deweys surprise and confusion seem disingenuous
when compared to the reaction of Professor Morris, Deweys
mentor, to news of the engagement months earlier, in late
March. As John reports to Alice, He inquired if Mrs
Morrises [sic] surmises in the matter were correct, so
apparently Mrs Morris had noted the bond developing
between John Dewey and Alice Chipman. Once Dewey
confirms this suspicion, George Morris expresses great joy: I
really never saw Mr Morris so enthusiastic in my life. He
gripped my hand and shook it really shook it said that was
good, was splendid He was so genuinely and heartily pleased
that I was very glad I told him. He wanted to know if he
could tell Mrs M and of course I said yes; he was so pleased he
wanted to drag me right in with him to tell her. When
Dewey comments, If everybody was as nice and decent as
George is, life would be simpler, as well as more agreeable
(March 31, 1886), he may well have his mother in mind.
His relationship with Alice Chipman had immediate impact
on John Deweys work. For instance, he wrote an article
examining the adjustment of female students to the University
of Michigan, concluding that the older woman students,
like his intended, adapted more readily to university
life. And Dewey grows impatient with a colleague
who resists the notion that women can achieve
competence in physics: Very neat with their
hands, but so anxious to see something go off,
that they can never finish an experiment. This of
course is pure libel. (March 29, 1886). He also
finds himself reading political science and wishing
that it, not philosophy, were his discipline because
it is so thoroughly human. (April 1, 1886)
But, most important, his relationship with Alice
seems to have improved John Deweys philosophy. Even
though he is the professor and she, the student, while John
Dewey praises the literature Alice Chipman recommends to
him, she responds negatively to the philosophic readings he
presumably suggested to her. The first summer they write to
each other, she comments only that she read a few pieces in
the Journal of Speculative Philosophy (July 3, 1885), where
Deweys first four publications appeared. When Alice
Chipman reads his article on the social organism, she sees the
influence of John Deweys mentor, George Morris: It isnt
much new after what George has given us. But she does
concede that John brings out some points more clearly than
anything else. (December 22, 1885). She reacts to Spinoza,
the subject of Deweys second published article, with pity
verging on contempt for a man willing to put aside human
relationships to complete his philosophic work: Poor old
Spinoza, I read today, let the woman he was in love with
marry some other man and then went placidly on writing
Philosophy. How I should hate to be in his place and write
Philosophy, at least such Phil as that must have been.
(March 28, 1886).
The next month, Dewey starts to write his Psychology (April

5, 1886), a book that William James read with great anticipation because I thought, on first turning over the leaves,
that here was something altogether fresh & original. (January
12, 1887). The book disappoints James, not because it seems
hackneyed, but because it aspires to achieve a union of the
abstract and the particular that James declares impossible:
Its no use trying to mediate between the bare miraculous self
and the concrete particulars of individual mental lives.
(December 27, 1886). At the center of the book rests the
notion that feeling and thought inevitably influence each
other, so any sharp distinction between them violates reality:
Speaking from the standpoint of psychology, consciousness is
always both subjective and objective, both individual and
universal. (p.25). William James perhaps dismissed the book
because, even though James thought he liked the idea of
reading something original, Dewey had gone too far for him.
For instance, in J. Clark Murrays A Handbook of Psychology, the
last text Dewey used in his classes before writing his own, the
only feeling explicitly connected to knowledge is curiosity
because generally the emotional factor of intellectual work
is subordinate, the consciousness being absorbed in the primal
end of the work, the object to be known. (p.398). Certainly
in traditional philosophy and in psychology, logic, reason and
objectivity dominate.
Deweys insistence that subjectivity always persists
presumably grows from his understanding that his love for
Alice has had such deep impact on him that no aspect of his
being, including his thinking, remains untouched by her;
or, as he wrote her: Darling your love is such
inexhaustible knowledge. (April 5, 1886). The
objections of William James notwithstanding,
Dewey would continue trying to fuse specifics and
abstractions throughout his career because he
remained convinced that theory and experience
must nurture each other, a faith undoubtedly
reinforced in him by the way his life and work
flowered after he allowed himself to feel as deeply as
he thought.
Psychology delivers the message that John Dewey learned
from his relationship with Alice: one cannot think well or
truly without love: Love is not an ill-regulated gush or
sentiment, not a personal indulgence, but is the universal and
natural manifestation of personality. (p.295). Feelings
provide the foundation for all thinking and action; as a result,
someone with a distorted emotional core cannot reason well.
When he concludes his first draft of the book, John Dewey
tells Alice it would have required far fewer than 994 pages if
he could have assumed that more of his readers knew her: I
have only written just a few things of what you have told me,
and it took so many pages because so many people dont know
you, love, and they have to have things explained so. He
claims that in writing this psychology text, he actually
conversed with her: And then sweetheart I talked to you so
much yesterday. You heard me didnt you loveliest? I [didnt]
do anything but finish my psychology yesterday. If he could
have gone directly to the point, he would have simply written
that he loves her: I didnt say in it at all what really is, that I
love you, because darling no one but myself really knows you,
and they wouldnt know at all what it is, and it never could be
explained to them. (April 11, 1886).
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 15

In Psychology, Dewey puts emotion at lifes core when he

asserts that all intelligent life seeks meaning and that the mind
begins this search with the outside world and moves inward as
it grows in sophistication: We may say that intelligence
begins with the external and least representative state, and
advances to the internal and most symbolic. (p.137). So, when
Dewey writes passionate letters to Alice Chipman, he deals
with a more important aspect of reality than he does when he
produces abstract philosophic argument.
Deweys letters sometimes get particular on this point,
indicating specific insights he had gained through of his
relationship to Alice, like a new sense of memorys significance: Sweet one, I know what remembering is so much
better than I did before you taught me. I used to think
remembering was calling back something that happened once,
and isnt any more. Now I know that remembering is just
having your being that is come to me and fill me fuller and
fuller and lose me more and more in you. (April 11, 1886).
Memory does not just collect external information as a result
of a detached survey of the past; memory makes the past
present. Dewey puts this idea into Psychology: Memory
consequently removes one limitation from knowledge as it
exists in the stage of perception: the limitation to the present.
(p.154).
Professor Dewey explains that the ability to see reality
symbolically, rather than literally, results from having more
and deeper relationships: The growth of knowledge is
measured by the extent of relations concerned. Each advancing
stage is characterized by the development of a new and widerreaching sphere of relations. (Psychology pp.137-138).
Similarly Dewey maintains that his love for Alice added
multiple dimensions to his life and, as a result, given him a
stronger foundation for realizing the significance of his world
and the events taking place in it: What an idiot I was
sweetest Chippy to think I couldnt write you every day
because I wouldnt have enough to say Darling, you make
me know something every day. (April 1, 1886).
In his Psychology, Dewey declares creative imagination, not
reason, the most important capacity for understanding the
world: The highest form of imagination however, is precisely
an organ of penetration into the hidden meaning of things ...
It may be defined as the direct perception of meaning of
ideal worth in sensuous forms; or as the spontaneous
discovery of the sensuous forms which are most significant,
more ideal, and which, therefore, reveal most to the intellect
and appeal most to the emotions. (p.171). Dewey continues
to point out that Aristotle declared poetry truer than history, a
judgment Dewey sees as valid because history only tells us
that certain things happened; poetry presents to us the
permanent passions, aspirations, and deeds of men which are
behind all history, and which make it. (p.172). But perhaps
most important for Dewey, the imagination creates artistic
objects that embody feeling and evoke it in others: The
function of the creative imagination everywhere is to seize
upon the permanent meanings of facts, and embody them in
such congruous, sensuous forms as shall enkindle feeling, and
awaken a like organ of penetration in whomever may come
upon the embodiment. (pp.172-173).
Deweys repeated declarations that the love he shares with
Alice Chipman has saved, expanded and illuminated his
16 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

awareness makes it easy to understand his enthusiasm for art

that evokes emotion, but his correspondence with Alice
indicates that she may have had an even more direct influence,
for she turned Deweys attention to literature. As a result, he
reads Robert Browning Alices favorite poet, as a sauce after
he completes his philosophic labors for the day (December 22,
1885). Thus, John Dewey, the philosopher, argues in
Psychology that the joy art produces justifies it; Imagination
has no external end, but its end is the free play of the various
activities of the self, so as to satisfy its interests. (p.173).
Professor Dewey explains the tie between imagination and
feeling and links both to the exercise of human freedom:
Imagination, in short, takes its rise in feeling, and is directed
by feeling much more explicitly than either perception or
memory. Imagination represents the subjective side of self
acting in its freedom. (Dewey, Psychology p.173). And so
writing letters to ones beloved instead of, say, preparing a
philosophy class or writing a philosophy article, becomes not a
waste of time or an evasion of responsibility, but a method of
self discovery and, as such, lays the groundwork for exercising
ones true freedom.
Dewey writes Alice repeatedly that she has given him his
real life. Her relationship with him, has taught him about
love, knowledge that has redeemed him. And by saving him,
she has enlivened his world: Darling this world is so
different from what it was before you came into it. My
darling, it is such a beautiful sunshiny world now. (April 3,
1886).
Since Deweys relationship with Alice brings him joy, it
makes him a fuller person. The more pleasure the self feels,
the more completely it realizes itself. As Dewey puts it in his
Psychology: Feeling is an accompaniment of activity. It is the
self finding its own nature in every activity of the soul All
adjustment that accomplishes itself gives rise to pleasure; all
failure to adjust, or misadjustment, to painThe right combination of unity and variety calls for the best energy and the
most successful adjustment, and hence the greatest pleasure.
(p.238).
The more self-realization an individual achieves, the more
happiness he or she will enjoy, no matter what the events of
his or her life. Happiness is active satisfaction, or interest
A man who has lost money will feel pain, for he has been
deprived of one mode of action; but he may continue to be
happy. He may not feel the loss as a loss of himself. (Dewey,
Psychology p.254). Dewey knows what he speaks of here, for he
discovers that his relationship with Alice makes him less
sensitive to disappointment. He writes that he has not yet
learned whether or not he will get the raise he probably needs
to marry her the following summer, but such difficulties no
longer trouble him: A few years ago I presume I should have
worried to deathand should have attributed the fact that I
do not to the development of an ominous happy go lucky trait
in my nature. His new stoicism comes from the peace he has
found in his relationship with her: I cannot be separated from
you, because you and I are not two to be separated. What is,
is, my own sweet darling. (March 31, 1886).
Although pleasure may indicate the satisfaction of only a
limited dimension of oneself, happiness, on the other
handis realization of ones true, permanent nature brought
home to him as an individual. (Dewey, Psychology p.254). And

the man who penned these words is very happy. As he

explains to his intended, I used to think happiness was
something you had. I know now that it is what you are, and it
is so happy just to be that it really makes all things be. (April
16, 1886).
Dewey the philosopher argues that human beings realize
this ideal nature only through relationships with others: A
person developing his personality in isolation from other
persons, through contact with intellectual or aesthetic
material, is impossible. (Dewey, Psychology p.281). So, selfrealization finally depends upon cultivating the capacity for
sympathy. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance
of sympathy in the emotional lifefor it takes us beyond what
constitutes our immediate personality, out private interests
and concerns, into what universally constitutes personality.
(Dewey, Psychology pp.285-6). Or as John Dewey, the lover,
writes to his intended: Darling my own do you know that I
have been doing this long time? Just learning how I love you
darling. I knew it before but I have been learning what that
knowledge is & means & it has grown so in depth & in
height that it is taken the whole universe into itself. (April
16, 1886).
The similarity between the feelings set out in the letters
and the intellectual system Dewey develops in Psychology
validates Professor Deweys claim that Logic, in short, only
generalizes and crystallizes what was originally existing in the
form of feeling. (Dewey, Psychology p.265).
After Deweys mentor G.S. Morris died in 1889, Deweys
memorial stressed the link between Morris personal life and
his philosophy: He was preeminently a man in whom those
internal divisions, which eat the heart of so much of contemporary spiritual life, and which rob the intellect of its faith in
truth, and the will of its belief in the value of life, had been
overcome. (Dewey, Professor Morris p.9). Dewey explains
that the variety and number of Morris relationships to others
played a central role in this integrity. So, the example of G.S.
Morris and the love of Alice Chipman persuaded John Dewey
that intellect functions best with the aid of feelings shaped by
deep ties to others. In his Psychology, Dewey offers a rational
analysis of social interactions role in education, a central
principle of his philosophic system, while his letters to Alice
Chipman reveal how he learned it and why he found it so
compelling.
PROF. NANCY BUNGE 2004

Nancy Bunge teaches in the Department of American Thought and

Language at Michigan State University. She is currently a
Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Divinity School.

References
Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from letters come from
The Correspondence of John Dewey ed. Larry Hickman. (CD-ROM,
Interlex) and are identified by date.
Other writings by Dewey mentioned in this article are Psychology
and The Late Professor Morris, both reprinted in The Early Works
1882-1898 ed. Jo Ann Boydston. Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1967.
J. Clark Murray, A Handbook of Psychology. Boston: DeWolfe, Fiske
& Company, 1890.
Alan Ryan, John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism.
New York: Norton, 1995.

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 17

Bohr & Kant & Zeno

Would it not be nice if there were a simple foundation to quantum physics?
Tony Wagstaff believes there is; and that the Greeks had it.

uring the opening decades of the 20th century,

as the secrets of quantum theory emerged, so
the underlying reality it purported to describe
turned odder and odder. Electrons, photons,
even cats, all seem to exist in a ghostly limbo
with no well-defined characteristics of their own until
someone observes them. For many scientists, including Max
Planck and Albert Einstein, both pioneers in the history of the
quantum, things had gone too far.
To advance their case against the emerging quantum
orthodoxy, Einstein
devised many
hypothetical experiments
which tried to show that
quantum theory was
missing some fundamental point. It was
mainly down to his old
friend Niels Bohr to
answer these criticisms,
and answer them,
without exception, he
did. It is chiefly from his
retorts that a picture of
the reality that lies
behind quantum theory
appeared, a picture
which came to be
known, after Bohrs
home city, as the
Copenhagen interpretation.
Due to the manner of
its development, the
Copenhagen picture is
somewhat esoteric.
There is no authoritative
draft outlining its theses,
it has no manifesto as such.
Since for the most part we have only Bohrs replies to
Einsteins puzzles, we are left without the thrust of thought
that lay behind these replies.
Nonetheless the Copenhagen interpretation has become in
many circles the standard interpretation of quantum theory.
It has held this standing in Institutes and Universities the
world over, oftentimes, one may conjecture, just to keep
students from asking awkward questions. With its insistence
in situation after situation that some questions are

18 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

meaningless and should be left unasked, one is drawn to

wondering whether the Copenhagenists are simply evading
the inherent difficulties.
This is unfortunate, for behind Bohrs dogged upholding of
the all-encompassing validity of quantum theory lies, I believe,
the most profound and subtle philosophical thought.
Whether Bohr himself was explicitly aware of what this was is
unclear, though certainly he had an assured instinctive ease
with it. As Einstein said of him, seldom has anyone
possessed such an intuitive grasp of hidden things.
At the heart of quantum theory lies the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle, the thrust of which is that
certain conjugate properties, position and
momentum for instance, cannot both be
measured to a totally accurate degree of precision
at once. If we choose to measure perfectly the
position of an electron, we then lose accuracy
regarding its momentum. We could choose
instead to accurately measure its momentum, but
then we cannot be exactly sure of its position.
This promotes the seemingly untenable situation
of an electron that has neither well-defined
position nor momentum until we come to
measure it. In effect, what we choose to measure
in some way determines the characteristics of the
electron. Hardly surprising that Einstein, Planck
et al found this unacceptable.
In defending quantum theory against Einsteins
many thought experiments, Bohr would
repeatedly emphasise the practicality of any
experiment. When Einstein proposed his famous
Clock in a Box experiment [see box], it was not
enough that he propose we weigh the box before
and after the photons escape. Bohr was insistent
we specify exactly how we do the weighing. Only
once it is made clear that a spring or some such
device must be used does it become clear how the
uncertainty will manifest itself. It was not enough
to argue in principle. For Bohr the practicalities had
to be explicit.
Time and again Bohr would return to practicalities, and
time and again his case rested on the fact that to measure
position, a measuring device needs to be fixed and unmoving,
like the hole (relative to the box) through which the photon
escapes. Because of this any momentum is absorbed by such a
measuring device, and irretrievably lost. Conversely to
measure momentum the measuring device needs to be loose,
like our spring. Herein lies the problem. A measuring device

cannot be both loose and fixed at once.

Well take this problem with us back over two millennia to
Zeno, a Greek thinker and puzzler, contemporary of Socrates,
and one of his many paradoxes, the arrow paradox.
Picture an arrow in flight. At any instant of time, an
instant lasting exactly zero seconds, is it actually moving or
not? How can anything move in an instant? On the other
hand how can something be moving, yet also, for every instant
of its journey, be at rest?
The problem is one of incompatibility. For a moving
arrow to be at a definite position, with no element of uncertainty as to where it is, we have to specify an exact instant of
zero time-length. If our instant lasts any length of time, the
arrow will have moved during that time, even if only a
minuscule distance. Conversely to say how the arrow has
moved, we have to specify a period of time during which it did
move, a period which must be non-zero.
Does this help with the quantum paradox?
First we need turn to the 18th century philosopher
Immanuel Kant.
Central to Kants philosophy is the distinction between
noumena and phenomena. The literal meaning of noumena is
things that are thought, as opposed to things that appear
which defines phenomena. Noumena form an integral part of
the work of Plato as Ideas and Forms, such as a perfect
triangle, whose sides have no breadth. No actual triangle can
appear that way, for when we draw a triangle it has thick lines,
but we can think and abstractly manipulate perfect triangles.
Kant believed this idea to be the greatest legacy bequeathed
by the Ancient Greeks.
Phenomena on the other hand refers to the appearance of
external reality, which should not necessarily be equated with
external reality itself. It refers to our awareness of the

external, that image which we would say the brain produces

when for instance we observe a sunset. It doesnt necessarily
mean the sunset itself. Science teaches us that the vibrant
colours of a sunset dont actually exist out there. They are
an interpretation by our brain via the optical system of the
different wavelengths of light.
To illustrate this distinction we can look at an example that
fired Kants imagination and took him from philosophical
mediocrity to greatness. When he read David Humes
argument that we have no objective knowledge of causality,
Kant realised, not that causality must therefore be an illusion,
but that it cannot be phenomenally portrayed as it is in-itself.
Causality can be represented in our cerebral picture of the
world only as one event habitually occurring after another.
We can never see the causal link between the first and second
event; it is phenomenally invisible to us, though we can
represent it noumenally as an abstract thought.
Notwithstanding it is still possible for causality to play its part
noumenally within external reality.
Having marked this distinction, Kant used it to dispel what
he referred to as antinomies, which are a kind of paradox. We
can take our lead from him. We must regard one and the
same conception, on the one hand, in relation to experience as
an object of the senses and of the understanding, on the other
hand, in relation to reason, isolated and transcending the
limits of experience, as an object of mere thought. [Critique of
Pure Reason] We need to ask where a particular conception
rightly belongs, as noumena or phenomena. This directly
mirrors Bohrs emphasis on practicalities.
Zenos treat
So, we can treat Zeno to a little noumenal/phenomenal
distinction. Of course conceptually we have no problem with
the notion of an arrow having both a definite position and

The Clock in a Box

A box containing a clock is swimming with photons; the
clock being connected to a shutter which covers a hole in the
wall of the box. The apparatus is designed so that the clock
will briefly open the shutter at a specified time, allowing just
one photon to escape. Einstein argued that by weighing the
box before and after this specified time, we can calculate the
energy of the photon, since mass=energy. As we know the
time the photon escaped (we specified this before the
experiment) we have broken the Uncertainty Principle the
time and energy of a particle are a conjugate pair that
according to quantum theory, we cannot have exact
knowledge of, both at once.
All well and good in principle, came Bohrs response, but
how do we actually weigh the box? Suppose we suspend it
from a spring in a gravitational field. Then obviously the box,
clock and all, has to move in the gravitational field; thats how
weighing works. But according to Einsteins own general
theory of relativity, clocks run at different rates depending on
their position within a gravitational field, so we cannot be
exactly sure of how fast the clock is running. This uncertainty is just enough to comply with Heisenbergs principle.
Bohr is said to have been not a little amused that he had
turned Einsteins own theory against him.

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 19

definite motion at any instant of time. The problem arises

when we wonder what conscious picture the optical process
can construct of such an arrow. Here we reach the logical
impossibility, highlighted by Zeno, that we cannot consciously
represent both at once. Any conscious representation of exact
position (for a moving object) must involve an instant of time
whereas any conscious representation of movement must
involve a period of time, the two being mutually exclusive.
Time cannot be both an instant and a period at once.
Thus it is logically impossible to phenomenally represent
both exact position and exact momentum at once.
But when we think about it, when we consider it
noumenally, there is no reason that an arrow should not have
exact position and momentum at once. Just that any attempt
to phenomenally represent the momentum renders the position
uncertain, and vice versa.
It is a credit to Kant that this consequence of his work,
which in view of his Newtonian faith would certainly never
have occurred to him, should come to dominate our modern
understanding of the physical world.
What though does it mean to exist in this noumenal
manner? We would like to think that an arrow has both welldefined motion and well-defined position at every instant of
its travels. We can hold this noumenal, well-defined motionin-an-instant in mind as we consider what Bohr had to say
about the unspeakable.
There is some confusion as to what Bohr meant when
speaking of what can be spoken of. So much so that people
grasp for some deep meaning in the hope of enlightenment
when in fact what Bohr was saying is quite simple.
It is best to invoke a simple experiment in this context. We
can imagine that a measuring device, designed to register
some property of motion of an electron, call it its spin, has at
a specified time given us a reading of +1/2. I use the term
electron without any prejudice as to what an electron actually
is, or what form it takes, and what it might be doing when it is
spinning. It refers to the underlying reality behind the
measurement, and indeed the two terms, electron and
underlying reality are interchangeable in what follows.
Bohr was at pains to stress the communicability of experiments. That when speaking of what has happened, we need
to be unequivocal. That when we describe a particle, anybody
should be able to identify that specific particle.
He realised that, with the arrival of quantum theory, the
only way we can do this is with reference to specific experimental set-ups. Thus in our experiment, it is fair to say that
an electron was measured as having spin of value +1/2, using
the specified experimental set-up.
Furthermore we can assert that any such a statement is an
objective fact about that electron. Indeed for Bohr, this is the

only way to objectively describe reality. The electron was

such that it yielded a measurement of +1/2, given the experimental set-up, is a statement about that electron. It asserts
that the underlying reality was such that it produced this
reading. In addition it asserts that this underlying reality
could have been different in which case we might have had a
different reading but wasnt.
Perhaps most importantly, we can say that the electron was
such that it would have registered +1/2 for that particular
experimental set-up, even if we hadnt actually measured
anything; or if wed used a different set-up to measure
something else. In other words, we are entitled to say that
nothing about the presence or absence, or even the orientation of any measuring device, affects the electron in any
pertinent way. (Other than what we would expect to happen
in a classical sense the measuring device may halt the
electron in its track for example.) The underlying reality
responsible for that +1/2 reading existed at the point of
measurement, irrespective of the measurement set-up.
What we are not entitled to speak of, according to Bohr, are
specific identifiable electrons without reference to specific
experimental set-ups. We cannot say for instance that an
electron with +1/2 spin was responsible for the measurement
obtained. That that electron had +1/2 spin in-itself, and
would have had +1/2 spin, even if we hadnt measured it, is
quite clearly contradicted by quantum theory. That is unless
we allow for some faster-than-light signalling, a view that
Bohr never attempted to sustain.
This point was decisively made in a theorem published in
1964 by John Stewart Bell. Bells theorem shows that, if
quantum theory is correct, strong correlations exist between
seemingly isolated measurements, even if they are taken at
opposite ends of the Universe! In a nutshell, the presence,
absence or orientation of a distant measuring device might
result in a different value of spin obtaining than would
otherwise be the case.
So while the values obtained are dependent on the experimental set-up, Bohr is still arguing for an underlying reality
that is not so dependent. It would seem that this underlying
reality, our electron, is somehow valueless.
Returning to our noumenal motion-in-an-instant, we can
see that this is just the case. Values of motion are expressed in
terms of distance over time, yet in-an-instant there is no time,
and no distance travelled. Even though the motion-in-aninstant is well-defined, it is meaningless to assign values to it.
It is in exactly this sense, I believe, that Bohr spoke of that
which is meaningless.
So, there is a wealth of difference between asserting that a
specific underlying reality determines the results obtained in a
measurement, and asserting that specific values of an
underlying reality determine the results so obtained.
Is there any way in which it is permissible to speak of this
underlying reality without reference to an experimental set-

When we think about it ... there is no reason that an arrow

should not have exact position and momentum at once. Just
that any attempt to phenomenally represent the momentum
renders the position uncertain, and vice versa.

20 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

up? Bohr is saying quite categorically that there is such a

reality, and that it exists in a specific way regardless of any
experimental set-ups we may or may not have set up to
measure it. That of all the possible ways-of-being it could
have, it has but one of them. The rest may be disregarded as
might-have-beens. So why can we not speak of it in an identifiable way without reference to an experimental set-up?
The answer again is that we have to treat it noumenally,
just like our motion-in-an-instant. For that indeed is what it
is. When we examine the sub-atomic, we are on a scale so
small that instantaneous motion has to be taken as a reality.
Just as we cannot assign values of properties to motion-in-aninstant, neither can we assign values of properties to the
underlying reality of our electron measurement. Yet in
neither case can we deny that it is well-defined, that it has a
specific way-of-being.
In what sense then can
we say it exists as a
specific way-of-being?
Obviously not in the
classical sense of having
definite values of
properties. Not in any
way that can identify it, to
answer our question.
How then?
Thanks to the development of quantum
theory, specifically to
Einstein, Podolsky and
Rosen who produced a
series of thought experiments to challenge, albeit
unsuccessfully, Bohrs
position on quantum
theory, we are in a
position to answer.
The EinsteinPodolsky-Rosen, or EPR,
experiments, make use of
paired particles, a consequence of the conservation of momentum, that have equal and
opposite motion. If we consider the motion of such a pair in a
noumenal sense, it is clear that in-an-instant they would still
have equal and opposite motion, just as they would phenomenally over a period of time. This, even though they do not
meaningfully have absolute values of motion in-an-instant, as
they do over a period of time.
We can now refine our notion of noumenal motion in-aninstant, it being meaningful to say such motion has a specific
relational way-of-being, even though talk of specific absolute
values is meaningless. This gives justification to the assertion
that motion in-an-instant is well-defined, that it is a specific
way-of-being. For if one of the pair existed as a different wayof-being, as one of the might-have-beens, the motions could
no longer be equal and opposite, and this would be reflected
when we came to measure them.
It is important to realise that this specific relational way-ofbeing is a direct description of the underlying reality. In a
classical, or phenomenal sense, particles have absolute values
of properties. The way they relate to each other comes about

by comparing these values after they are obtained. This

relationship does not however inhere in the particles
themselves, it cannot be measured directly. On the other
hand, for Bohr, and in our noumenal sense, a particle is the
way it relates to other particles, and nothing more. Unless we
refer to experimental set-ups then there are no specific values
of properties, merely ways-of-being that are the same,
opposite, etc.
The fact that Einstein could not accept this when he was
the author of the two great theories of Relativity, was a source
of constant exasperation for Bohr.
In essence the philosophical point Bohr is making when
talking about what we can talk about, is that a phenomenal
description of reality is meaningless without reference to an
experimental set-up. Only a noumenal description is okay
without such reference, or
in-itself. And by noumenal
we mean valueless,
relational, and determinate
of, or underlying, the
phenomenal.
This is about as far as Bohr
took the matter. There is
one problem remaining
that we can give quick
consideration, that of how
the noumenal becomes
phenomenal.
Zeno considered the
overall flight of an arrow as
an infinite number of
motions-in-an-instant.
That the motions-in-aninstant determine the
overall flight this is what
is meant by the noumenal
being determinate of, or
underlying, the
phenomenal. But how do
we get from a valueless,
relational, noumenal wayof-being, to its phenomenal equivalent having absolute values?
Surely any values we assign to the noumenal would be
arbitrary?
The answer comes via the quantum of action, which is the
essence of quantum theory. Essentially, the difference
between quantum theory, and classical or Newtonian theory,
lies in how they do the maths.
Classical theory allows any value to be assigned to a
property, to any number of decimal places. Quantum theory
is not so lenient. Only discrete values are allowed such as 1/2,
1, 11/2 and so on. The values between these, 1/3 say, or
1.1079832, are not permissible. Generally speaking the
classical values will emerge statistically with large numbers of
these quantised values. This is because in any given
measurement each of the permitted quantised values has a
probability weighting. In turn, this probability weighting can
be thought of as expressing the relational quality of the
particle when considered as a noumenal entity. Thus we go
from the valueless-relation, through the probabilisticquantised, to the objective-phenomenal, which has a nice ring
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 21

to it! It should be noted that Bells strong correlations occur

only if we reason in this direction.
Can this mathematical reasoning be justified in practical
terms? We need to apply a little Kantian distinction to the
measurement process itself.
For centuries, in the days before J.J. Thomson began his
pioneering work on electrons, objects to be measured were
considered in phenomenal terms, as having properties with
absolute values. Yet so too was the apparatus used to measure
them. The measurement process so considered is
phenomenal-phenomenal. A quantum measurement is a
curious hybrid. On the one hand we have a particle that is
noumenal, or valueless-relational. On the other we have a
classical measuring device, which has absolute phenomenal
values. This is the measurement process considered as
noumenal-phenomenal. This leads us to jump to the obvious
conclusion that a measurement can also be considered as
noumenal-noumenal. This conclusion is also suggested by the
consideration that a classical measuring device, though it can
be thought of as having absolute values of properties, is
nonetheless made up of valueless quantum particles such as
electrons and protons, as is indeed everything. We have seen
above, that a classical measurement cannot measure the
noumenal relationship directly, since phenomenally this
relationship does not inhere in the object itself. Considered
noumenally however, it does, and when we consider both
particle and measuring device as noumenal devices, then what
is being measured directly is this relationship. There is
nothing else to measure.

The measurement process thus provides justification for

the mathematical logic of quantum theory.
It should be noted that somewhere in the course of all this,
the noumenal measuring device needs to run through the
same process to become the phenomenal device in the hybrid
quantum measurement. Those familiar with quantum theory
will be aware that this problem corresponds to the problem of
where the wave-function collapses. On which turf, we will
tread no further!

Conclusion
Niels Bohr, the emblem of scientific integrity and good
common sense, believed in a reality underlying the peculiar
manifestations of quantum theory, a reality that is valueless
and relational.
By considering, in the Kantian spirit, the basic property of
motion from two distinct perspectives; as it is experienced, as
phenomenon, and as it is thought, as noumenon, we can see
that the noumenal motion-in-an-instant is just such a
valueless-relational reality that underlies the phenomenal
motion-over-a-period.
It gives us reason to assert that quantum theory is, after all,
firmly grounded in logic, and is a necessary process in the
representation of the world as-it-should-be, as the world as-itappears-to-be.
TONY WAGSTAFF 2004

Tony Wagstaff is the finest thinker in his field, and sponsors his
philosophical musings by working as a musician.

Niels Bohr

PFA
Philosophy
For All
The PFA is a London-based association open to
everyone interested in philosophy. We aim to
encourage philosophical debate between
professional and non-professional philosophers
in a non-technical way.
The PFA offers once-monthly meetings at
Kants Cave, including a lecture and social
evening, plus debates, film club, Sartre reading
group, philosophical walks and a regular bulletin.
For more information on our activities and
membership details please phone or fax us on
020 8880 5567 or email us at:
secretary@pfalondon.freeserve.co.uk
Visit our website: http://www.pfalondon.freeserve.co.uk

22 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the
Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist
so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.
Dear Socrates,
I have a query about objectivism versus relativism. Im studying
philosophy, and my lecturer says that I cannot take a relativistic
standpoint in my arguments because relativism is a lazy philosophical paradigm to use. By this it is meant that if everything
was relative, there would be no need for moral debate, etc. But
surely objectivism is an imperialistic paradigm to superimpose
upon a situation, because its foundations are Judeo-Christian.
And isnt ethics evolutionary? If so, how could there justifiably be
objective moral grounds? Our very sense of morality is in flux.
P. Difford
by Email

Dear P,
Your lecturer has encountered lazy relativists, I have no
doubt, for they are a common breed among students, many of
whom would rather let everybody believe what they like than
have to think about who is right. And yet, put to the test, none
of them is a relativist: If the teacher were to give them an F,
they would protest at the injustice.
But objectivists to use your term can also be lazy if they
merely assume that they themselves are right. You are not lazy
because you have given arguments for your position, so I will
stir myself to reply to them.
This is a tricky business, to be sure. Relativism is a doctrine
that can apply across the board, not just in ethics. Thus,
somebody could believe that truth itself is relative, meaning, in
effect, that people holding contradictory beliefs could both be
right. In other words, to believe that something is true is the
same as for it to be true; hence, there is no such thing as a false
belief. But this immediately escalates to the absurd, for then
would not both the relativist and the objectivist be right? They
hold opposite views; but if relativism is true, then both of those
views would be correct so long as they are maintained or
believed.
But that is not the end of it: It seems that relativism must also
be false. For relativism is equivalent to the assertion that objectivism is false. But, according to relativism, objectivism is just
as true as relativism since the objectivist believes it. Therefore,
if relativism is true, then relativism is false. That, my friend, is
a paradox; it is usually taken as a sign that the hypothesis is false.
An alternative route to the same conclusion is to point out
that for relativists even to maintain their own position amounts
to a contradiction, since they are asserting it to be true. But this
means they are denying its opposite. Hence they implicitly
subscribe to a notion of truth that is contrary to their thesis
truth as an absolute, truth in the sense of something that can
withstand beliefs to the contrary.
But perhaps all that I have said amounts to an ignoratio
elenchi, since you do not claim to be opposed to truth itself in a
non-relativist sense, but only to objective moral truth. So what

you are suggesting is that it is (objectively) true that morality

does not consist of (objectively) true propositions. Such an
hypothesis is not objectionable in form; it is as unexceptionable
as asserting that Zeus and Hera do not exist (but other things
do). Morality, then, according to you is a kind of mythology, or
else a kind of custom.
You present two arguments. One is that morality evolves. So
maybe it was OK, even obligatory to sacrifice the first newborn
a few thousand years ago, but it isnt OK anymore. But I reply:
Was it really ever OK to do that? Something can be a prevailing
practice even today and yet be wrong, yes? Or do you believe
that there is nothing whatsoever for the lone individual to stand
up for in the face of the tide? I submit that what you call
evolution, we might better label reform. Alternatively, we
could say that what is evolving is not morality, but our understanding of it.
Since a thoroughgoing relativism regarding truth has been
rejected, can we not simply analogize the moral situation to that
of non-moral truth? In science one can observe an evolution, if
you will. But it is not that the Earth went from being flat to
being round, but only that our beliefs altered is it not so?
and, presumably, in the direction of truth. (Although note: I am
not insisting on any historical inevitability in the direction of
greater knowledge, either in science or morality. Sometimes we
regress. Nevertheless, the truth remains what it is.)
Your other argument I find more intriguing: the idea that our
religious heritage has something to do with our sense of the
objectivity of morality. (I ignore your reference to JudeoChristian, since I encountered exactly the same sort of imperialism with Euthyphro, a priest of the ancient Greek gods.) In a
world of multiple and contradictory beliefs about morality, a
God who lays down the Law can seem to settle the matter. But,
of course, that settles nothing, since beliefs about God vary as
much as beliefs about morality. With this you would agree,
perhaps. But I consider a belief in God to be a manifestation of
a belief in moral truth. You and I differ, I think, as to which is
the cart and which the horse.
Simply put, then, I see the task before us as trying to
determine what is true: about God, about the universe, about
how to live. My preferred method is dialectic. Thank you for
indulging this penchant of mine.
Yours as ever,
Socrates

Readers who would like to engage Socrates in dialogue are

welcome to write to Dear Socrates, c/o Philosophy Now, or
even to email him at: socrates@philosophynow.org
Socrates will select which letters to answer and reserves the
right to excerpt or otherwise edit them. Please indicate if you
wish your name to be withheld.
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 23

Popular Bogus
Questions
Stephen Doty says we should rephrase certain questions so as not to be
bamboozled by language.

hat is truth? What is beauty? These and similar

questions are still revered and often asked by
philosophers despite being bogus.
A book catalog from a leading university recently
printed this: What is truth? has long been the philosophical
question par excellence. Not according to the sharpest
philosophers, though. The catalog neglects to mention
this; perhaps, because so many still pose the question. The
Internet has over 50,000 instances of What is truth? And
some leading professors still abuse the what is x? form, as
do practically all the novices at the Socrates Cafs, who
seem to rely on it exclusively. At these cafs, questions
such as, What is love?, What is violence? and What is
insanity? are trotted out as if philosophy has not
progressed a day since Plato. Its high time we asked why
such questions have not yielded satisfactory answers for
over two thousand years.
Like the form who is x?, the form what is x? is only
grammatically appropriate for some x. We simply do not
ask, Who is titanium? nor What is Horace? So, for
which x do we properly ask what is x?
The most common use of what is x? occurs in cases such
as, What is calamari? What is curling? and What is
fermentation? that is, when x is a noun that refers to a
somewhat out-of-the-ordinary object, activity, or process.
Questions such as What is nylon? or What is plastic?
make up the second most common type of what is x?

Why do we
feel a
grammatical joke
to be deep?
Ludwig Wittgenstein

24 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

question, wherein x is an ordinary noun with a physical

referent whose constituent parts are inquired into. For
adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and greetings, on the contrary, we
do not usually use what is x? but rather, what does x mean?
as in, What does arcane mean? not What is arcane?
When Plato asked What is virtue? and What is
knowledge?, he was not asking a question such as, What is
calamari?, because his xs were not of the first type.; viz,
they do not refer to out-of-the-ordinary objects. Nor were
Platos questions of the second type, because virtue and
knowledge are not physical objects with constituent parts, as
nylon and plastic are.
In the Theaetetus, however, Plato tellingly compared
knowledge to a physical object, clay, saying clay was earth
mixed with moisture and regarding knowledge asked for
the thing itself. Thus, he borrowed the grammatical form
of what is x? from the second type of case, in which we ask
for the constituent parts of an ordinary object. But once the
surface grammar is penetrated and the level of facts is
reached, the analogy fails, since one is an object with
constituent parts and the other is not. Plato used a
grammatical form that suggested a false conception of the
facts and sent others on a futile search for the imaginary
constituents of a non-entity. The questions What is
knowledge? and What is truth? merely have the look of
What is nylon? as a cardboard cut-out of a person has
the look of a person. Plato gave us the name of such a
cardboard cut-out, in effect, and asked for his vital statistics.
No wonder the searches have proved futile.
Plato should have used the what does x mean? form and
asked What does knowledge mean? The philosopher has
no privileged position over the lexicographer here: the uses
of the word show its meaning. Similarly, those who
currently ask What is truth? are guilty of the same
insidious solecism as Plato and should ask instead, What
does truth mean?
Yet the question What does truth mean? seems to lack
philosophical profundity, which crumbles just when the
grammar error is removed as Wittgenstein asked, why do
we feel a grammatical joke to be deep?
Since we were young schoolchildren, we have quoted the
poets: For truth has such a face and such a mien / So to be
loved needs only to be seen (Dryden) and Beauty lives
though lilies die (James Flecker). The reification of truth,
beauty and other abstractions is so commonplace that we no

longer notice it. Wittgenstein said that we tend to think of

beauty as an ingredient of all beautiful things as alcohol is
of beer and wine, such that we could isolate the beauty as
we do the alcohol. A fortiori, we tend to do philosophy
grammatically drunk, not factually sober.
As a student of engineering, Wittgenstein learned the
dangers of what is x? questions from the scientist Heinrich
Hertz, who rejected What is force? as misleading, saying
the facts can be described without the word force, and,
once they have, our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to
ask illegitimate questions.
Philosophers can also profit from the early scientists who
investigated heat. The question What is heat? suggests an
object, and physicists actually sought a sort of invisible ether
that passed into substances when heated. They would have
been better off asking, What happens when matter becomes
hot? No object need be posited. Indeed, the best thinkers
reject and rephrase bogus questions, as Alan Turing did
when he rejected Can Machines Think? in his landmark
essay of that title.
Moreover, it is a sort of fraud for a learned man to ask
What is truth?, because truth is used every day without
misunderstanding. He jolly well knows what it means
already! Compare the question What is negation? The
early Wittgenstein strained in vain for a hidden logical
essence the later Wittgenstein would say, Dont you
understand it already?

Perhaps bogus questions are like skinned knees, a phase

philosophers must pass through. As George Orwell once
noted, when we think, ready-made phrases come easily to
mind, and the tendency to be influenced by them is strong
and persistent. Yet to write or do philosophy well, we
should be critical of phrases that may be inapt and focus
instead on the facts, so as to avoid expressions that mislead
insidiously in certain contexts.
STEPHEN DOTY 2004

Stephen Doty has degrees in philosophy, psychology and law and

runs a private foundation in Salem, Massachusetts.

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 25

Darwin Meets

Socrates
Steve Stewart-Williams on the implications of evolutionary theory for ethics.
Morality is a collective illusion of the genes. We need to believe in
morality, and so, thanks to our biology, we do believe in morality. There
is no foundation out there beyond human nature.
Michael Ruse, Evolutionary Naturalism: Selected Essays, 1995, p.250

ince its birth, Darwins theory of evolution has been

uniquely controversial. It is not that the accuracy of
the theory is in any doubt among biologists. On the
contrary, it is one of the best-established theories in
science. Outside the scientific arena, however, the
theory seems to have a unique ability to inflame passions and
provoke debate. One particularly heated area of debate
concerns the impact of evolutionary theory for ethics. Some
flatly deny that the theory has any relevance to ethical
discourse, a view they support with arguments that values
cannot be derived from facts. Others disagree, but among
this group there is no consensus about what the moral implications of evolution are (surprise, surprise). Some have
argued that the theory supports right wing social and
economic policies. Another view is that we must recalibrate
our values in the wake of evolutionary theory, and rethink the
value we place on the lives of human beings versus other
animals. Others draw a darker conclusion, and suggest that
the truth of evolutionary theory undermines morality
altogether. In the following pages, I will look at each of these
views in turn.
Evolutionary Theory is Irrelevant to Ethics
The first view to consider is that evolutionary theory
simply has no moral implications. This view has probably
been motivated in part by some of the unpopular conclusions
that have been drawn from the theory in the past. For
instance, the Social Darwinists, whose position I will consider
more carefully in the next section, argued that Darwins
theory implied that society should be run according to laissez
faire principles, and that the provision of aid to the weak, sick,
and poor goes against nature. For those who wish to reject
such a view, several options are available. One is to reject the
truth of evolutionary theory. A more reasonable alternative is
to argue that evolutionary theory does not have the ethical
implications that are claimed. And one way to do this is to
argue that evolutionary theory has no ethical implications
whatsoever.
This position is commonly met, and is typically backed up
with the suggestion that ethical systems derived from evolutionary theory commit an error of reasoning known as the
naturalistic fallacy. More than a century before Darwin
unveiled his theory, David Hume had pointed out that, in

26 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

moral discourse, people often begin by making factual

assertions (is statements), but then somewhere along the line
quietly shift to making evaluative or normative assertions
(ought statements). However, the leap from factual premises to
evaluative conclusions is not deductively valid. Consider this
argument:
Efforts to aid the weak, sick, or poor go against nature.
Therefore, we ought not to aid the weak, sick, or poor.
The premise does not entail the conclusion, for the
conclusion contains an element not present in the premise
the word ought. Thus, even if the premise were true, the
argument is not valid and so fails to establish its conclusion.
As Hume noted, no collection of solely factual premises could
entail any moral conclusion. This principle, known as Humes
law, may tempt us to assume that the fact of evolution can
have no bearing on ethical issues, and that factual and ethical
reasoning are completely independent domains of thought.
However, Humes law does not in fact have this implication.
The simple argument above is obviously invalid, but this
could easily be remedied by including additional premises that
would justify the leap from is to ought. (After all, it is possible
in principle to construct a deductively valid argument from
any premise to any conclusion, given the appropriate intervening premises.) For instance:
We ought not to go against nature.
Efforts to aid the weak, sick, or poor go against nature.
Therefore, we ought not to aid the weak, sick, or poor.
The argument is now deductively valid, and thus if the
premises are true, the conclusion must also be true.
Furthermore, the new premise is one that many would accept.
It is commonly heard, for instance, in arguments against
genetic engineering. In the next section, I will suggest that
arguments such as these rest on false assumptions about
evolutionary theory. Our concern for the moment, though, is
the more general point that Humes law does not rule out the
possibility that is statements can inform ought statements, as
long as the former are conjoined with premises that are also
ought statements. What it does show is that ultimate ethical
statements (ethical statements that are not implications of
other, more general ethical statements) cannot be derived
from solely factual premises. Therefore, although ultimate
ethical values cannot be read straight from the facts of
evolution, this does not rule out the possibility that these facts
could figure in our moral reasoning.

Social Darwinism
Having established
this point, I can now
consider what ethical
implications evolutionary theory might
have. To begin with, I
will consider a notorious
answer to this question:
that associated with the
Social Darwinist
movement of the late
nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Actually, Social Darwinism was not so
much an organized movement as a trend of thought only
identified and named in retrospect. As the name suggests, it
involved applying (supposed) Darwinian principles to society.
The Social Darwinists believed that society should be
organised according to the principle of the survival of the
fittest, and thus advocated laissez faire economic and social
policies. Some capitalists found moral support for an
unrestrained free market in Darwins theory. According to
John D. Rockefeller, for instance, the growth of a large
business is merely a survival of the fittest. This is not an
evil tendency in business. It is merely the working out of a
law of Nature. And as I have already noted, the Social
Darwinists viewed efforts to aid the weak, sick, and poor as
undesirable. To be fair, some of the more eloquent Social
Darwinists, such as the philosopher Herbert Spencer, did not
use Darwins theory solely to justify ruthless social and
economic practices. Nonetheless, it is those conclusions that
have unjustly tarnished evolutionary theory by association, and
therefore it is with those conclusions we will wrestle.
Based on Humes law, we can reject any Social Darwinist
argument that proceeds from is statements directly to ought
statements. However, this only rules out a certain class of
arguments. It does not show the falsity of Social Darwinist
conclusions. So lets consider on what grounds it might be
argued that society should be organised according to the
principle of the survival of the fittest. One approach would be
to argue that it is the way of nature and the way of nature is
good. This ties in with the premise discussed earlier that we
should not go against nature, and basically treats the survival
of the fittest as a good thing in itself. An alternative approach
would be to argue that it is a means to other ends. The Social
Darwinists were impressed with the idea that evolution
produces ongoing progress, and believed the crucial ingredient
producing this progress is the survival of the fittest. They
could thus argue that the survival of the fittest simply provides
the means to ends that, quite independently of evolution, we
consider good. On this view, state interference and social
welfare are undesirable not because they go against the way of
nature, but because the way of nature produces progress, and
efforts to constrain the market or to aid the needy prevent
progress.
Of course, we may wish to ask whether the means justify
the ends. However, there are more fundamental problems
with these ideas. Social Darwinist thought is based on several
misunderstandings of evolutionary theory. For a start, the
phrase survival of the fittest is somewhat misleading. (Note that
the phrase was introduced not by Darwin but by Spencer.)

Evolutionary history is not simply a Hobbesian war of all

against all. There is plenty of warring and competitiveness in
nature, but selection can also produce cooperation and even
limited altruism among organisms. (In biological terms,
altruism is defined as any action that advantages another
organism at the altruists expense, as distinct from cooperation, which benefits all involved parties.) Thus, such
tendencies are not necessarily going against nature. This is
the Social Darwinists first misunderstanding.
According to many modern evolutionary theorists, it is
only at the level of the gene that nature always and
inevitably operates according to principles analogous to
those the Social Darwinist favours. The only genes that
survive are those whose contribution to the phenotype
results in them being copied at a greater rate than other
versions of the same genes. Genes often cooperate with
one another (for example, to build coherent organisms that
will preserve and propagate them), but they do so only if
this is in their own interests. There is no altruism among
genes, and there is no gene equivalent of social welfare. In
order to salvage his position, the Social Darwinist would
have to maintain the (rather peculiar) view that human
societies should mimic the conditions of gene selection. But
to establish such a social system, we would have to suppress
our natural altruistic tendencies, and artificially emphasize
our natural selfish and competitive tendencies.
Consequently, to pursue this line of argument, the Social
Darwinist would have to let go of the view that we should
follow the way of nature.
That would leave only the argument that selection
produces progress. But this idea represents another significant misunderstanding of Darwins theory. Evolution is not
synonymous with progress. First, evolution is not a matter of
ongoing betterment. As the environment changes, the
criteria for goodness of design change with it. More
important, selection favours any trait that increases the
likelihood that the genes contributing to it will be copied,
regardless of whether we consider it good or desirable in any
sense. Although gene selection accounts for some things we
consider good, such as altruism, it also accounts for plenty we
consider bad. As a result, there is no reason to think that the
selective principles that operate among genes would necessarily lead to the betterment of society or an increase in the
sum total of happiness, and consequently no reason to accept
that society should be run according to these principles.
These considerations undermine the Social Darwinist
viewpoint, and show that there is no necessary connection
between evolutionary theory and laissez faire social policies.
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 27

In fact, if anything, the suffering constitutive of natural

selection could support an argument against such policies.
Rethinking our Ethical Commitments
Social Darwinism represents a failed attempt to derive
ethical implications from evolutionary theory. In this section,
I will consider another attempt, one consistent with a more
sophisticated understanding of evolution. This was presented
by James Rachels in his 1990 book Created From Animals: The
Moral Implications of Darwinism. Rachels identified an
important trend in traditional Western morality, which he
called the doctrine of human dignity. According to this trend
of thought, human life has a supreme value whereas the lives
of animals may be sacrificed for our purposes as Kant put it,
human beings are an end in themselves whereas animals are
merely a means to our ends. Although the Darwinian
worldview does not directly contradict this position, it does
undermine the foundations upon which it rests, and the
worldview within which it makes sense. The doctrine of
human dignity has its roots in the pre-Darwinian anthropocentric view of the universe, and is supported by such
beliefs as that human beings alone are made in Gods image,
and that reason distinguishes us from other animals in some
significant way. But evolutionary theory challenges these
views. First, given that the raw materials with which selection
works are a product of random mutations, and that evolutionary history is shaped by capricious and unpredictable
events, it is difficult to maintain that human beings are created
in Gods image or in accordance with any pre-existing design.
Furthermore, the evolutionary perspective challenges the view
that we are distinguished in some important way by our
possession of reason. Reason is simply one adaptation among
many, and we are one animal among many.
Viewed in this light, the idea that human life is infinitely
valuable begins to look like a vast and unjustified overvaluation of human life. According to Rachels, this suggestion
has important implications for a number of issues in applied
ethics. If human life is not supremely valuable after all, there
is no reason to assume that the duty to preserve human life
always takes precedence over other considerations, such as
human happiness. So, for instance, suicide and voluntary
euthanasia are no longer ruled out as absolute evils. If they
are good for the individual, it is difficult to maintain that they
are necessarily wrong under any circumstance.
A second set of implications relates to the moral status of
nonhuman animals. Evolutionary theory stresses our kinship
with other animals, and undermines the idea that our species
is the pinnacle of evolutionary progress, except when judged
against arbitrary and self-chosen criteria. It also lowers our
confidence in Descartes idea that nonhuman animals are
nonconscious automata; after all we are conscious beings
(conscious automata perhaps), and we came about through the
same process as every other animal. As such, we cannot
ignore the possibility that other animals experience pain and
suffer, just as humans do. These considerations support the
claims of ethicists who hold that we have undervalued the lives
of other animals. If such views are taken seriously, they have
important implications. The bio-ethicist, Peter Singer, argues
that when we accord nonhuman animals the moral standing
they deserve, we recognise that prejudice against other species
is as objectionable as any other form of prejudice, including
28 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

racism and sexism. Moreover, he argues that the amount of

suffering and pain caused by the tyranny of human beings
over other animals (particularly in food production and experimentation) far outweighs that caused by sexism, racism, or
any other existing form of discrimination, and thus that the
animal liberation movement is the most important liberation
movement in the world today. Such suggestions, although
they are not logically necessary conclusions of evolutionary
theory, would be virtually unthinkable from a pre-Darwinian
standpoint.
Evolutionary Theory & the Death of Right and Wrong
The ethical conclusions I have outlined were informed by
facts about evolution. However, implicit in the arguments
were some more general ethical principles that were not
derived from evolutionary theory for instance, that we
should value any life form in proportion to its capacity to
suffer. Thus, the discussion was consistent with the earlier
conclusion that, although facts can inform ethical decisions,
they cannot entail ultimate ethical principles. But this leaves
us with a difficult question: How do we arrive at ultimate
ethical principles? How do we gain knowledge of moral
truths? Many answers to this question have been proposed.
Some people maintain that we know moral truths through a
mysterious faculty of intuition. Another popular answer is
linked to the idea that science and religion have distinct and
non-overlapping domains. The suggestion is that science is
limited to providing empirical knowledge, whereas it is the
role of religion to provide knowledge of moral truths. The
position to be explored in this section is that all and any such
suggestions must be rejected in light of evolutionary theory.
The argument is not with the idea that science can only
directly uncover empirical knowledge no one imagines that
there could ever be an experimental procedure that would
detect the rightness or wrongness of an action or intention.
The argument is that, rather than religion or intuition
providing us with knowledge of moral truths, knowledge of
moral truths is simply not possible, for there are no moral
truths. This view should not be confused with ethical
relativism, which is, in effect, the view that all moral beliefs
are true, at least within the culture in which they are held.
The position under discussion is ethical nihilism, the view that
all moral beliefs are false.
Evolutionary theory supports moral nihilism in a number
of ways. First, many hold that the existence of moral truths
depends on the existence of God. As Dostoyevsky stated, If
God does not exist, then everything is permitted in other
words, nothing is right or wrong. Although the truth of
evolutionary theory is not incompatible with the existence of
God, it does weaken the case for God. Prior to Darwin, the
design exhibited in life forms was viewed as some of the best
evidence for a creator. However, Darwins theory provided a
naturalistic explanation for this design. Furthermore, natural
selection is a cruel and wasteful process, which raises the
problem of evil as an argument against Gods existence. So, if
Dostoyevsky was right, then to the extent that evolutionary
theory undermines Gods existence, it also undermines
morality. Second, promising evolutionary explanations have
been proposed for some of our basic moral inclinations and
feelings. For instance, according to Robert Trivers theory of
reciprocal altruism, many of our basic moral impulses were

crafted by natural selection to facilitate mutually cooperative

relationships, and to avoid being exploited in such arrangements. According to some philosophers, such results reveal
that our moral beliefs are illusions, held not because they are
true but because they are biologically useful in regulating the
social life of a highly social animal.
As with earlier examples, the truth of evolutionary theory
does not entail the conclusion that there are no objective
moral truths, and some have argued against this conclusion.
Many ethicists have noted that the existence of moral truths is
not logically dependent on the existence of God. Similarly,
even if our moral nature has an evolutionary basis, it might be
that it meshes with an objective moral order, just as physical
adaptations mesh with the physical environment of the
organism. In other words, the existence of objective moral
truths is still a logical possibility. Nonetheless, if this is all
that can be said in support of such truths, people could be
forgiven for remaining unconvinced. After all, it is equally a
logical possibility that there are no moral truths. In addition,
even if there are moral truths, evolutionary theory poses
another challenge to morality. On a materialist Darwinian
perspective, the mind is the activity of an evolved brain, and
consequently could not survive the death of the body any
more than could the beating of the heart. But if there is no
life after death then there could be no final balancing of the
scales of justice in an afterlife or future incarnation. This
raises the salience of a pivotal question in moral philosophy:
Why be moral?
Some may find these suggestions frightening, and perhaps
this an appropriate reaction. Then again, maybe it is not. For
it is certainly possible to frame an ethic consistent with the
Darwinian view of the world. Such an ethic might emphasize
the virtue of being honest and courageous enough to
acknowledge unflinchingly that there is no objective basis to
morality, that there is no higher purpose behind our suffering,
that we are insignificant in a vast and impersonal universe,
that existence is ultimately without purpose or meaning, and
that the effects of our actions will ultimately fade away
without trace. We would acknowledge all this but struggle on
as if life were meaningful and strive to make the world a better
place anyway, without any expectation of ultimate victory,
eternal reward, or good karma, and indeed for no good reason
at all. Of course, nothing can be said to argue that people are
morally obliged to accept this ethic, for to do so would be
inconsistent with the very ideas that prompted it in the first
place. It is an ethic that will be adopted, if it all, by those who
find a certain stark beauty in kindness without reward, joy
without purpose, and progress without lasting achievement.
STEVE STEWART-WILLIAMS 2004

Steve Stewart-Williams is a Lecturer at the School of Psychology at

Massey University in New Zealand. His research interests include
the placebo effect, the implications of evolutionary psychology for
philosophy, and the evolution of mating preferences. He likes cheese.
Further Reading:
Dawkins, R. (1989). The Selfish Gene (2nd ed.). Oxford Univ. Press.
Rachels, J. (1990). Created from Animals: The moral implications of
Darwinism. Oxford Univ. Press.
Richards, J.R. (2000). Human Nature after Darwin: A philosophical
introduction. Routledge.
Singer, P. (1990). Animal Liberation (2nd ed.). Jonathon Cape.

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 29

The Burden of
Food for the History of
Thought

Philosophy

Were delighted to announce the birth of a new column by Tim Madigan.

lfred North Whitehead once remarked that all of

Western Philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato.
While this is surely not literally true, no one can
dispute the powerful influence that Socrates friend has had
on much subsequent philosophical work. Countless volumes
have been devoted to examining his basic ideas and their
impact throughout the ages. It may well be that one cannot
truly understand philosophy without somehow trying to
come to grips with Plato.
But if impact is an important criterion for understanding
a figures importance in the history of philosophy, and if one
should be familiar with the most influential figures of the
past before attempting to do philosophy oneself, then what
would constitute the list of such individuals whose works
must be reckoned with? To whom must attention be paid?
Aquinas, Descartes, Kant and Marx? Or Berkeley, Hume,
Mill and Dewey? And what about such thinkers as Bruno,
Fichte, Vico and Feuerbach, who are considered by some to
be major figures that helped to shape the very nature of
philosophical inquiry, and yet are dismissed by most
cognoscenti as being at best minor figures in the history of
the field? What level of knowledge, if any, should one have
of their works? Must one immerse oneself into the numerous
volumes produced by the Big Names or is it enough to
have a nodding familiarity with their various views?
Certainly a deep knowledge and association with as many
viewpoints as possible in the thousands-year old history of
philosophy would be a beneficial attribute. Had we world
enough and time, no doubt it would be a goal worth aiming
at. But few of us will have the luxury of living to the ripe
old age of ninety-seven, which Bertrand Russell, author of
the best-selling A History of Western Philosophy, achieved.
And for all his great age and familiarity with his philosophical predecessors, even he was criticized for having at
best a shallow (and at worst a biased) opinion of most of
them, and himself claimed that the only philosopher whose
work he could honestly said he completely understood was
Leibniz.
In a very real sense, philosophys history weighs heavily
upon it. To read and comprehend the works of even a
relatively few philosophers who are generally considered to
be members in good standing of the pantheon of great
30 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

thinkers would take an enormous amount of time and effort.

And this is not even taking into consideration the massive
amount of secondary and tertiary literature devoted to them.
How then do we deal with the sheer weight of information
which has accumulated over the centuries? The history of
philosophy continues on unabated future generations will
have to deal not only with the ancient and modern thinkers
we of the early Twenty-First Century seek to absorb (from
Thales to Rorty and everything in-between) but also with the
greats and near-greats yet unborn. Where will it end? Are
philosophers ultimately fated to drown in a sea of words of
ideas?
One of the most prevalent techniques is to simply ignore
entire periods in the history of philosophy, dismissing them
as not very important stages. Indeed, the majority of surveys
and courses in the history of philosophy usually omit any
lengthy discussion of the medieval period (roughly from
300AD to 1600AD). Over one thousand years of thought
bracketed out! The attitude taken by those who do so is
summed up rather well by Walter Kaufman, who writes:
... medieval philosophy was so different from both Greek and modern
philosophy that it is somewhat misleading to call it by the same name.
And if philosophy were defined as a search for truth that involves
following arguments and evidence, without recourse to authority,
wherever they may lead, frequently arriving at unforeseen conclusions,
then medieval philosophy would not deserve the name at all. (The Faith
of a Heretic, 1961, p.31).

This air of nonchalance is rather disturbing. Should one

really ignore such writers as Ockham, Augustine, Boethius,
Abelard, Maimonides and Averroes because they were not
truly philosophers? To define them out of existence seems a
shoddy thing to do. Their influence on the history of
philosophy is easily proven, and certainly it is a gross misrepresentation and oversimplification to hold that they were not
concerned with seeking the truth, but only with reconciling
their views to the party line of theological doctrines. If this
were the case, Ockham would not have had to flee from the
Popes wrath, Averroes would not have had to fear death at
the hands of enraged clerics, and Abelard would have led a
much more settled existence.

Far too many histories of philosophy act as if the period

between Plato and Descartes simply did not exist. Even
those who admit the importance of the medieval period are
likely to give a triage-type defense to make a course
workable or a textbook readable, somethings got to be
sacrificed. And besides, as Kaufman would no doubt concur,
the medieval period was chiefly concerned with matters of
faith, which can best be dealt with in specialized courses on
the philosophy of religion, or better yet in courses on the
history of religion. Lets move on.
This raises another important point to consider when
addressing the burden of the history of philosophy is such
history progressive in nature? If it is, then perhaps ones
knowledge of the writings and ideas of the many philosophers
who have furthered this progress need not be so all-encompassing. We can concern ourselves with what is important in
this process of growth, while ignoring those issues (and the
thinkers who addressed them) which are no longer relevant.
Richard Rorty, often considered the most influential contemporary philosopher, puts it this way:
We should treat the history of philosophy as we treat the history of
science. In the latter field, we have no reluctance in saying that we know
better than our ancestors what they were talking about. We do not think
it anachronistic to say that Aristotle had a false model of the heavens, or
that Galen did not understand how the circulatory system worked. We
take the pardonable ignorance of great dead scientists for granted. We
should be equally willing to say that Aristotle was unfortunately ignorant
that there are no such things as real essences, or Leibniz that God does
not exist, or Descartes that the mind is just the central nervous system
under an alternative description. We hesitate merely because we have
colleagues who are themselves ignorant of such facts, and whom we
courteously describe not as ignorant, but as holding different philosophical views. Historians of science have no colleagues who believe in
crystalline spheres, or who doubt Harveys account of circulation, and
they are thus free from such constraints. (The Historiography of
Philosophy: Four Genres, in Philosophy in History, 1988, p.50).

the Pragmatist schoolyard and briefly entering into the

Kantian schools domain. But he or she need never enter the
Thomistic schoolyard, or bother to learn the history of the
pre-Socratics or the Phenomenologists.
It would make things much easier if philosophy were as
simple as that, or as easy to compartmentalize. But it is not.
The connections and influences do not obey such easy labels
(nor, for that matter, do they in the history of art). To join a
school is in many ways to try and break free from the
burden of the history of philosophy, but all one basically
accomplishes is the setting up of artificial barriers. There are
periodical calls from philosophers who are frustrated by the
fragmentations of the present to return to the writings of
Hegel or Hume or Aquinas or Aristotle and get right with
fundamentals a Back to Kant maneuver, as it were. But
one cannot ignore all the work that has gone on after these
writings became known. Rorty may be mistaken when he
claims that we can simply put aside all discussion of real
essences, but can anyone who wants to come to grips with
Aristotle blithely ignore all the work that has been done on
this topic since the time of his death? In other words, what
would Aristotle likely have said about Quines anti-essentialist
arguments? Would he have been as convinced by them as
Rorty seems to be?
It might appear that philosophers fight the same battles
over and over again, under different guises. Thus, Rortys
hermeneutics-based view has been dismissed by some as
warmed-over Sophistry. The history of philosophy might be
no more than a bad case of eternal recurrence: old problems
never die, they just get re-named. If this is the case, then one

BAD PRESS: THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD DUNCE

Stephen Lahey

So much for arguments for essences, proofs of Gods

existence, or discussions of the mind/body problem. But is
philosophy really so akin to science? If so, why do certain
nagging problems including the three mentioned above
keep coming back throughout the ages? Cant we finally solve
them to everyones satisfaction and just move on?
Perhaps the history of philosophy is more like the history
of art than it is like the history of science. Just as there are
different schools of art, such as Realism, Impressionism,
Surrealism, and Pop Art, which have some connections with
each other but which can also be treated as separate entities,
perhaps there are schools of philosophy, such as Platonism,
Thomism, Marxism, Pragmatism and Deconstructionism,
which can likewise be treated as separate entities. In this
sense, there is no need to be concerned with the overall
history of philosophy. Rather, one should be concerned with
the history of the school one belongs to. For example, a
Pragmatist would want to know the influence that Peirce had
upon James, and James upon Dewey, and Dewey upon Rorty.
There would be some interest as well in the influence of
figures outside the school in regards to their influence on
those within. So, a Pragmatist could trace the Kantian
elements in Peirces writings, thereby momentarily leaving
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 31

need only have a superficial knowledge of the history of

philosophy just get clear on what the eternal problems are,
and the finite ways they can be dealt with, and ignore the
messy historical details. If there is no real progress, there is
no need for an in-depth evaluation.
Yet this eternal recurrence picture is not very convincing.
It seems to arise from a too-strict adherence to a problemscentered approach to philosophy. By taking such issues as the
existence of essences, proofs of Gods existence, and the
mind/body problem out of the context in which they arose,
one loses a sense as to why various philosophers felt they had
to be addressed at all. The problems seem to take on a life of
their own, with the philosophers merely acolytes fated to
serve them. While it is the case, for instance, that Plato was
much concerned with the nature of Justice, we cannot
therefore be certain that his discussions of this topic were
strictly akin to present-day discussions. By taking Justice as
something a-historical, we face the danger of assuming that
the idea itself has never changed: that whoever speaks of it
necessarily, in all conditions and at all times, speaks of one
and the same thing.
John Dewey, in his Reconstruction in Philosophy, tried to
demonstrate how unsound this view of the history of
philosophy really is. He writes:
The very things that made the great systems objects of esteem and
admiration in their own socio-cultural contexts are in large measure the
very grounds that deprive them of actuality in a world whose main
features are different to an extent indicated by our speaking of the
scientific revolution, the industrial revolution, and the political
revolution of the last few hundred years. A plea for reconstruction
cannot, as far as I can see, be made without giving considerable attention
to the background within which and in regard to which reconstruction is
to take place. (Reconstruction in Philosophy, 1948, p.viii.)

That is to say, as the needs and concerns of a society

changes, so too does its philosophy. The history of
philosophy must be studied with this ever in ones mind.
This being the case, if one wishes to understand the
problems one is addressing, one must have a good historical
sense. Dewey was interested in mapping out the causes of
various changes in thought throughout the ages, so that one
could understand why we have arrived at our present-day
philosophical systems. There is a constant state of development occurring in philosophy, but it is a development
which does not advance in strictly linear fashion. The voices
of the past are constantly being heard: but they are re-interpreted to fit our present-day concerns. Dewey tries to make
explicit this often-underestimated point. If Plato were to
speak to us directly, we probably could not understand him,
for the times and social conditions have changed so radically
that it would be in a very real sense a different world for him.
Perhaps Aristotle and Quine wouldnt be able to discuss the
nature of essences after all.
But does such an historical sense mean that, before one
does philosophy one must have a near-complete knowledge
of all that has taken place beforehand not only the writings
of previous thinkers, but also the economic, political and
social conditions under which they wrote? Surely this would
discourage all but the most anal-retentive from ever entering
the field of philosophy.
32 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

The burden of the history of philosophy need not be so

heavy a load, provided one does not attempt to write what
Hegel would call a universal history of philosophy. That is
clearly an impossible task, and it becomes ever more unrealizable as time marches on. It seems that what is needed is a
realization that this is impossible, coupled with a willingness
to learn as much as one needs to about the figures of the past
who grappled with the problems one currently confronts.
For Rorty, the nature of essences is a non-issue, but there are
many philosophers today who still consider it a real issue, and
who still find fruitful the discussions of essences by
Aristotelians, Thomists and other thinkers. Who knows what
other philosophical issues, laying dormant for now, might
once again rear their mighty heads and dominate the discussions of the Twenty-First Century? I for one have given
serious thought to reviving the ancient argument that the
ultimate essence of the universe is water and thereby starting
a Back to Thales movement.
We should cheerfully admit that our knowledge of the
history of philosophy, taken in its totality, is tentative at best.
It is not a unique problem for philosophers. After all, a
similar dilemma faces many academics today. Few English
professors are equally expert in Chaucer, Shakespeare, James
Joyce and Mickey Spillane. The weight of material forces
one to specialize, and to focus ones attention on mastering
certain areas of ones chosen field.
As the history of philosophy becomes ever more crowded
with systems and people, elbowing for position and fighting
for space on library shelves, the awareness of the great efforts
made by the figures of the past should be kept in mind.
Perhaps it is sheer hubris to think that one can possess a real
understanding of this history but it is a worthy challenge to
try to master as much of it as one can. It is significant that
Russells History of Western Philosophy, which he himself never
considered to be one of his own major contributions to the
field, became a best-seller as soon as it appeared in 1944 and
has remained in print ever since. The desire for an overall
view of what this history involves remains a strong one,
especially when one is first introduced to the very idea of
philosophy and begins to wonder Whats it all about, Bertie?
We can take some solace from Pythagoras, the learned
individual who is credited with coining the term philosophy
itself. In doing so, he admitted that he was not a possessor of
wisdom, but rather a seeker of it. It was the quest for wisdom
which gave meaning to his existence. The history of
philosophy is an ever-changing, ever-shifting map of the
many paths taken by noted individuals in this quest. No one
can travel all its highways and byways, but no one should thus
disparage the paths not taken. They might just end up being
paths one will stumble upon
unexpectedly one day hence, and
its helpful to have a map in
hand, just in case.
DR TIMOTHY J. MADIGAN 2004

Tim Madigan is Editorial Director

of the University of Rochester Press
and a US Editor of Philosophy
Now. Any readers wishing to join
his Back to Thales movement
should wr ...
(splash!) glug glug glug....

The View from

Mount Zapffe
Gisle Tangenes describes the life and ideas of a cheerfully pessimistic,
mountain-climbing Norwegian existentialist.

This world, mused Horace Walpole, is a comedy to

those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. And for
Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899-1990), humans are
condemned to do both. We have evolved a yearning
for metaphysical purpose for intrinsic justice and
meaning in any earthly event that is destined for frustration
by our real environment. The process of life is oblivious to
the beings it makes and breaks in the course of its perpetuation. And while no living creature escapes this carnage, only
humans bear the burden of awareness. An uninhabited globe,
argues Zapffe, would be no unfortunate thing.
Born in the arctic city of Troms, in Norway, Zapffe was a
luminous stylist and wit, whose Law examination paper (1923)
in rhyming verse remains on display at the University of
Oslo. Following some years as a lawyer and judge, he had a
revelatory encounter with the plays of Ibsen and
reentered university to attack the ever burning
question of what it means to be human. The answer
he reached is an original brand of existentialist
thought, which, unlike the more optimistic views of
Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, concludes in a minor
key. Among its earliest airings was a little essay called
The Last Messiah (1933).
The piece begins with a fable of a stoneage hunter
who, as he leaves his cave at night, is stricken by pity
for his prey and has a fatal existential crisis. This is a
parable resonating with two archetypical tales of
Western culture. Firstly, it recalls the Allegory of the
Cave in Platos Republic, which also relates the eyeopening exit of a cave; secondly, it alludes to that
origin myth of moral sentiment, the Fall of Man in
Genesis. Zapffe chimes in with an exegesis to the
effect that his caveman was a man who knew too
much. Evolution, he argues, overdid its act when creating the
human brain, akin to how a contemporary of the hunter, a
deer misnamed the Irish elk, became moribund by its
increasingly oversized antlers. For humans can perceive that
each individual being is an ephemeral eddy in the flow of life,
subjected to brute contingencies on his or her way to annihilation. Yet only rarely do persons lose their minds through
this realisation, as our brains have evolved a strict regime of
self-censorship better known as civilisation. Betraying a
debt to Freud, Zapffe expands on how most people learn to
save themselves by artificially limiting the content of
consciousness. So, isolation is the repression of grim facts by
a code of silence; anchoring, the stabilising attachment to

specific ends; distraction, the continuous stream of divertive

impressions; and sublimation, the conversion of anguish into
uplifting pursuits, like literature and art. The discussion is
sprinkled with allusions to the fate of Nietszche: the poster
case, as it were, of seeing too much for sanity.
Lastly, Zapffe warns that civilisation cannot be sustained
forever, as technology liberates ever more time for us to face
our demons. In a memorably ironic finish, he completes the
tribute to Plato and Moses by foretelling a last Messiah, to
appear in a tormented future.
This prophet of doom, an heir to the visionary caveman,
will be as ill-fated. For his word, which subverts the precept
to be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, is not to
please his fellow man: Know yourselves be infertile, and let
the earth be silent after ye.

Zapffe working on
his PhD dissertation

The Messiahs ideas are developed at greater length in the

treatise On the Tragic (1941), unaccountably never translated
into any major language. The work is rigorously argued, yet
so suffused with carnevalesque humour that one critic
acclaimed its author as the Chaplin of philosophy. Nor is
there want of poetic imagery; at one point, for instance, a sea
eagle bred in cage is evoked as an analogy to the human
predicament. While unable to manifest its potential in
captivity, such an eagle should doubtless perish if released into
the open sky.
That dilemma highlights a fundamental concept of Zapffes
tome: the objectively tragic sequence, that is, any narrative in
which excellence is linked to misadventure. Aristotles theory
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 33

of tragedy in the Poetics centers on the debacle of a generally

virtuous individual who makes a fateful error of judgment,
expressing a latent flaw of character. By contrast, objectively
tragic tales do not hinge on any fault of the protagonist; rather
a manifestation of culturally relevant greatness prefigures his
demise. Such excellence either engenders the calamity or is
else instilled in the protagonist by whatever does, for instance
a disease. To clarify his model, Zapffe introduces a hierarchy
of interest fronts: biological, social, autotelic (pertaining to
whatever is rewarding in itself), and metaphysical. The latter
one, essential to humanity, requires a dual virtue for objectively tragic sequences to unfold: (i) aspirations to secure a just
and meaningful world; and (ii) intellectual honesty. Insofar as
(i) alone is found in a character, whether real or a fictional, her
response to absurdity and injustice should be to sacrifice
lower-ranking interests on behalf of the metaphysical one.
This sets the stage for what Zapffe labels a heroic sequence
of events. A tragic sequence demands the addition of (ii), and
peaks with a devastating realisation that existence never will
become satisfactory in terms of meaning and justice. For
Zapffe, such resignation to futility marks the apex of many
classic tragedies, from Prometheus Bound to Hamlet. His most
intriguing case in point is The Book of Job, in the Bible,
which given its seemingly happy ending was never anybodys
idea of a tragic tale. Yet on Zapffes reading, Job has the
misfortune to uncover the Lords genuine nature: a benighted
tyrant, mistaking might for right. Even martyrdom would be
lost on this godly Caliban, and the disillusioned Job takes
cover behind a mask of repentance. His is a timeless tragedy,
for Jehovah holds sway in our experience even today, as the
symbol of a familiar social and biological environment:
He represents the blind natural forces oblivious to the human craving
for order and meaning, the unpredictable strikes of illness and death, the
transience of fame, the betrayal of friends and kin. He is the god of
machines and might, of rule by violence, Moscow tribunals, party yoke
and conquest, of copper pipes and armour plates. Job is not alone to face
him with spiritual arms. Some are downtrodden in heroic martyrdom;
others see the limitations of martyrdom as well, yielding in the outer
things, but hiding despair in their hearts.

The human condition is so structured, then, that objectively tragic sequences will readily arise (which is ultimately
why they are described as objective.) Not only is humankind
distinguished by an impossible interest, the need for purpose
in a realm of pure causality; it also excels at comprehending that
realm. We relate to the truth as do moths to a flame.
Thus the thousand consolatory fictions that deny our
captivity in dying beasts, afloat on a speck of dust in the
eternal void. And after all, if a godly creator is waiting in the
wings, it must be akin to the Lord in The Book of Job, since it
allows its breathing creations to be tumbled and destroyed in
a vast machinery of forces foreign to interests. Asserts Zapffe:
The more a human being in his worldview approaches the
goal, the hegemony of love in a moral universe, the more has
he become slipshod in the light of intellectual honesty. The
only escape from this predicament should be to discontinue
the human race. Though extinction by agreement is not a
terribly likely scenario, that is no more than an empirical fact
of public opinion; in principle, all it would require is a global
consensus to reproduce below replacement rates, and in a few
34 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

generations, the likening of humankind would not be the

stars or the ocean sand, but a river dwindling to nothing in
the great drought. This rather less than life-affirming
message is actually not without historical precedence.
In a preface to the 1983 edition of On the Tragic, Zapffe
refers to the insight, or Gnosis, that the Mystery of Life is
amoral. That is no mere figure of speech: his philosophy does
indeed suggest the mystical viewpoint known as Gnosticism,
influenced by Judaism and Platonism and flourishing early in
the Christian era. Gnostic doctrines generally teach as
follows. Our innermost selves began on a deific plane, the
Fullness (Pleroma), but were dispersed around the earthly
shadowland, and locked into a cycle of rebirths, at the dawn of
time. They may break free and reunite through Gnsis: the
awareness of their divinity, promoted by holy messengers. Yet
the majority keep mistaking the dominion of death for home
and partake in its reproduction, encouraged by cosmic slavers
(archons) who serve the ignoble creator of matter the deity of
the Old Testament. As Hans Jonas noted in the 1950s, this
esoteric lore resembles, to some degree, the outlook of
modern existentialism. Both depict the human self as
somehow thrown into, and incarcerated in, a foreign world, in
which it mindlessly acquiesces unless woken by a sense of
alienation. With Zapffe, the match appears closer than usual,
for if he denies, like most existentialists, that humankind
belongs in a heavenly home, he also echoes Gnostics in
rejecting its continuance on earth.
Zapffe defended On the Tragic for his doctoral degree, not a
risk-free act in the German-occupied Norway of the day; his
friend Arne Nss, later the originator of deep ecology, took
a break from resistance work to serve as opponent. After
liberation, Zapffe turned down a professorship to live instead
by his essays, monographs, poetry, plays and humourous
writings.
Many of the latter address a favourite activity, the art of
mountain climbing. This he extolled for being as
meaningless as life itself. (Destinations included, incidentally,
the spire of Troms Cathedral, whence he proclaimed that he
could not ascend further by means of the Church!)
Some find his zeal as a mountaineer, humorist and early
champion of environmental conservation rather at odds with
his philosophical pessimism. According to another friend and
eco-philosopher, Sigmund Setreng, this paradox is resolved by
considering the light bliss founded on dark insight of the
bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism a wakened sage who
accepts the futility of human accomplishment. In any case,
Zapffe lived as he taught in reproductive matters, staying
childless by design. Apart from Berit Zapffe, his spouse
through 47 years, his name is now borne only by one of the
arctic mountains he pioneered. As for Mt. Zapffes philosophical counterpart, it presents an austere, yet impressive,
vista of the earthly vale of tears. In a letter dated 1990, its
conqueror described his view from the final cairn: The
human race come from Nothing and go to Nothing. Above
that, there is Nothing. At the close of his last major writing,
Zapffe answers all who despair of this view. Unfortunately,
rues the playful pessimist, I cannot help you. All I have for
facing death myself, is a foolish smile.
GISLE R. TANGENES 2004

Gisle R. Tangenes is soon to graduate in Philosophy from the

University of Oslo. He is too pessimistic even for mountaineering.

The

Last Messiah
The first English version of a classic essay by Peter Wessel Zapffe, originally
published in Janus #9, 1933. Translated from the Norwegian by Gisle R. Tangenes.

ne night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw

himself.
He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his
own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought,
wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his
mind.
Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay.
And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of
spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the
beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of
habit, he felt no more the tigers bound in his blood, but a
great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between
everything alive.
That day he did not return with prey, and when they found
him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the
waterhole.
II
Whatever happened? A breach in the very unity of life, a
biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target,
blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily
by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its
own well-being. Its weapon was like a sword without hilt or
plate, a two-edged blade cleaving everything; but he who is to
wield it must grasp the blade and turn the one edge toward
himself.
Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his
soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet
he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all
phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He
comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his
arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no
more, it performed a miracle with man, but later did not know
him. He has lost his right of residence in the universe, has
eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been expelled from
Paradise. He is mighty in the near world, but curses his might
as purchased with his harmony of soul, his innocence, his
inner peace in lifes embrace.
So there he stands with his visions, betrayed by the
universe, in wonder and fear. The beast knew fear as well, in
thunderstorms and on the lions claw. But man became fearful
of life itself indeed, of his very being. Life that was for the
beast to feel the play of power, it was heat and games and
strife and hunger, and then at last to bow before the law of

course. In the beast, suffering is self-confined, in man, it

knocks holes into a fear of the world and a despair of life.
Even as the child sets out on the river of life, the roars from
the waterfall of death rise highly above the vale, ever closer,
and tearing, tearing at its joy. Man beholds the earth, and it is
breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life
swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but
when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the
multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail.
Not merely his own day could he see, the graveyards wrung
themselves before his gaze, the laments of sunken millennia
wailed against him from the ghastly decaying shapes, the
earth-turned dreams of mothers. Futures curtain unravelled
itself to reveal a nightmare of endless repetition, a senseless
squander of organic material. The suffering of human billions
makes its entrance into him through the gateway of
compassion, from all that happen arises a laughter to mock the
demand for justice, his profoundest ordering principle. He
sees himself emerge in his mothers womb, he holds up his
hand in the air and it has five branches; whence this devilish
number five, and what has it to do with my soul? He is no
longer obvious to himself he touches his body in utter
horror; this is you and so far do you extend and no farther.
He carries a meal within him, yesterday it was a beast that
could itself dash around, now I suck it up and make it part of
me, and where do I begin and end? All things chain together
in causes and effects, and everything he wants to grasp
dissolves before the testing thought. Soon he sees mechanics
even in the so-far whole and dear, in the smile of his beloved
there are other smiles as well, a torn boot with toes.
Eventually, the features of things are features only of himself.
Nothing exists without himself, every line points back at him,
the world is but a ghostly echo of his voice he leaps up
loudly screaming and wants to disgorge himself onto the earth
along with his impure meal, he feels the looming of madness
and wants to find death before losing even such ability.
But as he stands before imminent death, he grasps its nature
also, and the cosmic import of the step to come. His creative
imagination constructs new, fearful prospects behind the
curtain of death, and he sees that even there is no sanctuary
found. And now he can discern the outline of his biologicocosmic terms: He is the universes helpless captive, kept to fall
into nameless possibilities.
From this moment on, he is in a state of relentless panic.
Such a feeling of cosmic panic is pivotal to every human
mind. Indeed, the race appears destined to perish in so far as
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 35

any effective preservation and continuation of life is ruled out

when all of the individuals attention and energy goes to
endure, or relay, the catastrophic high tension within.
The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by overevolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is
thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological
times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The
mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown
forth, without any contact of interest with their environment.
In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of
such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer
to the ground.
III
Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during
great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor
number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the
strain of living because cognition gives them more than they
can carry?
Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and
others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save
themselves by artificially limiting the content of
consciousness.
If the giant deer, at suitable intervals, had broken off the
outer spears of its antlers, it might have kept going for some
while longer. Yet in fever and constant pain, indeed, in
betrayal of its central idea, the core of its peculiarity, for it was
vocated by creations hand to be the horn bearer of wild
animals. What it gained in continuance, it would lose in
significance, in grandness of life, in other words a continuance
without hope, a march not up to affirmation, but forth across
its ever recreated ruins, a self-destructive race against the
sacred will of blood.
The identity of purpose and perishment is, for giant deer
and man alike, the tragic paradox of life. In devoted Bejahung,
the last Cervis Giganticus bore the badge of its lineage to its
end. The human being saves itself and carries on. It
performs, to extend a settled phrase, a more or less selfconscious repression of its damaging surplus of consciousness.
This process is virtually constant during our waking and active
hours, and is a requirement of social adaptability and of
everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal
living.
Psychiatry even works on the assumption that the healthy
and viable is at one with the highest in personal terms.
Depression, fear of life, refusal of nourishment and so on are
invariably taken as signs of a pathological state and treated
thereafter. Often, however, such phenomena are messages
from a deeper, more immediate sense of life, bitter fruits of a
geniality of thought or feeling at the root of antibiological
tendencies. It is not the soul being sick, but its protection
failing, or else being rejected because it is experienced
correctly as a betrayal of egos highest potential.
The whole of living that we see before our eyes today is
from inmost to outmost enmeshed in repressional mechanisms,
social and individual; they can be traced right into the tritest
formulas of everyday life. Though they take a vast and multifarious variety of forms, it seems legitimate to at least identify
four major kinds, naturally occuring in every possible combination: isolation, anchoring, distraction and sublimation.
36 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

By isolation I here mean a fully arbitrary dismissal from

consciousness of all disturbing and destructive thought and
feeling. (Engstrm: One should not think, it is just
confusing.) A perfect and almost brutalising variant is found
among certain physicians, who for self-protection will only see
the technical aspect of their profession. It can also decay to
pure hooliganism, as among petty thugs and medical students,
where any sensitivity to the tragic side of life is eradicated by
violent means (football played with cadaver heads, and so on.)
In everyday interaction, isolation is manifested in a general
code of mutual silence: primarily toward children, so these are
not at once scared senseless by the life they have just begun,
but retain their illusions until they can afford to lose them. In
return, children are not to bother the adults with untimely
reminders of sex, toilet, or death. Among adults there are the
rules of tact, the mechanism being openly displayed when a
man who weeps on the street is removed with police
assistance.
The mechanism of
anchoring also serves from
early childhood; parents,
home, the street become
matters of course to the child
and give it a sense of
assurance. This sphere of
experience is the first, and
perhaps the happiest,
protection against the cosmos
that we ever get to know in
life, a fact that doubtless also
explains the much debated
infantile bonding; the
question of whether that is
sexually tainted too is
unimportant here. When the
child later discovers that those
fixed points are as arbitrary
and ephemeral as any others,
it has a crisis of confusion and
anxiety and promptly looks
around for another anchoring.
In Autumn, I will attend
middle school. If the substitution somehow fails, then the
crisis may take a fatal course,
PETER
or else what I will call an
ZAPFFE
anchoring spasm occurs: One
clings to the dead values,
concealing as well as possible
from oneself and others the fact that they are unworkable, that
one is spiritually insolvent. The result is lasting insecurity,
feelings of inferiority, over-compensation, restlessness.
Insofar as this state falls into certain categories, it is made
subject to psychoanalytic treatment, which aims to complete
the transition to new anchorings.
Anchoring might be characterised as a fixation of points
within, or construction of walls around, the liquid fray of
consciousness. Though typically unconscious, it may also be
fully conscious (one adopts a goal.) Publicly useful
anchorings are met with sympathy, he who sacrifices himself
totally for his anchoring (the firm, the cause) is idolised. He

has established a mighty bulwark against the dissolution of

life, and others are by suggestion gaining from his strength.
In a brutalised form, as deliberate action, it is found among
decadent playboys (one should get married in time, and
then the constraints will come of themselves.) Thus one
establishes a necessity in ones life, exposing oneself to an
obvious evil from ones point of view, but a soothing of the
nerves, a high-walled container for a sensibility to life that has
been growing increasingly crude. Ibsen presents, in Hjalmar
Ekdal and Molvik, two flowering cases (living lies); there is
no difference between their anchoring and that of the pillars
of society except for the practico-economic unproductiveness
of the former.
Any culture is a great, rounded system of anchorings, built
on foundational firmaments, the basic cultural ideas. The
average person makes do with the collective firmaments, the
personality is building for himself, the person of character has
finished his construction, more or less grounded on the
inherited, collective main firmaments (God, the Church, the
State, morality, fate, the law of life, the people, the future).
The closer to main firmaments a certain carrying element is,
the more perilous it is to touch. Here a direct protection is
normally established by means of penal codes and threats of
prosecution (inquisition, censorship, the Conservative
approach to life).
The carrying capacity of each segment either depends on
its fictitious nature having not been seen through yet, or else
on its being recognised as necessary anyway. Hence the
religious education in schools, which even atheists support
because they know no other way to bring children into social
ways of response.
Whenever people realise the fictitiousness or redundancy
of the segments, they will strive to replace them with new
ones (the limited duration of Truths) and whence flows all
the spiritual and cultural strife which, along with economic
competition, forms the dynamic content of world history.
The craving for material goods (power) is not so much due
to the direct pleasures of wealth, as none can be seated on
more than one chair or eat himself more than sated. Rather,
the value of a fortune to life consists in the rich opportunities
for anchoring and distraction offered to the owner.
Both for collective and individual anchorings it holds that
when a segment breaks, there is a crisis that is graver the
closer that segment to main firmaments. Within the inner
circles, sheltered by the outer ramparts, such crises are daily
and fairly painfree occurrences (disappointments); even a
playing with anchoring values is here seen (wittiness, jargon,
alcohol). But during such play one may accidentally rip a hole
right to the bottom, and the scene is instantly transformed
from euphoric to macabre. The dread of being stares us in
the eye, and in a deadly gush we perceive how the minds are
dangling in threads of their own spinning, and that a hell is
lurking underneath.
The very foundational firmaments are rarely replaced
without great social spasms and a risk of complete dissolution
(reformation, revolution). During such times, individuals are
increasingly left to their own devices for anchoring, and the
number of failures tends to rise. Depressions, excesses, and
suicides result (German officers after the war, Chinese
students after the revolution).
Another flaw of the system is the fact that various danger

Zapffe at sea,
1930

fronts often require very different firmaments. As a logical

superstructure is built upon each, there follow clashes of
incommensurable modes of feeling and thought. Then
despair can enter through the rifts. In such cases, a person
may be obsessed with destructive joy, dislodging the whole
artificial apparatus of his life and starting with rapturous
horror to make a clean sweep of it. The horror stems from
the loss of all sheltering values, the rapture from his by now
ruthless identification and harmony with our natures deepest
secret, the biological unsoundness, the enduring disposition
for doom.
We love the anchorings for saving us, but also hate them
for limiting our sense of freedom. Whenever we feel strong
enough, we thus take pleasure in going together to bury an
expired value in style. Material objects take on a symbolic
import here (the Radical approach to life).
When a human being has eliminated those of his
anchorings that are visible to himself, only the unconscious
ones staying put, then he will call himself a liberated personality.
A very popular mode of protection is distraction. One limits
attention to the critical bounds by constantly enthralling it
with impressions. This is typical even in childhood; without
distraction, the child is also insufferable to itself. Mom, what
am I to do. A little English girl visiting her Norwegian aunts
came inside from her room, saying: What happens now?
The nurses attain virtuosity: Look, a doggie! Watch, they are
painting the palace! The phenomenon is too familiar to
require any further demonstration. Distraction is, for
example, the high societys tactic for living. It can be likened
to a flying machine made of heavy material, but embodying
a principle that keeps it airborne whenever applying. It must
always be in motion, as air only carries it fleetingly. The pilot
may grow drowsy and comfortable out of habit, but the crisis
is acute as soon as the engine flunks.
The tactic is often fully conscious. Despair may dwell right
underneath and break through in gushes, in a sudden sobbing.
When all distractive options are expended, spleen sets in,
ranging from mild indifference to fatal depression. Women,
in general less cognition-prone and hence more secure in
their living than men, preferably use distraction.
A considerable evil of imprisonment is the denial of most
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 37

38 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

From Jeg, Arne Naess by Ola Hegdal & Tore Strand. Oslo, Kagge Forlag 2001.ISBN 82-489-0142-4 (tr. Gisle Tangenes)

distractive options. And as terms for deliverance by other

this major psychological law.
means are poor as well, the prisoner will tend to stay in the
The human yearning is not merely marked by a striving
close vicinity of despair. The acts he then commits to deflect
toward, but equally by an escape from. And if we use the
the final stage have a warrant in the principle of vitality itself.
word in a religious sense, only the latter description fits. For
In such a moment he is experiencing his soul within the
here, none has yet been clear about what he is longing for, but
universe, and has no other motive than the utter inenduraone has always a heartfelt awareness of what one is longing
bility of that condition.
away from, namely the earthly vale of tears, ones own
Pure examples of life-panic are presumably rare, as the
inendurable condition. If awareness of this predicament is the
protective mechanisms are refined and automatic and to some
deepest stratum of the soul, as argued above, then it is also
extent unremitting. But even the adjacent terrain bears the
understandable why the religious yearning is felt and experimark of death, life is here barely sustainable and by great
enced as fundamental. By contrast, the hope that it forms a
efforts. Death always appears as an escape, one ignores the
divine criterion, which harbours a promise of its own
possibilities of the hereafter, and as the way death is experifulfilment, is placed in a truly melancholy light by these
enced is partly dependent on feeling and perspective, it might
considerations.
be quite an acceptable solution. If one in statu mortis could
The fourth remedy against panic, sublimation, is a matter of
manage a pose (a poem, a gesture, to die standing up), i.e. a
transformation rather than repression. Through stylistic or
final anchoring, or a final
distraction (Aases death),
AS TO CLIMB PAST THE
ITS A MONKEY WHO HAS
then such a fate is not the
MAN IS A BEAST
BANANAS IN THE TREETOP
EVOLVED ITS CLIMBING SKILL
worst one at all. The press,
WHO HAS REACHED
AND INTO EMPTY AIR!
TO SUCH PERFECTION
for once serving the
EXCESSIVE
HEIGHTS.
concealment mechanism,
never fails to find reasons that
cause no alarm it is
believed that the latest fall in
the price of wheat...
When a human being
takes his life in depression,
this is a natural death of
spiritual causes. The modern
barbarity of saving the
suicidal is based on a hairraising misapprehension of
the nature of existence.
OUR FOREMOST WEAPON,
Only a limited part of
THINKING, HAS BECOME
WE HAVE NOW REACHED SUCH A LEVEL OF
humanity can make do with
THOUGHT AND SCIENCE THAT WE CAN
SO
MIGHTY
mere changes, whether in
OBSERVE AND ANALYSE EVEN OURSELVES,
THAT WE CAN
work, social life, or enterSEEING HUMAN LIFE AS IT IS, IN ITS
USE IT TO
TRAGIC DULLNESS.
tainment. The cultured
DEFEAT
OURSELVES.
person demands connections,
lines, a progression in the
changes. Nothing finite
satisfies at length, one is ever
proceeding, gathering
knowledge, making a career.
The phenomenon is known
as yearning or transcendental tendency. Whenever
a goal is reached, the
yearning moves on; hence its
SOON, WE SHALL ALSO BE
object is not the goal, but the
ABLE TO DRAW THE
HUMAN LIFE
INESCAPABLE CONCLUSION
very attainment of it the
ISNT THE
gradient, not the absolute
THING FOR
HUMAN BEINGS!
height, of the curve representing ones life. The
promotion from private to
corporal may give a more
valuable experience than the
one from colonel to general.
Any grounds of progressive
optimism are removed by

artistic gifts can the very pain of living at times be converted

into valuable experiences. Positive impulses engage the evil
and put it to their own ends, fastening onto its pictorial,
dramatic, heroic, lyric or even comic aspects.
Unless the worst sting of suffering is blunted by other
means, or denied control of the mind, such utilisation is
unlikely, however. (Image: The mountaineer does not enjoy
his view of the abyss while choking with vertigo; only when
this feeling is more or less overcome does he enjoy it
anchored.) To write a tragedy, one must to some extent free
oneself from betray the very feeling of tragedy and regard
it from an outer, e.g. aesthetic, point of view. Here is, by the
way, an opportunity for the wildest round-dancing through
ever higher ironic levels, into a most embarrassing circulus
vitiosus. Here one can chase ones ego across numerous
habitats, enjoying the capacity of the various layers of
consciousness to dispel one another.
The present essay is a typical attempt at sublimation. The
author does not suffer, he is filling pages and is going to be
published in a journal.
The martyrdom of lonely ladies also shows a kind of
sublimation they gain in significance thereby.
Nevertheless, sublimation appears to be the rarest of the
protective means mentioned here.
IV
Is it possible for primitive natures to renounce these cramps
and cavorts and live in harmony with themselves in the serene
bliss of labour and love? Insofar as they may be considered
human at all, I think the answer must be no. The strongest
claim to be made about the so-called peoples of nature is that
they are somewhat closer to the wonderful biological ideal than
we unnatural people. And when even we have so far been able
to save a majority through every storm, we have been assisted
by the sides of our nature that are just modestly or moderately
developed. This positive basis (as protection alone cannot
create life, only hinder its faltering) must be sought in the
naturally adapted deployment of the energy in the body and the
biologically helpful parts of the soul1, subject to such hardships
as are precisely due to sensory limitations, bodily frailty, and the
need to do work for life and love.
And just in this finite land of bliss within the fronts do the
progressing civilisation, technology and standardisation have
such a debasing influence. For as an ever growing fraction of
the cognitive faculties retire from the game against the
environment, there is a rising spiritual unemployment. The
value of a technical advance to the whole undertaking of life
must be judged by its contribution to the human opportunity
for spiritual occupation. Though boundaries are blurry,
perhaps the first tools for cutting might be mentioned as a
case of a positive invention.
Other technical inventions enrich only the life of the
inventor himself; they represent a gross and ruthless theft
from humankinds common reserve of experiences and should
invoke the harshest punishment if made public against the
veto of censorship. One such crime among numerous others
is the use of flying machines to explore uncharted land. In a
single vandalistic glob, one thus destroys lush opportunities
for experience that could benefit many if each, by effort,
obtained his fair share.2

The current phase of lifes chronic fever is particularly

tainted by this circumstance. The absence of naturally
(biologically) based spiritual activity shows up, for example, in
the pervasive recourse to distraction (entertainment, sport,
radio the rhythm of the times). Terms for anchoring are
not as favourable all the inherited, collective systems of
anchorings are punctured by criticism, and anxiety, disgust,
confusion, despair leak in through the rifts (corpses in the
cargo.) Communism and psychoanalysis, however incommensurable otherwise, both attempt (as Communism has also a
spiritual reflection) by novel means to vary the old escape
anew; applying, respectively, violence and guile to make
humans biologically fit by ensnaring their critical surplus of
cognition. The idea, in either case, is uncannily logical. But
again, it cannot yield a final solution. Though a deliberate
degeneration to a more viable nadir may certainly save the
species in the short run, it will by its nature be unable to find
peace in such resignation, or indeed find any peace at all.
V
If we continue these considerations to the bitter end, then
the conclusion is not in doubt. As long as humankind
recklessly proceeds in the fateful delusion of being biologically
fated for triumph, nothing essential will change. As its
numbers mount and the spiritual atmosphere thickens, the
techniques of protection must assume an increasingly brutal
character.
And humans will persist in dreaming of salvation and affirmation and a new Messiah. Yet when many saviours have
been nailed to trees and stoned on the city squares, then the
last Messiah shall come.
Then will appear the man who, as the first of all, has dared
strip his soul naked and submit it alive to the outmost thought
of the lineage, the very idea of doom. A man who has
fathomed life and its cosmic ground, and whose pain is the
Earths collective pain. With what furious screams shall not
mobs of all nations cry out for his thousandfold death, when
like a cloth his voice encloses the globe, and the strange
message has resounded for the first and last time:
The life of the worlds is a roaring river, but Earths is a
pond and a backwater.
The sign of doom is written on your brows how long
will ye kick against the pin-pricks?
But there is one conquest and one crown, one
redemption and one solution.
Know yourselves be infertile and let the earth be silent
after ye.
And when he has spoken, they will pour themselves over
him, led by the pacifier makers and the midwives, and bury
him in their fingernails.
He is the last Messiah. As son from father, he stems from
the archer by the waterhole.
Peter Wessel Zapffe, 1933
Notes:
1 A distinction for clarity.
2 I emphasize that this is not about fantastic reform proposals, but
rather a psychological view of principle

Many thanks to Mrs Berit Zapffe for permission to publish this

translation.
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 39

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or email rick.lewis@philosophynow.org
Keep them short and keep them coming!
So Farewell, Philosophy?
DEAR EDITOR: I read with sadness your
obituary for the demise of the
Philosophy Dept at City University,
London.
It seems that you may soon also have
to write one for the Philosophy Dept at
University of Wales Swansea.
The new Vice-Chancellor of the
university has decided that too broad a
range of courses is being offered, so he
intends to do away with Philosophy,
Anthropology, Sociology and
Chemistry! How can an educational
institution call itself a university without
these fundamental disciplines?
The Department was founded in
1920 and is home to the journal
Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein
was a frequent visitor, staying in
Swansea with one of his favourite
students, Rush Rhees, himself a
professor in the department. The
Wittgenstinian tradition has been
carried on by Prof. D.Z.Phillips, so you
can imagine what a loss it will be to the
academic community.
The Department is trying to gather
support from politicians, academics and
anyone else who may be able to exert
any influence at all.
I am not, myself, part of the
Philosophy Dept I read for my degree
at Swansea and am now a senior lecturer
at Swansea Institute of Higher
Education, but I teach Philosophy on
the part-time degree course at Swansea,
and am currently pursuing a PhD there.
BRIAN BREEZE
SWANSEA

Eat Cuddly Bunnies

DEAR EDITOR: I was looking forward to
a cogent argument in favour of granting
animals the same or at least some of
the rights we give ourselves. Instead,
Jeremy Yunt (Issue 44) gave us yet
another re-run of the Cuddly Bunny
Plea.
OK, lets all become vegetarians and
stop killing pigs and cows for food.
Should we also stop killing kangaroos
and past-their-sell-by-date horses for
40 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

pet food, or should we explain to our

dogs and cats that they have a moral
responsibility to all those creatures
further down the food chain?
OK, lets do away with hen-batteries,
abattoirs and research labs. So whos
going to pay for feeding the millions of
redundant chickens, pigs and monkeys
now that were not going to eat them or
conduct experiments on them? Tell you
what: lets give them their freedom, and
let them starve to death.
OK, lets find creative ways to
pursue our own needs without
conflicting with (a butterflys or a
coyotes) basic requirements for a sound
habitat and food source. Does this also
apply to non-cuddlies such as houseflies
and rats? And how far down the line
does it go: the malaria-carrying
mosquito? The AIDS virus?
OK, lets agree that life all life
deserves safeguarding from harm. So
do we safeguard the noble King of the
Jungle by letting it feed where it can, or
do we safeguard the doe-eyed Bambi
from being eaten? Or do we duck out of
that particular argument on the grounds
that we shouldnt interfere with nature?
(And while were on that subject, it
seems to be the nature of an overwhelming percentage of the human race
to eat meat as well as vegetables. Why
should we interfere with that? Simply
because we can? But, then, thats one of
the reasons we rear, slaughter, butcher,
cook and eat certain animals because
we can.)
As a Christian omnivore, I deplore
the infliction of unnecessary suffering
on animals. But Im also a pragmatic
Christian omnivore, and the operative
word in my deploring is unnecessary.
Battery farming is cruel; but Im happy
to eat a free-range chicken (not least
because it tastes so much better). Im
not going to give up eating pretty little
piglets or fluffy baa-lambs; but I agree
that abattoirs should be closely regulated to minimise the distress of the
animals to be killed. I agree that animals
should not be used to test cosmetics; but
Id rather that controversial but potentially ground-breaking cures for

cancer/ebola/AIDS be tested on animals

before being let loose on humans.
(Unless we tie this in with another
feature in the same issue: why not clone
human beings for the sole purpose of
acting as lab-monkeys? Would that
satisfy Mr Yunt?)
To return to the matter of animal
rights, which Mr Yunt promised to
address, but didnt. There is no such
thing as a natural right. Rights are
granted by those in a position to do so.
By all means lets grant animals the right
not to be abused or tortured. In our
country (I cant speak for Mr Yunts
country), we already have laws covering
that, and we have the RSPCA to
monitor those laws. And it would be
nice to think that Mr Yunts invading
aliens might see things our way, and
grant us a right or two: clean abattoirs,
perhaps.
But, for all our moral angst, lets try
to keep a grip on reality.
PETER MOTTLEY
PANGBOURNE, BERKS
p.s. Mr Yunt asserts that a plantbased diet is repeatedly proven the most
healthy for the human body. My own
reading indicates that its been repeatedly proven that a balanced diet
including a certain amount of meat is
most healthy for the human body. I
guess it all depends on where you
choose to read your surveys...

Pax Americana
DEAR EDITOR: After reading David
Gamezs article - Pax Americana (Issue
44), I would like to respond to a few
interesting points that he raised
regarding problems with the spread of
Utopia by force of arms.
Point 1) Although the pre-colonial
government in Iraq used force, torture
and secret police to maintain its rule, it
still depended on the cooperation and
support of a substantial number
perhaps even a majority of its citizens.
One man cannot repress twenty three
million alone.
Does this mean all dictators received
support from a majority of their

Letters
citizens? If America uses Saddam
Husseins way to run Iraq, it will
certainly have an impressive result gain
100% support from Iraq people. Is this
statement extremely unfair to people all
over the world who are still suffering
from torture by dictatorship?
Dictatorships blot out every form of
internal freedom and independent
thinking. As a result, only docile and
subservient people are allowed to
survive.
Point 2) interventionist wars generally have nothing to do with the achievement of utopia but are motivated by
paranoia, greed and a slack domestic
economy.
America will have to pay $80 billion
for the rebuilding of Iraq. Is that good to
their economy?
Some Canadians heavily criticize US
with respect to War on Iraq and Canada
did stay away from this War despite both
US and Canada sharing the same values
democracy and freedom. As neighbors
to the US, it seems to me that criticizing
George Bush is the safest thing we can
ever do. However, just a decade ago,
Kuwait was simply overrun by their socalled brother Iraq in a matter of hours
even though Kuwaiti people did not dare
to criticize Saddam Hussein.
While some continue to doubt the
real intention of America for both the 1st
and 2nd War on Iraq, do Kosovo in
Europe and Somalia in Africa have oil
fields?
Point 3) Downtown LA is an
expanse of dirty and decaying streets
lined with homeless people, hookers and
madmen.
There is no a perfect system in the
world. The American political system is
perfectly imperfect. At least, it does not
need to establish something like the
Berlin Wall. America does not need to
hide its problems. Those homeless
people have rights to vote against the
government, and hold hopes for
tomorrow, to say the least. Democracy
is not a medicine for all ills, but dictatorship is a sure poison to everything.
Point 4) Americans might actually
suffer more poverty than the people in
the country that they are invading.
Why are a lot people around the
world afraid to fall behind others to
enter US both legally or illegally every
year? Why do a lot of parents send their
children to receive education in US?
Does that ever happen to Iraq?
Point 5) If the expansion of Empire
extends the negative effects of capitalism
without making the American dream

into other countries reality, then we

have little reason to support it.
Some may even argue the United
Nations should be the ones to bring
justice. Not so long ago, Libya held the
presidency of the U.N. Human Rights
Committee. Do we want to apply the
human rights standard of Libya in our
society? How many UN members are
still controlled by wicked oligarchies?
How convincing is any conclusion drawn
from such an organization? In a civilized
society, we are not obliged to go to War
easily, but we are obliged not to be indifferent towards right or wrong.
Dictatorship is the common enemy of all
who respect human rights. After all, We
are citizens of the world.
Point 6) There is the fact that over
the last fifty years Americas record of
achieving utopia anywhere outside of its
borders has been extremely poor.
Without Americas intervention,
would Kuwait still be on the map today?
Without Americas intervention, what
would be the fate of South Korea or
Kosovo?
When Winston Churchill talked
about the Nazi threat, he said: If we do
not stand up to the Dictators now, we
shall only prepare the day when we shall
have to stand up to them under far more
adverse conditions. Two years ago, it was
safe; three years ago, it was easy, and four
years ago a mere dispatch might have
rectified the position. But where shall we
be a year hence?
HONG-LOK LI
UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Perceiving and Sensing

DEAR EDITOR: I think Joel Marks got
confused between perceiving and sensing
when he refers to the sense of gravity as
having nothing to which we need or
even can attend as compared to our five
senses. This is not comparing like with
like. Our senses allow us to receive information (sounds, smells, etc.), but we do
not receive gravity it acts upon us and
does so irrespective of us having any
means of controlling it (we cannot close
our eyes or plug up our ears to it).
Gravity is an external reality which (like
the sound of the proverbial tree falling in
the forest) acts irrespective of our ability
to perceive it or not. It also acts without
us having any means of shutting it off or
otherwise controlling its effect on our
bodies. In any case, we do not perceive
gravity through its direction; what we
perceive is our direction, or anticipated
direction, in relation to its force upon us.

The question, however, of what we

sense when we feel ourselves being out
of balance remains. As a rock climber, I
am acutely aware of the problem of
maintaining my balance particularly
when theres a lot of air between me and
the ground. So what do I perceive when I
feel myself starting to peel away from the
cliff that tells me Im out of balance? I
perceive a long drop earthwards (and a
desperate need to stop that happening).
What I sense is a different matter altogether. What I sense, i.e. the sensation I
have, is fear. This sensation is obtained
from previous experience; what I am
fearful of, am anticipating, is hurt and
pain (and although I have taken what is
known as a ground fall and know what
its like to drop at 9.81m/s2, all that is
necessary to anticipate pain is to have
experienced falling over as a child; everybody does that). Therefore, I dont think
its possible to talk about sensing
gravity, we can only experience its
results. You dont feel falling, you just
feel the ground when you hit it! What I
sense in relation to gravity is my desire
to avoid its negative effects.
The only reason Joel Marks can experience light by imagining it when hes in
a dark room is because he is drawing on
previous experience. I would suggest that
its not possible through imagination to
encounter (with any accuracy) an experience youve never actually had (although
identikit approximations may be
possible). It may very well be the case
that certain types of consciousness... are
useless, but gravity is not a helpful
metaphor. The extent of consciousness
may be defined by its contextual relevance. However, if that is the case, and
given the above, what is it that we are
receptive to (sensing), what sort of
consciousness are we referring to, when
we talk about having a sense of direction?
There is perhaps in this phenomena a
metaphorical clue about moral objectivity.
STUART B CAMPBELL
PORTSOY, ABERDEENSHIRE

Dawkins and Darwinism

DEAR EDITOR: The attempt to discredit
the logic of Richard Dawkins and
thereby discredit Darwinism and atheism
(guilt by association), did not succeed
very well. Dawkins can be accused of
being outspoken and offensive (ad
hominem) yet it is hard to accept the
other logical criticisms levelled against
him by Peter Williams. There is a
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 41

Letters
dichotomy in the way different people
perceive the world. Some see enchantment and inexplicable wonders of
demons and divine purpose, while others
see a world of natural philosophy, where
experiment and observation can enable
reason to deduce cause and effect. The
two sides cannot meet in agreement
because no amount of prayer will change
Dawkins mind and no amount of
evidence will shake Williams faith.
There is a danger that creationists and
intelligent designers will make themselves look foolish by chasing the red
herring of trying to reconcile religious
faith with facts.
Jesus did not come here to tell us
about evolution, dinosaurs nor the Earth
going around the Sun and whatever is
ultimately discovered about the detailed
nature of evolution it will not remove
the need that some people have to
believe in God. Nor the lack of such a
need in other people.
JOHN WOODHEAD
REEDHAM, NORWICH

DEAR EDITOR: I read Peter Williams

critique of Richard Dawkins with a sense
of morbid fascination as one misinterpretation followed another. The arguments
put forward were so flawed it is difficult
to know where to start. Peter Williams
starts by criticizing Dawkins statement
that his daughter should doubt anything
that is not well founded on evidence. He
finds this statement to be self-contradictory because it is not itself based on
evidence. If Richard Dawkins had been a
philosopher he would no doubt have
expressed it differently, exhorting his
daughter to question statements not
arrived at by induction on the basis of
empirical evidence which as far as any
scientist is concerned amounts to the
same thing and is clearly not self-contradictory at all. Statements of fact arrived
at by induction are usually held to be
valid and of course are the basis of all our
scientific knowledge, not just the bits
about evolution to which Peter Williams
takes exception. If Williams genuinely
doubts this and doesnt trust the evidence
of his own senses or the power of human
reason, the world must be a frighteningly
unpredictable place and one wonders that
he has the courage to get out of bed in
the morning! In any case Williams goes
on to use empirical evidence or the
absence of it quite freely in the rest of his
article. Essentially this is the same
evidence that Richard Dawkins uses, the
evidence for the evolution of species by
42 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

natural selection being necessarily

somewhat limited by the passage of aeons
of time. He continues his argument by
criticizing Dawkins for saying that only a
gradual accumulation of small genetic
changes could do the job of producing
what appear to be great evolutionary
leaps in structure and function on the
basis that this is a circular argument.
Indeed on the face of it this does sound a
bit like a biological version of the ontological argument. Richard Dawkins does
not of course intend this to be a logical
proof of evolution at all; he is merely
making a point in a rather grand style. A
point which is however soundly based on
the empirical evidence and argument he
so eloquently puts forward in Climbing
Mount Improbable. Williams goes on to
comment on the lack of functional intermediaries a matter which occupies
almost the whole of Climbing Mount
Improbable and for which Dawkins gives
the most cogent explanations; all based of
course on that troubling scientific
evidence for which Peter Williams can
see no logical case. It is also worth noting
at this point that the evidence for this
gradual evolutionary change is no longer
confined to the fossil record. We now
understand the mechanism by which it
takes place, essentially, faulty copying of
DNA; evidence which gives powerful
support to our understanding and appreciation of the timescale involved and the
incremental nature of the change. The
theory of evolution by natural selection is
now a highly cohesive theory.
Williams next pot shot consists of
accusing Richard Dawkins of creating a
false dilemma. He seems to believe that
the theory of evolution and the idea of
creationism are not mutually exclusive
and that it is logically possible to hold
both theories to be true. If this is so one
wonders why he has spent so much time
trying to suggest that the gradual
progression of evolution through intermediate functional forms is so improbable. Unfortunately his assertion is not
true, the reason being is that the theory
of evolution specifically excludes any
form of divine intervention, guidance or
design. Evolution, which is of course still
visibly going on all around us, albeit very
slowly, is and can only ever have been
driven by chance and necessity. The
whole of life is merely a fortuitous
accident driven by random mutations in
DNA, the only design coming from the
exigencies of existence. If Williams has
examined the theory of evolution and
believed it to be consistent with an
element of design, he has misunderstood

the theory and created a quite new and

very different theory of evolution which
is not consistent with the original one
and which would of course require more
of that scientific evidence that he has so
much trouble with. Creating a distortion
of the original theory like this is exactly
what Williams goes on to accuse
Dawkins of doing when he suggests that
Dawkins has produced a straw man
argument. I would like at this point to
deal with Williams comments on equivocation. Once again Richard Dawkins
account perhaps lacks the precision in
the use of words that Peter Williams as a
philosopher would like, but is perfectly
easy for any fair-minded person to
understand. The meaning is clear: that
some things that appear to be designed
are not in fact designed.
The rest of the article consists largely
of an attack on Dawkins views on
religion and Williams concludes by
saying that Richard Dawkins deduces
evolution from his own atheistic world
view. He has clearly done nothing of the
sort; what he claims to have done is to
deduce atheism from the theory of
evolution. Whether he has or not, it is
certainly not possible to deduce any sort
of theory of intelligent design from the
scientific evidence as Peter Williams
claims to have done.
ALAN KEITH
ROTHERHAM, SOUTH YORKSHIRE

Pictures of the Big Bang

DEAR EDITOR: If you are looking for a
photograph of the Big Bang (Did the
World Have a Beginning?, Issue 44), a
theory that was suggested by the Russian
scientists George Gamow in 1948, I
suggest that you contact NASA, as they
may be able to assist.
In June 2001 a satellite was launched
to map the details of cosmic microwave
radiation. There is available a photograph of this which shows in detail the
thermal ripples of the birth of the
universe over thirteen billion years ago,
so confirming the theory of the Big
Bang.
This theory may still not be the
complete answer to all our questions of
why? or how is it? that we ask from
the dawn of our childish thinking
ability, but I think it is a possible way
forward to understanding our place on
this earth, in our galaxy, in this
universe rather than the logic chopping
of desiccated med-evil-ists.
JOHN JACKSON
BECKENHAM, KENT

by Joel Marks

Ignorance is Bliss

hank God, Im not depressed. Or so my self-diagnosis

proclaims after an informal discussion with a philosopherturned-therapist friend of mine. He explained that the
symptoms of clinical depression include loss of appetite for food
and accustomed activities. I have none of that. Take these
columns that I write: I throw myself into them not only when I
am feeling light-hearted but also when I am in the depths of ...
... despair? Yes, I think that must be what I had been mislabeling as depression. What I suffer from is a philosophical
rather than a psychological ailment existential rather than
emotional at base, mental rather than behavioral in manifestation. When my friend asked me what exactly was the problem
or symptom, which would be logically prior to rooting out the
cause or seeking a cure, I replied at once: Pain. What kind of
pain? he pursued. In my head. Like a headache? No, but
it hurts all the same. So much so that I might wish anything to
have it stop, even the end of my existence. Absent that, I
sometimes do things to relieve it that I later regret: out of the
frying pan and into the fire.
My friend continued to bob his head up and down in good
therapist fashion. Eventually he attempted to employ the cognitivist approach which hearkens back to Socrates of asking
questions that were designed to lead me down a rational path of
clarifying the problem and thereby (possibly) arriving at a
solution. But precisely what makes mine a philosophical ailment
is that thinking makes it worse.
My non-philosopher friends often make the simple observation: You think too much. And its no joke! Not to condone
misology, but even we of the examined life-stripe agree that
certain matters are better left un-pondered. Sometimes they are
just not worth the effort (Shall we park here, or in the next
space over?). Sometimes it would break the mood (Wasnt she
a wonderful lady?). Sometimes they are too urgent (Smoke!
Should I exit the premises?).
Yet some problems are properly philosophical because they do
invite reflection although they seem insoluble. That is what can
make them interesting to contemplate at ones leisure (at least to
a certain type of personality). That is also what can make their
consideration dreadful (in the sense of angst-inducing) if they
bear on what we care about in some significant way.
So ... I am en route to my second marriage. I am experiencing
the jitters that are normally associated with ones first approach
to the altar. I didnt feel them then because I was caught up in
the fantasies of love. This time I am anxiously aware of the
realities of my previously failed relationship.
In theory, one is supposed to be on firmer ground the second
time around, having learned from past mistakes. I have indeed
become knowledgeable about many of the things that can go
wrong. But I have not thereby discovered how to prevent them,
or how to deal with them once they arise. After all, marriage
Number One ended in divorce, not reconciliation. Any

wisdom gained from that episode must therefore be purely

speculative until put to the test, i.e., until the second marriage is
a fait accompli.
Furthermore, a second marriage will present a host of new
problems some general (advancing decrepitude, step-parenting,
etc.), some particular to the personalities and circumstances
involved. One can hope to transfer some general knowledge
from the first marital encounter; but generals usually know how
to win the last martial encounter.
In fact what I know is that the odds are against us: Most
marriages end in divorce and of those that dont many, if not
most, are unhappy. Furthermore, second marriages are in even
worse shape than first ones. (It is not obvious how to interpret
the statistics, and of course prognostications are always iffy; but
the divorce numbers Ive just picked off the Internet are 72% for
second marriages in the U.S. and 50% in the U.K.) This is not
necessarily an indictment of marriage per se, as the same may be
true for life prospects in general (if one could assess such a
thing); maybe most people are unhappy with their lives, married
or not. But it is little comfort to know that one is likely doomed
no matter what. One still wants to know how to become one (or
in this case, one of two) of the lucky few.
And of course I not only know about the general facts; I am
intimately acquainted with the particulars of what went wrong in
my own case. Given my philosophic nature, I have also introspected and reflected on these particulars ad nauseam. I believe I
have gleaned insights by the truckload: I see where we went
wrong, where she went wrong, and most importantly, where I
went wrong. But what I have not seen is the way to avoid any of
this in future (other than just not to get married again).
In other words, part of my understanding seems to be that
what took place was inevitable and not just because I did not
then have the insights I have now, but because of who I am and
what people are and the nature of the cosmos and perhaps even
of being itself. I have very specific premonitions about the
impending marriage because of all this philosophizing.
Thus, in this instance, philosophy has proven not to be for me
the guide to life, nor even a consolation. I can no longer be
taken in by the mantra, We will beat the odds. Just as I know
that someday I am going to die, I know that this marriage is
likely to fail. Perhaps that dose of reality will focus my attention
in such a way as to improve the odds of our having a successful,
i.e., an exceptional, second marriage. Or it could instead be a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Which way it will go is also something I
feel I can do nothing about; it would be like trying to travel back
in time to prevent my parents from ever having met.
JOEL MARKS 2004

Joel Marks is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Haven

in West Haven, Connecticut. www.moralmoments.com He thanks
Jerome Shaffer and Jack Davis for their sympathetic input, and, of
course, his altar ego for her leap of faith.
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 43

Books
Welfare and
Rational Care
by Stephen Darwall
IN Welfare and Rational
Care, Stephen Darwall
lucidly argues that a
persons welfare is best understood as what
someone who cares for her should rationally want for her. Integrating care into
our understanding of welfare promises to
be a distinct improvement over the
standard view of welfare as pure selfinterest as the person sees it. We all know
people who do not know or do what is best
for themselves. And the idea of rational
care brings in a desirable impartiality.
What is best for you is not simply what
you happen to want for yourself, or what I,
who care for you, want for you. It is what
I and others should rationally want for you.
Darwalls new view is a sophisticated
culmination of his work on rationality,
sympathy and self-interest.
Within the traditional view of rationality as self-interest, understood as maximizing ones own welfare, people have at
various times insisted that ones preferences must be consistent, or fully
informed, or must survive a deliberative
process. But the attractive simplicity of all
such theories is purchased at the price of
defining away genuinely altruistic preferences as irrational. Is rational self-sacrifice
necessarily a conceptual impossibility?
Morality involves altruism, and even selfsacrifice. Is morality irrational?
Moral philosophers have resisted arbitrarily ruling out a rational basis for
morality. They have tried hard to show
that being moral is in everyones rational
self-interest, but they have always run into
the so-called free rider problem. Even if
it is in ones self-interest to be a member
of a moral community which eschews
theft, and to be viewed by others as
complying with the rule against stealing,
nevertheless, a situation might arise in
which one could steal with impunity, and
the self-interest theory of rationality is
likely to counsel that it would be rational
for one to steal in that case. By free
riding on others compliance, one could
gain the benefits of others upholding the
rule without paying the price of abstaining
44 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

Jean Chambers explains how Stephen Darwalls ideas

about care connect to an ambitious theory of rationality and
ethics. Meanwhile Abdelkader Aoudjit reports on which
beleaguered positions are still held After the Science Wars.
from violating it oneself. If everyone else
abstains from walking on the grass, and I
disobey the rule, I get both the benefit of
having nice grass to look at and the
pleasure of walking on it.
Fortunately, the fact that human beings
naturally have altruistic preferences is
becoming widely accepted. Some have
argued that such preferences are useful and
should be included in a broader account of
human rationality. In his 1983 book,
Impartial Reason, Stephen Darwall argues
that rationality should be understood as
exceeding mere preference-satisfaction. It
is a process of wide-ranging self-reflective
and self-critical deliberation, governed by
norms of rationality and resulting in,
among other things, all-things-considered
judgments about what to do. Rather than
taking our preferences for granted, we
should question them, question the goals
at which they aim, question the means to
those goals and even question our own
deliberative processes, in order to arrive at
all-things-considered judgments about
what to do in particular situations. There
is much more to rationality than simply
trying to satisfy the preferences one
happens to have, even including ones
altruistic preferences. One
must decide, not only what to
do, but also who to be, what
sort of life to live, what goals
and ideals to have and so on.
In Welfare and Rational Care,
Darwall redefines welfare in
light of this broader conception
of rationality. He believes that
previous attempts to analyze
the concept of welfare have
missed its essential normativity.
Instead, they have focused on
substantive, descriptive
accounts of what makes human
lives good. Is pleasure the
measure of the good life, as
hedonists believe? Or is there
an objective list of the good
things all people should want?
All such descriptive accounts
must answer the next logical
question why should anyone
want to promote human
welfare? Also, a persons
welfare has been understood
in terms of what seems good

from the persons own point of view, but

of course people are not always the best
experts about what is good for them.
Darwall hopes to avoid these pitfalls by
defining welfare as the concept of
what we would rationally desire for
someone insofar as we care for her, or
equivalently, what is rational to desire for
her for her sake. (p.12) Rational care is
impartial, in the sense that any rational
person who cared about one would want
the best for one. Also, if one were rational
and cared about oneself, one would want
those same things for oneself. Darwall
suggests that depressed people and people
with low self-esteem do not care for themselves enough to truly want what is best for
themselves. We have all experienced
wanting the best for such people, for their
sake, even when they do not want the best
for themselves. Darwall is saying that the
best we want for others for their own sakes
just is their welfare.
In developing his general account of
care as a kind of sympathetic concern,
Darwall is explicitly building on the work
of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers David
Hume and Adam Smith. The point of
view of Adam Smiths impartial spectator

Book Reviews

Books
is like that of impartial benevolence which
Darwall uses. In addition to his careful
conceptual analysis and insightful interpretations of historical sources, Darwall
canvasses contemporary psychological
research on the development of sympathetic concern in infants and children, in
order to show that care is a natural-kind
term which may be used in conceptual
analysis. It is the natural human social
perspective of caring for someone else
which allows us to join in the communitys
shared values and determine what any
rational person would want for another
person for that persons own sake.
While Darwall acknowledges a debt to
Carol Gilligan, Nel Noddings and others
who argue for a feminist ethic of care, his
view of where care fits into moral
philosophy is quite different. For
Noddings whose terminology identifying the members of a caring relationship as the one caring and the one cared
for Darwall occasionally uses the
ideally caring relationship is the normative ideal. Each of us, on Noddings view,
has a moral obligation to meet other
people as one caring. This very high
standard has been criticized as too
demanding, leading to caring burnout,
and as potentially morally compromising,
as when one must care for a racist or
other immoral person.
Gilligans original view, and Noddings
developed theory, characterize care as
inherently partial to particular other individuals, and as naturally extending out
from the self through social relations and
networks. By contrast, the hypothetical
care which defines welfare on Darwalls
account is rooted in impartial rationality.
This difference suggests an interesting
challenge to the concrete particularity
alleged to be definitive of care as defined
by Nel Noddings, Lawrence Blum and
others. The feminist ethic of care as
involving partiality to family and friends is
more like the kin altruism which sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists claim
is characteristic of our species. An impartial caring perspective might not be as
natural as Darwall seems to suggest.
Darwalls view might also lend itself to
paternalistic approaches to public welfare
policy. Some policy makers might
conclude that, since members of the
general population tend to indulge in
patently self-destructive behaviors such as
drinking, drugs, gambling, and smoking,
they must not care very much for themselves. The policy makers might feel that
they care more for people than people care
about themselves, and that their judgment
of what is good for people rationally
Book Reviews

constitutes the true welfare. Could

Darwalls theory of welfare, if adopted by
policy makers, result in paternalistically
overriding the autonomy of people whose
welfare was being legislated? Might we
see paternalistic laws going far beyond
seatbelts and motorcycle helmets new
laws which outlaw smoking, drinking,
gambling, overeating and so on? Might
legislators be tempted by this theory to
override peoples autonomy for their own
good?
Darwall counters this possible abuse of
his theory by embracing the doctrine of
impartial respect for human dignity and
freedom:
Think of a parents relation to his child at
different stages of life. A toddlers desires and will
give normative reasons to a parent just insofar as
they indicate or represent what is for the childs
good. If the child doesnt want to eat his broccoli,
then this fact may have no independent weight
except insofar as it indicates that it will be frustrating, painful, and so on, to the child to do so.
When, however, the child matures into a competent agent, then his will and desires do acquire
independent weight. For a parent to be regulated
only by his childs good at this point is paternalism
in the pejorative sense. (p.15)

Respect for peoples will and desires

should, on Darwalls account, check any
paternalistic interventions in the lives of
adults. If so, incorporating his care-based
definition of welfare into ethical and policy
debates could help to counter the standard
tendency to reduce all costs and benefits to
dollars and cents. Hopefully we want
more for others than simple economic
well-being or even preference-satisfaction
in general.
What should we rationally want for
other people, for their own sakes?
Darwall embraces a neo-Aristotelian view
of the good life which holds that anyones
welfare consists in active engagement
with and appreciation of values whose
worth transcends their capacity to
benefit The benefit or contribution to
welfare comes through the appreciative
rapport with the values and the things that
have them. (p.76) His example of appreciating a work of musical art while
playing it on the piano echoes Aristotles
account of virtuous engagement in noble
activities. Caring for specific other
persons can include such appreciative
rapport and so can directly enhance the
welfare of the person who cares. Darwall
argues further that his metaethical
analysis of welfare in terms of rational
care is consistent with his neoAristotelian normative account of the
good for persons, since what anyone

should want for anyone else is just this

kind of appreciative rapport, and that
together these two accounts form a unity,
a philosophical ethics.
Welfare and Rational Care is more
subtle than I have been able to show in a
short review, but it is consistently
readable and lively, including examples
ranging from Tarzan to Oliver Sacks
which demonstrate the intuitive plausibility of Darwalls view. For those
familiar with his earlier important coauthored article on methodology in
ethics, Toward Fin de Siecle Ethics: Some
Trends, this book serves as an example of
naturalizing ethics without sacrificing
analytical rigor or the independence of
the normative stance.
JEAN CHAMBERS 2004

Jean Chambers received her PhD from Brown

University in 1996 and is now an Associate
Professor in philosophy at SUNY Oswego,
specializing in theoretical ethics, feminist
philosophy and social and political philosophy.
Welfare and Rational Care by Stephen Darwall
(Princeton Univ. Press 2002) $24.95/ 16.95
ISBN 0-691-09252-4.

After the Science Wars

ed. by Keith Ashman &
Philip Baringer
THE WIDELY accepted
view according to which
the goal of science is to
explain how things really are has been the
target of serious attacks in the last few
decades attacks by philosophers and sociologists of science, by postmodernists,
feminists and postcolonial critics. The
philosopher and historian of science
Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) famously challenged the notion that there is a sharp
distinction between scientific theories and
other kinds of belief systems, that observation is theory-independent, and that
science describes what the world is really
like independent of what people think. He
also argued that the historical and political
contexts in which theories are embedded
influence paradigm shifts in scientific
thinking. Other critics have argued that
social and political factors play important
roles in the choice of research funding.
Some commentators go so far as to suggest
that the very content of science the questions that are asked, the way observations
are interpreted, even what counts as data
is subject to political, cultural and psychological influences. For example, the
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 45

Books
feminist Sandra Harding contends that
science as it has been pursued until now, is
patriarchal, sexist and homophobic. She
also claims that the very ideas of objective
reality and of value-neutrality are myths
invented by neurotic males to satisfy their
perverted psychological needs. Therefore,
she urges that science as we know it be
overthrown and replaced by another kind
based on female ways of knowing.
Postcolonial critics, in turn, argue that
despite its pretense to be universal and to be
the standard of knowing, science is ethnocentric; it not only represses some of its
non-European origins but it also marginalizes other ways of knowing of other
cultures.
For much of the second half of the twentieth century, scientists were happily oblivious to the critiques of the sociologists,
postmodernists, feminists, etc. Then, in the
mid 1990s two major events ignited the
Science Wars. The first was the publication
in 1994 of Higher Superstitions: The Academic
Left and its Quarrel with Science by biologist
Michael Gross and mathematician Michael
Levitt. The second was the so-called Sokal
Hoax of 1996 (see box).
On one side of this controversy are the
defenders of the orthodox view of science
according to which it is fundamentally
objective, rational, and value-free; on the
other side are some of those Gross and
Levitt called cultural constructivists and
postmodernists who maintain for
different reasons and according to different
premises that everything in science ought
to be understood in terms of socio-political
factors and that what scientists take to be
facts are constructs contingent upon the
social context in which they are established.
For a while, each side accused the other of
ignorance, idiocy, obscurantism, sloppy
scholarship and so on. It seemed as though
the differences between the two sides were
so deep that there was little hope for
productive dialogue between them.
The goal of After the Science Wars, which
is the edited version of papers given at a
conference on Science and Its Critics at
the University of Kansas in 1997, is to
remedy this situation. The organizers of
the conference wanted to encourage scientists and researchers in the humanities to
talk to each other, to present various viewpoints from across a wide range of disciplines regarding the objectivity of science,
and to find common ground.
Following an introduction by the editors
which provides important background
information, the book opens with Sokals
What the Social Text Affair Does and Does
Not Prove: A Critical Look at Science
Studies. Sokal tells the story of the hoax
46 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

and explains what motivated him to play a

practical joke on the editors of Social Text.
Then, he repeats his (in)famous critique of
what he believes is the misuse of science
and scientific terminology by some prominent French thinkers. Finally, he mounts
an attack against what he thinks are the
sloppy thinking and glib relativism that
have become prevalent in many parts of
science studies. He argues that this sloppy
thinking is due to the fact that social critics
of science conflate five related but conceptually distinct levels of analysis: ontology,
epistemology, sociology, individual ethics,
and social ethics. He goes on to say that he
is willing to admit that social and political
factors such as American militarism have
influenced the selection of scientific
projects and their funding. He also
concedes that the ethical investigation of
the development and use, of quantum electronics, for example, is important. Yet, he
claims that these questions are totally irrelevant to the ontological question such as
whether atoms (and silicon crystals, transistors, and computers) really do behave
according to the laws of quantum
mechanics and the epistemological question
such as how scientists might decide to
accept or reject a particular theory.
In the next chapter, Reading and
Relativism: an Introduction to the Science
Wars, mathematician Gabriel Stolzenberg
criticizes what he describes as the shabby
scholarship of self-proclaimed defenders of
science and reason. Gross, Levitt, Sokal
and their followers claims that the writings
of postmodernists and social constructivists
are unintelligible, silly, absurd, and incomprehensible rest, according to Stolzenberg,
on insufficiently attentive readings of postmodernist texts. He accuses Sokal and his
supporters of being more interested in ridiculing their opponents than in understanding what they say. For Stolzenberg, a

THE SOKAL HOAX

lan Sokal suspected that the writings of
many French theorists complex,
erudite and larded with references to
modern science were so much meaningless nonsense. Like a good scientist, he
devised an experiment to test this theory
he concocted a deliberately nonsensical
paper in a similar style, replete with trendy
jargon and pseudo-scientific references.
Titling it Transgressing the Boundaries:
Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of
Quantum Gravity, he then sent it to a
journal called Social Text, to see if they
would be fooled. They published it; he then
revealed the hoax and people have been
arguing about its significance ever since.

careful and thorough reading of philosophical texts demands a certain degree of

sympathy on the part of the reader; it also
demands that one appreciates the structure
of thinking underlying the conclusions of
the writer. He compares the kind of
reading that good scholarship requires to
the way people who are in love read a love
letter and quotes Mortimer Adler: When
[men and women] are in love and are
reading a love letter, they read for all they
are worth. They read every word three
ways; they read between the lines and in the
margins; they grow sensitive to context and
ambiguity. Then, if never before or
after, they read. In the section called
hatchet jobs, Stolzenberg provides
examples of the kind of shabby reading he
associates with Sokal and his followers.
Thus, according to him, if Thomas Nagel
showed a minimum of interpretive charity
and tried to understand what Luce Irigaray
means by sexed and privileged in the
context of her philosophy instead of
mimicking Sokal and Bricmonts condescension, he would not have dismissed her
as easily as he did.
In Objectivity and Ethno-feminist
Critiques of Science, Anne Cudd uses
examples from biological theories of intelligence, economics of the family, and the
paleontology of human origins to show
how gender and racial biases can influence
science. According to her, a number of
researchers in the fields mentioned above
fail to recognize that race is a cultural
rather than a biological category and to
distinguish between the biological concept
of sex and the socially constructed concept
of gender. As a result, gender and racial
biases in the form of stereotypes,
metaphors, and symbols are read into
science as if they were woven into the very
fabric of things. She believes that recognizing such biases, confronting them and
questioning them can make science better
on sciences own terms, namely, the openminded pursuit of truth. And the way to
do so, according to her, is through logic,
rationality and the pursuit of truth and
objectivity. Unlike Sandra Harding, Cudd
believes that these notions are not hopelessly male and can be used to advance
science and womens causes even though
they have often been perverted by
masculinist bias throughout the history of
science and philosophy.
Like Cudd, Keith Ashman argues in
Measuring the Hubble Constant:
Objectivity Under the Telescope that nonscientific factors in his case, loyalty,
careerism, desire for fame, and peer
pressure rather than sexism and racism
influence the process and results of science.
Book Reviews

Books
Ashman uses the Hubble Constant as a case results, I see no sense in measuring
in point. In 1929 Edwin Hubble found that anything).
In The stigma of Reason: Irrationality as
the Universe is expanding, which suggests
a Problem for Social Theory, Norman
that it had a definite beginning: the Big
Smith argues that anti-science is part of a
Bang. He also determined that galactic
larger irrationalist movement which started
distance and velocity are related; the
galaxies nearer to us are moving away more with Romanticism. He gives an overview of
the philosophical aspects of this irraslowly than the distant galaxies. This
tionalism as it developed from the end of
presented a problem of determining the
the 18th century to the middle of the 20th
rate at which the universe is expanding
and its influence on what he calls antithe relationship between the distance and
science. The main point of Smiths essay,
the velocity or the Hubble constant. To
however, is to argue against using logical
arrive at the constant, astronomers started
reasoning to refute postmodernist critics of
by measuring the distances to several
science because, in his view, postmodernists
galaxies, and then they compared the
reject reason altogether and therefore, logic
distances to how fast the galaxies are
and arguments are impotent
moving away. Throughout
to change their minds. He
the 1970s and 1980s, two
suggests that instead of
groups of researchers, one
trying to debate the critics of
in Texas and one in
science, defenders of science
California, consistently
and reason should prove
found wildly different
them wrong indirectly by
values for the Hubble
pointing to the social and
constant. The Texas group
political origins and influfound 100 km/s/megaencing factors of irrational
parsec, the California group
beliefs. Smith concludes by
found 50 km/s/megaparsec.
saying: For critics of irraEach group became set in
tionalism, who wish to
its view of how to measure
contribute directly to the
distances to galaxies and
understanding and undoing
stars, and how to measure
Sokal: Cruel-But-Funny Hoaxer
of anti-rational prejudice, I
the speed of a receding
galaxy. These were highly technical issues would argue that social constructionism
has much to offer.
that outsiders had a hard time judging,
Also informative are two other essays in
says Ashman. So for 20 years the commuthe collection, one by Ziauddin Sardar on
nity was far too influenced by the reputanon-European origins of modern science
tion of these people, and that hindered
and the other by Robert Pack on pseudoattempts to find a consensus figure for the
science. In Above and Beyond, and at the
Hubble constant. Ashman goes on to
Center of the Science Wars, Sardar critiexplain that depending on who a cosmolocizes Western philosophy, sociology and
gists friends were and whom she or he
studied under, the scientist aligned with one history of science for forgetting the contricamp or the other. In addition, he says, the bution of other cultures to modern science.
In Voodoo Medicine, an essay that isnt
few dissenting voices suggesting that the
correct value might lie between 50 and 100 directly relevant to the Science Wars but
which makes for interesting reading, Park
were ignored. The right value, as detercriticizes Deepak Chopras Quantum
mined by the orbiting Hubble Space
Healing as an example of the kind of
Telescope, eventually turned out to be
quackery that is totally wrong by established
around 75. With more objectivity,
scientific standards, yet attracts large crowds
astronomers might have learned that
of followers and sometimes even gets the
sooner, says Ashman. It is an increase in
epistemic objectivity and the self-correcting support of corporations and governments.
Most of the essays in this book steer a
nature of science rather than agreement, he
contends, which solved the Hubble contro- middle course between extreme realism and
extreme constructivism with varying
versy: either the Hubble constant was
degrees of success and originality and to
solved by astronomers objectively
this extent the book has achieved its
measuring this parameter and gradually
intended purpose. Yet, some criticisms are
eliminating uncertainties and biases, or
in order. Firstly, although some of the
astronomers have, through social and
articles included in the book, especially
cultural pressures, mutually agreed on a
Cudds essay, are clear and direct, the
value of a parameter. (In the latter case, I
suspect, we have to throw out measurable, average reader for whom this collection is
intended may have difficulty understanding
since if science is nothing more than a
process by which scientists agree on certain the articles by Stolzenberg and Fuller.
Book Reviews

Secondly, the editors wanted to bring

together the opinions of the opposing
camps in one book but, instead, they ended
up making the collection a defense of the
kind of weak constructivism which sociologist David Bloor calls the sociology of
error. All the contributors who tackled the
issue of the objectivity of science directly,
Sokal, Ashman, Cudd and Smith argue that
non-scientific factors only explain bad
science; good science is free of non-scientific factors.
The most significant flaw of the collection, however, is the absence of any essay
on the political aspect of the Science Wars.
This is a major weakness given that much
of the debate between the defenders of
science and rationality and the science
critics, especially the postmodern critics,
hinges on the nature of leftism; each side
claiming the other is undermining progressive political causes. Thus according to
some science critics Gross, Sokal and Levitt
are conservatives who defend science as
part of a general defense of the status quo.
In response, Levitt, Gross, and Sokal
proclaim that they are the true leftists and
their goal is to defend the old brand left
against the relativism and irrationalism of
the academic left. In an article published
in Dissent Sokal wrote, Im an unabashed
Old Leftist who never quite understood
how deconstruction was supposed to help
the working class.
Despite these drawbacks, Ashman and
Baringers book provides a fair and useful
introduction to the Science Wars.
ABDELKADER AOUDJIT 2004

Abdelkader Aoudjit studied philosophy at the

University of Algiers and at Georgetown
University. He teaches at Northern Virginia
Community College.
After the Science Wars edited by Keith Ashman
and Philip Baringer, (Routledge 2001) pb
17.99/$27.95.

Philosophy Now
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the Philosophy Now online bookstore sells each and every book
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if the review says it stinks!), plus a
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March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 47

Our movie maestro Thomas Wartenberg says that

Films

Clint Eastwoods recent film Mystic River is a tragedy

this mystical notion. Rather, it requires

an acknowledgment that the everyday
sense of control that many people
presume to be adequate for reflecting on
their lives has to give way to a broader
perspective that takes account of the role
of circumstances and the actions of other
human beings in determining the
outcome of an individuals intentions.
Still, it is useful to call this fate.
Although the films three protagonists
had grown apart since their days as fast
friends playing together on the streets of
East Buckingham, they are brought
together, as if by some ordained power,
through the horrific murder of Katie
Markum (Emmy Rossum), the beautiful
daughter of Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn).
Sean Devine (Kevin Bacon) is one of the
two policemen called to investigate the
case and, because of his former friendship
with Markum, he remains tied to it. Dave
Boyle (Tim Robbins), who was abducted
and repeatedly sodomized as a boy, still
lives in the neighborhood and his wife,
Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), is the
cousin of Markums second wife,
Annabeth (Laura Linney). Boyle therefore finds himself drawn into the web of
this murder as if by a magnet.

lthough tragedy is one of the classical genres of drama, it does not

translate easily onto the silver
screen. While there are many film
comedies, varying in form from slapstick
to romance, there are far fewer examples
of successful film tragedies. Certainly
there have been some. Just the mention
of Marcel Carns 1945 masterpiece
Children of Paradise or Vittorio de Sicas
1948 austere, neo-realist film The Bicycle
Thief makes it clear that tragedy has been
presented on the screen in convincing
terms.
And yet I still have a sense that film is
not a natural venue for tragedy. One
possible reason for this has to do with
films relation to melodrama. That
popular art form became widespread
during the late nineteenth century, as art
became disseminated to a wider audience
than ever before. Some theories of the
form suggest that this broad audience
explains the stylized and exaggerated
nature of its emotional range. Given
films imperative to reach as wide an
audience as possible, melodrama has
seemed to many theorists a more suitable
form than the delicate emotional structure
of classical tragedy.
The occasion for these reflections is the
recent appearance of a genuine film
tragedy: Clint Eastwoods Mystic River.
The film, based upon the book by Dennis
Lehane, explores the impact that the
abduction and rape of a young boy by two
pedophiles has on him and his two friends
some twenty-five years later. Whats
remarkable about the film is its ability to
render this tale about three working-class
Irish men in East Buckingham, a poor
neighborhood in Boston, in terms that
Aristotle argued apply more readily to the
lives of the great and superior. Yet this
film depicts the lives of three apparently
ordinary men in just such archetypal
terms.
What Eastwood has accomplished in
the film is the presentation of the lives of
three Boston working-class men as determined by factors over which they seem to
have no control. Although the Greeks
called this fate, recognition that our lives
fit into patterns that are beyond our
conscious control does not need to involve
48 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

but in the good sense of the word.

The earlier crime still exerts its influence over the lives of all three men.
Markum and Devine are still haunted by
their failure to stick by Boyle when the
two men demanded that he enter their
car. Boyle himself has never recovered
from the episode that so dominates his life
that, despite his conscious denial of its
significance, he floats from one odd job to
another. Katies murder brings the
former crime to life once more by uniting
these three men and their fates.
As the movie progresses, what dawns
on us as it does on Boyles wife is that
Boyle has committed this heinous murder.
When he returns from a night of drinking
in the early hours of the morning, his
hand damaged and his clothes smeared
with blood, Celeste does not question
him. She simply cleans him up and
disposes of his bloody clothes. But as the
fact of Katies murder spreads, she slowly
comes to believe that her husband killed
her. And we, following her lead, accept
that view, too.
Slowly, as the film grinds inexorably
on, we learn that Boyle is really innocent.
His semi-coherent ramblings allow us to
see that he did kill someone that night: a
pedophile he discovered outside the bar as
he was leaving. His unconscious rage at
his own violation overtakes him as he
beats the pedophile senseless after freeing
his victim. Whats tragic about this is that
Boyles working-class masculinity makes it
impossible for him to find a way to
acknowledge what has happened to him
and thereby to make peace with it.
Instead it dominates his life in ways he
cannot comprehend. Indeed, his
ramblings about seeing things play a
crucial role in convincing his wife that he
is the murderer.
Markham is no less a victim of the
limitations imposed by his own sense of
masculinity. When he learns from
Boyles wife that she suspects that he is
the murderer, Markum must follow the
only course that accords with his sense of
himself: to avenge his daughters murder
by murdering the murderer, much as
Orestes must do in the Greek myth. The
only problem is that Markum kills an
innocent man. The scene of his doing so
is incredibly powerful since, by now, we

have learned that Katies murderer is a

young boy who kills her in his own cycle
of unredeemed violence. As we watch
Markum exact what he thinks of as just
retribution for Katies death, we are
appalled. What we may not realize at the
time, as Markum tells Boyle of his earlier
execution of a criminal associate who
ratted on him, is that the previous illegal
exacting of retribution set in motion a
chain of events that resulted so many
years later in Katies death. The
workings of fate may be ironic and
indirect but they exact their payment
nonetheless.

Finally, theres Devine, the cop who is

haunted by silent phone calls from the
wife who has left him. Although Devines
life is the one that is least clearly
presented by the film, we do learn that he,
too, has been devastated by the demands
of his masculinity, for his wife has left him
because he is unable to confide in her.
Her haunting phone calls are made in
hopes that somehow he will open up and
fill the silence that pains him so deeply
with an account of the ghosts that haunt
him as well.
There are many deeply felt and
superbly executed scenes in this film. One
of the most chilling occurs between
Jimmy and his wife, Annabeth, after he
has confessed that he has killed an
innocent man who was once his friend
and who is his wifes cousins husband.
Instead of being appalled by what has
transpired, Annabeth becomes aroused.
We watch in horror as she reacts to
Jimmys words by telling him as her
tongue feels its way down his body that
he has done what a real man has to do.
The chill we feel comes from our awareness that the violent masculinity that has
so appalled us is precisely what fulfills this
womans desire.

Films
Although the film softens its punches
in the final scenes most dramatically by
showing us Devines wife reunited with
him it conveys a sense of the lives of
these men as caught in a web from which
there is no escape. Each in his own way is
a victim of a rigid code of masculine
honor that constricts their potential for
achieving full humanity. The films
ability to portray this difficult truth justifies the attribution to it of that term of
critical approbation used all too
frequently and easily today of a masterpiece.
THOMAS E. WARTENBERG 2004

Thomas Wartenberg is the author of

Unlikely Couples: Movie Romance as
Social Criticism (Westview) and co-editor of
Philosophy and Film(Routledge). He
teaches philosophy and film studies at Mount
Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 49

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Interview with Nietzsche Linda Williams
Santa Lives? A Challenge to Religion Les Reid / Intro to Continental
philosophy Mike Fuller / Schrdingers Cat Joy Christian
Big Ears Bites Back! Jerry Goodenough / Against Tolerance Peter King
/ A Footnote on Casuistry Mike Fuller
Irrational Emotions Carole Haynes-Curtis / For Tolerance Jonathan
Gorman / Interview with Jostein Gaarder
Lottery or Lootery? G. Giles /Blasphemy & the Rushdie Affair B.
Larvor / Why Alchemists Can Make Gold Rebecca Bryant
Talking to the Animals Patrick Phillips / Grief Revisited Michael
Williams / Dennett & the Conscious Robot Roger Caldwell
Nihilism in Pulp Fiction Steven Goldberg / Pleasure Now!
(Aristippus) Dane Gordon / Lotteries & Religion Martin Tyrrell
Kant and Prostitution Tim Madigan / Interview with David
Chalmers / Overview: Philosophy of Religion.
International Philosophy issue. Chinese, Indian & African thought.
Philosophy & Humour issue. Sex and Sociobiology Mary Midgley /
Interview with John Searle.
Are There Any Moral Facts? Bob Harrison / God & Evil Antony Flew
Interview: Alexander Zinoviev / Round Table: Religion vs Philosophy.
Philosophical Viruses Richard Taylor / Interview: Roger Scruton /
Round Table: Science vs Philosophy.
Authenticity in art/Whats New in African Philosophy?
Philosophy & Food issue edited by Jeremy Iggers / Intelligent Design
Todd Moody / Interview: Peter Singer
Existentialism issue. Kierkegaard Jonathan Re / Articles on Sartre
and Heidegger / Interviews with Donald Davidson and Hans Saner.
Feminist Philosophies issue. Articles on feminist ethics and theories
of knowledge / Interview with Mary Daly / Wittgenstein Mark Cain

50 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

Issue 34 Philosophy & Science Fiction / Heaven and Earth Mary Midgley /
Interview with Alvin Plantinga
Issue 35 Knowledge, Meaning and Heresy / The Many Maps Model Mary
Midgley / Interview with Simon Blackburn
Issue 36 Mind and Morals / Confucianism / Liberty, Logic and Abortion
Mark Goldblatt / Interview with Jennifer Hornsby.
Issue 37 War and Struggle / Mutually Assured Destruction / The War of
Good Against Evil Rai Gaita / Interview with MJ Akbar / Hegel.
Issue 38 The Impact of Science / The Ethics of Terraforming Paul York /
From Hume to Tillich Nancy Bunge / Poppers Open Society
Issue 39 Corporate Crises Alan Malachowski / Omissions and Terrorism Ted
Honderich / Is Ethics Possible? Richard Taylor.
Issue 40 Debate: Euthanasia and assisted suicide / Bertrand Russell and Space
Travel Chad Trainer / Hume and Freewill Antony Flew.
Issue 41 Philosophy and Sport / Interview with Philippa Foot /Nietzsches
Women Linda Williams.
Issue 42 Philosophy and the Paranormal / Interview with Susan Blackmore
Judging Saddams pictures Stuart Greenstreet.
Issue 43 American Pragmatism issue: articles on Peirce, Dewey, Goodman
and Rorty. Interview with Richard Rorty.
Issue 44 Articles on animal rights, human cloning, war & peace and
evolution. Zombies Mary Midgley / Science Massimo Pigliucci

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Society Columns
Our regular roundup of information on where to find people to argue with.
This is a free noticeboard for local philosophy societies and discussion groups. If you know of a group which isnt listed, do please tell us!
Please send notices for Issue 46 to: Society Columns, Philosophy Now, 43a Jerningham Road, London SE14 5NQ, U.K. or email them to: societies@philosophynow.org

British Isles

United States

Bath Bath Philosophy Group meets at Bath

Royal Lit. & Scientific Institute Victor Suchar
01225 461606
Belfast The Belfast Branch of the Royal
Institute of Philosophy holds public lectures &
events. Contact via QUB Philosophy Dept (028
9027 3624)
Birmingham Four Oaks Group. Meets 1st &
3rd Mondays monthly at Four Oaks Carvery,
Balwell Lane, Sutton Coldfield. Contact
Margaret Morris (01922 455192)
Bristol Bristol Philosophy Circle. 7:30pm on
2nd Monday of every month except August.
Contact Hugh Thomas (0117 987 1751)
hugh.thomas@lineone.net
Gloucestershire Gloucestershire
Philosophical Soc. meets in Cheltenham at
C&GCHE, 7.30 pm most alternate Wednesdays.
Contact Harry Cowen; 01242 543243.
London Philosophy For All (PFA), organises
lectures, debates, philosophical walks and introductory courses. Also Sartre Reading Group
and Philosophy Film Club. Contact Andrew
Dodsworth 020 8802 5567
London Philosophical Society of England
(London Group) meets monthly. Contact Ben
Basing: ben.basing@virgin.net 01923 451157)
Liverpool Liverpool Philosophy Pub, The
Brewery Pub, Berry Street, Liverpool Contact
Rob Lewis (0151 428 6685) or lvlw@f2s.com
Manchester Manchester Philosophy Group
meets at 7.30pm on 1st Tues. of each month.
Contact Bob Breckwoldt 0161 282 5466
BMBreck@aol.com
Manchester Moral Sciences Circle. Last
Tuesday of each month at 7.30, starting 30th
Sept. Contact Ann Long (0161 766 9540)
Newcastle Newcastle Philosophy Society.
Study groups & Caf Philo. 01388 747240 or
see: www.newcastlephilosophysociety.org.uk
Nottingham Nottingham Philosophy Club
meets at 7.30pm on 3rd Mon. of the month at
34 Waldeck Rd, Carrington, Nottingham.
Contact Alan Geary at same address 0115 962
2087 al-geary@yahoo.co.uk
Peterborough Open Philosophy Meeting,
Peterborough Art House, 26 Fitzwilliam Street,
Peterborough. All welcome price 1.50.
Helen Mould, helen.mould@btinternet.com
Somerset Burnham Philosophical Society
meets 1st Weds of each month. Contact John
Coombes, 2 Pizey Ave, Burnham on Sea
(01278 784150)
Wiltshire Swindon Philosophical Society
meets most Friday evenings at the Arts Centre,
Devizes Road. Contact John Little, 60
Shrivenham Rd, Swindon (01793 619687)
Tintern Tintern Philosophy Circle. At the
Rose & Crown pub, Tintern. Contact Hatti
Pegram (01291 689928)

CA: Los Angeles Philosophers Forum meets

3rd Friday of every month at Barnes & Noble,
10850 West Pico Blvd Contact Katie Layman
310-475-3914.
CA: San Francisco Socrates Caf meets 2nd &
4th Wednesday of each month at Barnes &
Noble, 2552 Taylor at Bay, Fishermans Wharf,
SF. Lorenzo Tan eqgrowth@yahoo.com.
DC: Washington. Caf Philo at Brasserie Les
Halles, Pennsylvania Ave NW. Ken Feldman
703-751-5958.
FL: Charlotte County. Caf Philo at several
locations. Contact Carol Miller 941-764-8100.
IN: Indianapolis IUPUI Philosophy Club meets
monthly at the Indiana University-Purdue
University campus in Indianapolis. All welcome.
Contact Dave Stout at plato1963@juno.com or
visit http://www.iupui.edu/-philosop/
MD: Baltimore Baltimore Philosophy Club
meets monthly. Lectures and discussions. Contact
Alan & Lorraine Duckworth (410 377-8247)
MO: Philosophical Cafe, Borders Bookstore,
Clayton meets 2nd Mon of each month. Contact
Dave Hilditch 314-727-1675
ND: Philosophy For All, Fargo-Moorhead.
Regular discussion meetings. Contact Mark
Chekola (218-477-4087) chekola@mnstate.edu
NJ: Socrates Caf-all welcome! The Montclair
Inn, 27 Hillside Avenue,.Montclair NJ 07042
every Tues. 7.30-9.30pm Contact Steve Marchetti
973-566-9058
NY: Manhattan. Philosophy caf meets every
other Thurs. 6:30-8:30 at Bamiyan Restaurant,
358 Third Ave. Details at www.bernardroy.org
or email bernardroy@earthlink.net
NY: Rochester Greater Rochester Russell Set
meets monthly, all welcome. Call Tim Madigan,
585-273-5778
TX: Socrates Caf, First Unitarian Universalist
Church,4700 Grover St., Austin, Texas, every
Wed. 7-9pm Don Smith or 512-452-6168
UT: Socrates Caf, Rm 201 First Unitarian
Church of Salt Lake, 569 So.1300 E., Salt Lake
City, Utah, 1st Sun. of each month at 6.30pm
Craig Axford 801-845-4076 (evenings).

52 Philosophy Now March/April 2004

Australia
Melbourne Existentialist Society monthly
lecture & discussion. Royal Society Theatrette,
8 La Trobe Street. 1st Tues. of each month
8pm. Call David Miller (03 9467 2063)

Canada
Calgary Philosophy Caf at Annies Book
Company, 912-16 Ave NW, every 2nd Thurs.
Call 403-282-1330
Vancouver Philosophers Cafs for the
general public, organised by Simon Fraser Univ
in more than a dozen locations. Yosef Wosk
(604) 291-5215 www.sfu.ca.philosopherscafe

Events & Conferences

British Isles
9th-12 July 2004
Mind Assn - Aristotelian Society Joint Session
University of Kent at Canterbury.
Contact: Alan Thomas, a.p.thomas@kent.ac.uk
14th-16th July 2004
Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Confer.
Preference Formation and Well-Being
St Johns College Cambridge.
Contact: Katherine Harloe, kch24@cam.ac.uk

Canada
May 29 - June 1 2004
Canadian Philosophical Association
Congress 2004.
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg.
Details: http://www.acpcpa.ca

United States
22-25 April 2004
American Philosophical Association Central
Division Meeting. Chicago, IL, Contact Linda
Smallbrook (302) 831-1112
17-21 July 2004
Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary
World, 2004 Conference. Western Carolina
University, Cullowhee, NC.
Contact Andrew Fiala, fialaa@uwgb.edu
4-8 August 2004
American Association of Philosophy Teachers
2004, 15th International Workshop-Conference,
University of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio.
Mimi Marinucci, mmarinucci@mail.ewu.edu
This is only a small selection of the
forthcoming events listed on our
online calendars, so for more info
please visit: www.philosophynow.org

Gravity
A short story by Mairi Wilson.

he was nine years old when she came of age, which is

too soon for anyone to realise that they are alone, and
that the entirety of their universe is contained within
their skull, without connection to the universes of
others. She found the knowledge a heavy burden.
Her mother was mad, whatever that might mean it might just
mean tragic and no-one cared for her. She felt that her soul
had been lost somewhere, or perhaps shed never had one, after
all, how does one acquire a soul? She surmised it had to be
given, first, seed-like in a name and then as a beloved You, and
she had known neither. She felt cold and she was in relentless
pain from her experience of nothingness. Its strange how
nothing can be so painful and exhausting.
Soulless years passed. She changed, became more
curvaceous, used peroxide on her hair, pouted her lips, but noone gave her her soul, and the black hole within her, which
should have been full of something which gave out energy, just
became the stuffing for her outer skin, absorbing everything
but never being filled. An insatiable hunger.
Soulless years passed.
She flicked the pages of her magazine; the sunlight was too
bright on the pages. She laid the magazine down and enjoyed
the cooling shadow it cast across her midriff. She took a sip
from her cocktail, rested her head back against the cushions of
the lounger, touched her sunglasses, half closed her eyes.
In her line of vision was a man on the high dive board, a
glistening shadow against the sky. He turned towards her and
gave her a small wave. She smiled back, raised her glass in
acknowledgement. He prepared himself, launched himself into
the atmosphere. He was trusting that earthly laws of gravity
would not alter during his flight.
Now she closed her eyes completely and thought.
I think he might be in love with me, but then many men
are, men who have never even met me. What are they in love
with? The picture in the centre-fold? How can colours printed
on a piece of paper make people believe they love me?
The voids she perceived made her nauseous, with
gooseflesh, at 83 degrees in the shade.
She opened her eyes. She saw him reach the zenith of his
trajectory. She took a deep breath and held it for him as he
began his fall.
I would rather have you dive into my consciousness and my
subconsciousness, unconsciousness. I do not wish to be
separate from you. I would that our struggles might not be
solitary. Go deeper, go deeper into the fluidity! Can you
breathe here? Or do you fear you might drown? We believe we

live because our hearts are beating, but I sense that they are
slowing. Are we approaching death? Are we alone, or together,
in death, or are we non-existent because no-one knows our
thoughts?
Death sometimes seems attractive. Death wish. Sigmund
Freud. He thought that we might be driven to reduce life to
inanimate matter. But then he changed his mind. Is that why
you leapt into space? We are driven to reduce stress, not to
organic dissolution. Emotional and bodily peace are what we
are driven towards, so much so that we will fight for it. Fight
or flight. Warmongers and pacifists are on an equal moral
footing; its more a question of personal style. Any war can be
justified by either side because both are fighting for peace.
He folded his body into a pike and started turning over and
over, over and over.
Of course, ultimate peace is not physical death, but a state
more perfect than embryonic life, where all bodily needs are
met, food warmth, shelter, emotional completeness, wanting
for nothing, the feeling that one is loved. Ah love! That word.
Upside down, heels over head, over, over, which way is up?
That word. Those words. I love you, I love you. It turns
your heart over. It should all be turned over. I love you means,
I want you for myself because you make me feel loved. We
should be more honest about that selfish word; it would make
life a lot simpler. And it goes without saying that a person who
has never been loved can never say, I love you and mean it. A
soulless hungry person with empty words, like me.
If we were honest about that selfish word, we would stop
being grateful when someone says, I love you. I make men feel
they are loved by me, in a physical sense, so they love me, so
they say, but they do not make me feel loved, so, if Im honest,
I cannot say I love them in return. Is their love better than
nothing?
Her nausea and emptiness grew fiercer.
He straightened, all the time accelerating towards the water.
His fingertips now touched the surface. She breathed out, then
in again, to continue her life. There was nothing more she
could do for him as his momentum forced the molecules of the
liquid to part and he split the skin of the pool.
Surface tension. The outer boundary. Perhaps Im only
held together by surface tension. She laughed at her pun.
He disappeared below the surface and her line of vision. Her
attention was caught by the heat of the sun on her legs.
Ultimately it all comes down to skin, wouldnt you say?
Descartes was wrong. He said it was all down to thinking, but
its all down to skin in the end, sensitive skin, like mine: he only
March/April 2004 Philosophy Now 53

felt confident in his existence when he was thinking. Me? I

have confidence in my existence in all my activities, and my
being is only limited by the confines of my skin and what I do
in this time and space. I do lots of things. I have to be alive to
do lots of things, and the I comes from being contained, and
from what is not-I being sensed and cognised as not-I. A
volcano does lots of things, but it has no sensation of an outer
limit, nor cognisance of what is not-I, so it cannot distinguish
what is I and what is not-I, so it cannot say, I do therefore I
am, as I can. Skin gives me my personal pronoun, but it does
not give me my soul. And if I were dead, I would no longer be
sensing what is I and what is not I. Without an I, I cannot say,
I do, nor, I live. And if I were dead, my outer limit would be
dissolving into the elements, so I would no longer exist. Thats
why massage gives such a sense of well-being: it affirms
existence.
A flunky drew close to her. Would you care for another
cocktail, Madam? She watched her admirer pull himself out
of the pool.
No thanks, Ill have some iced water. Im thinking of
detoxifying myself. Would you be so kind as to ask my
masseur to come by?
Certainly, Madam.
Huh! Detoxifying myself. She laughed to herself. Here I
am, a black hole surrounded by skin and without a soul. Is it
possible for an abused child to grow into an unabused adult, as
if the abuse had never happened? Is it possible for me to live
my adult life as if I had had a different childhood from the one
which made me soulless and wanting? Justice says it should be
possible. I need a bit of respect.
She watched him start chatting to a bevy of girls at the side
of the pool. They were desperate to introduce themselves to
him. She noticed his tanned skin, his developed musculature,
his narrow hips, the profile of his buttock, his crotch. Droplets
glittered on his skin, like gilding. A golden boy, a god, a divine
one, one who is most blessed.
The perfect specimen for a mate. I want you for myself. I
want to talk to you myself. Im jealous of those girls. I love
you.
She stood up from the lounger and sashayed over to where
he stood. He spotted her.
Marilyn! he called.
Mr President! she purred.
DR MAIRI WILSON 2004

Mairi Wilson lives in Ipswich.

On Real and
Artificial Flowers
by Chengde Chen

If an artificial flower is made

more beautiful than a real one,
more fresh and bright,
more lively and touching,
with more charm of spring,
and dignity of autumn,
more tenderness of love,
and fragrance of imagination,
it is more real than the real one,
so that in comparison
the real one looks artificial,

then,
why is the real one still preferred?
The only reason is that
it will wither and die.
So,
the possibility of death
is its ultimate value,
although no one realises this.
Man appreciates living things,
because he himself dies.
The sense of life, like that of sex,
is something within the perceiver,
through which that of the object
can be felt
Those that have it respond to it.
Those that dont wont.
The charm of real flowers
is in living men.

CHENGDE CHEN 2004

(Chengde Chen is author of

Five Themes of Today: philosophical poems,
published by Open Gate Press)

54 Philosophy Now March/April 2004