Doug Bruns

Posts Tagged ‘Philosophy’

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Woof, woof. Bark.

In Dogs, Philosophy, Religion, Thinkers on April 10, 2012 at 7:35 pm

I was at a book reading a few evenings ago. Two rows in front of me sat a woman and next to her, on its own seat, perched an ivory-colored terrier. The dog was well-behaved and I was enjoying her (his?) presence when it turned and looked at me through the slats of the ladder-back chair. Her eyes were like brilliant black marbles tucked in a fluff of silk. I stared into them, lost, and was suddenly and unexpectedlly overwhelmed with the thought of those eyes locked on her master, then closing forever on the stainless steel veterinarian’s table. I chased the thought away it was so immediately and consumingly dark and troubling. Why such a thought would occur to me is a mystery. I’m not dark that way; but animals have always held an incomprehensible sway over me.

It is possibly apocryphal but reported that upon finding a horse being abused on the streets of Turin, Nietzsche threw himself, sobbing, around the neck of the beast. The event so overwhelmed the fragile philosopher that he never recovered, never spoke another word, and plummeted into a psychosis from which he did not recover. One can profess a will to power but protecting an animal might be the greatest philosophy.

I’ve had dogs all my life. One dog lost to illness years ago prompted a friend’s comment, “That must be like losing a family member.” No, it was not like losing, it was losing a family member. The most violent mourning I’ve ever experienced was at the loss of my Maggie a year and a half ago. As I write this my little Lucy, a terrier mix, is asleep at the office door, putting herself between me and any intruder who might make the mistake of crossing her without my permission.

Any philosophy I might have must include the beasts.

Hubristic medieval philosophers held that animals had no soul because they had no self-consciousness. Perhaps in that fact alone we hold the  evidence of a superior soul-filled being. This seems provable in that animals will not burn witches at the stake nor slaughter whales.

It is maybe that I want to be more like a dog and less like a human being. I find in them evidence of how to live in a moment so completely as to exist in full vibrancy. Too, I recognize love in a dog more readily and without apprehension than I do in people. Surely, that is a teaching. A dog does not make professions of faith, does not pray, does not sin nor seek redemption. Those are human designs extraneous to an animal intent on spirited life. There is joy at a dog park that is not found in a church. That is where I go to pray.

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Buzzwords of authenticity

In Life, Philosophy, The Examined Life on March 12, 2012 at 2:40 pm

There is an article in the current Yankee magazine about the tradition of the Maine guide. At its heart, the guide program here in Maine is the practice of handing down skills and knowledge, guide to guide. It is, by definition, a tradition, like an apprenticeship. The article speaks to the context of “ritual history” verses “artifact history.” Artifact history is stuff, the offal of civilization, the things one finds in antique stores and museums. Ritual history, however, is the action of a skill handed down, including the knowledge of time and place contained in the memory of the teacher, drawing on previous teachers. There seems such natural symmetry to history practiced, if that is the right word, in this manner.

Turning still to contemporary culture, I received a catalog from a company called Ibex. They specialize in outdoor clothing. The catalog is quite nice and filled with lovely photography and interesting copy. Not all the copy is specific to selling clothes, at least not directly. There are several short essays that articulate the life-style choices of the Ibex clothes wearer. They are good little pieces, and frankly inspiring. One title, in particular, caught my eye: “Do (Authentic) Things.” The piece describes a sixth generation Vermonter, Bob Harrington, who runs a 140 acre sap farm. He collects sap with a horse-drawn tank. Drawing an overlap between their clothing and Harrington’s story, the copy reads, “We understand taking a longer road, a road tied to an artisan product and a strong connection to the natural world. We get it.” Consumerism aside, I respond to the pitch with a good deal of appreciation.

The business of authenticity has held center to my attentions for some time. It is the classic challenge: how to ensure that your experience of experience is valid. I have to reject in principle Sartre and Heidegger who held that modern civilization is already lost, that authenticity had been crushed by modern cultural norms and the attendant technologies. However, despite my rejection of that claim, it does not escape me that we first turn to outdoor guides and sap farmers when thinking of a life drawn authentic. I enjoy the comforts of modern existence. I’m not a Luddite. But there seems something fishy about much of modern existence (perhaps what Roland Barthes meant by “the plastic attempts of modernity”); so devoid it often appears of ritual history, to use our new phrase.

I wish to eat at the table of authenticity where the test of time is a basic ingredient of the recipe. That meal is most satisfying when the skills of its making are handed down from previous generations. Whose meal would you rather, Grandma’s or Ronald McDonald’s?

Does not something in our DNA long to connect with the ritualized promise of our ancestors? I fancy that if I find the right combination with which to respond to that question, a satisfaction, rich and unique, will be my reward. How best does one understand the nature of authenticity and assimilate that knowledge into a life?

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The Philosophy of Groundhog Day

In Life, Philosophy, The Examined Life, The infinity of ideas, Thinkers on February 29, 2012 at 6:54 am

Do you read The Stone, the weekly New York Times column on philosophy? It’s not so much about philosophy, as it is a column written by contemporary philosophers, using the tools of philosophy. Here’s how the Times’s header puts it: The Stone features the writing of contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless. The column by-passes much of the modern tedium that has smothered the discipline. You won’t find a discussion on analytic philosophy or logical positivism, fortunately. Rather, as in today’s column, you might find a discussion on the philosophy behind Groundhog Day, the movie.

The film was invoked in today’s piece because the author was exploring the relationship between love and the future. The idea being that for love to flourish there must exist trust in the potential of the future. “The intensity we associate with romantic love requires a future that can allow its elaboration,” writes Todd May, of Clemson, in today’s column, Love and Death.

The column begins with an idea I’ve been revisiting recently.  Early in the piece, while on the topic of the movie, Professor May writes, “It seems that the Nietzschean test of eternal return, insofar as it is played out in Punxsutawney, yields not an overman but a man of decency.” It’s this “test of eternal return,” that I keep kicking up and want to talk about. (I briefly touched on this subject in a previous post, Da Capo.)

Here’s the back-story: It is the summer of 1881 and Friedrich Nietzsche is reaching the maturity of his thinking. He has an epiphany. He calls it The Test of Eternal Return. He said this about that moment:

…the basic conception, the idea of the eternal return, the highest formula of affirmation that can possibly be attained,…was jotted down on a piece of paper….I was that day walking through the woods….I stopped beside a mighty pyramidal block of stone which reared itself up…It was there that this thought came to me.

As an aside, note that the thought came to him while he was walking. Walking, in my study of the history of ideas, triggers more profundity than any other activity. Want to be a genius? Go for a stroll. (I develop this thought in an essay, Metaphor : On Walking, published at The Nervous Breakdown.)

The idea of eternal return is central to Milan Kundera‘s The Incredible Lightness of Being, by the way. Here’s the concept as spelled out by Nietzsche biographer Julian Young:

“…were one to come to believe that whatever one did next would be repeated throughout all eternity the result would be to attach incredible importance–’weight’, ‘gravity’–to each and every action one performed. If one responded this way to eternal return the effect would be to eliminate all cowardice, compromise, and evasion. One would begin to live with incredible intensity.”

The goal of existence, as Nietzsche saw it, is to “become what one is.” (Freud, who admired Nietzsche, hi-jacked this notion.) The tool to becoming what one is, is the test of eternal return. With a nod to Bill Murray, the challenge of life is to be found in the test of repetition. Does this action or thought or activity or behavior hold up to the challenge of living it repetitively through all eternity? No? Yes? I think of the test as a filter through which only authenticity can pass.

Class dismissed.

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This just in…

In Mythology, Philosophy, The Examined Life, Wisdom on July 15, 2010 at 12:50 pm

…from Pythia, the goddess oracle at Delphi:

“Look into yourself, know yourself, keep to yourself; bring back your mind and your will, which are spending themselves elsewhere, into themselves. You are running out, you are scattering yourself; concentrate yourself, resist yourself; you are being betrayed, dispersed, and stolen away from  yourself. Do you not see that this world keeps its sight all concentrated  inward and its eyes open to contemplate itself? It is always vanity for you, within and without; but it is less vanity when it is less extensive. Except for you, O man, each thing studies itself first, and, according to its needs, has limits to its labors and desires. There is not a single thing as empty and needy as you, who embrace the universe: you are the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and all in all, the fool of the farce. “

Well then. Three thousand years later, Thank you, Pythia. I’m working on it…still…honest.

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Foucault

In Life, Philosophy, Thinkers on May 23, 2010 at 5:48 am

Yesterday I finished James Miller’s overview of French philosopher Michel Foucault, The Passion of Michael Foucault. Miller relates the following story. It is 1975 and Foucault’s career is in full bloom. His reputation is international and he has accepted an invitation to the states. It is suggested he visited a “Taoist” commune at Mount Baldy in Southern California. It is night, there is a fire going. The philosopher and his hosts are sitting on the porch of a cabin.

One of the young men plaintively remarked that he felt completely lost.

“‘You have to be lost as a young man,’ Wade recalls Foucault replying.

“‘You are not really trying unless you are lost. This is a good sign. I was lost as a young man too.’”

“‘Should I take chances with my life?’” the student asked earnestly.

“‘By all means! Take risks, go out on a limb!’

“‘But I yearn for solutions.’

“‘There are no solutions,’ said the French philosopher firmly.

“Then at least some answers.’

“‘There are no answers!,’” exclaimed Foucault.

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Up and at ‘em.

In Dogs, Life, Nature, Philosophy, Thinkers on April 13, 2010 at 7:02 pm

I walk the Promenade every morning, specifically the Eastern Prom. It’s about three miles round trip. But it’s not about the exercise. It’s about morning. About air. And clearing one’s head.  Nietzsche said the best thoughts are those that come while walking. (Thanks to blogger-philosopher Phil Oliver for this reminder.) Speaking of philosophers, it’s said that the villagers of Königsberg set their pocket watches by the grand-old rational-man, Kant, making his daily rounds, so precise were his habits. (Supposedly he once forgot his walk. He was reading Rousseau’s Emile.)

It’s only come on me recently how I’ve grown dependent on these morning strolls. This morning the sun had just painted my bedroom wall pink when my eyes opened. I realized I’d missed the sunrise. I immediately was filled with regret, regretting not being up and alert as the sun rose over Bug Light. It’s not a good thing to feel regret before even lifting your head off the pillow, but that’s the way it was. I rushed to make coffee and head out before the morning was spent. Maggie doesn’t seem to share my early-rising enthusiasm. But she comes around and out we go.

I’m not sure how I feel about listening to music while I take these walks. My heart says I should avoid the distraction. But my head tells me that the Goldberg Variations (Gould)  in the morning can only be a good thing. It is classic, this battle between head and heart, and I think it is the essence of human existence. Sleep in or see the sunrise. Walk in silence or listen to the immortals reach forward through the ages’ mist. What to do? There is no correct answer of course, only the tension one experiences when answers are not forthcoming. Is that not the essence of the human condition?

This returns me to the land of thinkers. Schopenhauer said that walking is arrested falling. One would expect that from him. I think more about this–literally–since I had a hip replaced two years ago. Every step is putting the body off balance, trusting that it will recover before falling. My hip has caused me some problems lately and I’m not sure it’s working as it should. That is another matter altogether, except that it isn’t, another matter, that is.. What really is this condition of being human without surprises, pleasant or otherwise? Very little, it seems. This is where the morning walks come into play. Everything works in the morning for me. I am fresh. The day is fresh. Maggie is running, nose to the ground. (There is nothing, I feel, more beautiful nor perfect than a dog running in the morning, astride a body of water, the sun rising.) I know that I am not going to fall down, at least not this morning.

I had a conversation with an old and close friend this weekend, a buddy I’ve know for thirty years. As guys with that degree of familiarity will do, in a bar with beer aplenty, we talked about life, where we’ve come and how the hell did it all happen so fast. We knocked around our joint desire to live more simply. It is a theme in the air, common and shared, it seems by a lot of people. (Perhaps we’re spent–morally, emotionally, fiscally, who knows?– and are reacting.) I think, I told him, I’m making progress on that front. He asked me specifics. I wish I’d told him of my morning walks. That is how it all started. That is when the best thoughts come.

I want to add this end note. A month or so ago, on a morning walk, I spotted a man flying a kite. We talked. His name is James Shields and he builds his own kites–and get this: he has a little camera mounted on his kite and controls the shutter from the ground. Check it out at Nearly Vertical Over Maine. It’s wonderful stuff.