Scientific convention and grammatical convention

“…scientific convention decides whether an eel shall be a fish or a snake, and grammatical convention determines what experiences shall be called objects and what shall be called events or actions.” — A. Watts, in The Way of Zen, quoted in Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century by Neil Postman

Philosofish

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Kierkegaard versus the Christian apologists: faith and reason in genuine tension

“Religious apologists today might mumble about the power of faith and the limits of reason, yet they are the first to protest when it is suggested that faith and reason might be in tension. Far from seeing religious faith as a special, bold kind of trust, religious apologists are now more likely to see atheism as requiring as much faith as religion. Kierkegaard saw clearly that that faith is not a kind of epistemic Polyfilla that closes the small cracks left by reason, but a mad leap across a chasm devoid of all reason.

“That is not because Kierkegaard was guilty of an anarchic irrationalism or relativistic subjectivism. It is only because he was so rigorous with his application of reason that he was able to push it to its limits. He went beyond reason only when reason could go no further, leaving logic behind only when logic refused to go on.”

– Julian Baggini, in “I Still Love Kierkegaard“

The irrelevance of opposing a commencement speaker

You know what would be funny? If a group of people aligned with corporation-funded military interventionists got upset about a speech made by someone aligned with a different group of corporation-funded military interventionists! Pretty funny, if you think about. You know, if you actually stopped to think about it. “Hey! That’s not my brand of cola!” Or, “Hey! That’s not my brand of blue jeans!” Or maybe, “I wanted a Whopper, not a Big Mac!” Hard times, I tell you, hard times.

Movies as insight into mass fears and desires

“[Gene] Siskel described his job as ‘covering the national dream beat,’ because if you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear. Movies are hardly ever about what they seem to be about. Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may be.” – Roger Ebert, from an enriching gallery on the Atlantic’s site

‘Tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims’

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

- C. S. Lewis, in “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” from God in the Dock

What fascinates us about some of the bad guys?

Maybe what intrigues us about the secret conspirator or the undercover ideologue is his great vision. While we might hate what he represents and what he fights for, we are amazed by his conviction, dedication, and purpose. Those inner values can only be sustained by a powerful vision of change or implementation. The wrong he does might disgust us, but we want to believe in something with as much clarity and certainty.

A language to open the world to us

“…this change from closed to open language is also a passage from a closed to an open world, for our world — the concrete world in which we live — does not come to us as something independent of language; we do not construct a language independently and then add it on to experience; our world transpires within language. Consequently, the essential openness of the language that we have to use for the purposes of life means that the world of our experience is correspondingly open. And that the world should lie open to us is the real and concrete meaning of freedom to which we aspire.” — William Barrett, writing about Wittgenstein, in The Illusion of Technique

On Soren Kierkegaard’s 200th birthday, a few quotations from his works

“If you wish to be and remain enthusiastic, then draw the silk curtains of facetiousness, and so hide your enthusiasm.” Soren Kierkegaard, in his journals

“No, an illusion can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed…. That is, one must approach from behind the person who is under an illusion.” — Soren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as an Author

“The reason I far prefer the autumn to the spring is because in the autumn one looks up to heaven — in spring at the earth.” — Soren Kierkegaard, in his journals

“Most men think, talk, and write as they sleep, eat, and drink, without ever raising the question of their relation to the idea; this only happens among the very few and then that decisive moment has in the very highest degree either the power to compel (genius), or it paralyzes the individual with anxiety (irony).” — Soren Kierkegaard, in his journals

“Mysticism has not the patience to wait for God’s revelation.” — Soren Kierkegaard, in his journals

“Socrates proved the immortality of the soul from the fact that sickness of the soul (which may be called sin) does not consume the soul, as sickness of the body consumes the body.” — Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death

“There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.” -Soren Kierkegaard, Either / Or

“People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, that is, freedom of thought, and instead demand free speech as a compensation.” – Soren Kierkegaard, in his journals

“Luther, you have a huge responsibility, for when I look more closely, I see more and more clearly that you toppled the Pope only to enthrone ‘the public.’” — Soren Kierkegaard, in his journals

“Other people may complain that the present age is wicked. I complain that it is wretched, because it lacks passion. People’s souls are thin and flimsy like lace; and they are spiritual lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be regarded as sinful. A worm might be looked upon as sinful to think in such a way; but for people made in the image of God, ‘sinful’ is too big a word. Their desires are drab and sluggish, their passion lethargic. They are like shopkeepers, doing their duty, but clipping little pieces of gold from the coins they take. They think that, even if the Lord is careful in keeping his accounts, they can cheat him a little. Away with them! This is why my soul constantly turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. The characters are real human beings: they hate and love, they murder their enemies, they curse their descendants, they sin.” -Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or

Learn more about Soren Kierkegaard at the late D. Anthony Storm’s thorough commentary site.

Related articles

• The Church’s Kierkegaard tribute is hypocritical. (lindvedpress.com)
• ^!39 Daily Readings With Soren Kierkegaard (Daily Readings Series) (iumafkaa.wordpress.com)
• Rogue Philosopher, Great Communicator (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Copenhagen: Søren Kierkegaard’s legacy lives on (telegraph.co.uk)
• Introverts and Inwardness (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)
• Morning Quote: Soren Kierkegaard (curmudgeons.net)

The possibility of misinterpretations

Consider the following sentence:

“I think the spirits have gotten to him.”

If you’re a child, or a member of a tribe with an ancient mindset, you might think, “Supernatural forces have attacked him.”

If you’re a cosmopolitan fellow living in a big city, you might think, “Ah — this guy has had too much liquor.”

Except for the equivocal use of “spirits,” the syntactic and semantic structure is the same.

I was thinking through something I read earlier today: ”Sentences exhibiting the same syntactic and semantic structure may be asserted in wholly different modes of identification.”

That’s Walker Percy in his essay, “The Symbolic Structure of Interpersonal Process,” which was published in The Message in the Bottle.

I’m not sure, however, equivocation (my above example) is exactly what he is getting at.

His example seems less a matter of equivocation and more a matter of understanding different processes behind the same central meaning of the sentence.

Percy’s example of a “syntactic and semantic structure … asserted in wholly different modes of identification” is as follows:

“My son John has become a roentgenologist.”

That sentence “has the logical form of the assertion of class membership,” Percy writes.

But this “sentence can be asserted in more than one mode,” he says.

Thus, if a psychiatrist should hear his patient utter the above sentence, he may very well understanding, knowing her as he does, that she is asserting a magic mode of class membership. Her son John has gone off to a scientific place where he has undergone a mystical transformation and emerged as a roentgenologist. Another patient may assert the same sentence and be quite clearly understood to mean that her son has acquired a skill which it is convenient to speak of as a class membership.

In poetry, the possibilities of multiple meanings are exciting. In journalism, multiple meanings are problematic.

However, the two patients in the above quotation are dealing neither with poetic language nor with a professional obligation to clarity in language.

The two patients above seem to represent two radically different mentalities which generate two radically different interpretations of a sentence.

Speaking in such a way that one absolutely cannot be misinterpreted might just be impossible.