Thoughts of the Day: Saturday 21 November 2020

 

The Master and His Emissary

Iain McGilchrist

So Wordsworth describes at the opening of Book XII of The Prelude how inspiration requires both the effort by which the mind ‘aspires, grasps, struggles, wishes, craves’ and the stillness of the mind which ‘fits him to receive it, when unsought’ – despite the effort, it still only comes unsought.

Compare the above with Hannah Arendt's descriptions of "thinking," such as undertaken by Socrates.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

Plotinus’s level of Soul is in turn divided into two sublevels, one rapt in upward contemplation, the other dynamically involved below. The tradition of this distinction in Greek philosophy goes back from Plotinus through Middle Platonist and Neopythagorean sources to Aristotle’s distinction between active and passive intellect, and ultimately to Plato’s conception of the World Soul in the Timaeus.

Made to Stick

Chip Heath, Dan Heath

As we pored over hundreds of sticky ideas, we saw, over and over, the same six principles at work. PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY How do we find the essential core of our ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, “If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize.

And for a deeper dive today:

The ‘corrupting influence of power’ is a commonplace. Power means the exercise of force; it corrupts by undermining a man’s will and reducing him to the level of his own slaves. [Collingwood is writing in the context of Greco-Roman political thought.] A slave-driver, getting out of the habit of explaining to his slaves what he means them to do, gets out of the habit of formulating his intentions even to himself. He can retain that habit only by discussing them on equal terms with his equals.

Plato knew this. He has left us a psychological study of the political slave-driver (in Greek ‘tyrant’) and a psychological study of the slave, the ‘tyrant’s’ subject. The results are the same. The lack of free will, the inability to resist the pressure of emotional forces, which makes the slave a slave, is also what makes the ‘tyrant’ a ‘tyrant’.

To narrate the genesis and career of the ‘tyrant’ (for us to-day, as it was for Plato or the Hellenistic period, an absorbing task) is not exactly the business of political science, because the field of activity in which the ‘tyrant’ distinguishes himself is not, strictly speaking, political. For the time being, let us call it pseudo-political. Collingwood, R. G.. The New Leviathan. Read Books Ltd.. Kindle Edition.

Thoughts of the Day: Wednesday 23 September 2020

Nota Bene: Today, I'll only quote from one piece of writing, the source of our "deeper dive" with Hannah Arendt. I'll be quoting again from Arendt's "Understanding & Politics," published in 1953 in Partisan Review. I'm jumping ahead a bit here, but in reviewing my notes, these remarks near the conclusion of the essay struck me as quite striking. I'll add some comments after the quotes: 

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

If we wish to translate the biblical language [King Solomon's prayer for an "understanding heart"] into terms that are closer to our speech (though hardly more accurate), we may call the faculty of imagination the gift of the “understanding heart.” In distinction from fantasy, which dreams something, imagination is concerned with the particular darkness of the human heart and the peculiar density which surrounds everything that is real. In distinction from fantasy, which dreams something, imagination is concerned with the particular darkness of the human heart and the peculiar density which surrounds everything that is real.

. . . .

True understanding does not tire of interminable dialogue and “vicious circles,” because it trusts that imagination eventually will catch at least a glimpse of the always frightening light of truth. To distinguish imagination from fancy and to mobilize its power does not mean that understanding of human affairs becomes “irrational.” On the contrary, imagination, as Wordsworth said, “is but another name for . . . clearest insight, amplitude of mind, / And Reason in her most exalted mood” (The Prelude, Book XIV, 190–92).

Imagination alone enables us to see things in their proper perspective, to be strong enough to put that which is too close at a certain distance so that we can see and understand it without bias and prejudice, to be generous enough to bridge abysses of remoteness until we can see and understand everything that is too far away from us as though it were our own affair.

. . . .

Without this kind of imagination, which actually is understanding, we would never be able to take our bearings in the world. It is the only inner compass we have. We are contemporaries only so far as our understanding reaches. If we want to be at home on this earth, even at the price of being at home in this century, we must try to take part in the interminable dialogue with the essence of totalitarianism.

Arendt, Hannah. Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954 (p. 322-323). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

SNG: What caught my eye is Arendt's emphasis on "imagination" as an essential faculty of mind is so widely shared by other significant thinkers. Upon reading this, one thinks of Kant, Coleridge (who shares Kant as a common ancestor with Arendt), Owen Barfield, R.G. Collingwood, and the thinkers and commentary in Gary Lachman's Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. And this is a shortlist. All of these thinkers--and many others--realize that we can't gain understanding without the use of imagination. And we need imagination and understanding more than ever--even more than knowledge--as much as we sorely need further knowledge to address our current challenges.

The Art of Travel by Alain De Botton*

In this, another delightful book from Alain De Botton, of whom I’ve previously read How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Consolations of Philosophy, De Botton once again adroitly mixes personal experience, paintings, literature, and famous figures to explore different aspects of travel. Each chapter is “on”: “On Anticipation”, “On the Exotic”, “On Habit”, and so on. Each chapter is a self-contained essay that explores its chosen topic through a representative figure from history, such as Flaubert, Wordsworth, and Ruskin, to name three of the more familiar figures. Each chapter uses paintings and photography to supplement the words of the essay. “On Traveling Places”, for instance, explores works of Edward Hopper, best known for his work “Nighthawks" (not used here), but who also explored trains, gas stations, and hotel rooms along his way. Finally, De Botton includes his own experiences to provide a contemporary perspective and to sometimes test the ideas of those upon whom he has drawn. 

Part of the pleasure of De Botton’s project comes from his ability to meditate on travel from many different angles. In the opening essay, “On Anticipation”, he tells the tale of J.-K. Huysmans, who decided upon a trip to London from his French residence, only to abandon it after having made all of the necessary arrangements and consulted all of the guide books. After consulting the guidebooks, he decided he’d seen enough! Sometimes, indeed, the imagination of anticipation exceeds the reality of even the most alluring of destinations. In “On the Exotic”, the French novelist Flaubert travels to Egypt to stay and experience an alien world, while Xavier de Maistre writes about his travels around his bedroom, and then his view from his bedroom window in De Botton’s “On Habit” chapter. (De Maistre travels abroad as well.) But even within the limited purview of a bedroom De Maistre finds, upon careful and leisurely inspection, more interesting things either he or we could have imagined. 

De Botton contrasts the city with the country. Samuel Johnson found the Scottish highlands a wasteland that merely created annoyance, while not long after Johnson, Wordsworth sang the praises of the Lake District. Our views of what’s worth visiting and experiencing changes with time and varies according to our temperament. The German scientist Alexander von Humboldt traveled the Amazon basin in the early 19^th century to catalogue all that was new to European scientists, loving the challenge and uniqueness of the journey. 

De Botton uses the paintings of Van Gogh to illustrate what might go unnoticed or unappreciated in a region and that can be newly (or perhaps first) appreciated only after viewing a painted facsimile of the scene. Of course, Van Gogh didn’t take a realist perspective, his cypress trees look as if they are on fire and his building are often all akimbo, but he forces us to take a new and closer look at what some once considered the boring countryside of Provence. By abstracting reality, we obtain a better appreciation of it. In a similar vein, Edmund Burke argues that we benefit when Nature overwhelms us with its grandeur and power in a manner that we label “sublime”. 

If you travel or you contemplate travel, De Botton’s book will serve as a meditative preparation, one that you can dip into at leisure, as each chapter constitutes a self-contained essay on some aspect of travel. We humans have been traveling and exploring our world for tens of thousands of years, and now, with travel easier than ever, we need to reflect upon its benefits and pitfalls. And in this, De Botton serves as an excellent guide. 

*First posted in SNG Abroad blog.