Nature and Nurture

is short for biology and narrative.

Can you think of an influence of nature that is not susceptible to nurture?

Can you think of a biological influence that cannot be shaped by a narrative?

I think this question goes a long way in answering the question, Why must we treat history and not science as the proper study of humans?

I just want to remember this question for now.

Inside Out and Outside In. Thought and Thinking. Reflections on Modern Habits.

I'd like to sit with two comparisons.

We, as Moderns, have certain habits of thought that we may think essential, but that turn out to be contingent and therefore plastic.

The first has to do with how we relate to the outside world. The second, with how we think of thought.

I'm slowly making my way through Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly's book, All Things Shining. I'm quite happy with it so far.

They claim that the Homeric Greek experience of reality was profoundly different from ours, and that we could gain something by reflecting on the gulf between our experiences.

To put it crudely, the Homeric Greeks were open to the world in a way that we are not. Their experience was something that was imparted to them by the world, whereas ours is something that we impose upon the world. Their experience flowed from outside in, whereas ours flows from inside out. To paraphrase, they say that the Homeric Greeks views themselves as empty heads open to what the world had to offer. Their sense of control or involvement in the world hinged on their ability to be attuned to the mood of a situation. Truth, in other words, was already present in the world, and their task was to be sensitive to it, to await its call.

Our experience, on the other hand, is not of openness, but of manipulation. Our experience flows from inside out: we are habituated to think of ourselves as autonomous rational beings that must impose our own will on the world. I find this conception of the self deeply troubling for numerous reasons. I can't think about that right now.

I won't build a bridge right now. But there is another idea that is deeply connected that I'd like to reflect on.

I had a conversation tonight with a young man that I'm quite fond of. We were reflecting on the relationship between the world's fluidity and the stillness of thought.

Thinking, it seems to me, is often expressed in terms of solidity, in a language that betrays the instability of reality. Thought, that is to say, is intimately tied to generalization. This, I suspect, is why Bergson claims that we have failed to clearly think time and have instead substituted metaphors of space for clear discussions of time, space and time being synonymous with permanence and change, as I've seen in Ravaisson's Of Habit.

Bergson believes that conceptualizing time as time has serious implications. For one, when we think flow clearly we can begin to experience flow more clearly. Life is nothing but flow.

My experience, I say without hesitation, is incessantly novel, always exploding with newness. The specter of redundancy, no doubt, beckons constantly.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday.

We all know the regularities and drudgeries of our lives.

Illusions, I say.

They, and not I, deserve the Abyss.

So, how do I live and love flow? How do I recognize that my life is not regular and boring, but rich, novel, and unique at each moment?

What are the limitations of the claims: Nothing is ever the same. Nothing has ever happened twice. Similarity and difference are illusions. Particularity and uniqueness are the only truth. Change is the only reality.

There is no answer. Fucking duh. To accept the reality of flow is to reject answers and to embrace questions.

Therefore we cannot accept thought, we can only engage in thinking.

There are no complete systems of thought that await a greater Genius. There are no answers that will finally negate pain, illuminate love, and banish death.

There is only learning to love and coping with pain.

And that is no tragedy.

It is the condition of beauty.

Heidegger, as much as I love him, should not be as startling as he was. This statement is meant in no way to detracts from his intelligence and insight, but to point out how misguided our thinking about the human condition is, and to vindicate John Gray's claims about our unreflective importing of Christian ideas.

We moderns could use to experience the world as something that flows from outside in. (Remember that Buddhism advocates a healthy type of self-forgetting).

We moderns could stand to leave behind thought in favor of thinking.

There is no substitute.

Philosophy as the Purposeful Ordering of the Soul

I'm not interested in complete definitions.

But I find it highly provocative to define philosophy as the purposeful ordering of the soul. This, Bloom tells me in Love and Friendship, is how Rousseau conceived of philosophy.

I reckon it has something to do with habit formation, with the cultivation of intuition, with the management of biases and heuristics.

Philosophy must do something for the heart as well as the mind.

An apparatus constructed on dry land
Submerged beneath the waters of my soul
Ordering and sorting the bubbles
So as to love more and hate less
So as to see more clearly into myself and others

Tautology. Other Things.

Several philosophers I like tend to revert to tautologies. Chiefly: 'It is what it is' and 'This is what I have to do because this is what I have to do'. I am of course referring largely to Collingwood, but I've also observed this tendency in Dewey, and I think Bergson. Others, too, no doubt.

What is up with this? How can you just say that 'it is what is is' and expect to be taken seriously by rigorous thinkers? How can you avoid the conclusion that my friend observed tonight: 'everything is what it is'. Because if everything is X then nothing is X.

Aye.

A minor point.

Yet there is a depth in this tautology. A depth that may reside in the concept of particularity.

Because things are not merely in the sense that they are general, but are in the sense that they are precisely what they are.

When I resort to the tautologies I often mean to imply a sense of particularity. I mean to say: 'Hey, this is the situation you are in, and as much as you'd like it not to be true, it cannot be compared or reduced to other kinds of situations'.

'It is what it is' is a recognition that I am what I am and nothing else.

I am singular and the world is singular.

This fits nicely with what I'm trying to think about: that there is no substitute for reflection, no knowledge other than knowledge of the self.

How to square this with the buddhist claim that there is no self, I don't know.

I admit, moreover, that I am tired of thinking. I'm incredibly tired. Ready to apply to graduate programs. Ready to doubt my choice.

Ready to live until I die.

I hope I have the strength to die gracefully.