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For Our Organism Is An Oligarchy

From Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §6:

Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious mémoires; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown. Indeed, if one would explain how the abstrusest metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he—) aim? Accordingly, I do not believe that a “drive for knowledge” is the father of philosophy; but rather that another drive has, here as elsewhere employed knowledge (and mis-knowledge!) as a mere instrument. But anyone who considers the basic drives of man to see to what extent they may have been at play just here as inspiring spirits (or demons and kobolds—), will find that all of them have done philosophy at some time—and that every single one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master [Herrn] of all the other drives. For every drive is domineering [herrschsüchtig]: and as such it attempts to philosophize.— To be sure: among scholars who are really scientific men things may be different—“better,” if you like—, there you may really find something like a drive for knowledge, some small independent clockwork that, once well wound, works on vigorously without any essential participation from all the other drives of the scholar. The real “interests” of the scholar therefore lie usually somewhere else, in his family, say, or in making money, or in politics; indeed, it is almost a matter of total indifference whether his little machine is placed at this or that spot in science, and whether the “promising” young worker turns himself into a good philologist or an expert on fungi or a chemist:—it does not characterize him that he becomes this or that. In the philosopher conversely, there is nothing whatever that is impersonal; and above all his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is—that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand in relation to each other.

As F. H. Bradley says: Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what one believes on instinct.

In a part II of my dialogue (not included in the draft I linked in that previous post) S & P mull the advantages and disadvantages of defending 'theory' by aligning it with this Nietzschean vision of philosophy. Aristocracy becomes personal authenticity. Argufying for your personal sensibility turns out to be par for the philosophy course. Intellectual conscience turns out to be a shallow - at best, an instrumental virtue. (So theory's lack of it is no great loss.) Unsystematic systematicity - eclecticism - is a natural and predictable product of clashes between our inner drives. (Anything else would indicate your heart wasn't in it.) There is, additionally, nothing journalistically feuilletonistic about having one's philosophy be a chorus of howls from an inner oligarchy of daimons, kobolds and sundry spirits. (You can even rename them race, gender and class and impersonalize them socially and culturally.) The passage effectively affirms settling your moral conclusions in advance. Last but not least, you get to bash analytic philosophy as no true philosophy, just a sort of callow clattering with impersonal machines. Any takers for this line of defense? Perhaps the aptly named Me?

I think there is something seriously tempting about this line of defense for 'theory'. Because I think there is something right about what Nietzsche is saying. Even so, I don't think it's healthy to grip the Nietzschean nettle too tightly. What do you think? [Obviously it's no simple matter to work out how this passage relates to others in Nietzsche. Yes, I'm aware he is a complicated fellow - a veritable pandaimoniacal parliament.]

Pixies

So how does the hair look, you ask? Pictures under the fold. It's cooler and easier to wash, and luckily it will just grow back...actually this picture doesn't really capture the cuteness, I'll try again later.

Glass Bead Games and Feuilletons

"I passed through a euphoric dream of scientificity." Roland Barthes, bemusedly recollecting how he came to write The Fashion System. A similarly hubristic passage from Paul Ricoeur (from lectures in 1961-2; turned into a book, Freud & Philosophy: An Essay On Interpretation, in 1965.)

Today we are in search of a comprehensive philosophy of language to account for the mutliple functions of the human act of signifying and for their interrelationships. How can language be put to such diverse uses as mathematics and myth, physics and art? It is no accident that we ask ourselves this question today. We have at our disposal a symbolic logic, an exegetical science, an anthropology, and a psychoanalysis and, perhaps for the first time, we are able to encompass in a single question the problem of the unification of human discourses. The very progress of the aforementioned disparate disciplines has both revealed and intensified the dismemberment of that discourse. Today the unity of human language poses a problem.

Such is the broad horizon within which our investigation is set. The present study in no way pretends to offer the comprehensive philosophy of language we are waiting for. I doubt moreover that such a philosophy could be elaborated by any one man. A modern Leibniz with the ambition and capacity to achieve it would have to be an accomplished mathematician, a universal exegete, a critic versed in several of the arts, and a good psychoanalyst. While awaiting that philosopher of integral language, perhaps it is possible for us to explore some of the key connections between the disciplines concerned with language. The present essay is an attempt to contribute to that investigation.

Grand Unified Theory. Who can believe in anything of the sort today?

Bad Hair Day

Today was Zoë's first day of school. Yesterday was sort of her .5th day of school; I took her to the pre-school down the road to visit, and she was having so much fun she didn't want to go home. Today was the first official day, though. It all went well, no tears--even from me. From zero to five days a week (in the morning). Yesterday I left her happily lecturing the teacher about dinosaur names. Today had further excitement in the form of that classic childhood experience: the self-administered haircut. I came in after putting the baby to sleep, and the nominally napping Zoë was moping on her bed, surrounded by a big fluffy pile of hair. To cap things off there was a big puddle of pee on the ground. I just burst out laughing, because she looked so ridiculous with a mullet. I had to cut the rest of it off to even things out. Now she's going for a very, very young Mia Farrow look. Pretty cute, actually, although she spent 15 minutes crying theatrically in front of the mirror. I'll post photos. I tragically didn't get any of the mullet.

Pattern Languages

It's a matter of whether you're content to focus on everyday events or whether you want to try to encompass the entire universe. If you go back to the literature written in ancient Greece or Rome, or during the Middle Ages and much of the Renaissance, you'll see writers trying to write not just about everything that exists but about everything that could exist. As soon as you open yourself to that possibility, you're going to find yourself talking about things like intelligent robots and monsters with Gorgon heads, because it's becoming increasingly obvious that such things could indeed exist. But what fascinates me is that the ancient Greeks realized these possibilities some five hundred years before Christ, when they didn't have the insights into the biological and physical sciences we have today, when there was no such thing as, say, cybernetics. Read the story of Jason and the Argonauts - you discover that Crete was guarded by a robot. Somehow the Greeks were alert to these possibilities despite the very primitive technology they had, and they put these ideas into their stories. Today, it's the SF writers who are exploring these things.
- Gene Wolfe

... For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibily represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things bring them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.

Albertus Secundus
tract. de cristall. spirit.
ed. Clagor et. Collof. lib. I, cap. 28
(in Joseph Knecht's holograph translation

I recently reread Hesse's Glass Bead Game back to back with William Gibson's Pattern Recognition; they seem to me to be part of ... an overall pattern. Let's start with the fact that both can be classified as science fiction, but somewhat uncomfortably.  What makes the classification uncertain is the absence of the generically-familiar focus of technology.

Glueless in Academe

On the vanity of academic journal culture.

All that is profound accidentally glues a mask to its face.
- Nietzsche

Oddly enough, Gary Sauer-Thompson makes the same joke. [UPDATE: no, he's corrected the typo.]

 

Bluedar Update

Here is a quick snap of Zoë's sketch of Bluedar. It looks like he's got four arms, but the upper bits are actually overall straps.

Further distinguishing marks of this mysterious hero are now known. Bluedar is a kid, although he is 'as big as daddy' and 'very strong'. He has a younger sister who 'looks exactly like Zoë.' He has no hair, only likes blue, and only eats wood. It turns out he has beaver teeth and a beaver tail. He wears overalls, as previously reported, and big rubber boots in case it rains.

OK, now we really need some comic artist to go to work on this project. I want a Wolverine-style portrait of Bluedar, chewing on a stogey-like stick of wood, looking like no one's going to stop him from rebuilding that bridge. Knowing my daughter's visual influences, I'm guessing 'hairless with beaver teeth' means we want a cross between Martian Manhunter - but in blue - and Munchy, from PB & J Otter. Wardrobe by Fuzzy Lumpkins.

Oh, and Bluedar has another sister - a tiny little girl,'the size of Little Miss My in the Moomin books'. She is named Centimeter. She has no powers but is 'very tough'.

Please feel free to suggest a likely origin story for Bluedar in comments.

Bluedar!

Zoë reached a new developmental stage today. She invented her first superhero. His name is Bluedar! He is blue and wears overalls. He has the power to rebuild bridges that supervillains have destroyed AND (in a stunning plot twist) at first the Justice League of America think he destroyed the bridge - since they show up while he is rebuilding it, after the Joker got away. Now what we need is some comic artist out there to show us what Bluedar looks like. Zoë's own sketch is intriguing but impressionistic. But her blue lego bridge was quite impressive. 

Lifemanship & life.after.theory

Since this has come up in comments to my dialogue post, some quick Saturday night thoughts regarding arguments to the effect that 'theory' is aristocratic.