On Necessity as a Possibility and The Singularity of Authenticity

Jargon jargon jargon. Forgive the flashy title.

Two things. First, I was thinking tonight that necessary action, paradoxically, is a possibility, an option that we can choose from. Because we all know that there are many different things that we could do. But among those many things, there is the possibility that one of those options could appear itself to us as necessary. It is possible that one course of action could be justified only by saying "this is what I have to do."

Basically, there seems to be a way that necessity could be a possibility, an option, and not pure necessity.

It becomes a different kind of necessity: The necessity of what we know about ourselves.

This idea of necessity as a possibility or option leads me to my second question, the question of authenticity.

Second thing. I ask this: Is it possible for there to be more than one authentic action open to an individual? Or are there actions that are more authentic than other actions? Is there a maximally authentic action that we can perform?

To me it seems like the answer is no. Authenticity is singular. The idea of authenticity points to a way that things must be. There are degrees of authenticity, no doubt. It isn't as simple as saying 'this action is totally inauthentic and this one is authentic'.

But there are some actions that are more authentic than other actions. There is a course of action that is most authentic. And that most authentic seems to be pretty particular, pretty singular.

If we grasp ourselves, and grasp what it is that is most authentic, then we have to do it. We have to be true to ourselves.

It appears to me that in any given moment there is only one course of action that is truly authentic. Authenticity is singular.

These ideas are complimentary. To perceive action as necessary, to see necessity as a possible course of action, and to believe that authenticity is singular, are compatible ideas.

They both point to Collingwood's notion of duty. They imply that there is a form of action in which possibility and necessity overlap, leading us to do the only thing we can do.

Both of these things, moreover, find there most powerful reference in the idea of self-knowledge. If we truly understand ourselves we perceive options, but we know that one of those options is what we must do, that one of those options will be the most authentic expression of who we are and what we understand about our situation.

I am trying here to unravel Collingwood's claim that "A man's duty on a given occasion is the act which for him is both possible and necessary: the act which at that moment character and circumstance combine to make it inevitable, if he has a free will, that he should freely will to do." It seems to me that I can move closer to solving this problem of duty by asking about the question of authenticity, by asking if there is more than one course of action that can be considered authentic. I don't have a robust answer to this question, but my tentative answer is no. Authentic action is singular, not plural.

The idea of authentic action, that is, action based on a deep understanding of self and world, is action that can be perceived as both possible and necessary.

Duty is authentic action. It is action that is owed to the self based on deep knowledge of the self.

Duty and authenticity. A great pairing, one I'm happy to have come to tonight.

Action as Both Possible and Necessary

Possibility and necessity seem like exclusive concepts.  Possibilities are by definition plural.  Necessity is by definition singular.

Yet Collingwood argues that the highest form of moral action, which he calls duty, happens at the intersection of the possible and the necessary.

I've been dropping bits and pieces about this problem of duty lately.

I don't know how to write about it yet.  I fear I'm not being very diligent with my studying.

But I do think that this idea of dutiful action as necessary action has something to do with self-knowledge.  We would find an action to be both possible and necessary because we understand ourselves, and understand that our character and our situation offer us no other alternative.  Even if we can conceive of other alternatives, we know we can't do anything else.

Self-knowledge, moreover, is in many ways knowledge of our habits.  Knowledge of habits, in turn, has something to do with historical knowledge.  Knowledge of both our own history, and our larger history.

All of this makes me think a little bit about the relationship between language and emotion.  Language as the house of being.

Last night a friend asked me about the problem of truth.  I asked him about Zen and the idea that everything is flux and flow.  How is truth preserved in this conception of the world as flux and flow?  Is the truth of Zen somehow a historical truth?

The idea is that there is no such thing as a general emotion, only particular emotions.  Emotions acquire their particularity, moreover, from historical moments, from the unique cultural (linguistic) circumstances of an age.

So is truth always an historically situated truth?  Does Zen aim for a historically situated truth?

I think yes, but can't be sure.

Effort.

Effort?

I ain't got no time for that.

Maybe it's just because I'm reading Nietzsche. He is talking a lot about how responsibility is an illusion, how action is always necessary.

I don't think it isn't quite that strict.

I feel like the deeper issue is one of honesty, of feeling what it is that we are actually feeling.

The issue with effort seems to be more about self-deception, about resistance to reality.

Either way, I'm tired of effort.

I don't want to 'make things work'.

I want life to work for me.

You mad, bro?

This is one of my favorite things to say lately. Sure, it's a meme. Sure, it's really stupid and doesn't mean much.

My friend says that there is no good response. Because you either say 'no I'm not mad' and you sound mad, or you say 'yeah I'm mad' and then you sound stupid. 

You mad, bro?

Check andddddddddddddd mate.

The truth is, however, that I am mad.

I still feel uncomfortable with the directionless of my life. 

I wrote earlier about Nietzsche and his claim that man's life must ultimately be squandered, that it is the 'feeling above all feelings'. He is probably right. 

Why this life over that life?

Why this choice over that choice?

Reason is a tempting mode of thought, and the relativism that emerges from it is hard to deny.

Yet I deny it.

I fight it.

And this is a problem that I might have with Nietzsche. He was living in the thick of the Enlightenment's collapse. He felt so clearly that the work of the Enlightenment had left us groundless. He knew that the West's commitment to reason was thoroughly bankrupt and would never help us live better.

But I think Nietzsche doesn't push enough at the idea of truth. 

I admit, I haven't read enough Nietzsche. I've only read his early writing. Perhaps he came to an idea of truth, an antidote to relativism.

What I'm really expressing here is my own desire for truth, my conviction that there is a reality that ought to be pursued.

I don't know how to specify this truth. But I believe that there is a kind of truth that needs to be pursued.

We need to ask if there is such a thing as truth.

I saw an article that argued that Romney was running a 'post-truth' political campaign.

Either way, I unequivocally reject relativism. I'm not having this willy nilly 'ain't no goodness' business.

Some things are better than other things.

There is such a thing as goodness.

There is such a thing as truth.

Deal with it.

Dissolving Distinctions: Subject/Object, How/Why

I think that the human world demands a unique form of explanation.  We need a new vocabulary that lets us understand ourselves and others in fuller ways.

We need a humane vocabulary that is free from the epistemological bullying of the natural sciences.

Because the distinctions that apply to thought about the natural world do not apply to the human world. With humans we cannot cleanly make the distinction between subject and object, nor the distinction between what, how, and why.

In thinking about other humans we are thinking about other minds. When our mind grasps another mind it has not grasped it as an object, but as a simulation that we have brought to life in our own mind.  Collingwood argued this point til his dying day.  John Searle, however, put it even more clearly: "The explanation of an action must have the same content as was in the person's head when he performed the action or when he reasoned toward his intention to perform the action. If the explanation is really explanatory, the content that causes behavior by way of intentional causation must be identical with the content in the explanation of the behavior" (Minds, Brains, and Science, 67, emphasis removed). To explain another person's actions is to understand their thoughts. To understand another person's thoughts is to think those same thoughts for yourself.  Thus Collingwood was able to argue, with humans "the object is enacted and is therefore not an object at all" (The Principles of History, 246). 

The distinction between what, how, and why is also blurring to me these days.  This is something I'm learning personally through reflection and attempts at meditation.  When I know what my feelings or thoughts are it is immediately clear to me why and how I have them.  The understanding that I'm trying to gain of myself is fuller than those distinctions and cannot be adequately divided into the neatness of what, how, and why.  Those questions are totally rolled together, and cannot be taken apart.

Our normal scientific language cannot be applied to humans.  There is a need for a more human language.  That language is to be found in history, philosophy, and the rest of the humanities.

The humanities.

Duh.  

Ughhhhhh Nietzsche Feels Good.

I was trying to read a book by Jim Holt, Why Does The World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story. It aggravated me, though. I have other questions to ask. I don't really care very much about the origin of the universe.

So, today I've started reading Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human and it feels reallllly good.

I like reading him.

He was talking about Man's position in the world, and our ultimate aimlessness. He says that if one considers ourselves part of this overall aimlessness, our "activity acquires the character of squandering in [our] eyes. But to feel squandered as mankind (and not just as an individual), as we see the single blossom squandered by nature, is a feeling above all feelings. But who is capable of it? Certainly only a poet–and poets always know how to comfort themselves" (Aphorism 33).

Excellent.

Excellent stuff.

The Truth of Art, History, and Duty

For my friend Collingwood, art, history, and what he calls 'duty' all offer access to a form of truth.

The artist is one who is accessing the truth of his own heart by using his imagination to transform a difficult emotion into a clear and expressible 'idea'.  The artist is one who learns a truth about himself through the use of consciousness and expression.  It is through expression alone that the artist learns about himself.  Prior to an emotion being expressed, it existed in a different form.  It was dormant, existing at a lower state of consciousness, existing as a trace.  Through the act of expression, these traces are pulled to a higher level of consciousness, being transformed into something new in the process.  The truth of art is thus an emotional and mental truth becoming known through the transformative power of conscious expression.

Through art we learn something about ourselves we already knew, we just come to know it with greater clarity.

The historian, on the other hand, is one who accesses truth not only about himself, but about people in the past.  The historian, in some ways, is also an artist.  He, too, uses his imagination to elevate an impression into an idea.  He, too, uses consciousness to learn something through the process of expression.  What the historian wants to know, however, is not the truth of his own heart and mind, but the truth of other hearts and minds.  What the historian expresses then must be something external to himself.  The traces the historian seizes upon are not the traces of thought and feelings in his own heart, but the traces of thought and feeling left behind by people in the past.  This is why Collingwood claims that the historian is merely recreating past thought in his own mind; understanding past actions by rethinking the thoughts that made those actions possible and necessary.  The truth of history is thus aesthetic truth applied to the actions of the past; that is to say, in thinking historically we learn about the hearts and minds of past actors by becoming those minds, and expressing for ourselves what those minds expressed through their actions.

Through history we learn something about past actors that they already knew about themselves, that they expressed in their actions.  In thinking historically we are already thinking aesthetically: we are knowing something that is in a sense already known; we are simply knowing it with greater clarity.

We see this link in Collingwood's aesthetics and in his philosophy of history.  The unifying factors are how we use consciousness to understand the relationship between thought and action.  I think, however, that the concept of necessity also binds the two together.  What we feel, and thus what we learn about ourselves, is not something we asked for: it was simply something in our hearts, something necessary.  In history, too, we are not choosing what we learn about: we are learning about what happened.  And in learning about history, we see why it had to happen the way it did.

Now, these ideas become more difficult when we try and parse Collingwood's concept of duty.  The more I think about him the more I see that duty was what his thought was building towards.  It is duty that would bind his aesthetics, his philosophy of history, and his philosophical method, into a coherent moral concept.

To act dutifully, Collingwood would say, is to treat action in the present in the same way that we treat the actions of the past.  That is, as necessary.

The consciousness of duty is the consciousness that says 'This is what I have to do because this is what I have to do'.  Dutiful action needs no utilitarian analysis, and it needs no reference to a rule.  Dutiful action requires no explanation at all.  It is simply what must be done, it is what we owe ourselves.

We begin to act dutifully, he argues, when we appreciate ourselves as unique beings acting in a unique situation, having only one course of action open to us.  That course of action is the only one open to us because it is the one that emerges organically from the unity of our heart, mind, and circumstance.

That dutiful action is necessary, however, does not compromise the idea of freedom.  Freedom, Collingwood argues, is incorrectly identified with caprice.  Someone acting dutifully, doing what they know they have got to do, has arrived at a fully free and rational conclusion. "A man's duty on a given occasion," he argued, "is the act which for him is both possible and necessary: the act which at that moment character and circumstance combine to make it inevitable, if he has a free will, that he should freely will to do" (The New Leviathan, 17.8, his emphasis).  In acting dutifully, we already know what it is that we must do.  All that stands in our way are misconceptions about the nature of our character and our circumstances.

The truth of duty, then, just like art and history, is a truth that is already known.  To act dutifully we only need to know more clearly what it is that we already know.

Duty is some kind of form of consciousness in which we move forward into the future perceiving ourselves like historians perceive the people of the past, like artists perceive themselves.

Duty is some sort of aesthetic-historical morality.

How odd.

There is something in duty that lines up with my current attempt to write about the West's relationship with predictive knowledge, and Taleb's claim that we need to cultivate a nonpredictive view of the world.

This writing was an essay, an exploration to help me get there.

I'm pleased with what has happened here.

Off The Path. Into The Open Field.

The lack of clear direction in my life is a pain that I'm becoming more comfortable with.

I once had much clearer narratives for my life.  I wanted to go to graduate school, most likely for military history.  I had an idea that my education in history would lead me to be a philosopher of sorts, specializing in Clausewitz, Collingwood, and other people that I still love to think about.

I had a plan.  I had a path to walk.

Tonight someone said to me, 'How interesting that you've stepped off that path, and into the open field, to find out what it's really all about.'

What life is all about, they meant.

Because life isn't only about the academy.  It's about living.

This metaphor of off the path and into the open field sounded really good to me.  She admitted she was borrowing from a group of poets who advocated 'open field' poetry.  Something to do with form and structure.  She couldn't recall it entirely.

I'm trying to live a less predictive life.  I'm try to not force a narrative.  I still find myself coming up with narratives, and hoping that they will work out.  But it doesn't seem to work very well.

More than ever, I'm giving in to how I feel.  I'm learning to feel more clearly.

It's strange.

Trusting yourself is strange.

Accepting tautology is strange.  But I've accepted two.  It is what it is, and, This is what I have to do because this is what I have to do.

Confident, self-reliant action.  Self-knowledge, self-trust.

All this is so vague, right?  So incomprehensible.

So important in the world of practice and so vague in the world of ideas.

I'm trying to learn the practice.

I'm not sure if I want or need to get around to the ideas.

What Is.

It is profoundly disappointing to feel that some things simply are.

That I can admit yet another tautology into my repertoire: It is what it is.

My tendency, and the tendency of liberal academia, is to say: 'Well, maybe it isn't quite what it seems it is.  Because if we shift our perspective slightly, if we apply a different lens, if we look at it through another set of ideas, we find that what is actually isn't quite what we thought it was'.

Relativism abounds.

I'm more hostile to it than ever.

Because some things simply are.

Reality is out there.

This realization is most painful when it comes to the reality of my own heart and mind.  I simply feel certain things.  I simply think certain things.  I am something.

I am not a blank slate, I am not raw material, I cannot fashion myself into whatever kind of being I want to be.

The mastery I can have of myself will never be the mastery of the natural world, of raw materials.

It can only be the master of self-knowledge.  The mastery of understanding myself, knowing who I am, and being that way more consciously.

Consciousness does not help me make myself, willy nilly.  Consciousness helps me know myself, so that I can become that thing more fully.

I am something.

How painful.  So painful.

Other people, too, are something.

They feel and think certain ways, and I can't do anything about that.  That hurts, too.

Because I don't understand why other people think and feel what they do.  I don't even understand why I think and feel the way I do.

But I can no longer pretend that I'm not already something.

I am.

The Shieldedness of the Open

Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker with a picture of a Native American man on it.  It said "The Earth doesn't belong to us.  We belong to the Earth."

These days, I feel like I belong more than ever.

I want so badly to belong to my situation, to my world.  I no longer want to set myself above and beyond that space that I occupy.

I want to be, in a fuller sense than I've ever been.

I want to feel what I'm feeling.  Nothing else.

This is something that I've come to through therapy, through meditation.

But I also have some powerful intellectual referents.  Heidegger, in particular, has me super jazzed.

Unfortunately, I have a strained relationship with the intellectual end of this feeling.  In the past, I've lost myself in my intellect.  I've let my writing be disconnected from reality.  I've let my writing become masturbatory.  Pleasurable, but disconnected from reality.

These days, I really want to continue my intellectual development.  But I'm more committed than ever to practice.

In his essay, "What Are Poets For?", Heidegger lays down some real shit.

The essay revolves around the problem of technological nihilism: that we are addicted to scientific and objective forms of thought.  These objective forms of thought, he claims, have left us disconnected from reality and unable to access the truth of Being.

Being, for Heidegger, has something to do with being in the 'Open'.  The Open is something that animals exist fully in.  But something that humans have lost touch with through our modes of thought.  Through science we have managed to place ourselves above and outside of the Open.  We have managed to objectivize the world and ourselves, turning everything into raw material for some greater human plan.

Our relationship with abstract, objective thought, has plunged us into a too willful willing.  We no longer feel the fullness of Being, the simple unity of the fourfould, as Heidegger might say.

We no longer dwell in order to build, we simply build without a sense of dwelling.

Paradoxically, Heidegger believes that by situating ourselves in opposition to nature, the Open, we have become unshielded.  That our tendency to think objectively, to manipulate people and the world, leaves us more vulnerable to the pain of Being.

Somehow, there is more shieldedness in the Open.

Somehow, accepting the vulnerability of the Open makes us more shielded.

This idea resonates so powerfully with me.

I want so badly to know myself, to express myself, and to be known by others.

And this type of knowing does not happen through objective modes of thought.  It happens in the Open.  It happens in the unity of the fourfold.

True strength comes from vulnerability.

Shieldedness comes from the Open.

I feel it.

Yet I'm trying to write about it.

I'm not sure if that is a problem, but I don't feel like it is.