No one will care, but here is Part II at last.

Cardinal flowers earn their name with bright splashes of scarlet.

I recently read a novel by the philosopher Iris Murdoch, The Sandcastle. It was brilliantly achieved, characters all quiveringly true to life, outcomes in suspense until the very end. A compelling fiction. Following my reading, I sought out the late Murdoch online and found a long interview she did with Bryan Magee, on the topic literature and philosophy. At the beginning, I noted that in mentioning philosophers in our “modern times” who were good writers, he named Bertrand Russell but omitted Henri Bergson, who also received the Nobel Prize for Literature. In naming earlier philosophers who were great writers, he included Nietzsche, my nemesis. 

 

Here are links to the interview. I followed Part I with interest and got a little way into Part II, but did not watch all five parts because, having only a couple of weeks ago read another book (nonfiction) that brought back my quarrel with Nietzsche, I wanted to write through my thoughts on philosophy as a personal quest rather than an abstract search, because (another because) in the opening part of their conversation, Murdoch and Magee agree that philosophy is impersonal and, unlike literature, does not involve the personality of the writer. 

I strongly disagree. 

Each weaves according to her nature.

I would say, on the contrary, that philosophy makes a pretense of being impersonal and that the writers of philosophy have all, until very recently, attempted to hide themselves behind language that strives to be objective and “universal.” Looking deeply at the problems on which different philosophers have focused, however, and their very different takes on those problems — not just writing style but the substance of their writing — shows obsessions and prejudices and hopes and fears bleeding through, and for me Nietzsche is a striking example.

As my subject heading to this post indicates, I doubt very many, if any, people will mind that it was way back in 2011 that I posted what I called Part I of my own Nietzsche story. If you want the background, here it is, yes, a full dozen years ago. 

For those not inclined to follow links, I'll summarize by saying that I was writing a chapter on Nietzsche in my dissertation on theories of metaphor and, bending over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt (following philosophy's "principle of charity," a principle more honored in the breach than in the observance), I was “bracketing” – setting to one side – all his troubling remarks on Jews, women, blacks, and others said to possess a “slave mentality” to focus exclusively on what he had to say about language. How much more generous could I be? 

 

When working on any long piece of writing (and writing a dissertation in philosophy typically stretches over a couple years or more), there is a frequent need to get up out of a chair and move around. Go for a walk. Take a shower. Hit the bars. Whatever it takes to jar the brain enough to get thoughts flowing again. In my case, one fateful day I was pacing back and forth in front of a friend’s bookshelves and pulled a book out almost at random, hardly thinking it would bear on my subject. The title intrigued me: Women and Pornography. The author was Susan Griffin. I opened somewhere in the middle, again at random, and began reading -- idly, at first.

Take a deep breath and plunge forward --

Susan Griffin never once cites Nietzsche in her book. His name does not appear. And yet I kept seeing that name on page after page as I read and as a knot of dread formed in my gut. 

 

In a chapter entitled “The Sacrificial Lamb” (I borrowed the book from interlibrary loan last month and copied the relevant pages), Griffin describes what she calls “the chauvinist mind.” writing 

 

…we discover that just as the racist is obsessed with a pornographic drama, the pornographer is obsessed with racism.

 

She cites the work of Lucy Dawidowicz who concluded, after studying a rock group that proclaimed itself the “master race” and after listing items found in a Hell’s Angel apartment, “Pornography and propaganda have reinforced each other over the decades.” The psychoanalytic term for what the chauvinist’s mind does is projection. What is feared and hated in the self is projected onto another. Here is Griffin again:

 

Over and over again the chauvinist draws a portrait of the other which reminds us of that part of his own mind he would deny and which he has made dark to himself. The other has appetite and instinct. The other has a body. The other has an emotional life, which is uncontrolled. And in the wake of this denied self, the chauvinist constructs a false self with which he himself identifies. 

 

Wherever we find the racist idea of another being as evil and inferior, we also discover a racial ideal of the self as superior, good, and righteous. 

 

Griffin, next page (162):

 

…The chauvinist cannot face the truth that the other he despises is himself. 

 

…The chauvinist insists upon an ultimate and defining difference between himself and the other. 

 

What is it that is feared in the self? Appetite, instinct, emotion, the body and its needs and urges. In short, the power of nature. Thus the “other” is to the chauvinist an “animal,” while he is not – or would have himself not be, but as that is impossible (he is, after all, “all too human”), “his mind is filled with contradiction.”

 

…He both longs for and fears the knowledge of the body. Nature is a part of him. He cannot divide what cannot be divided. His mind is in his body. His body thinks; his mind feels. From his body, nature renders meaning. He is trapped inside what he fears. 

 

Anyone who is still with me this far, if anyone is, might wonder what this has to do with language and metaphor. And didn’t I say I was going to set aside all that other stuff? The thing is, everything I set aside is still right there in the writings on language. That’s what filled me with such horror that I fell into a state of shock. 

Do you need refreshing, cool water? I do. Okay....

How so? The task Nietzsche set himself was to “recover” meanings he felt had been “lost,” and this largely involved discarding later meanings, which he regarded as “decadent.” To simplify, imagine a word as a playing card. It has two sides, two different meanings which may even stand in opposition to each other: one side, the “pure” side, “lost”; the other “decadent,” one he would overcome. (This is an oversimplification, obviously, because meanings are more often multiple than merely dual, but if you want a more complicated image, make one up yourself.) In recovering the lost meaning, Nietzsche would have stripped off the decadent meaning. -- But note the problem: the playing card still has two sides! There is no way to get down to a single side, no matter how many layers are stripped away. The task of recovering an imagined original purity of meaning is doomed. 

And yet nature goes on, unconcerned with our angst!

An obsession with purity is essential to racism, just as it is in countries where women must cover their faces and are forbidden to attend school or drive or even to appear in public. It is not the women who are obsessed with their purity but the men who make the laws, who see their own purity at risk if women are too free. 

 

Policing language is nothing new, either, and you can find examples all over the world. Historically, conquered peoples’ languages have been outlawed by conquerors; various countries strive to keep “foreign” words out of public discourse; and older generations object to new meanings the young attach to older words and phrases. But as I wrote in my dissertation, words are like horses and can be stolen and ridden by those other than self-acclaimed owners, and no one, not even Nietzsche, can ever have the “last word” on any particular meaning. Languages and cultures and meanings evolve, much as do living organisms.

Nietzsche’s Zarathustra raved about clouds staining the “purity” of the sky. I ended my dissertation chapter on Nietzsche with the Gerard Manley poem "Pied Beauty." 

Glory be to God for dappled things—

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;

       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

       With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                     Praise Him.

 

Coming back now to my disagreement with Iris Murdoch, I offer for your consideration: Plato's rejection of the natural world as nothing but "appearance," reality being entirely and only eternal, ideal and unknowable (the life lessons the narrator draws from Plato are good ones, but do they need the metaphysics?); Schopenhauer's pessimism; Russell's frustration that philosophy could not be reduced to mathematics (this is my own view of him, so read him yourself to see what you think); Bergson's optimism and obsession with time; my own passionate love of natural ephemera and my Bergsonian-Heideggerian obsession with time. I confess I have not read Murdoch's philosophy, but I have no doubt her personality would reside in it, even if cloaked in mystifying universal terms. 

The images in today's post are from my personal life and surroundings, places and things I love, and my hope is that they will encourage philosophobes to come all the way with me, whether or not they slow down to muse or hurry to this final line.

Clouds add so much to the beauty of the sky.