Some Reflections on “Scylla and Charybdis”

“Scylla and Charybdis,” being the ninth episode, marks the halfway point of Ulysses. By this time, we are familiar with both our main characters, Stephen and Bloom, whom we’ve been following through the afternoon. Stephen has come to the library to get Mr. Deasy’s article published, but also, perhaps, to gain admission to Æ’s (George Russell) literary salon, while Bloom, lurking in the back, looks for design inspiration for an ad. To the librarians Lyster, Best, and Eglinton (William Magee), as well as to Æ and, eventually, Buck Mulligan, Stephen presents a radical theory: Shakespeare’s drama is, for all its universality, deeply personal and semi-autobiographical. The following table summarizes both his own conclusions and the wider parallels at play in the text:

	Hamlet.	Shakespeare’s biography	Odyssey	Ulysses
Betrayed father	King Hamlet	Shakespeare	Ulysses	Leopold Bloom
Dispossessed son	Prince Hamlet	Hamnet	Telemachus	Stephen Dedalus
Faithless wife	Queen Gertrude	Ann Hathaway	Penelope(?)	Molly Bloom
Usurper	King Claudius	Richard	Suitors	Buck Mulligan/Blazes Boylan

Ultimately, his exposition is unconvincing to his audience. Throughout the episode, we are treated to a fascinating exploration of the inner and outer world as experienced by Stephen. The narration switches between third-person descriptions, Stephen’s internal monologue, imagined conversations, a music score, and even a script for a play. Interestingly, the line between internal and external seems to blend indistinguishably as the chapter progresses. For example, the names of the other characters morph humorously and allusively, as if the subjective has become the objective, or the objective subjective. This blurry/-ing dynamic is, I will assert, the guiding theme of the chapter.

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According to Joyce’s schemata, this chapter’s organ is the brain, its art dialectic, and its main symbols the twin dangers of Scylla the monster and Charybdis the whirlpool, both of which have several corresponding counterparts to which I’ll turn soon. That the brain is central, makes a lot of sense: here, at the National Library, Stephen is presenting his critical take on Shakespeare, drawing on his vast erudition to argue for the indispensable relevance of Shakespeare’s biography to his dramas. 

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The employment of dialectic is noteworthy, because its significance varies throughout the history of philosophy, meaning one thing to Plato and another to Aristotle.[1] For Plato, the dialectical method is reserved for the training of philosophers; a hypothesis is forwarded, and it must survive, if possible, intense scrutiny until it leads to pure, unchanging knowledge. Socrates’ interrogations with Athenians are a prime example. However, for Aristotle, the dialectic is a tool whereby two extremes—for example, materialism and idealism—are reconciled. Two opposite views, formerly thought incompatible, find their meeting point, where lies the truth. The idea of entelechy, on which Stephen continually dwells, is one such outcome of the dialectic, supposed to combine the universal with the particular, form with matter.

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It would seem, for the purposes of this chapter, that Joyce had Aristotle’s dialectic in mind, especially since it informed the Scholastics and the medieval theory of education, in which both he and Stephen were trained by the Jesuits. And yet, there are traces of the Platonic, or rather Socratic, dialectic at work. Eglinton at one point remarks, “I was prepared for paradoxes” (159.369). This is “paradox” in the ancient sense, namely something that is beside (para-) common opinion (-doxa). What Stephen propounds is not self-contradictory but unorthodox/heterodox; otherwise, there’d be no point in trying to win over his listeners. In this way, he fashions himself in the role of an unsuccessful Socrates, who endeavored to demonstrate to his interlocutors that, in spite of their disagreement, they actually deep down agreed with him—only, their opinions were not clearly thought out, and so only appeared to be in conflict. 

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In Homer’s Odyssey, Circe informs Odysseus upon leaving that he must choose which of two routes to take—one that passes by the monster Scylla, which will eat some of his sailors, or by the whirlpool Charybdis, which will swallow the ship whole.[2] While the idiom “between Scylla and Charybdis” thus means “between a rock and a hard place,” or a choice between two equally displeasing options, Creasy points out that, in this chapter, such a clean duality—and this chapter really is fully of dichotomies—is, like everything else “simple” in Ulysses, muddled (282).

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One dualism, the most prominent, provided by Joyce himself, is between Æ’s mystical Platonism—“ideas, formless spiritual essences,” “eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas” (152.49,52-3)—where art is pure and self-sufficient, and Stephen’s dogmatic Aristotelianism: “[H]is own image to a man… is the standard of all experience, material and moral” (161.432-3).[3] Creasy writes that this “makes [Stephen] part of the dilemma rather than a Homeric hero caught ‘between’ forces” (282). Joyce could be saying that Stephen is too one-sided and stands in need of balance, requiring Bloom’s groundedness; but if this is so, then it deprives Stephen of his own odyssey, relegating that adventure to Bloom instead. But if Bloom, likewise, requires help from Stephen, then who is the hero? 

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Many big questions are raised in this chapter, but I will focus on three major ones: Art and life, personal identity, and the search for a father. (Other themes include the colonial context and the attitude toward women.)  

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A fundamental question is the relationship between the artist and their art, or between life and art. In Portrait, Stephen advocates for objectivity, likening the artist to the deist God who absconds from His creation, leaving no trace behind. Here, though, using Shakespeare as a case study, he declares that the artist, their life circumstances, and their creation cannot be so easily separated. For our discussion, a guiding question will be the respective places of objectivity and subjectivity in art. One commentator, highlighting this disparity, dissociates the young scholar from the mature novelist: “[W]hatever Stephen says, he is no Joyce. Talking about art is no substitute for art” (Tindall 176; emphasis mine). However, even Ellmann seems to be undecided on the question. In his work on Ulysses, he interprets the lecture impersonally: 

Stephen’s theory makes life and art… instantly interchangeable…. Asked whether he believes his own theory, Stephen promptly says no. He can disavow belief so easily because what he is offering here is not, as it seems, a biography of Shakespeare at all; it is rather a parable of art. (Ellmann 85; emphasis mine)

Meanwhile, in his biography of Joyce, he seems to challenge this own reading by suggesting that what is professed is not some symbolic story but actually “the author becom[ing]… his own father,” seeking “to mother and father himself, to become, by the superhuman effort of the creative process, no one but James Joyce” (Ellmann 299).[4] Just as in “Proteus” the reader has to decide how seriously to take Stephen’s speculations and the degree to which he reflects Joyce, so here one has to determine how much of Joyce is in the text and whether, Stephen being sincere in his views, he has evolved with time, or whether the whole thing is an ironic, farcical attack on artistic subjectivity.[5]

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This will hinge on how one interprets Stephen’s prompt “No” when asked if he believes his theory (175.1067). And, as if matters weren’t complicated enough, this fails to take into account the deliberateness of irony, like that of Socrates: “The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious” (163.542-3). Who, then, is the mocker here—Stephen or Joyce?—and is it mere mockery, or is there something serious afoot? Perhaps Stephen (or Joyce) is again trying to employ Socratic irony, or feigned ignorance—a dramatic technique of Plato’s—in order to advance his dialectic on artistry.[6]

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Lastly, Stephen spends a good deal of time pondering what, if anything, a father is—or could be. He avoids going home to his own father, of whom he is ashamed. In this and the first chapter, “Telemachus,” he interprets fatherhood in relation to the theological question of the Trinity (Father-Son-Holy Spirit), comparing the various heresies of christology. This relates to Shakespeare and Bloom as grieving fathers, not to mention fatherhood (and motherhood!) as metaphors for art as an act of conception. The fact that both Stephen and Bloom are in the library at the same time, once more crossing paths, one “fatherless” and the other sonless, is significant, and should make us ponder their possibilities together.

 

 

 

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[1] And it means something altogether different for Hegel and Marx. It is thought to have originated with the master of paradoxes, Zeno of Elea.
[2] “A like fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool” (161.464).
[3] Here are two more, both with cultural and colonial overtones: (1) “Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin Dublin” (154.149-150). (2) Shakespeare’s socioeconomic status (154.130-5; 167.710-12) and how it plays into the Anglo-Irish question.
[4] “​​Thus ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ is central to Ulysses, because it also accounts for the novel’s own creation” (Creasy 281).
[5] This raises the question of whose sincerity truly matters here: Stephen’s or Joyce’s? What happens, respectively, if Stephen disbelieves but Joyce believes, if Stephen believes but Joyce disbelieves, if both believe, or both disbelieve what is professed? Is the author in the text, or can the text lie outside the author?
[6] Mr. Best tells Stephen, “You ought to make it a dialogue, don’t you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote” (175.1068-9). It goes without saying that Stephen has no need to “make it [into] a dialogue,” for it already is one! 

 

Works Cited:

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Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce. Rev ed., Oxford University Press, 1983. 

———. Ulysses on the Liffey. Oxford University Press, 1986. 

Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Vintage Books, 1986. 

Joyce, James, and Matthew Creasy. “Scylla and Charybdis.” The Cambridge Centenary Ulysses: The 1922 Text with Essays and Notes, edited by Catherine Flynn, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 276-320.

Tindall, William. A Reader’s Guide to James Joyce. Syracuse University Press, 1995.

Berkeley’s Idealism

According to Berkeley, an idea is that which is perceived: its “esse is percipi” (§3). A perception, being the perception of an idea, always has as its content some quality. Thus, the objects of our simple perception consist of simple qualities that are combined into complex ideas, which we call things. The floor upon which I sit is one such complex idea, being composed of the simpler ideas brown, hard, flat, and glossy. My stream of perceptions is determined both externally, via sensation, and internally, via the imagination.

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Sensation gives me ideas of real things, but the imagination gives me only images of things. As ideas are themselves images, it could be said that, through the imagination, I get the idea of an idea, as when I recall a memory from my past or invent the fantastical idea of a dragon, which has no real corresponding thing in the world. A dragon is an idea, something I perceive, yet it is only an image, not a real thing, since no human has ever experienced any such entity; nonetheless, the ideas of which the dragon is composed—e.g., scaly, lizard, wings, fire—are real in perception. 

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It would be tempting to thus conclude that real things, then, are external, material things that exist independently of me, like the Grand Canyon. This would be overly hasty, though, because there is no such thing as the Grand Canyon independent of any perception. To begin, even if I’m not immediately sensing the Grand Canyon, e.g., peering over the edge, still I must be able to think of it. Indeed, the very thought of the Grand Canyon apart from my perception of it is itself a perception. As Berkeley puts it, “[A]n idea can be like nothing but an idea” (§8).

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It is impossible to compare the idea of a thing to the so-called “thing-in-itself,” because the latter, if it is to have any sense, must be accessible to me in perception, in which case it is no longer an in-itself. Neither does this mean that, the moment I turn away, the rest of the world is annihilated. Berkeley’s point is that ideas are in principle perceivable. Just because I am not present at the Grand Canyon, does not mean it doesn’t exist at all—first, because someone else can do so in my place, and second, because at all times there is an infinite spirit, God, who preserves its existence.

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But if all things are ideas, then it remains for Berkeley to explain how we can distinguish between what is real and what is illusory, or else we succumb to skepticism, given the possibility that reality might just be an imagined construction—like a dreamscape. There are two origins of ideas: Sensation and imagination. Put simply, sensed ideas are real, whereas reflected ideas are unreal. That the thought of eating an apple differs qualitatively from the act of eating an apple, is sufficient to demonstrate this clearly and distinctly. In both cases, I’m dealing with the idea of an apple.

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The difference is that, when I imagine an apple, I do not get the same intensity of qualities (e.g., color), as when I really sense an apple. But more importantly, when I imagine an apple, I conjure it up at will; I can vary it in my mind as I please. Meanwhile, I  perceive a sensed apple passively: I cannot control the fact that it is red, not green, for example. Thus, imagined things, i.e., unreal things, lack the vividness of their real counterparts. When I wrap, or rather try to wrap, my hand around the imagined apple, I experience no physical sensation that resists me; on the other hand, with a real apple, which is still an idea, I can wrap my hand around it, which gives me the quality of resistance from solidity. 

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Because, for Berkeley, the only two things that exist are spirits and ideas, and because only spirits are active, while ideas are passive, it follows that ideas cannot be causes. And if I assume things have causal power, then I must perceive said powers; however, in the course of my experience, I do not perceive any such powers, but only effects that are limited to the past or future. For example, when it comes to fire, I perceive a number of sensations, such as red, yellow, hot, shifting, etc. When I feel heat, I can only say as much: I feel the simple idea of heat, just as I see the complex idea of fire as a whole.

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However, I cannot then say that the former is the effect of the latter. Instead, all I have is a connection between these two ideas, albeit a connection lacking any necessity, which is the mark of causality. What I can say, is that what I see as fire serves as a sign for that which I also experience, namely the signified sensation of pain I undergo when I get too close. The close association between the heat of the fire and the pain I feel when I approach it is founded solely upon the basis of experience, which, being a posteriori, can only contingently establish an expected link. Experience is contingent because it is confined to either the past or the present, neither of which is sufficient to predict the future with necessity. 

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Modern science is typically conceived—particularly since Descartes—as the systematic study of cause-and-effect relationships, which counts as true knowledge because it allows us to have control over nature; knowledge of nature, that is, amounts to knowledge of efficient causes. However, considering Berkeley has not only removed matter entirely but also jettisoned causation from ideas themselves, science no longer serves the function of reverse engineering the world. For if causality be not a case of actions and effects between ideas but rather one of ascertaining signs, then spirit’s job is to “perus[e] the volume of Nature” (§109) and to interpret it as one interprets a written text.

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After all, if nature is the product of an infinite spirit, “the Author of Nature” (§66)—spirit being the only active power—then it falls to us, as finite spirits, to attempt to decode what intention has gone behind all natural phenomena. In a word, science becomes hermeneutics, by which we guide ourselves to happiness. Through interpretation, we arrive at laws of nature. These are the habitual associations between ideas that we make from experience, designed by God. I find that, whenever I’m thirsty, water happens to slake my thirst every time. Again, while I can’t declare this a causal connection, I can say that it is a natural law. Understanding nature, rather than explaining it, still allows us to live pleasant lives. 

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While Descartes and Locke both sought to find the essence of things in material substance, specifically in what the latter referred to as “primary qualities,” e.g., figure, shape, size, and solidity, Berkeley thinks that a distinction between primary and secondary qualities is deceptive. Locke proposed that the brownness of my table is unreal; there is no brownness in the table itself, but it only seems this way based on the atomic arrangement of the body, which then interacts with my visual perception system.

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On the other hand, the table really is such-and-such inches across. The color is secondary, having no resemblance to the object itself, and the extension primary, being a direct image of the table. Yet such a distinction breaks down because, after all, even primary qualities, being qualities, must be perceived! That a table is a certain height, or that it weighs a certain amount, depends as much on a perceiving subject as the color and smell it gives off. Therefore, it’s no use appealing to atomic configurations to explain causality either. They, like the properties they supposedly explain, are passive ideas. 

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All ideas must, in the final analysis, come from a spirit, which is the only active force. The reason we assume that there must be some external cause of our ideas is because our very activity is unrepresentable to us: “[S]pirit… cannot be of itself perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth” (§27). Subsequently, we externalize our own activity, attributing it to matter that supposedly exists without us—even though, as an idea, it must be perceived, and so mental. Accordingly, both physical and psychological determinism are obviated: Nature cannot determine us because its phenomena exist as ideas perceived by us, and there are only signs, not causes, in the world. That is, our ideas cannot determine us because they, too, as objects of reflection, are perceived and, as such, passive, having no causal bearing on one another. Finite spirit, therefore, is radically free from nature, though still passive with respect to its sensations. 

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Hence, Berkeley is critical of Cartesian philosophy, which, admitting the existence of material substances, i.e., bodies, needlessly introduces “second causes.” In Descartes’ system, the infinite mind, God, creates and sustains both finite minds and material bodies. What Berkeley calls human spirit, is for Descartes a psychophysical unity, a coupling of immaterial mind with extended body. Then, Descartes claims that a causal relation exists between the mind and the body, with sensation coming from the latter.

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The first, obvious difficulty with this is that a material thing cannot possibly interact with an immaterial thing. There is a category error here, given that, if two things are to interact causally, they need to be of the same type; however, it’s unclear how an extended thing could impact a non-extended one, or vice versa. Second, supposing the body did interact with the mind concurrently, through the intervention of God, it would be questionable to speak of the body as the sufficient cause—that would be God. Lastly, even if the interaction were mediated by God, as in Malebranche’s occasionalism, this move is entirely unnecessary if the body is removed from the equation at the outset. Spirit’s activity does not need to be overdetermined by more than one cause—not merely for sake of simplicity, but also because spirit is the only causal force.

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Berkeley, George. Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues. Edited by Howard Robinson, Oxford University Press, 1999.  

Modernity and Objectivity in Lestrygonians

In the “Lestrygonians” chapter of Ulysses, Joyce illustrates how the conscious self is besieged by the logic of modernity. As Bloom idly rambles and ambles through Dublin at lunchtime, we see how the predominance of objectivity comes to threaten the meaningfulness of subjectivity.

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“Because life is a stream” (8.95), Bloom wonders how it is that one can “own water,” since “It’s always flowing in a stream, never the same” (8.94). He’s referring to the fact that, along a physical river, various advertisements have been placed. Water is flux; thus, as Heraclitus pointed out, we cannot step twice into the same river. Likewise, water is a commons: Everyone has access to it, so the idea of one person being able to possess it is absurd. And yet, he finds that it’s practically as if the river were owned—not by an individual, to be sure, but by the business interests that utilize its prime locational value to maximize their commerce. Hence, modernity’s answer to Bloom: Although it’s true that water as such cannot be owned, yet the stream can be (re)directed, which amounts to a more insidious ownership!

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And if the literal river is an analogy for life, or consciousness, then it follows that, in modern existence, we can never be quite sure of our autonomy. What is ostensibly most private, most constitutive of our being, namely, our consciousness, has been set upon, as Bloom constantly finds, by the public and the massive. In some of his later writings, Heidegger called this “the gigantic,” referring to the widespread quantification of modern living.[1] Even something as elusive as consciousness becomes quantified, as Bloom can attest, when it’s subordinated to an economy of attention, when advertisement becomes a means of controlling and subtly influencing our thoughts, behaviors, and desires.

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Under the reign of the gigantic, when everything is subject to mass, number, and quantity, when “more” is the byword, especially in the urban environment, it’s easy to become alienated as an individual. Twice, as he wanders around, Bloom finds himself sinking into a nihilistic malaise. First, he observes around him incontestable signs of the impermanence of existence, an impermanence which, while intrinsic to life itself, is accelerated by the frenzied pace of the city: “Things go on same, day after day” (8.477), merely “coming on, passing on” (8.485); thus, “No-one is anything… Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed” (8.493,495). Then, as he ponders parallax in relation to astronomical time, he reflects, “Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about…. [D]ead shell shifting around” (8.581-3).

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In both cases, Bloom is forced into abstraction. The sheer preponderance of data in the city assaults him. The thought of Greenwich time in relation to cosmic time, neither of which captures our first-person experience of temporality, dizzies and discourages him. He is ripped away from his sensual nature, forced to contemplate an inhuman, quantified scale of space and time, according to which he is nothing, insignificant. Food, ordinarily so appealing, becomes repulsive when it’s been so mechanized and mass-produced, made to feed to so many men as if they were Circe’s pigs, reduced only to their instincts. Accordingly, when modernity becomes gigantic, sacrificing individuals to the rule of objectivity, which makes things homogeneous and marketable, it’s fitting that its symbol should be the Lestrygonians, who are giant man-eaters. It’s no coincidence, then, that Bloom should feel “as if [he] had been eaten and spewed” by the giant machine of the city. 

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Though, to be clear, the issue at hand is not with our natural existence itself. When Bloom thinks of “stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food” (8.929-30), this is another case of disgust at human life, once again taken in the abstract. The problem is not material, having to do with eating, the body, excretion, or sex; it has to do, rather, with the way in which we do these things. Bloom for the most part takes joy in his natural functions; the problem is that these natural functions—ordinarily subjectively enjoyable—are distorted by an objective approach. Normally, when Bloom approaches a meal, or any other material process, he views it as a singular occasion: He is sitting down to enjoy this meal at this time.

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However, when food is viewed quantitatively, when bodily functions are divorced from their enactment, and when time is dissected into equal and impersonal chunks, as is the case here, then the meal loses its subjective significance; it is no longer this meal but a depersonalized, substitutable, and abstract instance of a universal, any meal. This contrast is made clear by Bloom’s retreats into personal memory, as when he thinks back to kissing and having sex with his wife Molly (8.903-16), or when, repudiating the idea of quantitative time, in a bout of nostalgia, he regretfully wonders, “I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I?… Can’t bring back time” (8.608,610). Because these occasions are distinctive, being tied to specific people from specific moments in his life, moments that are unrepeatable, and unrepeatable because time is unique—because he appeals to his own subjectivity, he is able to carve out a space to once again breathe in meaning, to find relief from the deoxygenated atmosphere of objectivity.

 

 

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[1] Cf. Belu, Dana S. “Gigantic (Riesige).” The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon. Ed. Mark A. Wrathall, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp. 352–354.

 

Book cited:
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Vintage Books, 1986.

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy

For Descartes, an idea is a representation of something. Because the idea is not the thing itself but only the appearance of it, this leads to the possibility of some ideas being true while others are false, depending on how well they correspond to the actual thing. In this sense, they resemble images. When I perceive a small dot on the horizon and then move toward it, gradually bringing it into relief as a building, I realize the inadequacy of my first perception: the idea becomes clearer. As such, the reality of an idea is twofold, based on the content and form. The objective reality of an idea consists in its content, that is, what the idea is of. Meanwhile, the formal reality of an idea consists in its intrinsic nature. All ideas share in the form of being modes of thought. Thus, as I type this paper, it has objective reality insofar as I perceive it as an idea in my mind and formal reality insofar as, being a digital document, it has the essence of a substance, a thing. 

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Ideas differ in terms of their origins; for while some do not depend on me, being externally derived and thus adventitious, others may be found within me entirely, being innate, or else concocted from out of others, making them invented. Innate ideas are unique in that I necessarily have them by existing; I can’t not have them. In contrast, adventitious and invented ideas are accidental or involuntary: I need not ever perceive or encounter them, and, in any case, I cannot acquire them solely through myself. Thus, the idea of the computer on which I type is adventitious in that it presumably exists outside of me, and it’s in sensing it, visibly or tactically, that I perceive it. On the other hand, in order to type, I must first of all exist, and this realization, being indubitable, is innate; it comes from myself entirely. It is for this reason that, even if my ideas can be doubted, nonetheless I can be certain that I have ideas to begin with. If I combine the idea of a computer with that of a monkey typing infinitely, then I invent the idea of the latter’s possibly composing the entire corpus of Shakespeare.

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But while all ideas are equal in their formal reality, they are unequal with regard to their objective reality, which comes in degrees. This is because the object of an idea determines the objective reality possessed thereby. To think of God and of a table is the same act formally, yet the former idea contains more reality than the latter. The idea of “hard,” for example, contains less formal reality than that of “keyboard,” since the former, a mode, cannot exist independent of the latter, a substance; however, even “keyboard” is not entirely self-subsistent, considering it is a substance that is limited, i.e., finite. All finite substances, including myself as a thinking thing, depend on an infinite substance, the idea of which is perfect—namely, God. Descartes contends that the idea of God is innate because, from the very fact of my existence, which is itself an innate idea, I understand my own imperfection and limitation; from this, it follows that I must possess the perfect, eternal standard by which I evaluate my own faultiness. Descartes’ next major step is to declare that this standard is none other than God.

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Moreover, it follows from analysis of the very idea of God that, His being infinite, it’s impossible that my finite mind should obtain such objective reality by its own means, even though it contains the idea necessarily; accordingly, since causes must be equal to or greater than their effects, the idea of God cannot have been acquired from without, adventitiously, let alone from myself, through invention, but must have been implanted in me, God being my creator who actively sustains me. I have the idea of God, yet because I do not stumble upon it by accident, it is innate. In other words, just as the color purple by itself cannot supply the thing “couch,” which it qualifies, the latter exceeding the former objectively, so a thinking thing cannot be the cause of the idea of God. Put otherwise, I find myself with the idea of God, but I am not the cause of it. I bear within me the idea of God much as a seal bears the face of the stamp that impressed it. And while it may be objected that, from the mere fact that I possess the idea of an infinite, perfect being, this in no way entails the existence of said being—after all, it may be an empty representation to which there corresponds nothing actual—Descartes would reply that being is one such perfection. A possibly perfect being is a contradiction in terms, as only an actually perfect being is perfect in the true sense of the word.

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With the assurance that God exists, Descartes can establish as the criterion of truth that only those perceptions be judged true that are both clear and distinct, which is to say, so self-evident as to be undeniable. As a result, I can never fall into error by withholding judgment from obscure perception. An example of a clear and distinct idea is that of my existence, the very thought of which verifies itself. The reason God’s existence ensures the existence of truth is that He, being perfect, cannot deceive us, deception being the mark of an imperfect being. God does not lack knowledge, meaning He cannot lie, and He is also benevolent, which prevents Him from acting out of malice, with the intent of misleading us. Earlier in his meditations, Descartes entertained the notion of a deceiving God, such that even the propositions of mathematics could be doubted. But having established God’s existence, and trusting in the light of reason by which he arrived, first, at knowledge of his own existence, and then at that of God’s, he is confident that, ultimately, truth—particularly within mathematics, which is clear and distinct—is within reach.   

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Yet truth often eludes us, our being imperfect beings. This unfortunate reality proceeds from the fact that, as beings who think, we have two faculties, the intellect and the will, the cooperation of which leads to either truth or falsity. According to Descartes, the intellect is limited, whereas the will is unlimited. Effectively, we can only understand so much; most knowledge will lie outside our reach in both fact and principle. On the other hand, our willing is absolute: We either will or fail to will. In other words, the will is free, and the freedom of the will takes two forms, one negative and one positive. Negatively, the will is free to suspend judgment and deny obscure perceptions.

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Photo by Ksusha Semakina on Pexels.com

It is clear from the very act of meditating which Descartes undertakes that this—freedom—is possible: The first meditation, in which methodical doubt is exercised, is evidence that we are free to doubt, and thus to ascertain truth. Positive freedom, then, is associated with truth: I am free to follow my reason and affirm only that which is true. And since what is true necessarily accords with reason, it follows that freedom is a kind of submission to necessity. In sum, whenever I think, there are two stages: First, I perceive an idea, and this act of representation belongs to the intellect; second, I decide whether to affirm or deny said idea, and this act of judgment belongs to the will. If everything goes correctly, then I affirm only those ideas that are clear and distinct and deny those that are obscure and indistinct.

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But as my experience attests, it often happens that the converse transpires, leading to falsehood. This is because the will outstrips the intellect. Naturally, that which is infinite tends to overtake the finite, and nowhere is this clearer than in the case of judgment when, acting hastily on incomplete knowledge, I will affirm what is not the case or deny what is the case. An important conclusion results: The senses not only do not deceive us, but they cannot ever deceive us. Within Descartes’ system, sensation is a mode of perception, i.e., thinking. Our senses give us ideas. The act of ideating is a function of the intellect, which, crucially, does not judge, and it is judging that yields truth.

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Thus, what the senses tell us, plain and simple, is neither true nor false until we judge it to be so, which is an act of willing. Deception, then, cannot be outsourced to some flaw outside of me; I cannot even pin the blame on God, who created me with my faculties; rather, deception is in every case self-deception. God endowed me as a thinking thing with my intellect and will, both of which are inherently good. Respectively, they allow me to seek  and attain truth, and to preserve my existence. Neither is at fault, consequently, when I make errors; it is rather their coordination, which is an act on my part, that misses the truth. Falsity depends entirely on my own doing, resulting from the misuse or abuse of my absolute will.

Bloom’s Humanistic View of Death

In the sixth episode of Ulysses, “Hades,” Joyce’s exploration of Bloom’s interior monologue at the cemetery reveals a view of death which, stripped of its traditional and supernatural elements, contributes to a new view of the end of life, a view that is more humanistic and thus affirmative.

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For Bloom, ever the pragmatist, whose impatience toward the religious veers on the sacrilegious, death does not, and should not, have the significance attributed to it by traditional religions, especially as exemplified in Catholicism. As he sees it, the traditional approach to death is not only irrelevant at best but callous at worst. When a fellow funeral-goer quotes Jesus’ reassurance that “I am the resurrection and the life,” which presumably “touches a man’s inmost heart,” Bloom thinks to himself, “Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes to the daisies? No touching that… The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead” (670,672-3,677). In the first place, emphasis must be placed on the “your”: that is, it is the mourner, not the mourned, who is comforted by this saying. Far from being compassionate, this religious consolation exists for the sake of the speaker, who hopes deep down that they will avoid the same fate; it bespeaks an egotistical concern for the salvation, not of the one who is dead but of the one who remains living and wants to go on living.

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On another level, Bloom is able to play on the meaning of heart, which can signify either the metaphorical “Seat of the affections” (673) or else the actual physiological organ that is responsible for biological life. Hence, it is possible for the living to be touched, but the same cannot be said of the one “with his toes to the daisies” since, on the level of affections, there’s “No touching that.” A dead man can be physically but not emotionally touched; his heart is not a spiritual organ but an unpretentious “pump” (674), a materially indifferent mechanism. With his blunt final declaration, “Once you are dead you are dead,” he unequivocally takes up a materialistic framework in which neither afterlife nor soul exists. Bloom takes his stand, literally, with both feet on the solid ground, which for him is all there is in the world. 

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Otherwise, dogma intrudes and, ironically, the view that places a supreme value on death ends up being able to supremely devalue it as well: “They [Catholics] have no mercy on that [suicide] here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn’t broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late” (345-8). Presumably, if all life is sacred, and by extension death, too, then such value would be unconditional; however, Christian rites explicitly make death’s sanctity conditional on professions of faith, repentance, and cause of death. Bloom is well aware of such double standards: His father “committed” suicide, and his son, Rudy, while not a victim of infanticide, died shortly after birth, which, per Catholic doctrine, would place him in Limbo.

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He is not blinded by the pomp of the ceremony to the hypocrisy of the whole performance. The fact that religion can set up a binary through its spiritual hierarchy is sufficient to debunk it in Bloom’s eyes. No worldview that simultaneously claims to honor the dead while denying this privilege to others, either condemning them to eternal punishment or else denying them bliss, can be true, for it denies our humanity abstractly and arbitrarily. The merciless character of the supernatural is shown in its adding insult to injury: “As if it [the heart] wasn’t broken already.” Here, Bloom plays again on the ambiguity of heart, this time subverting its logic: By “driv[ing] a stake of wood through his heart,” they acknowledge the material basis of life in the physical organ, but in doing so, they cruelly neglect the spiritual or emotional damage, first, of the one who killed themselves, which pain could not be alleviated, and second, to those who loved them—say, the parent of a dead child, like Bloom. On the other hand, if we are all biological beings, if a soul that can be either pure or impure—in short, one capable of being damned at all—is taken out of the equation, then a more humane, egalitarian approach to death, and thus life, becomes possible.

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By rejecting a supernatural approach to death and making it into a purely natural phenomenon, Bloom is able to envision it in a more life-affirming way. With transcendence eliminated, an immanent embrace of life is enabled, in which everyone is on an equal plane. Such a view encourages a feeling of solidarity with one’s fellow man: “Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it” (811-2). His meditation on the loneliness of man leads to the thought of Robinson Crusoe, who, by his logic, would have needed to be buried by his only companion, Friday. So not only is this a refutation of the essential solitude of man, it is a positive assertion of the inherent sociality of man.

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At the end of the day, if for nothing else, we need someone to bury us. Although we ultimately die alone, unsubstitutable, we need not go to death alone; we may feel at times like Robinson Crusoe, but we all need our Fridays. Bloom’s observation also emphasizes the ineluctable modality of the diurnal: “Every Friday buries a Thursday” in the sense that time proceeds irreversibly, linearly. We are mortals; we live because we are bound to death. Time passes us by until we pass away. But—there is no afterlife, no eternity, no personal immortality: This is all there is, this is all we have. Although this is terrifying, it can also be liberating and empowering, as there is “Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you” (1003).

 

 

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Book cited:
Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter Gabler, Vintage Books, 1986.

From Dubliners to Ulysses

Paralysis is immobility: it is an explicit denial of the capacity for movement. However, in an uncanny way, paralysis is also an implicit recognition of the capability of movement. Thus, Joyce illustrates in Dubliners how life is essentially a matter of crisis, that is, of decision, which means that it is through a renewed awareness of one’s perplexity that motion again becomes possible.[1] Specifically, in “A Painful Case,” he shows how city life has the potential to transform the artistic self through connection.  

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Mr. Duffy in “A Painful Case” bears several similarities to Stephen in Ulysses, as both are intellectuals who are disenchanted with life in Dublin and exist largely in solitude. From the start, Mr. Duffy is characterized as aloof: he lives away from Dublin out of principle, wanting nothing to do with it or its people, instead preferring the companionship of past minds, from Wordsworth to Hauptmann to Nietzsche. As Joyce describes it, “his life rolled out evenly – an adventureless tale” (Joyce 105). By shutting himself up in his room, isolating himself from the external world, he is able to retreat inward and find solace in “his intellectual life” (Joyce 106), which for the most part remains private.

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He has successfully cultivated an inviolable sphere of safety and comfort for himself; it thereby becomes, as Dublin was for him previously, a prison, albeit a self-made one. A great impediment is his elitism, which separates him from others, especially the working class, whose interests he shares as a socialist. But because he feels that they resent his leisure, and because he looks down upon the intellectual capabilities of “an obtuse middle class” (Joyce 107), he finds further reason not to engage himself in any ventures, despite the liveliness of his mind. Though of course, it is his self-conceived unwillingness to condescend to them that is most condescending about him.  

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It is only when Mr. Duffy encounters and briefly befriends Mrs. Sinico, whom he initially considers a kindred soul, that he learns how much his life can be expanded—or rather, it is not the encounter per se that changes him but its eventual breakdown. This is shown by his fraught ambivalence. In her, he finds someone who listens to and appreciates him, who shows him affection. And yet, he is resistant: “every bond,” he convinces himself, “is a bond to sorrow” (Joyce 108) and “we are our own” (Joyce 107). In short, he believes in his “incurable loneliness” (Ibid.). These cannot but strike us as rationalizations, though, rather than genuine statements of fact; they are attempts at retaining a sense of autonomy, at keeping away any and all breaches to the secrecy of the self, and at saving himself from the pain, but also the possible joy, of attachment. 

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It is telling that Mr. Duffy finds consolation in Nietzsche, with the latter’s disdain toward “the herd” and his celebration of the solitary, creative great man who dispenses with all so-called artificial relations. Mr. Duffy likely thinks himself (albeit incorrectly) an Übermensch, much as Buck characterizes himself and Stephen. From all this, it is apparent that a certain view of the artist, according to which he must isolate himself from and rise above the rabble or herd, as well as scorn the place from which he comes—being above it all—is finally detrimental and not actually conducive to the creation of good art.[2] It is no surprise that his complete isolation—from his former friend, his bank partner, and his father—coincides with a great indolence: “He wrote seldom” (Joyce 108).   

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Ultimately, it dawns upon Mr. Duffy in an epiphany that it was his paralysis that condemned him, but which need not going forward—just as Stephen, the artist as a young man, should he so choose, might find himself transformed by a chance encounter. Mrs. Sinico “wore away the rough edges of his character, emotionalised his mental life” (Joyce 107.). Nonetheless, upon learning of her death, he is at first resentful, for she is seen as a “[wreck] on… civilisation,” “unfit to live,” a “wretch” (Joyce 111), reminiscent of his distaste toward the working classes. 

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However, as he reflects more on their relationship and the warmth it brought him, he realizes just how lonely he is and “gnaw[s] the rectitude of his life,” for “she had seemed to love him” (Joyce 113). His epiphany is that, for the artist, paralysis amounts to self-enclosure: it is a complacency with oneself, an inability to stoop down to communion with others or to see beyond the high walls of one’s own ego, a temptation to tear down the plebeian in favor of the patrician. To be cut off from the city is to be cut off from a potential life-source.

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In Dubliners, the artist/intellectual is a recluse who turns down his nose at others, stifling his creativity; however, an awareness of this attitude, which is effected by the introduction of a caring non-artist—but someone who still appreciates art—has the capability of restoring motion to the spirit. Stephen, if he can learn to open himself back up to Dublin, throwing himself into the life there, may yet become a fuller artist. 

 

 

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[1] “Crisis” deriving from κρίνειν, “to discern/decide.”
[2] The gendered pronoun is important. 

 

Source: Joyce, James. Dubliners. Penguin Books, 1992.

From Portrait to Ulysses

Based on my reading, it seems that Stephen will continue to act out his role as Lucifer, that is, as a prideful albeit great artist, but with the necessity of revising his aesthetic vision in order to accommodate—or better, reintegrate—the very things he has rejected in order to become himself.

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The Luciferian spirit is the coupling of an arrogant rejection—non serviam—with a powerful vision that is predicated on transformation. During his aesthetic epiphany, Dedalus announces his project: “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life!” (Joyce 150). More concretely, this means that “the artist [will] forg[e] anew in his workshop out of the sluggish matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being” (Joyce 148). In Ulysses, Stephen will have to seize upon his fall into sensuality and the world, using his newfound experiences “to triumph” by creating art which, while having its basis in the real world of everyday, living people—“the sluggish matter of the earth”—will yet “soar” above this context, so as to achieve a more lasting state of “being.” Stephen is attempting to immortalize what is mortal, and this means that he will have to somehow still remain with both feet on the ground, amidst other people, rather than inhabit an ethereal realm of Truth and Beauty. Like Lucifer, he will have fallen from grace, but it is this humiliation that will make his art that much more human.

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However, Stephen’s Luciferian project is compromised in that it neglects the necessity of that which it rejects. Put simply, the desire to be a truly independent artist (let alone human) is an impossible myth. What Stephen desires is “unfettered freedom” (Joyce 217). Anything that does not come from himself, anything external, is automatically perceived as a constraint, something that compromises his self-sufficiency, such that it must be discarded as an obstacle in his way. Thus, he speaks of “try[ing] to fly by those nets [viz., nationality, language, religion]” (Joyce 179). A net can indeed be a hindrance to one’s aims; one is caught in a net, and so cannot move freely. Yet a net, insofar as it limits movement, is also a safety measure. The net appears after the leap to protect the one who falls.

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For Stephen, the safety nets of his “nationality, language, religion” prevent him from falling all the way. What he wants is precisely the danger of being without the net; he wants free fall, for only then, he believes, can he achieve something that is truly his own and which owes nothing to anything else.[1] This also plays into the egocentric role he attributes to the artist, whose creation is solely self-serving. While it is true that, for Stephen, the good artist absents themselves from their artwork, it is still central to the work that it be an eternal testament and that, in having intrinsic worth, it gives nothing back to the community. The artist is not in the work, true, but the artist did give birth to it; therefore, the work reflects the genius of the solitary creative. Further, art is for art’s sake: the artist has no obligation to anything or anyone external but only wants to create something beautiful and everlasting per se. 

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Quite simply, this project is flawed in both fact and principle. As Cranly points out, for example,  “It is a curious thing… how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve” (Joyce 212). It may be countered that Stephen has no choice in the matter, having been religiously indoctrinated at a young age; it is no surprise, then, that he should cling to old beliefs from which he nonetheless wishes to distance himself. But this overlooks the fact that Stephen himself conceives of his aesthetic role in religious terms, referring to himself as “a priest of the eternal imagination” (195). It’s not just that he has failed to get past Catholicism, Irishness, or the English language, though; for the point is that he will never be able to—as a matter of principle.

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The simple fact is that, no matter where he goes, he will always remain tethered to each of these nets in his core. It will be the task of Ulysses, as I see it, to come to terms with these negations, and subsequently to affirm them, albeit inventively. In other words, Stephen’s unequivocal rejections will have to become reinventions. Catholicism, Ireland, and English cannot be thrown away or transcended entirely, but they can be reimagined. And this, in turn, entails that the artist will have to immerse themselves back in the rabble from which they previously isolated themselves; will have to descend, like the Platonic philosopher at the mouth of the cave, back into the depths, bearing the living word of the sunlight, which bestows intelligibility onto reality and dispels, or at least makes sense out of, the shadows. Perhaps the artist, like the philosopher, will not succeed in leading others above ground, but it will be a worthy thing if the gospel of reality can be brought to “the marketplace” (Joyce 188) of everyday consciousness. 

 

 

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[1] In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant directs the following barb against extravagant metaphysicians, which barb also aptly exposes Stephen’s Icarian folly: “The light dove in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space” (A5/B9).

 

Source:

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Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. Edited by John Paul Riquelme et al., Second ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2021.

Analogical Being: A Critique of Univocal Quantification

In this paper, I will argue that Peter van Inwagen’s advocacy for a univocal sense of Being established on the basis of formal-logical quantification not only misunderstands Heidegger’s ontology but, as a result, limits the productive scope of metaphysical questioning.[1] Because van Inwagen collapses the distinction between beings and their activity, misunderstands the meaning of Dasein, and reduces the ontological to language, he fails to see how a recognition of different ways of being can help clarify traditional metaphysical disputes and create further discussion between diverse thinkers.  

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According to Heidegger, all beings are; but in addition to this, beings exhibit distinctive ways in which they are for us. This is why he believes that Being is analogical: There is a central meaning which, as it were, branches off into more specific ones. In contrast, van Inwagen holds that Being only has one meaning and that, as such, all beings are the same ontologically: “[T]o say that things of a certain sort exist and to say that there are things of that sort is to say the same thing” (480). A clear, more comprehensive summary of Heidegger’s position is as follows:

All of this [i.e., what is] is not merely uniformly presented to us on the world-stage as a confused manifold of juxtaposed items. On the contrary, within beings [Seiendes] there are certain fundamentally diverse ‘kinds’ of beings, which prescribe certain contexts in respect of which we take up a fundamentally different position…. And yet [for the most part] the beings that surround us are uniformly manifest as simply something present at hand in the broadest sense…. (FCM 275)

From this excerpt, a number of points can be gleaned: 

1. He begins with “All of this,” which simply indicates anything that is a being, that simply is. 
2. Beings do not manifest themselves “uniformly,” in an undifferentiated manner.
3. The various ways in which beings manifest themselves are not arbitrary but can be grouped “fundamentally… [into] ‘kinds.’” That is, these kinds are natural: they are not made but found.
4. Point (3) is obscured primarily because point (2) is not explicitly realized. It seems contradictory that, in the first sentence, he should deny that beings are uniform, only to say in the final sentence that they are. This must be understood phenomenologically: Descriptively, we do in fact find that beings often appear much in the same way, say, as things that are “just there,” but this is derivative; it is actually the case that, through our engaged dealings in the world, beings are qualitatively distinct. What is decisive is how beings are encountered, which elicits “fundamentally different position[s]” toward them. Heidegger explains that our ontology is biased toward presence-at-hand for existential reasons, insofar as it allows for a more secure existence.

It is worth dwelling a bit more on this last point, because it may be interpreted as a circular argument. Van Inwagen might object that Heidegger is begging the question in this way: Being is analogical rather than univocal, but on the basis of one of its modes, namely, presence-at-hand, we conclude that this is the one (uni) way in which it is properly said (vocal). Or to put simply, Heidegger can only refute van Inwagen’s univocity by assuming in the first place that being is not univocal, which is not the same as proving that such is the case. However, this concern is avoided because, as McDaniel explains, “Since Heidegger recognizes th[e] general concept of existence, he is willing to say (and capable of saying) of two things that enjoy different kinds of being that they are two” (300-301).  

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I believe Schaffer is on the mark when he declares that existence questions, which Heidegger would designate as ontic, are trivial within metaphysics, considering the very things under question can only be intelligently disputed if they first of all are (357). At this point, both van Inwagen and Heidegger are in agreement that Being is the most general phenomenon. The subsequent difference is that, for van Inwagen, this is both the point of departure and the point of arrival. His inquiry starts and stops at the same instant, because his is a “flat ontology” (Schaffer 355). Everything that is, is on the same plane. According to such an ontic egalitarianism, there are no qualitative distinctions between beings because, after all, being is nothing but an empty universal, as it were, reducible to an existential quantification of the form ∃ (“There is….”)! 

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To my mind, van Inwagen’s Quinean view is not a satisfactory account of either the reality we experience or Heidegger’s philosophizing about it.[2] Specifically, he misunderstands at least two points in Heidegger’s ontology. 

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First, he fails to properly appreciate the distinction between the ontic and the ontological. This Heidegger calls the “ontological difference,” i.e., the difference between beings and their respective Being (Sein), or beingness (Seiendheit), or way-of-being. Simply put, it is not the same thing to describe the fact that something is and to describe how that something is. Thus, it is true that Dasein and tables are, but they are in different ways—Dasein in virtue of its openness to Being, the table its presence-to-hand. Van Inwagen is quite correct, then, when he says that it is an “obvious truth… that one can’t engage in any activity unless one is” (477). Heidegger would not contest this. But van Inwagen stops being correct because he does not acknowledge the analogical sense of Being to which Heidegger is committed. Being is analogous insofar as there is a general activity of Being that derives from more specific—one can say “specialized”—activities. 

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By leaving out this latter half, van Inwagen can assert, “The vast difference between me and a table does not consist in our having vastly different sorts of being (…dass sein); it consists rather in our having vastly different sorts of nature (Wesen…)” (477). Heidegger’s point is that the different nature is the different way of being. As Quine expressed a preference “for desert landscapes” and van Inwagen is a follower of Quine, he can criticize this position for multiplying entities, leading to an “overpopulated universe” (Quine 23), as it seems like Heidegger is saying that there are two “layers”: There is the being, first of all, and then, in addition, there is the being’s Being, or nature, that is tacked on. Yet this would be a misunderstanding, too, because as Heidegger insists, “The Being of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity” (Being and Time 26). So what is a being’s Being, if not a new being? It is the way in which the being manifests itself—or, in a word, it is the distinctive activity of the respective being, which distinctly runs counter to van Inwagen’s first thesis. 

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Second, he deflates the ontological question into a linguistic one. Van Inwagen asks us to imagine some Martians whose language lacks any being- or existence-related words, whether nominal or verbal; then, he contends that, in such a scenario, the Martians would be not only perfectly intelligible but also probably better off than we are—we who busy ourselves to no avail with vapid talk of “being”! The (un)surprising thing is that, in each of his proposed “translations” that ostensibly dispenses with being-language—for example, “‘It makes me strangely uneasy to contemplate the fact that it might have been the case that everything was always not I’” (479)—van Inwagen manages to use such words anyway, words such as “been” and “was,” which are conjugations of “to be” and require the concept of existence to have any sense. 

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To this, he might reply that, despite begrudgingly using these words, he is actually employing them toward a different end, such that “being” is no longer an activity. For example, van Inwagen might say that in the sentence “The dragon is brushing its teeth,” which might appear in a medieval scroll or children’s storybook, there is no ontological commitment in question; one need not actually posit that such a dragon exists and that it is brushing its teeth. Still, this defense does not hold up, for Heidegger is not making a linguistic point about the words we are using; rather, the words refer to an underlying concept, namely, that something is, that we can experience it in some way—in a word, the phenomenon of Being.

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Precisely this is what fascinated Heidegger: That anything we can think or talk about, imagine, perceive, etc. presupposes Being, for which we have what Heidegger calls a “vague average understanding of Being” (Being and Time 25). Being must always be presupposed, though this “must” should not be interpreted to suggest contingency: We cannot do otherwise. Even in the case of the fictional dragon brushing its teeth, the dragon is an imaginary being, and imagined beings have their own distinct beingness, even if they only have their Being in the confines of bound pieces of paper. 

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If we return to the above-quoted Martian translation, which includes the words “It,” “me,” “fact,” “everything,” and “I,” the total absence of any being-word does not refute Heidegger’s position, but actually implies it; that is, even if van Inwagen’s Martians could successfully eliminate any semblance of being-language, the necessary concept of Being would necessarily persist. How so? First of all, because to speak of “It,” “me,” “fact,” “everything,” and “I,” implies that each of these things exists to be spoken about; and second, because even if none of the said things exist, the very sentence, in being spoken, exists, along with the speaker who says it! Indeed, for Heidegger, language has a disclosive function: Through speech, we make beings manifest. Yet this manifestness need not be limited to spatiotemporal objects that can be studied by science, considering a feeling, like the Martian’s being “strangely uneasy” about its contingency, is just as much a being that is communicated through speech.         

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Van Inwagen, neglecting the ontological difference, uses the example of “an unborn” or “unconceived person” in order to supposedly show how the Heideggerian position falters. The argument goes that the very premise “there are unconceived people” is nonsensical because the mere use of a form of “be” need not refer to anything that really has Being (481). Actually, the so-called problem of an “unborn” or “unconceived Dasein,” to which I will henceforth refer in keeping with Heidegger’s philosophy proper, can be addressed in two ways, depending on how “unborn” is construed. 

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According to Heidegger, it is true that “Dasein is its possibility” (Being and Time 62); however, to speak of an unborn Dasein, as van Inwagen does, is inappropriate and mistaken, since there is no such thing. At that point, one is speaking of either an unactualized being, to which I shall turn presently, or else a fetus, a present-at-hand collection of cells which, like all other beings, is, and has its own distinctive beingness. The fetus’ mode of being, though, is not Existenz, which belongs properly to Dasein, for whom its Being can be an issue: It is neither open to beings nor in-the-world (which really amounts to the same thing).[3] In fact, even if we granted that a fetus could be an unborn Dasein, and as Dasein is defined by possibility, then we would have to say that it is only a possibility of possibility, a second-order potentiality that thus makes its Being of another kind. There is no “remainder of… life,” as van Inwagen correctly opines, for something that does not have the mode of life to begin with (481). And yet, the fetus has Being all the same. 

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Or, if by an “unborn Dasein” one means, not a fetus, but merely a possible Dasein that could exist or could have existed at some indeterminate point in the future or past, then the argument is similar. Again, Dasein, as a to-be, is its possibilities; only as actual, as existing, does Dasein have its own potentiality-for-Being (Being and Time 225). On the other hand, to predicate potentiality of a non-existent being is to commit an ontological mistake, as only a being that is, can be; conversely, a being that only could be, like some unspecified unborn Dasein, does not as such have any real possibilities of its own to speak of. A seed is a potential tree, while a potential seed cannot be a potential tree but only an actual seed—if even that, seeing as it does not even satisfy a minimum existence. Analogously, a potential Dasein does not itself have potential, for potential is a modality that belongs to specific kinds of beings, but not all. Therefore, van Inwagen misses the point when he declares that “there are no things that don’t exist” (481), from which it supposedly, albeit incorrectly, follows that existence and being are the same. 

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For van Inwagen, talking about ways of Being is superfluous, as he believes that all ontic questions can be resolved through the application of unrestricted existential quantification. Not only does formal logic encompass the whole domain of what is, it also avoids making any ontological commitments [4]; all it does is stipulate in an ideal, conditional way what is predicated of what.[5] When, in addition to the unrestricted existential quantifier, ∃, there are added restricted existential quantifiers, that is, symbolic specifications of which beings are being talked about, Heidegger is made obsolete. A statement along the lines of “There is something, such that this something is so-and-so” forgoes any need for “beingness.” And according to McDaniel, van Inwagen is indeed justified herein; so far, existential quantification is compatible with Heideggerian ontology. 

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Nonetheless, a key difference emerges: “From a Heideggerian perspective,…. [t]he unrestricted quantifier is in some way to be understood in terms of [the] restricted quantifiers…, not the other way around” (McDaniel 303). McDaniels refers briefly to the difficulty of, as he puts it, “‘defining up’ the generic sense of ‘being’” (304), but it seems to me that the difficulty is in the opposite direction: If we start, as van Inwagen does, from the assumption that Being is univocal and that quantification is primarily unrestricted, then how could qualitative distinctions possibly be derived? Starting from a plurality and arriving at a unity strikes me as more plausible than the converse: The former involves a basic operation of determinate abstraction, whereas the latter compels nondeterminate division. 

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Alternatively, I can point out that the very term “quantification” betrays the difficulty inherent to a flat ontology, given that numerosity, to which van Inwagen wishes to reduce the activity of Being, requires homogeneity. Putting all beings on the same plane, so to speak, deprives them of their intelligible differences. A simple proof of this is that the beingness of numbers—numerosity—is clearly inapplicable to that which is counted thereby. If I count three dogs, the number “3” and the actual dogs themselves are irreducible; dogs cannot be understood on the basis of numbers, nor can numbers be derived, logically speaking, from dogs.[6] Yet from a formal-logical perspective, in which existence is nothing but quantification, this point, which methinks indispensable, cannot legitimately be raised.

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Another point Heidegger could make is that, although existential quantification is valid as a system of discourse (McDaniel 302n), it is ultimately derivative. This conclusion comes from his phenomenological understanding of language as a form of understanding, which understanding is always implicitly of Being (Seinsverständnis). Formal logic’s existential quantification is an instance of first-order logic in which statements are analyzed in terms of predicate relations. With regard to the actuality of these predicates and what they ostensibly name, logic is agnostic, so to speak.

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However, as Heidegger sees it, these propositions (Aussagen), as forms of signification established upon predication, are actually founded upon, and so presuppose, a more original saying (Sagen). Therefore, a proposition is an abstraction insofar as it is extracted out from a saying (aus-sagen), which initially points out, or indicates, a being. All of this is to say that existential quantification is useful only because, in an idealized and roundabout way, it is an artificial means of re-presenting (vor-stellen) what we experience. In a word, existential quantification is valid because it actually has its own hidden ontological premises, a covered up sense of what is meant by Being.   

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For this reason, I agree with McDaniel that a Heideggerian ontology that “accept[s] that there are different ways of being… impact[s] ontological disputes” (291)—except, this statement being nearly trivial, I would put it more strongly: Acknowledging Being as analogous is a more productive approach to metaphysics than van Inwagen’s univocal approach, which effectively limits, and so hinders, metaphysical inquiry. Where Schaffer speaks of a permissivism, Heidegger may well be committed to a pluralism which, unlike univocity, renders certain traditional metaphysical disputes more tractable. McDaniels demonstrates this cogently in the case of subsistence. He believes, first, that we have a natural tendency to differentiate between the being of abstract existents and that of concrete/material ones; and second, that this natural tendency of ours is essentially correct. On the other hand, to equate the being of a table with that of a number is both unnatural, i.e., artificial or contrived, and more obscuring than clarifying. 

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Again, this illustrates the usefulness and power of the ontological difference, or the distinction between the ontic (what is) and the ontological (what what is is). An example from Heidegger will illuminate this intuition:

In the assertions ‘God is’ and ‘the world is’, we assert Being. This word ‘is’, however, cannot be meant to apply to these entities in the same sense (…univoce), when between them there is an infinite difference of Being; if the signification of ‘is’ were univocal, then what is created would be viewed as if it were uncreated, or the uncreated would be reduced to the status of something created. (Being and Time 126)

In short, the assumption of univocity does a disservice to the phenomena. To adopt van Inwagen’s existential quantification would be an injustice to the way we think about and experience the world [7]:—Yes, each thing that is, is just as much as every other thing, but no, each thing that is, is not in the same manner as every other thing. Even an atheist who disbelieves God’s existence would, I think, honestly admit that, in theory, God’s way of Being is of a fundamentally different kind than humanity’s.[8] Likewise, although both a quark and a chameleon are actually in the world, few would seriously consider their respective modes of Being qualitatively indistinct. 

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In conclusion, when it comes to the question of what is meant by the word “being,” I think Heidegger’s analogical conception is both truer to experience and more useful than van Inwagen’s univocal conception. Recognizing a general sense of Being is a starting point, not a conclusion; otherwise, one forfeits the ability to express the varied richness of the world. By overlooking or even abolishing the ontological difference, existential quantification flattens ontology, preventing us from making sense of how beings differ from each other, not just numerically but essentially. Different beings differ in their Being; but while this sounds strange, in reality it is anything but strange. What is truly strange is the desire to reduce the wonder of Being in all its manifestness to ∃…  

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Notes:

[1] To the best of my ability, I shall try to be consistent with my terminology, using “being” and its derivatives for those things that are (Seiendes), “Being” (Sein) or “beingness” (Seiendheit) for modes/ways of Being, and “exist” and its derivatives for Dasein alone. Basically, beings are any- and everything, but a being’s Being(ness) is the manner in which that being is encountered by us. On the other hand, Being itself (Sein selbst) is that which allows all beings to be at all.

[2] This is no surprise, though, because van Inwagen himself admits as much: 

[M]y knowledge of Heidegger is superficial… I, nevertheless, make no apology… It is my view that Heidegger’s philosophy of being is so transparently confused that no profound knowledge of his writings is a prerequisite for making judgments [on it].” (475n4)

[3] A non-Heideggerian would balk at this seemingly ridiculous proposition: “Of course a fetus is in the world! That is what an ultrasound reveals. Or are you suggesting a fetus is somehow extraterrestrial?” Here, too, the ontic-ontological distinction is vital. Ontically, a fetus is just as much “in the world” as a table is; it is inner-worldly. But for Heidegger, being in the world is different from being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein), which is an ontological description. In other words, both a fetus and a Dasein are in the world, but only the latter is being-in-the-world. A more detailed exposition of what is entailed by having a “world” and how this relates to other beings, like animals, can be found in the latter sections of Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics; however, due to the limitations of this paper, which does not set out to address the ontological status of fetuses—or, for that matter, the contentious ethical question of abortion, which would never cross Heidegger’s mind—I can’t develop this further.

[4] This doesn’t seem entirely true to me. In Time and Being, Heidegger makes use of the fact that the German phrase “Es gibt”—“There is”—literally means “It gives/is given,” which he refers back to Being. Van Inwagen is aware of this linguistic fact but, fairly enough, does not come to the same conclusions (480n15).

[5] One may say that formal logic deals not with what actually exists but only what is real, in Kantian language.

[6] I specify that this is so logically because, empirically, this is the case.

[7] Van Inwagen or another critic could easily dismiss this as a fallacious appeal to nature, for which reason I must forthrightly disclose my predilection toward phenomenology. Heidegger and I take seriously Aristotle’s exhortation to “save the phenomena” (σώζειν τὰ φαινόμενα). This is a fundamental stance that I assume for the sake of the essay.

[8] Cf. Schaffer’s similar argument (359)

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Works cited:

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Harper & Row, 1962. 

———. Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Translated by William McNeill and Nicholas Walker, Indiana University Press, 1995. 

McDaniel, Kris. “Ways of Being.” Metametaphysics, edited by David J. Chalmers, Clarendon, Press, 2009, pp. 290-319. 

Quine, Willard V. “On What There Is.” The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 2, No. 5, 1948, pp. 21-38. 

Schaffer, Jonathan. “On What Grounds What.” Metametaphysics, edited by David J. Chalmers, Clarendon, Press, 2009, pp. 347-383.

Van Inwagen, Peter. “Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment.” Metametaphysics, edited by David J. Chalmers, Clarendon, Press, 2009, pp. 472-506. 

Merleau-Ponty on Human Connection

From page 90 of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s The World of Perception (2004):

Lerner on the Necessity of Art

From pages 44-5 of Ben Lerner’s novel Leaving the Atocha Station (2011):