“Fear and Trembling” by Soren Kierkegaard (translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong)

This essay is one long meditation on the faith in God displayed by Abraham in the Old Testament. Kierkegaard begins, “That man was not a thinker. He did not feel any need to go beyond faith; he thought that it must be supremely glorious to be remembered as its father, an enviable destiny to possess it, even if no one knew it…. By faith Abraham emigrated from the land of his fathers and became an alien in the promised land…. He left behind his worldly understanding, and he took along his faith.” Kierkegaard then lays out the underlying problem wrapped up with Abraham’s faith. “If a person lacks the courage to think his thought through all the way through and say that Abraham was a murderer, then it is certainly better to attain this courage than to waste time on unmerited eulogies. The ethical expression for what Abraham did is that he meant to murder Isaac; the religious expression is that he meant to sacrifice Isaac—but precisely in this contradiction is the anxiety that can make a person sleepless, and yet without this anxiety Abraham is not who he is.” Kierkegaard claims himself shattered by this paradox.

Thinking about Abraham is no easy thing. In fact, it is the hardest of things. Kierkegaard compares the heroes of pagan myth to Abraham. “I think myself into the hero; I cannot think myself into Abraham; when I reach that eminence, I sink down, for what is offered me is a paradox. I by no means conclude that faith is something inferior but rather that it is the highest, also that it is dishonest of philosophy to give something else in its place to disparage faith…. I cannot make the movement of faith, I cannot shut my eyes and plunge confidently into the absurd; it is for me an impossibility, but I do not praise myself for that. I am convinced that God is love…. But I do not have faith; this courage I lack.”

Kierkegaard makes the point that Abraham does not calculate. He does not reason. He puts all his trust in God. He puts his trust in the absurd, what cannot ever be. “Abraham I cannot understand; in a certain sense I can learn nothing from him except to be amazed…. Faith begins precisely where thought stops.” For Kierkegaard, the paradox is the tension between the universal and the individual, ethics and faith. “The story of Abraham contains, then, a teleological suspension of the ethical. As the single individual he became higher than the universal. This is the paradox, which cannot be mediated…. A person can become a tragic hero through his own strength—but not the knight of faith…. He who walks the narrow road of faith has no one to advise him—no one understands him. Faith is a marvel…. The paradox may be expressed in this way: that there is an absolute duty to God, for in this relationship of duty the individual relates himself as the single individual absolutely to the absolute…. Faith itself cannot be mediated into the universal, for thereby it is cancelled. Faith is this paradox, and the single individual simply cannot make himself understandable to anyone.” Kierkegaard again goes back to the difference between heroism and faith. “The tragic hero relinquishes himself in order to express the universal; the knight of faith relinquishes the universal in order to become the single individual…. Anyone who believes it is fairly easy to be the single individual can always be sure that he is not a knight of faith…. Humanly speaking, [the knight] is mad and cannot make himself understandable to anyone.”

When you remove all ethics, logic, and comprehension, faith is what remains. “To fight against the whole world is a consolation, to fight against oneself is frightful.” The absurdity of Abraham is the lack of doubt, the absolute faith in God. “At every moment, Abraham can stop; he can repent of the whole thing as a spiritual trial; then he can speak out, and everybody will be able to understand him—but then he is no longer Abraham. Abraham cannot speak, because he cannot say that which would explain everything (that is, so it is understandable): that it is an ordeal such that, please note, the ethical is the temptation…. Faith is the highest passion in a person. There perhaps are many in every generation who do not come to faith, but no one goes further.”

“The Makioka Sisters” by Junichiro Tanizaki (translated by Edward G. Seidensticker)

Tanizaki’s novel tells the story of an extended family in gradual decline during Japan’s pre-World War II years. As the title suggests, the novel tracks the lives of four sisters, as they age and cope with family travails, while living around the Osaka/Kyoto region. When the story begins, the two older sisters are already married, their husbands having taken the Makioka name, thus having been adopted into the family. However, the family name is not as illustrious as just a generation ago. The Makioka sisters’ parents have both died, leaving little money and no more business prospects. Therefore, both male heirs work in banking firms. “The Makiokas were an old family, of course, and probably everyone in Osaka had heard of them at one time or another. But still—Sachiko would have to forgive her for saying so—they could not live on their old glory forever.”

The family’s attempts to marry off the two younger sisters drives much of the plot. “It was nonetheless out of the question to have the younger sister marry first.” This novel details the traditions, forms, and appearances that a family of this class tries to keep up amidst the changing times. As war breaks out in Europe and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria threatens to broaden to the rest of China and throughout Asia, the Makioka family struggles to adapt to their new station in life. “Teinosuke preferred not to be too deeply involved in domestic problems, and particularly with regard to Etsuko’s upbringing he was of the view that matters might best be left to his wife. Lately, however, with the outbreak of the China Incident, he had become conscious of the need to train strong, reliant women, women able to support the man behind the gun.”

In early twentieth century Japanese society, blood still formed thick bonds, even as families divided, expanded, and dispersed. In this novel, when the eldest sister, Tsuruko, and her husband, Tatsuo, the family patriarch, are forced to move to Tokyo for a bank job, tensions in the family are exposed as the two younger sisters are reluctant to follow, as expectations would dictate. “Aunt Tominaga was of the view that, although the younger sisters might well stay with Sachiko while the main house was in Osaka, it would be better for them now to go to Tokyo. After all, they belonged to the main house…. If the two sisters were to leave the main house and stay in Osaka, it might lead to talk and reflect on Tatsuo’s name as head of the family.” Money was becoming tight of late, but protocols and appearances had to be kept up at all costs. Calligraphy, poetry, cherry blossom gazing, and kabuki occupy most of the sisters’ time. “The cherries in the Heian Shrine were left to the last because they, of all the cherries in Kyoto, were the most beautiful. Now that the great weeping cherry in Gion was dying and its blossoms were growing paler each year, what was left to stand for the Kyoto spring if not the cherries in the Heian Shrine?”

Throughout this novel, the differences between the regional Japanese micro-cultures, their dialects, and the family status of the various characters all play pivotal roles. “The waiting room was full of strangers, women of the Tokyo breed, none of whom seemed ready to strike up a conversation. Ashamed, even when they talked in hushed voices, to have their west-country accents overheard, the sisters felt as if they were in the heart of the enemy country.” The youngest sister, Takeo, thoroughly westernized, pushes all the bounds of the rest of the family, as they quietly struggle to reign her back into conformity. “If she must have a hobby, doll-making will do. Dressmaking is quite out of the question…. The people in Tokyo still worried about family and position, and it seemed to them a disgrace that the Makioka family should produce a seamstress.” The other Makioka mistress, Yukiko, alternates between being comically and tragically inept at attracting a suitable husband, to the rest of her family’s chagrin. “The fact was that Yukiko could never be at home in the modern world. She would therefore always retain something pure and maidenly. What she needed was a husband who would place a proper value on her virtues, someone who would see it as his duty to cherish and protect them.” Through it all, the sisters show undying love and devotion for one another, even as each tests the others’ patience to no end. “He slid the door open to find Yukiko sitting on the veranda with her knees tucked under her chin, while Takeo cut her toenails for her…. It was only a glimpse, and yet there was a beauty in the scene, sister with sister, that left a deep impression on him. Though they might disagree, there would not often be serious conflicts between them.” At heart, this story is about four women who are struggling to keep up their traditions in a Japan that was rapidly industrializing and transforming beyond the recognition of their own comfortable childhoods. “And what if she had married the rustic gentleman? More than sour grapes, she was sure, made her know that she would not have been happy. If he spent his life on slow trains between one out-of-the-way little station and another, she could not believe that she would have been happy with him. Her decision had been the right one.”

“Conscious” by Annaka Harris

This is a short book on the nature on consciousness. Harris begins by stating that “consciousness is experience itself.” She refines her definition by quoting Thomas Nagel, “An organism is conscious if there is something that it is like to be that organism.” Consciousness is an internal phenomenon. Harris reveals that “it’s possible for conscious experience to exist without any outward expression at all.” People with “locked-in” syndrome and people who suffered through “anesthesia awareness” have attested to that. Consciousness also is experienced only after the human body has first experienced sensory stimuli. “Only after all the relevant input has been received by the brain do the signals get synchronized and enter your conscious experience through a process called “binding”…. Binding also helps solidify other percepts in time and space, such as the color, shape, and texture of an object—all of which are processed by the brain separately and melded together before arriving in our consciousness as a whole.”

Harris questions whether any aspects of human experience require consciousness. Does our consciousness control our bodies or does it just come along for the ride? “We can go so far as to say that few (if any) of our behaviors need consciousness in order to be carried out. But at an intuitive level, we assume that because human beings act in certain ways and are conscious—and because experiences such as fear, love, and pain feel like such powerful motivators within consciousness—our behaviors are driven by our awareness of them and otherwise would not occur.” Interestingly, the only exception she sees is that “consciousness seems to play a role in behavior when we think and talk about the mystery of consciousness…. How could an unconscious robot (or a philosophical zombie) contemplate conscious experience itself without having it in the first place?” The knowledge of consciousness itself is based solely on one’s own immediate subjective experience. Harris reiterates, “the qualitative experience is the entire subject, and without it, I can have no knowledge of it whatsoever.”

Harris explains why the idea of consciousness is so wrapped up in human beings’ conception of the Self. She states, “When we talk about consciousness, we usually refer to a “self” that is the subject of everything we experience…. We have what feels like a unified experience.” Binding helps create this illusion of the cohesive Self. “Without binding processes, you might not even feel yourself to be a self at all. Your consciousness would be more like a flow of experiences in a particular location in space—which would be much closer to the truth.”

Harris seems receptive to the probability of panpsychism, though not willing to endorse it with certainty. She states, “One branch of modern panpsychism proposes that consciousness is intrinsic to all forms of information processing, even inanimate forms such as technological devices; another goes so far as to suggest that consciousness stands alongside the other fundamental forces and fields that physics has revealed to us.” She continues by quoting Galen Strawson, “panpsychism is the most plausible theoretical view to adopt if one is an out-and-out naturalist…. who holds that physicalism is true…. [that] everything that concretely exists is physical…. [and that] all physical phenomena are forms of energy…. [because] panpsychism is simply a hypothesis about the ultimate intrinsic nature of this energy, the hypothesis that the intrinsic nature of energy is experience…. Physics is untouched by this hypothesis. Everything true in physics remains true.”

Finally, Harris rebuts the “combination problem” inherent in conceptions of panpsychism— the idea of smaller conscious units having to combine into larger ones. She states, “perhaps it’s wrong to talk about a subject of consciousness, and it’s more accurate to instead talk about the content available to conscious experience at any given location in space-time, determined by the matter present there…. Considering consciousness to be fundamental allows for matter to have a certain internal character everywhere, in all its different forms. And in this view, consciousness is not interacting with itself, as it would be in the act of “combining.”” She continues, “The solution to the combination problem is that there is really no “combining” going on at all with respect to consciousness itself. Consciousness could persist as is, while the character and content change, depending on the arrangement of the specific matter in question.” This, again, relates to the illusion of a unified Self. “Experiences of consciousness need not be continuous or maintained as individual selves or subjects…. The illusion of being a self, along with an experience of continuity over time through memory, may in fact be a very rare form of consciousness.”

“Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by Friedrich Nietzsche (translated by R.J. Hollingdale)

This is Nietzsche at his enigmatic best. “He who writes in blood and aphorisms does not want to be read, he wants to be learned by heart.” Nietzsche creates an alter-ego, Zarathustra, half-hermit and half-superman, who wanders the mountains and spits out life advice in the form of riddles to his small band of followers. He also occasionally takes time out of his day to talk with animals and fly through the air over passing ships. This is no stale philosophical treatise.

Nietzsche begins, “It is not your sin, but your moderation that cries to heaven…. Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman—a rope over an abyss.” Nietzsche is not concerned with the common man, but the remnant living above the mob. “To lure many away from the herd—that is why I have come…. Behold the good and the just! Whom do they hate most? Him who smashes their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker—but he is the creator. Behold the faithful of all faiths! Whom do they hate the most? Him who smashes their tables of values, the breaker, the law-breaker—but he is the creator…. I shall leap over the hesitating and the indolent. Thus may my going-forward be their going-down!” 

Nietzsche explains religious faith and higher virtue thus, “It was suffering and impotence—that created all afterworlds; and that brief madness of happiness that only the greatest sufferer experiences…. If you have a virtue and it is your own virtue, you have it in common with no one…. Let your virtue be too exalted for the familiarity of names; and if you speak of it, do not be ashamed to stammer…. only thus do I wish the good…. To have many virtues is to be distinguished, but it is a hard fate; and many a man has gone into the desert and killed himself because he was tired of being a battle and battleground of virtues…. Every virtue is jealous of the others, and jealousy is a terrible thing…. Man is something that must be overcome: and for that reason you must love your virtues—for you will parish by them.”

Nietzsche continues by describing relations between humans. He waxes on about the nature of the State, of wealth, power and freedom. “Where a people still exists, there the people do not understand the state and hate it as the evil eye and sin against custom and law…. But the state lies in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it says, it lies—and whatever it has, it has stolen…. I call it the state where everyone, good and bad, is a poison-drinker: the state where everyone, good and bad, loses himself: the state where universal slow suicide is called—life…. Just look at these superfluous people! They acquire wealth and make themselves poorer with it…. They all strive towards the throne: it is a madness they have—as if happiness sat upon the throne! Often filth sits upon the throne—and often the throne upon filth, too…. A free life remains for great souls. Truly, he who possesses little is so much the less possessed: praised be a moderate poverty! Only there, where the state ceases, does the man who is not superfluous begin.” 

Nietzsche is obsessed with the creators, especially the creators of subjective value. “Truly, men have given themselves all their good and evil. Truly, they did not take it, they did not find it, it did not descend to them as a voice from heaven. Man first implanted values into things to maintain himself—he created the meaning of things, a human meaning!… A change in values—that means a change in the creators of values. He who has to be a creator always has to destroy.” Nietzsche knows that the creator of values will be disdained by the mob. “It is more noble to declare yourself wrong than to maintain you are right, especially when you are right. Only you must be rich enough for it.”

Cultural inertia and contingency block the creative path. “Not only the reason of millennia—the madness of millennia too breaks out in us. It is dangerous to be an heir. We are still fighting step by step with the giant Chance, and hitherto the senseless, the meaningless, has still ruled over mankind.” The way forward is solitary learning. “Guard yourselves against Zarathustra! And better still: be ashamed of him! Perhaps he has deceived you. The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends. One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil…. The enlightened man goes among men as among animals…. As long as men have existed, man has enjoyed himself too little: that alone, my brothers, is our original sin!”

Nietzsche pitches war against the good and the just. “With whom does the greatest danger for the whole human future lie? Is it not with the good and just?—with those who say and feel in their hearts: ‘We already know what is good and just, we possess it too; woe to those who are still searching for it!’ And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm! And whatever harm the world-calumniators may do, the harm the good do is the most harmful harm. Oh my brothers, someone who once looked into the heart of the good and just said: ‘They are the Pharisees.’ But he was not understood. The good and just themselves could not understand him: their spirit is imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably clever…. The good have to crucify him who devises his own virtue…. For the good—cannot create: they are the beginning of the end.”

Nietzsche espouses almost Buddhist-like ideas on the nature of the Self and the cycle of life. “You are the teacher of the eternal recurrence, that is now your destiny!… We know what you teach: that all things recur eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have already existed an infinite number of times before and all things with us…. “Now I die and decay,” you would say, “and in an instant I shall be nothingness. Souls are as mortal as bodies. But the complex of causes in which I am entangled will recur—it will create me again! I myself am part of these causes of the eternal recurrence.””

Nietzsche speaks of the temptations of the secure and easy life of the everyman. “Even a prison at last seems bliss to such restless people as you. Have you ever seen how captured criminals sleep? They sleep peacefully, they enjoy their new security. Take care that you are not at last captured by a narrow belief, a hard, stern illusion! For henceforth everything that is narrow and firm will entice and tempt you.” Nietzsche, again, reiterates that even his followers must chart their own paths. “I am a law only for my own, I am not a law for all…. And let us not be equal before the mob. You Higher Men, depart from the market-place!” Man must create to overcome himself, but also know his limits, if he has them. “And you should not pretend to be saints in those matters in which your fathers were vicious!” Famously, Nietzsche advised, “Nothing is true, everything is permitted.”