Abolutism vs. Relativism

So my friend R., a professor of philosophy trained in the British/American analytical school and now a specialist in ethics, has recently told me that he wants to write a book about how the move in the U.S. toward relativism and away from the belief in absolute truth has resulted in the slow and painful demise of science and will eventually, if not stopped or reversed, lead to the death of science.

When I asked him for an example, he cited Kuhn and his book The Nature of Scientific Revolutions (if I have that title right). If you know the concept of paradigm shifting, then you at least have come under the indirect influence of Kuhn.

R. feels there is some middle ground between the two extremes and he'll be arguing for and demonstrating how to achieve that middle ground in his book.

We stand on opposite sides of the argument, I suspect, with my own inclination to support Kuhn's thesis that science (and all other disciplines) are mostly paradigmatic, and as the times change and people change, paradigms shift.

I also hold with Nietzsche that there is no truth with a capital "T", but rather there are multiple perspectives on basically everything. To have a fuller appreciation of a "fact" say is to consider as many perspectives on it as you can muster and how you relate to them and they to you in the world.

One current philosopher who holds the view that I endorse is the neo-pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, who now teaches at Stanford University, I believe, in the comparative literature department. Rorty was educated in analytic philosophy, and even taught it at Princeton for many years, but rebelled against it finally, discovered Dewey, Davidson, and other pragmatic philosophers with whom he agreed, and also developed an appreciation for Heiddegger, the late Witgenstein, and the postmodernist philosophe Jacques Derrida. These inclinations led Rorty to be considered an outcast by his more traditional colleagues and drove him to seek appointments in comparative literature, first at a school in Virginia, I believe, and then finally in Stanford. Rorty is a prolific writer and touches upon the whole notion of "truth" and its nature on the opposite side of the argument from my friend R.

So it should be interesting going forward. R. and I often talk about his article and book ideas and I often read drafts and give him my feedback. He knows about my own inclination toward Continental philosophy and views it with suspicion, but maybe on some slight level, he also values it as a modest glimpse into the enemy camp.

For my part, I'm trying to educate myself in my own philosophical leanings, but it's a long road. Ahead of me are many crucial works to ingest and time, as we all know, is fleeting at best.

On my many motorcycle rides into work from my Texas hill country home, I try to stay focused on the potential road hazards ahead and all around me, but some of my reading creeps into consciousness now and again. I'm reading some Rorty now, but also a book by Kellner, a philosophy prof from UT of 20 years ago whose classes on the Frankfurt School I sat in on and who now teaches at UCLA and was, when I knew him, a little Marxist. Today he along with a partner prof from UT El Paso are carving out some theoretical territory that has to do with what they call the "Postmodern Turn." They theorize that we are between "modernism" and "postmodernism" and that a number of authors, Debord, Baudrillard, and others, are exempla of this "turn." Kellner and Davis would plop down on my side of the absolutist vs. relativist argument. Rorty characterizes the sides as essentialist vs. antiessentialist.

More on this to come as the year unfolds and R. develops his thesis.

To Fall Is to Regain Humility

So when I got my Harley, I had the good sense to have engine guards put on it (some call 'em crash bars). They stick out to both sides of the bike, and when you drop the bike (which I've done three times now), they keep the chrome engine and air cleaner and the foot pegs and the brake and all the things that kind of stick out--all from getting scratched or marred or otherwise damaged and hence expensive to fix.

But dropping the bike itself has become kind of a ritual with me. I'm learning each time which kinds of situations create the likelihood of a fall, and I'm also learning how much I can resist, at which point I have to give in and just let go and live with the consequences, and how quickly I can "recover" my composure and set the 670 pound bike back upright again.

Today after I installed highway pegs on the crash bars so that I can stretch my legs out for relief when the normal mid-peg position leads to leg cramps, I also did something I've never done before. I took the bike for a spin sans gloves, helmet, or leather jacket. It was one of the most liberating feelings I had felt in a long time, and then when I got back to the office and was all full of myself as I backed the bike into the slanted parking space, viola, I felt it tipping dangerously too far to the left and I tried to correct it a bit, but realized it had passed the "tipping point," so I just let go and let it (and me) go down. But I was up in a sec and righted the bike and saw that it was none the worse for the fall.

But I myself had a mini-epiphany that told me on a bike, you can't let yourself be too self-endeared lest you over-reach your balance point.

So what does all this have to do with philosophy? Everything. For one, on my trip I stopped by Borders and snuck a read in the Cambridge History of Philosophy book I'm planning to buy tomorrow (at a 30 percent discount; yay). I read about the medieval philosopher Averoes (and also Maimonides) and how they were jewish and islamic in a Spain that was in the midst of its 300 years, Arabic-ruled period. My roots are from this part of Spain (Cordoba; Andaluz) and so I keep being drawn to the thinkers of that period.

But that's not the real philosophy connection I'm getting at. The "real" one is too obvious to state and it has to do with self awareness and caring for the self and moderation in all things and the like. I don't need to talk down to you to explain this; it's plenty obvious.

But I will plant a seed for future discussion. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig talks about the period among early Greek philosophy when the notion of dichotomies first got started: you know, the opposites of good/bad, hot/cold, mind/body and all of that. And with Aristotle, the naming of parts and the apotheosis of parts. Pirsig says rubbish, a motorcycle is not a collection of mechanical parts. It's something greater. And to divide it is to do it injustice. And I would go into this in more depth, but that is the topic of a future entry, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, know that I know how crucial to fully and freely living the understanding of humility is. Perhaps at some point, I won't have to be reminded of this by dropping my bike, but if that's what it takes, then so be it. Egos were made for self-correcting and it's a healthy enterprise.

Con Safos


--Arnaut

Only the Lonely

A friend of mine who rides motorcycles said it just a few minutes ago. "I know you understand," said he. "When you're out on your motorcycle, it's just you, God, and the universe."

Yep, I get it, even though I'm a pragmatic atheist and so would not capitalize the word "god" the way he does.

There certainly is something about the solitude you enjoy on a motorcycle ride through the country. You know that you are vulnerable to all kinds of mishaps because you're so exposed to the elements and you're only supported by two wheels and forward-force, but that makes the solitude even sweeter.

You also know that a deer, or a semi-cognizant driver, or any of a number of things could intrude and end your life in a millisecond. But you accept the risk, in part, so that you can enjoy that feeling of aloneness in the universe my friend spoke of. It's not so much feeling insignificant because of the hugeness of it all; it's more like feeling connected to the pavement, the weather, the road conditions and that "extension" of existence that often gets lost when you're at the office or in an automobile in traffic or in many other soul-numbing situations.

Motorcyclists have this three-finger dropped-arm salute they greet one another with when they meet out on those long, lonely stretches of highways. My wife describes the greeting as "very sweet," and she's right, although most of us Harley riders would utilize a more Anglo-Saxon war-mongering kind of description, if we could conjure up a description of any kind on short notice, that is, because being out on the lonely road means being without language for awhile. It's a visceral kind of thing. You'd more likely grunt than string together vowels and consonants.

Not prone to metaphysical musings, I nevertheless sense something elemental in a long, country-road, solitary motorcycle ride. Maybe it's closer to pragmatism in philosophy than say to transcendental idealism or any of the other "isms." It just plain feels good.

It's like: "Ah. There now. Whew. Great." and on and on monosyllabically until one runs out of the need to attempt to describe it.

With apologies to Nike: you just do it. And you just get it. That's it, Marmaduke. That's just plain it.

Motorcycles and the Art of Living on the Edge

I once had a friend, a deeply philosophical person, whose head was always immersed in thought to the point of distraction for matters of everyday life. Realizing this was a potential problem, he went off to Alaska to work on a fishing boat. His reasoning was that with sharp hooks flying by at alarming speeds, he'd have to focus on these dangerous elements in order to survive. But he'd also have the depth of the ocean as a symbolic reminder of the collective unconscious and he'd have his days to swing about in his hammock and reading Kirkegaard. This latter act almost did get him killed by one of the shipmates who didn't take kindly to deep thinkers, but therein lies another story.

This current blog entry is about motorcycles and philosophy and marks my return to blog land after a pretty lengthy absence.

At the age of 58, about 2 months ago, I became a Harley guy. This is actually pretty funny when you consider that I'm of small stature (5'7") and prone to nerdiness. You could ask many of the people who've known me throughout my life what kind of 2-wheeled transportation I might go for, and many would offer up a bicycle as the speediest or perhaps a motor scooter as a stretch. But no one would say a Harley, unless it would be my friend who once described me as having the heart of a rugby player trapped in a ping pong player's body.

And that's the connection between my story of my new Harley and my friend G.'s story of Alaska fishing. To wit: in order to drive and survive on a Harley, you have to focus. You have to constantly review the condition of the road and predict the behavior of cars in front of you, behind you, and to all sides of you. As one instructor of a national motorcycle safety course said to we students, "You must never be surprised by anything."

Statistics say that most accidents happen to motorcyclists in the first six months of owning their first bikes and within 25 miles of their homes. The most common kind of two-vehicle accident is a motorcyclist colliding with a left-turning auto. The most common kind of one-vehicle accident is a motorcyclist mis-judging the slope of a curve and swinging so wide as to leave the roadway (unless felled by an oncoming car who just happens to be swinging through that same curve in the opposite direction).

My wife was at first completely against my becoming a motorcyclist. Recently, she has warmed up to the idea for this reason. If at 58 you're not already a motorcyclist, then you probably don't have that many chances left to you to become one. Only a few years younger than I, my wife is taking stock of her life and being mindful of the many things, some of them involving risk or expense, that she wants to do before it's "too late." Traveling to Italy to visit the land of her forbears is chief among those.

I told a friend of mine (a professor of philosophy) that I named my motorcycle Foucault. "That's a precious name for a motorcycle," he replied. "Are you going to name your left glove and right glove Discipline and Punish?" You have to be a Foucault fan to get that joke.

But the joke ties back in to philosophy as the overriding theme of this blog. I've promised myself that I will ride my motorcycle often as a reward to myself for continuing to study philosophy and for getting back into physical exercise to combat the growth of my girth and the weaking of my musculature.

My current reading program goes something like this: Hume (selected), Kant (all), Nietzsche (all), Hegel (selected), Husserl (selected), Merleau-Ponty (selected), Sartre (all major), Heiddeger (major), Foucault (all), Derrida (all) and then selected others: Levinas, Deleuze, Berlin, Rorty, Lyotard, Eco, and so on.

If you're steeped in analytic philosophy then you'll note I'm not covering that area. Rather, I'm concentrating on authors that are part of the Continental tradition and that could also be said to have created a new discipline that's more related to cultural studies than philosophy by itself. It's a very different approach to philosophy--the Continental approach. To study along this path means to study a philosopher's entire works and to "think them through" as a way to both understand what they had to say (much of it very difficult and dense stuff) and to add to your own arsenal of thought.

The connection, then, with riding Foucault the motorcycle and reading Foucault the critic of culture is that both acts carry with them significant risks and also require an exertion of will beyond the everyday. With who knows how few days of life I have left to me, the last thing I want to be accused of is living it in a mundane, ordinary way.

My motorcylce weighs 672 pounds or so. I weigh about 207 pounds. My pile of philosophy books weigh more than I can hope to measure. But it's a nice weight to take on.

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We Are Sport for the gods

I'm finishing up a reading of Homer's Iliad and it's made me more contemplative than usual. Set down in writing around 800 something B.C.E., and relating a tale of warfare that occurred seveal hundred years prior, it has often been credited with giving us a view of pre-Socratic Greek cosmology and the like.

Setting aside for a moment the sheer majesty of a 24 book poem that was apparently recited orally without crib sheet to the accompanyment of some sort of ancient Greek stringed instrument, The Iliad is war up close and personal. You get graphic descriptions of warrior taunting warrior before slitting a gut with a sword and watching guts spill out on to the ground, or spears piercing eye sockets, or battle axes cleaving bodies in two.

The setting is the 10th year of the Acheaeans against the Trojans over Paris stealing Helen and cuckolding Meneleus.

But much more is at work in the cosmology. The Greek gods are very much involved in the conflict, knowing the outcome before it is to happen, obviously, but also taking sides and saving their favorites while helping the favored destroy thier ill favored. These are gods who are immortal, but in every other regard, very human. They sleep around, even with their own daughters and sons and also with mortals.

This is long before notions of reason and the unconscious, so pretty much every act by a human has divine intervention of some sort linked to it.

It makes me think of Vietnam (also 10 years as far as the U.S. was concerned) and the current situation in Iraq. As much as we don't want to admit it, there is something of a holy war at work in Iraq. U.S. influenced judeo-christian ethics against Moslem fundamentalism.

I feel for the warriors involved in this conflict. They seem at times to resemble the Acheaens and the Trojans--mere sword wielders who are being swept into conflict by distant "lords" whose motivation is purely self-interest and power.

One would think and hope that we could learn something about how to live on the planet together from studying the foibles and triumpths of ancient history (and not so ancient history), but as we are reminded time and time again, we learn little to nothing from past mistakes.

The other burr that gets under my saddle is that leaders such as Bush have this god-like power to move us into these kinds of conflicts and send young men and women to their deaths and there doesn't appear to be a damn thing we mere mortals can do about it.

And so we brood, like Achilles outside his tent, at the shame and injustice and loss-of-face of it all, but to what end?

I don't have an answer but I damned sad that I don't. Shame on me and shame on us.

Learning from Others

I just returned from the Texas Gulf Coast of Port Aransas. My wife, A., our good friends R. and J., and their daughter L. and her boyfriend B., all journeyed down for a weekend of surf, sea, walks, talks, food, laughter and general rejuvenation.

I learned that R. is unbeatable at Scrabble because of his profound understanding of and love of strategy. I learned that A. and J. are unselfish caretakers whose value, to me, is priceless. I learned that L. and B. are tender and I was moved by the way they touched one another (and touched my heart).

I brought down books for us all, one of which was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. This one was for me, who had put off reading the book for some unclear reason since its publication in 1974. So make that 31 years. And now I've read it and been extremely moved by it. Maybe I waited 31 years because I was just ready to read it. The fellow at half-price books sho sold it to me said it took him six months to get through it and that everyone he's talked to took a year or two to navigate it. I scratched my head in wonder at that; I got through it in a week of off and on reading. It seemed clear and easy to me, but maybe that's because I read it as a relief read (sort of like a marathon-recovery run) to get a break from Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

If you've read ZMM, then you know that its narrator, Robert Pirsig, wrote it in the aftermath of a massive dose of "involuntary" shock treatments designed to rid himself of his insanity. His alter ego, Phaedrus, makes an appearance in the book as the personality that used to inhabit Robert's body before the shock treatments were brought to bear to destroy him. Robert and his young son of 11 or 13; somewhere around that age, are on a motorcycle trip from Minnesota to California, and along the way, Phaedrus becomes more and more a presence in the story, as does the recounting of events leading up to the mental breakdown, as does philosophy, as does a tension between father and son that one wonders if either can survive, and then finally, Phaedrus re-inhabits Robert, he and son reconcile, and the story ends on a tentative yet hopeful note. The son himself, who has apparently shown signs of mental fragility, has some hope in observing his father that he, too, can re-integrate, or at least avoid dis-integration.

In the edition that I read, Robert's epilogue discoses a sad post-script to his son Chris' fate. Just two weeks before his 23rd birthday (in 1984, 10 years after the original publication) and a few days before he was going to fly to England for a reunion with his father, he was stabbed in the chest outside the Zen center in San Francisco and died on the sidewalk.

This startling news lends a poignant after image to the story that I'm still awash in.

I picked up Pirsig's sequel, Lila, just today. Written 15 years after ZMM, which was subtitled "An Inquiry into Values"; Lila is subtitled "An Inquiry into Morals." I'm sure it will be a compelling read.

But I started off this blog with the title "Learning from Others." And that's one of the epiphanies I've recently had--that we are in the world to learn from others. The other epiphany was/is that we are in the world to care for others.

I care deeply for my Texas Gulf vacation companions. Even though our retreat lasted only a couple of days, I think we all came away with a little bit more knowledge of one another and recharged through the mutual caring we all extended to one another.

In this time of larger global calamities, we must invest ourselves all the more seriously in such small mutual exchanges of positive energy. It seems to be our only hope to nurture the re-integration of the Phaedrus in all of us.