“Equals” by Adam Phillips

This is another collection of Phillips’ essays, subdivided into three categories: Equals, Under Psychoanalysis, and Characters. Each essay is a self-contained piece, with the theme of the collection, on the nature of equality in relationships between people (or lack there of), ever-floating loosely in the background. Phillips first essay, “Superiority,” makes the point that “equality…. is the legitimation, if not the celebration, of conflict.” In order for there to be a real dispute there must be some kind of rough balance of standing between the parties. On the other hand, “the authoritarian order pre-empts conflict, which is in and of itself a primary value. And to value conflict—to prefer the openness of conflict to the closure of intimidation—necessitates some notion of equality.” Phillips continues by bringing it back to his field of expertise, “The aim of psychoanalysis, one could say, might be the precondition for democracy; that a person be able to more than bear conflict, and be able to see and enjoy the value of differing voices and alternative positions.”

In his next essay, “On Being Laughed At,” Phillips expands on his idea of how relationships between people often involve tensions. Indeed, he asserts that there often can even be tension between two parts of the Self. “In circulation with others—and in the circulation with ourselves that is called psychoanalysis—it becomes extremely difficult to sustain, to hold in place, our preferred images of ourselves, of who we would rather be…. We are always other than what we want to be…. We don’t look the same as we look to ourselves.” That is what is so piercing about getting laughed at. The self-constructed veil of illusion is lifted for all the public to see. Phillips suggests, “To grow up is to discover what it is one is unequal to.” Some people bear this revelation better than others. Phillips assumes that the ridiculer reveals more about himself than the one exposed to the ridicule. “To laugh at someone one must enjoy their hatred of being laughed at…. It is one thing to acknowledge—if one is psychologically minded to—that we are likely to project whatever it is we find unbearable about ourselves into others. It is quite another to ridicule or mock this unbearable something once it has been so projected.”

Phillips begins his second section, “Under Psychoanalysis”, with the essay, “Around and About Madness.” He quotes psychoanalyst John Rickman that “madness is when you can’t find anyone who can stand you.” Madness is inherently social. It is about what it says about the sane just as much as it is about the insane. “In so far as they don’t break the law…. they are more like people with disturbingly bad manners. People who, by not playing the game, make us wonder what the game is. And indeed why the rest of us have consented to play it…. Those people referred to (however loosely) as mad are always people who seem to be unable or unwilling to follow rules. Their language, their beliefs, their bodily gestures, their hygiene, their hopes and expectations can be wildly at odds with some putative norm. They remind us of what it is to be normal.”

In the essay “Making It Old,” Phillips discusses the baggage that we all carry from our past. He suggests, “Our preoccupations are the way our pasts go on in our future…. Memory is of desire; we are formulating, we are picturing, in what we call our memories disguised descriptions of previous and longed-for satisfactions and terrors…. One is always bringing ones own past to the past…. There is the past that can seem to be searching us out, while we go in search of other pasts.” He prolongs the theme of our past  continually playing a role in our present and future selves in his next essay, “Childhood Again.” He explains, “The details of a life, of course, can never be predicted; nor can the content or the exact working of the repetitions…. But what can be assumed is that there will be repetitions, and that these repetitions found their initial (and initiating) forms in childhood…. The experiences of childhood—if that is what they are—are at once our most privileged and elusive referents. Memory becomes the hope, in however disguised a form, of the possibility of satisfaction.”

The last section of Phillips’ book is a series of character sketches taken from his book reviews of biographies, as well as novels. Phillips continues to pile on the insights while attempting to analyze from afar. In “Svengali,” he asserts, “That people want things that apparently do them harm—that they can desire the unimproving thing—might make us wonder less about human depravity and rather more about the points that pleasure makes.” Returning to how people view their pasts in “Isherwood,” Phillips states, “It is only in retrospect that we can avoid being so narrow-minded about ourselves…. Recollection, Isherwood intimates, may be the best cure for egotism.” In a review of the novel, “Mr. Phillips,” Phillips describes how the eponymous hero views his life course as charted. He is a man full of superstition. “The feeling that there are other powers, whether malign or in some way on our side, makes life seem more like something going on inside a novel than the random, intractable thing that we have to go through unassisted.” Of course, the person Phillips is ostensibly analyzing to make this point, is, in point of fact, a character within Lanchester’s novel. In “Russell” Phillips gets back to his theme of how perilous relationships are between people, but sometimes even more so between one’s own Self. “Disappointment with other people is easier to deal with, and rather more exhilarating, than disappointment with oneself. If one can bear it, though, disappointment with oneself may lead somewhere: once you realise you’ve got your ideal self wrong you can come up with a new one.” Finally, in his penultimate essay, “Ravelstein,” Phillips makes one last point about how amorphous the play between humans can be when we try to relate to one another. “That we might be full of other people—engaged in endless mutual biography—makes a more private sense of self difficult to account for.”

“Statesman” by Plato (translated by C.J. Rowe)

This is another dialogue starring the mysterious Visitor of “Sophist” fame. Now, his interlocutor is Socrates’ namesake, the so-called Young Socrates. After bantering around for a bit, they get to the crux of the matter. The Visitor suggests, “that kingly rule was one of the sorts of expert knowledge…. It seems that of constitutions too the one that is correct in comparison with the rest, and alone a constitution, is the one in which the rulers would be found truly possessing expert knowledge, and not merely seeming to do so…. And whether they purge the city for its benefit by putting some people to death or else by exiling them, or whether again they make it smaller by sending out colonies somewhere like swarms of bees, or build it up by introducing people from somewhere outside and making them citizens—so long as they act to preserve it on the basis of expert knowledge and what is just, making it better than it was so far as they can, this is the constitution which alone we must say is correct.” The Visitor seems to be giving utmost leeway to the opinions of experts in ruling the polis. He continues, “It is clear that the art of the legislator belongs to that of the king; but the best thing is not that the laws should prevail, but rather the kingly man who possesses wisdom.” There goes rule of law. It comes down to personal wisdom versus legislation. “Law could never accurately embrace what is best and most just for all at the same time, and so prescribe what is best. For the dissimilarities between human beings and their actions, and the fact that practically nothing in human affairs ever remains stable, prevent any sort of expertise whatsoever from making any simple decision in any sphere that covers all cases and will last for all time.”

The Visitor uses a metaphor to explain the role of the ideal Statesman, “Just as a steersman, always watching out for what is to the benefit of the ship and the sailors, preserves his fellow sailors not by putting things down in writing but offering his expertise as law, so too in the same manner a constitution would be correct, would it not, if it issued from those who are able to rule in this way, offering strength of their expertise as more powerful than the laws?” The Visitor seems to want to let the experts steer the ship of State, as circumstances arise, how they see best, without being constrained by tradition, precedent, and, most certainly, legislation. But who will these expert statesmen be? It is obvious, according to the Visitor, “that a mass of any people whatsoever would never be able to acquire this sort of expert knowledge and so govern a city with intelligence; and that we must look for that one constitution, the correct one, in relation to a small element in the population, few in number, or even a single individual.” The Visitor does worry that false prophets might claim to be experts and claim that mantle to the detriment of the whole State. “If they were to do such a thing without having expert knowledge, they would be undertaking to imitate what is true, but would imitate it altogether badly.” The Visitor next reiterates whom he has in mind as experts. “No large collection of people is capable of acquiring any sort of expertise whatsoever…. Then if some sort of kingly expertise exists, neither the collection of people that consists of the rich, nor all the people together, could ever acquire this expert knowledge of statesmanship.” The Visitor concedes that this is a dangerous proposition as it will attract many false experts. “Then it is in this way that the tyrant has come about, we say, and the king, and oligarchy, and aristocracy, and democracy—because people found themselves unable to put up with the idea of that single individual of ours as monarch, and refused to believe that there would ever come to be anyone who deserved to rule in such a way, so as to be willing and able to rule with virtue and expert knowledge, distributing what is just and right correctly to all. They think that a person in such a position always mutilates, kills and generally maltreats whichever of us he wishes.” Remember, the Visitor is setting out his case for the ideal Statesman, the platonic form, which might never exist in reality, and contrasting it at times, with what actually happens in the polis of reality. To that end, he states, “So then we must also remove those who participate in all these constitutions, except for the one based on knowledge, as being, not statesmen, but experts in faction.” If it is not statesmanship by impartial intelligence, then rule devolves into command by party and faction.

The Visitor next returns to the responsibilities of a proper Statesman. “What is really kingship must not itself perform practical tasks, but control those with the capacity to perform them, because it knows when it is the right time to begin and set in motion the most important things in cities, and when it is the wrong time; and the others must do what has been prescribed for them.” The Visitor goes back to one of his favorite metaphors for the proper occupation of kingship- the weaver, “The one that controls all of these, and the laws, and cares for every aspect of things in the city, weaving everything together in the most correct way—this, embracing its capacity with the appellation belonging to the whole, we would, it seems, most appropriately call statesmanship.” The job of the Statesman is to weave together and balance the various personalities of the best men of the polis to make sure that these men are put in a position to care for the day to day functions of the State. Skill in rhetoric, generalship, and judging of the laws are subordinate to the primacy of statesmanship and, therefore, must be delegated and not necessarily practiced by the king. Achieving balance to set the State in equilibrium is paramount. Neither men of too much courage, nor men of too much moderation must exert undue pull on the levers of State—this balance is the role of the ideal statesman. To that end, the Visitor admonishes, “This is the single and complete task of kingly weaving-together, never to allow moderate dispositions to stand away from the courageous. Rather, by working them closely into each other as if with a shuttle, through sharing of opinions, through honors, dishonor, esteem, and the giving of pledges to one another, it draws together a smooth and ‘fine-woven’ fabric out of them, as the expression is, and always entrusts offices in cities to these in common…. For the dispositions of moderate people when in office are markedly cautious, just and conservative, but they lack bite, and a certain sharp and practical keenness…. And the dispositions of the courageous, in their turn, are inferior to the others in relation to justice and caution, but have an exceptional degree of keenness when it comes to action…. This marks the completion of the fabric which is the product of the art of statesmanship: the weaving together, with regular intertwining, of the dispositions of brave and moderate people—when the expertise belonging to the king brings their life together in agreement and friendship and makes it common between them, completing the most magnificent and best of all fabrics and covering with it all the other inhabitants of cities.”

“The Blind Assassin” by Margaret Atwood

Atwood’s novel is difficult to classify. It is part tragedy, part love story, part mystery, and part historical fiction. On top of all of that, it also contains a science fiction novel, entirely embedded within, as part of its plot. “It was a saying among them that only the blind are free.” As such, this is an intricately told story, with multiple layers that also play with chronological order and the reader’s sense of understanding through time. The novel’s very first sentence begins with a conclusion of sorts, “Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.”

The plot is the story of the rising fortunes and subsequent fall of the Chase family, button manufacturing tycoons from Port Ticonderoga, Ontario. The tale is told by Iris Griffin nee Chase, by 1999 the last surviving member of the clan. “Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I’ve found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them.” Through chapters that alternate between her present day circumstances, flashbacks of old family secrets, historical news clippings, and excerpts of the interior sci-fi novel, the story sets out the history of the Chase’s, from the turn of the 20th century, through the Great War, the Depression, and World War II. “The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.” The two Chase sisters, Iris and Laura, grow up together amidst great wealth, but also death, isolation, and responsibilities beyond their years. “Hand-kissing covered a multitude of sins. It was in Berlin that I learned to perfume my wrists.” The tone of the narrative is bitter, as is the tale. “For the children with their greedy little mouths represent the future, which like time itself will devour all now alive.”

“Sophist” by Plato (translated by Nicholas P. White)

This is a dialogue between Thaetetus and a philosopher visiting Athens from Elea, simply referred to throughout as the Visitor. It is a very civil conversation, with the two most often agreeing with one another and working together to move the arguments along. The dialogue’s main purpose is ostensibly to define what a sophist is. However, as the two men dig deeper, they must seek to parse out the natures of knowledge, being, belief, negation, sameness, and difference, all the while analyzing the meanings of forms and kinds.

The Visitor begins by explaining the difference between the educated and the ignorant. “Not knowing, but thinking that you know. That’s what probably causes all the mistakes we make when we think…. If someone thinks he’s wise, he’ll never be willing to learn anything about what he thinks he’s clever at…. [Therefore,] refutation is the principal and most important kind of cleansing.” The Visitor goes on to relate the sophist’s methods. “This appearing, and this seeming but not being, and this saying things but not true things—all these issues are full of confusion, just as they always have been.” He quotes his mentor Parmenides’ most famous dictum, “Never shall this force itself on us, that that which is not may be; While you search, keep your thought far away from this path.” The Visitor then asks of Thaetetus, “This form of speech of ours involves the rash assumption that that which is not is, since otherwise falsity wouldn’t come into being…. Do we dare to utter the sound that which in no way is?”

Thaetetus and the Visitor next explore this idea of negation in detail, first just scratching the surface. The Visitor begins, “That which is not can’t be applied to any of those which are…. We always apply this something to a being…. A person who says something has to be saying some one thing?… Someone who does not say something says nothing at all…. Therefore don’t we have to refuse to admit that a person like that speaks but says nothing? Instead, don’t we have to deny that anyone who tries to utter that which is not is even speaking?… But shall we say that any of those which are can ever belong to that which is not?… Whenever we speak of those which are not, aren’t we trying to apply numerical plurality to them?… Do you understand, then, that it’s impossible to say, speak, or think that which is not correctly by itself? It’s unthinkable, unsayable, unutterable, and unformulable in speech.” That is what the Visitor had learned from his mentor, Parmenides. However, the Visitor has already come to see how he contradicts his own thoughts. “I was the one who made the statement that that which is not should not share either in one or in plurality. But even so I’ve continued after all that to speak of it as one, since I say that which is not…. So in trying to attach being to it wasn’t I saying things that were contrary of what I said before?” He ends by challenging Thaetetus, “Try to say something correct about that which is not, without attaching either being, one, or numerical plurality to it.” The Visitor realizes that he will have to apply more scrutiny on his own accepted wisdoms. “In order to defend ourselves we’re going to have to subject father Parmenides’ saying to further examination, and insist by brute force both that that which is not somehow is, and then again that that which is somehow is not.”

Thaetetus and the Visitor continue by examining the natures of being and change. The Visitor begins, “Then both that which changes and also change have to be admitted as being…. The philosopher—the person who values these things the most—absolutely has to refuse to accept the claim that everything is at rest, either from defenders of the one or from friends of the many forms. In addition he has to refuse to listen to people who make that which is change in every way. He has to be like a child begging for “both,” and say that that which is—everything—is both the unchanging and that which changes.” The Visitor tackles this challenge by examining forms and kinds. “It takes expertise is dialectic to divide things by kinds and not to think that the same form is a different one or that a different form is the same…. So if a person can do that, he’ll be capable of adequately discriminating a single form spread out all through a lot of other things, each of which stands separate from the others. In addition he can discriminate forms that are different from each other but are included within a single form that’s outside them, or a single form that’s connected as a unit throughout many wholes, or many forms that are completely separate from others. That’s what it is to know how to discriminate by kinds how things can associate and how they can’t…. Some kinds will associate with each other and some won’t. Some will to a small extent and others will associate a great deal.”

Just when the two men feel that they have made some progress, they plunge back into the depths of confusion. The Visitor states, “The most important kinds we’ve just been discussing are that which is, rest, and change…. But that which is blends with both of them, since presumably both of them are…. But what in the world are the same and the different that we’ve been speaking of? Are they two kinds other than those three but necessarily always blending with them? And do we have to think of them as being five and not three? Or have what we’ve been calling the same and the different turned out, without our realizing it, to be among those three?… It’s impossible for the same and that which is to be one…. In fact, though, it turns out that whatever is different definitely has to be what it is from something that’s different…. It pervades all of them, since each of them is different from the others.”

Thaetetus and the Visitor hope to solve their difficulties by further examining differences along with the principle of negation. The Visitor, as usual, leads the way, “So it has to be possible for that which is not to be, in the case of change and also as applied to all the kinds. That’s because as applied to all of them the nature of the different makes each of them not be, by making it different from that which is. And we’re going to be right if we say that all of them are not in this same way. And on the other hand we’re also going to be right if we call them beings, because they have a share in that which is…. So as concerning each of the forms that which is is extensive, and that which is not is indefinite in quantity…. So even that which is is not, in as many applications as there are of the others, since, not being them, it is one thing, namely itself, and on the other hand it is not those others, which are an indefinite number.” The Visitor continues by parsing out that differences are not necessarily contrary in nature. “It seems that when we say that which is not, we don’t say something contrary to that which is, but only something different from it…. So we won’t agree with somebody who says that negation signifies contrary. We’ll only admit this much: when “not” and “non-” are prefixed to names that follow them, they indicate something other than the names, or rather, other than the things to which the names following the negation are applied.”

The Visitor concludes by trying to apply negation to the nature of being. He asks, “Should we say that just as the large was large, the beautiful was beautiful, the not large was not large, and the not beautiful was not beautiful, in the same way that which is not also was and is not being, and is one form among the many that are?” When Thaetetus agrees that this is so, the Visitor realizes that he has pushed the bounds of Parmenides’ grave warnings. However, the Visitor bravely goes on, “But we’ve not only shown that those which are not are. We’ve also caused what turns out to be the form of that which is not to appear. Since we showed that the nature of the different is, chopped up among all beings in relation to each other, we dared to say that that which is not really is just this, namely, each part of the nature of the different that’s set over against that which is…. Nobody can say that this that which is not, which we’ve made to appear and now dare to say is, is the contrary of that which is. We’ve said good-bye long ago to any contrary of that which is, and to whether it is or not, and also to whether or not an account can be given of it.”

“Repetition- A Venture in Experimenting Psychology” by Soren Kierkegaard (translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong)

This is an odd story in which Kierkegaard’s persona, Constantin Constantius, is tasked to give advice to a young romantic poet tragically in love. Kierkegaard begins, “repetition is a crucial expression for what “recollection” was to the Greeks. Just as they taught that all knowing is a recollecting, modern philosophy will teach that all life is repetition…. Repetition and recollection are the same movement, except in opposite directions, for what is recollected has been, is repeated backward, whereas genuine repetition is recollected forward…. It takes courage to will repetition…. [On the other hand,] recollection has the great advantage that it begins with the loss; the reason it is safe and secure is that it has nothing to lose.”

For the young lover enveloped in a tragic affair, “His mistake was incurable, and his mistake was that he stood at the end instead of at the beginning, but such a mistake is and remains a person’s downfall…. He began to grasp the misunderstanding himself; the adored young girl was already almost a vexation to him. And yet she was the beloved, the only one he had loved, the only one he would ever love. Nevertheless, he did not still love her, because he only longed for her…. She was merely the visible form, while his thoughts, his soul, sought something else that he attributed to her…. What traps him is not the girl’s lovableness at all but his regret over having wronged her by disorganizing her life…. Humanly speaking, his love cannot be realized. He has now come to the border of the marvelous; consequently, if it is to take place at all, it must take place by virtue of the absurd.”

Kierkegaard concludes by relating the tension between the universal and the exception. The ordinary observer will have difficulty discerning “the dialectical battle in which the exception arises in the midst of the universal, the protracted and very complicated procedure in which the exception battles his way through and affirms himself justified…. in a word, it is just as difficult as to kill a man and let him live. On the one side stands the exception, on the other the universal, and the struggle itself is a strange conflict between the rage and impatience of the universal over the disturbance the exception causes and its infatuated partiality for the exception…. Just as heaven rejoices more over a sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous, so does the universal rejoice over an exception…. The whole thing is a wrestling match in which the universal breaks with the exception, wrestles with him in conflict, and strengthens him through this wrestling. If the exception cannot endure the distress, the universal does not help him any more than heaven helps a sinner who cannot endure the pain of repentance.”

Kierkegaard continues on the theme of the poetic soul, “Such an exception is a poet, who constitutes the transition to the truly aristocratic exceptions, to the religious exceptions. A poet is ordinarily an exception…. A poet’s life begins in conflict with all life. The point is to find reassurance or legitimation, for he must always lose the first conflict, and if he wants to win immediately, then he is unjustified. My poet now finds legitimation precisely in being absolved by life the moment he in a sense wants to destroy himself…. He keeps a religious mood as a secret he cannot explain, while at the same time this secret helps him poetically to explain actuality…. For him the repetition is the raising of his consciousness to the second power…. If he had a deeper religious background, he would not have become a poet. Then everything would have gained a religious meaning…. At first sight, I perceived he was a poet—if for no other reason I saw it in the fact that a situation that would have been taken easily in stride by a lesser mortal expanded into a world event for him.”

“Outline” by Rachel Cusk

This is the first novel in Cusk’s trilogy of so-called auto-fiction. It is a loose recollection of stories about others, yet, at heart, it is the story of the self. The protagonist is a writer, on her way to teaching an amateur writing workshop in Athens. “In my experience painters are far less conventional than writers. Writers need to hide in bourgeois life like ticks need to hide in animal’s fur: the deeper they’re buried the better.” Her life in London has fallen apart. She was recently divorced, on uncertain terms with her children, and in search of a second mortgage to pay the bills. “I wasn’t sure it was possible, in marriage, to know what you exactly were, or indeed to separate what you were from what you had become through the other person. I thought the whole idea of a ‘real’ self might be illusory: you might feel, in other words, as though there were some separate, autonomous self within you, but perhaps that self didn’t actually exist.”

Cusk’s novel is structured so that a great deal of the action is in the narrator’s listening to the travails of the others she meets while on her journey. Being a writer, much of the commentary revolves around the use of language. “The best way to confront our fears is to put them in costume, so to speak; to translate them, for the simple act of translation very often renders things harmless.” The creepiest interlocutor the narrator encounters is her first, a former shipping tycoon now down on his luck. “He spoke a refined and formal kind of English that did not seem wholly natural, as though at some point it had been applied to him carefully with a brush, like paint. I asked him what his nationality was…. ‘You might say I have the mannerisms of an Englishman but the heart of a Greek. I am told,’ he added, ‘it would be much worse the other way around.’” At one point the narrator makes a remark which might be emblematic of Cusk’s whole novel, “I was beginning to see my own fears and desires manifested outside myself, was beginning to see in other people’s lives a commentary on my own.”

“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.”