Category Archives: Philosophy

Pausanias’ Relativism

From a stupor, the following emerges:

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Pausanias, in his response/addition to Phaedrus’ speech extolling the virtues of love, suggests that Phaedrus put the cart before the horse, so to speak, inasmuch as Phaedrus talked at length about the benefits of love while neglecting to carefully define love save for as one of “the most ancient gods” (Phaedrus, 178b). Pausanias seeks to rectify this by not only clarifying what love is, but also by creating a distinction between two different kinds of love. As Pausanias notes, “Love and Aphrodite are inseparable” and insofar as there are two Aphrodite – he doesn’t expect we’ll disagree with him –, there “also are two kinds of Love” (180d). The first kind of love, corresponding to the first Aphrodite, is what Pausanias calls “Heavenly Love” while the second kind, corresponding to the second Aphrodite, is “Common Love (180e). The distinction between the two, for our hero Pausanias, lies in the origin, usage, and aim of each love. Indeed, Common Love, with its base nature, “strikes wherever he gets a chance” and rears his head as “the love felt by the vulgar” in attraction to the body with the sole aim of sexual gratification (181b). Heavenly Love, in contradistinction, is “older,” “free from the lewdness of youth” and with a focus on an attraction to the soul, is interested in the cultivation of virtue, etc. Where the former seeks purely physical pleasure, the latter seeks intellectual and spiritual fulfillment (181c-d).

Pausanias wants, with all his heart, to affirm the primacy of Heavenly Love to the point at which he suggests placing “legal obstacles” in the way of the achievement of Common Love, as those vulgar lovers falling prey to it “need external restraint” (181e-182a). As he goes on to espouse the virtues of Heavenly Love (e.g. it creates honorable men, it helps shape the young into virtuous citizens, etc.), it is clear that there is a disdain for the baseness of Common Love, a love which, in and of itself, can do none of the above and which “no genuine affection can possibly be based upon” (182d, 183c, 184b). It is my contention, however, that given very prudent remarks made by Pausanias throughout his speech, he cannot so easily assert the primacy of the Heavenly over the Common. Indeed, in its strongest form, this argument is not simply that he cannot so easily assert primacy, but that such a primacy does not exist. In what follows, it is my goal to show that not only is Heavenly Love not intrinsically superior to Common Love, but that Common Love can bring with it the same benefits supposedly intrinsic to Heavenly Love. Thus, to begin we will excavate two quotations and run from there.

[C]onsidered in itself, no action is either good or bad, honorable or shameful […] how it comes out depends entirely on how it is performed. If it is done honorably and properly, it turns out to be honorable; if it is done improperly, it is disgraceful […and] this principle applies to being in love: Love is not himself noble and worthy of praise; that depends on whether the sentiments he produces in us are themselves noble (180e-181a).

[L]ove is, like everything else, complex: considered simply in itself, it is neither honorable nor a disgrace – its character depends entirely on the behavior it gives rise to (183d).

Pausanias, in a sobering take, doesn’t categorically affirm things as intrinsically positive or negative; rather actions – and this includes the action of love – are intrinsically neutral and gain a moral value based on how they’re done. Not only does this imply that standard relativistic – or, better said, ‘fuzzy’ – claims or answers of the type ‘it depends’ are acceptable, it also means that Common Love, if done in the ‘right’ manner, can be honorable and praiseworthy while Heavenly Love, if done in the ‘wrong’ manner, can be dishonorable and shameful. Furthermore, such a fuzzy framework allows for a distinction between means and ends inasmuch as a given end of an action may not be desirable, but the action itself is honorable. In making this distinction, we must talk of means and ends separately as, arguably, Love that is aimed purely at the gratification of material desires – that is to say, love that supposedly intrinsically inferior to love aimed at the cultivation of the soul – can be performed in an honorable way, so long as it is done so honorably. Thus, the obvious question arises: ‘what are “good” or “honorable” ways to do things?’

For Pausanias, the answer can be found in the Greek way of life. Specifically, the Greek way of life, that way of life so far advanced as to be “remarkably complex,” is itself honorable. As Pausanias notes: “nothing done properly and in accordance with our customs would ever” be disgraceful (182b, 182a). The customs which he speaks of, a) making a public declaration of love1)It’s important to note that Pausanias doesn’t qualify which type of love he’s talking about, rather he seems to be talking about love in itself. which is “more honorable […] than to keep it a secret”; b) affirming one’s love so long as the beloved is “encouraged in every possible way,”2)It’s important to note, again, the lack of qualification. an action of loving that is not shameful; c) even love by conquest or merely for practical purposes, acts which are themselves laudable in the context of love govern the quality of the action itself (182d-183b). Thus, if an action is done, say, with a public declaration of true intent, with the goal of encouraging some kind of growth, etc., such an action can be said to be in line with Greek customs and, in turn, could never be disgraceful.

From this understanding, we continue and can see that Common Love, love of the flesh, as base as it is, can hardly be said to be less than Heavenly Love for it might be done in an honorable way thus making it, in itself, honorable. For example, public seduction or declarations of material desire, while potentially vulgar, can be respected as honorable thereby making the vulgarity a potentially superfluous aspect. Furthermore, in the most base of cases, a lover who is more experienced than the beloved and thus teaches him the ways of intercourse, if only for orgasmic gain, can be seen as honorable as well, insofar as the lover is helping to cultivate the growth the beloved, growth that need not be spiritual if we think back to Pausanias’ unqualified adoration of “encouragement.” Additionally, if we are to extend the means-ends distinction further, there are certainly cases in which Common Love can be more honorable than Heavenly Love. Although the former is aimed at a base desire while the latter is aimed at spiritual fulfillment, if the latter is accomplished by dishonorable means (having secret affairs, for example), then the overall act is tainted with dishonor. Conversely, if the former is accomplished by honorable means (those mentioned above), its negative stigma may be diminished. Interestingly enough, this tracks with our common intuition of actions we may not approve of. While certainly an extreme case, murdering your fellow human in the heat of battle is more honorable than stabbing them as they sleep. The end, while not necessarily ideal, is, at some level, subordinated to the means by which it was accomplished.

Now Pausanias, upon reading this, would no doubt be dismayed and would likely have the following response: “But Peter, you have clearly missed a part of my speech – perhaps drunk off too much wine? I made it clear that Common Love, whether done “honorably or not is of no concern” as Common Love is, absolutely, dishonorable. It is, as I have said, vulgar as it belongs to the “vulgar lover, who loves the body rather than the soul,” a “mutable and unstable” entity causing, in the parlance of your time, the lover to ‘ghost’ the beloved” (181b, 183d-e).

PH: ‘Pausanias, my dear, it seems as if you have given in to your Dionysian side far more than I have, for you have neglected to provide a justification for the bold claim that the honorability of Common Love is, as you say, “of no concern.” Indeed, if we are to take you at your word – and you are a man of honesty, are you not? – we must attempt to make sense of the remarks you made before that last glass of wine, that actions cannot be prejudged. I implore you, before Eryximachus speaks – for it seems as if Aristophanes has succumbed to a dreadful case of the hiccups –, to reconcile the contradiction. But I shall give you a chance to finish your figs as my cup is not yet empty and I have more to say.’

‘Let us take you at your word, again, and grant you that Common Love is merely love of the body which is mutable, while Heavenly Love is love the soul, a thing you contrast to the mutable body and as such implicitly affirm as immutable – perhaps Socrates can weigh in on the nature of the soul a bit later. I am getting off track, however – let us take you at word. I fear what you have said not only is empirically false, but misunderstands the nature of change. If the body is mutable and once it becomes old, the love fades and the lover leaves, we ought to see this happen in our society, ought we not? Our dear Socrates, however, pushing 50 is, as a time-traveler you will someday meet said, of “the lowest folk […] ugly.” His appearance has faded yet he has no fewer suitors, would we not all agree? It thus can be seen that bodily mutability does not carry with it a necessary loss of love, making it vulgar, as you claim.’3)F. Nietzsche, “The Problem of Socrates,” in Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. Polt (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997) 13.

‘That was a rather minor point, however. A larger objection is your assumption that the soul, in contrast to the body, is immutable. Indeed, if you define the body as mutable and contrast its nature to that of the soul, ought not we understand the soul as immutable? If this is the case, my dear Pausanias, how then can spiritual growth happen? What, then, is the point of this Heavenly Love you so adore? Is the soul mutable or not? It seems that either I am drunk, or you are in a double-bind. If the soul is mutable (and we ignore my above point), then it too will degenerate causing a lover to “‘fly off and away,’” a fundamentally vulgar act (183e). If the soul is immutable, however, then Heavenly Love can never fulfill its goal of cultivating the growth of the soul.’

‘If we take you seriously, Heavenly Love cultivates the soul – an action that can only occur if the soul is mutable –, but mutability is negative as it allows for degeneration and flight, thus Heavenly Love is no better than Common Love as it falls prey to the same “ghosting” issues. Much like a bow strung too tightly, something must give. Alternatively, you can concede that mutability is not a negative attribute, but you will then lose your critique of the body and we must have further reasons for why Common Love is bad. If that’s the case, we’re set back a few steps and I will certainly need more wine.’

‘I could go on; indeed, your contradiction risks impiety, but for fear of the court I shall not raise that charge here. Further, as my cup is nearly empty and you seem to have finished your figs, I would like to hear your response (and hopefully I am not chased out with accusations of Sophism)…’

References

References
↑1 It’s important to note that Pausanias doesn’t qualify which type of love he’s talking about, rather he seems to be talking about love in itself.
↑2 It’s important to note, again, the lack of qualification.
↑3 F. Nietzsche, “The Problem of Socrates,” in Twilight of the Idols, trans. R. Polt (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997) 13.

Preliminary Notes on Hannah Arendt, Prometheanism, and Human Nature

Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, is quick to make sure that we understand that the human condition as such is not equivalent to human nature. For her, while the latter consists of “essential characteristics of human existence in the sense that without them this existence would no longer be human,”1)Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition [HC] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 10. the human condition as such is a structuring principle: “conditions of human existence […that] can never ‘explain’ what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that they never condition us absolutely.”2)HC, 11. Indeed, for her, human nature is likely both inexplicable without recourse to theology — she notes that “[t]he question about the nature of man is no less a theological question than the question about the nature of God; both can be settled only within the framework of a divinely revealed answer”3)Ibid., 11 f. 2. — and, perhaps, non-existent: “the fact that attempts to define the nature of man lead so easily into an idea which definitely strikes us as ‘superhuman’ and therefore is identified with the divine may cast suspicion upon the very concept of ‘human nature.'”4)Ibid., 11.

It is my contention, however, that not only does Arendt (perhaps unconsciously) smuggle human nature and/or essentialism back into the picture despite being nominally anti-essentialist, but she also ontologizes human finitude in the same way Ray Brassier accuses Heidegger of doing. In this short post, what I want to try to do is explicate Arendt’s supposed anti-essentialism in The Human Condition, recapitulate Ray Brassier’s critique of anti-Prometheans in his 2014 essay “Prometheanism and its Critics,”5)Ray Brassier, “Prometheanism and its Critics” [“PC”], in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, ed. R. Mackay and A. Avanessian. (Falmouth, UK: Urbanomic, 2014.): 467-487. and ultimately argue that despite Arendt’s claims, there is a latent essentialism in her work.

Hannah Arendt by Ben Northern

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References

References
↑1 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition [HC] (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 10.
↑2 HC, 11.
↑3 Ibid., 11 f. 2.
↑4 Ibid., 11.
↑5 Ray Brassier, “Prometheanism and its Critics” [“PC”], in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, ed. R. Mackay and A. Avanessian. (Falmouth, UK: Urbanomic, 2014.): 467-487.

Gender, Impersonal Pronouns, and Nihilism

I rarely write anything overtly particularly personal here — indeed, I’ve been going through a bout of writer’s block, so I’ve hardly written anything at all — , but I’ve been mulling over the concept of gender for a while and wanted to commit some thoughts to ‘paper.’

In our current era, I find myself increasingly wondering why I don’t put preferred pronouns in my email signature, Twitter bio, etc. Part of it, I think, has to do with my general unease with identity politics (another issue), but as I reflect on it a bit more, something else seems to be at work. A few months back, I was eating breakfast with a friend and we were discussing this very issue. In response to the implicit question of “what pronouns would you use/put?” I noted that I would use ‘it/its,’ adding the caveat that I don’t ask for that because such a request would seem as if I were mocking those who legitimately desire specific pronouns to help with their identi(ty)(fication).

But setting that concern aside, the next question was, “why use those pronouns? Why use impersonal pronouns that are, in theory, devoid of gender?” The answer to this question — or, more broadly speaking, the question of “what is your gender identity?” — has been occupying my mind of late and I’d like to share some thoughts. I share them not because I think I have anything particularly insightful to say, nor because I want to convince anyone of anything. Rather, I share them for two reasons. First, they’re thoughts I want to get off my chest; and Second, gender politics are ‘in’ right now, and being transparent with one’s identity seems to be important (if you sense ambivalence here, it will soon be explained).

Thus, to start I must begin by noting psycho-biographical facts: I was born male (both sexed and gendered) and have identified as such throughout my life. Truth be told, however, I don’t particularly care how someone identifies me. Were I referred to as “she” (something that has happened before when I sported longer hair), I might be confused for a second, but that’s simply because it hasn’t been my norm. For me, gender is a largely irrelevant signifier. I don’t feel any affinity towards a group when I note “M” or “MALE” on official forms, and I’ve started putting “OTHER” for precisely this reason. While I am, of course, a sexed and (en)gendered subject within our society, I don’t care for that. Indeed, as anyone that knows me will attest, I find the concept of a static subject (an identity) confusing at best and stifling at worst. As such, I active choose to ignore my own gender.

My ambivalence towards gender — that is to say, my view that it a) ought not matter (we’ll bracket medical issues) and b) I don’t care — , admittedly stems from a place of privilege. At least to a certain extent. I find this part the hardest to articulate, but as best I can, the story goes like this: I can afford to be ambivalent about (my) gender precisely because I pass for male in a masculine culture. I don’t have to worry about the precariousness of my identity because, for all intents and purposes, I am part of the dominant group. While I wouldn’t show particular affinity for the men of America, my existence and outward appearance tends to place me in that group and since I don’t particularly care about my gender, I don’t object. Again, I can only do this because of a certain level of privilege and thus, while I would say that gender ought to be largely irrelevant, I would not say that people ought not self-define as I know for some, defining oneself is important.

While I can only speculate, were I born female (both sexed and gendered), I suspect my attitudes would be the same but I would also be more keenly aware of power differentials latent in my social gendering. I would not have the same privilege of passing for the dominant group that I have currently, and while I might not care, I would at least be aware of the lack. Thus, I can afford to be ambivalent for the aforementioned structural reasons.

But none of that directly answers the “why?” While briefly noted, I find the concept the concept of a static subject (or identity) to be confusing. Indeed, I find it conceptually incoherent for a myriad of reasons best explored elsewhere. Given that, I see any attempt to self-identify as a particular gender to be not only an act of reifying the incoherent, but to be a performative contradiction. While I generally have no issue with the latter, in the context of something that is a vector of oppression (subjectivity and identity), denouncing it while (at least) actively playing into it seems ‘icky.’ Thus, I opt for a form of gender nihilism (book) mixed with thoroughly depersonalized pronouns: it/its. Although as noted, I choose not to insist on them for reasons mentioned above. Were I to take this nihilism more seriously, I might actively affirm them, but for the time being specific pronouns are irrelevant. Use what you will. A longer discussion of gender nihilism might be forthcoming, but who knows. (In referring to someone I don’t know, I default to they/them)

The question will no doubt be raised, “why not affirm gender non-binarism?” While my thoughts on non-binarity are long winded and irrelevant here (further, they don’t matter and ought not hold any sway over anyone), I’ll simply say that identifying as non-binary seems to me to be, at best, an affirmation of a third identity with no real break while, at worst, reifying the gender dichotomy (see Alex Ray‘s wonderful essay “Radioactive Transness” in Plutonics XIII, 123-124; also, see “Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto”). Again, I have no desire to tell anyone how to identify (or not) and thus my distancing from non-binarism ought not be read as an invalidation of anyone.

As noted in the 2015 addendum to the Gender Nihilist Anti-Manifesto:

Finally, this piece was not meant to tell anyone how to think about gender, it was the result of a collective analysis by a specific group of people which came to conclusions that allowed us to understand our lives. If you don’t like that understanding, feel free to discard it. I do not ask or demand you agree with me. I am happy that discussion and discourse towards these ideas continues. I made mistakes with omitting crucial contextual framings which caused my piece to be at least tacitly complicit in whiteness and coloniality. Keep resisting, keep struggling, keep discussing, keep surviving.

Stuck Inside the Vampire Castle

When Mark Fisher, the late cultural theorist whose “K-punk blogs were required reading for a generation,” wrote his (in)famous 2013 essay, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” he was responding to the path contemporary leftism had been uncritically going down for years.1)Simon Reynolds, “Mark Fisher’s K-punk blogs were required reading for a generation,” The Guardian, accessed 3/31/19, published 1/18/17; Mark Fisher, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” in K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (London: Repeater Books, 2018): 737-745. Academically insulating itself from the world at large and maintaining an air of superiority, contemporary leftism was cultivating what Fisher saw as “an atmosphere of snarky resentment” coupled with “bad conscience and witch-hunting moralism,” traits born by ignoring class consciousness as such in favor of attacking specific individuals’ social status. Indeed, for Fisher, focus within the contemporary left shifted from broad-based class solidarity (with the recognition that individuals make mistakes and need not be excessively villainized for them) to rigid identitarianism where individual purity had to be maintained, and anyone not up to par must be purged.

While brilliant, Fisher’s analysis was instantly controversial as he shined light on a very unpalatable side of contemporary leftism which drained serious movements of their lifeforce: vampirism. Further, while being no less salient six years later, Fisher’s essay leaves some things unsaid with others still only implied. Thus, given the fact that we never really left, it is more important than ever to reexamine the rigid structure the left currently occupies: the Vampires’ Castle.

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References

References
↑1 Simon Reynolds, “Mark Fisher’s K-punk blogs were required reading for a generation,” The Guardian, accessed 3/31/19, published 1/18/17; Mark Fisher, “Exiting the Vampire Castle,” in K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2016), ed. Darren Ambrose (London: Repeater Books, 2018): 737-745.

Cut: On Humanizing Time

The (traditional) phenomenological project of reducing everything to human experience has, necessarily, caught up with time. Indeed, in Alia Al-Saji‘s “The Temporality of Life: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the Immemorial Past,” temporality becomes the unwilling servant to human subjectivity by being made into a structuring principle for the self — the past is the vital thrust that makes the present possible not by metaphysical necessity, but by retroactive phenomenological ‘secretion of time.'1)Alia Al-Saji, “The Temporality of Life: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the Immemorial Past,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 45, no. 2 (2007), 177-206: 181. Merleau-Ponty points to

the privilege of the present in the way in which the body lives time. Notably, the body “secretes time … project[ing] round the present a double horizon of past and future”2)Al-Saji, “The Temporality of Life,” 181; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception trans. Colin Smith (New Jersey: The Humanities Press, 1962), 239-240 / [“secretes time […] project[ing] a double horizon of the past and future around the present” trans. Donald Landes (London: Routledge, 2014), 249.]

Al-Saji:

These descriptions point to an immemorial that is neither lost presence, nor distant past; as both ground and abyss, the immemorial is a past that accompanies and makes possible the present.3)Al-Saji, “The Temporality of Life,” 184.

While noting that the past is not exhuasted in creating the present (thereby affirming some virtuality to it), the past is only important insofar as it is understandable and creates a present for us.4)Ibid., 186-188. While there’s more to say, all I have for now is the vague intuition that time is something so utterly alien to us that our attempts to humanize it — that is to say, make it understandable — strip it of its radical otherness. While not Kantianism per se, perhaps time is quasi-noumenal insofar as it is outside our comprehension but still affects us. In the meantime, here’s Germán Sierra:

You’re used to thinking of gods and demons as anthropomorphic – or at least biomorphic – stuff, something that must resemble living things you’re already familiar with – if not humanoid, in the shape of animals or plants. Sometimes adopting the form of earthly or atmospheric events such as volcanos or lightnings, or space bodies like the Sun, the Moon or stars. Otherwise they should be immaterial, invisible, spiritual, formless, metaphysical beings. But let’s imagine something that – being material, physical, corporeal and dynamic – is not bioid. Not physiologically driven, not even determined by a circular teleological aim – you wouldn’t consider it alive. Something that recycles energy, but not in the way we’re used to measuring it. Something that neither follows, nor contradicts, the laws of nature – like a weird, not fully explained quantum event. That would be a real monster; it would perform like there’s actually something radically different out there. Something that might come from the past or from the future, not because it has ‘travelled’ from there, but because it always existed in a parallel space of possibilities – almost-assembling matter meta-waiting for the right environmental context to re-order itself in some unexpectable way. Like if the observer had produced an event not by observing it, but by the same process of becoming capable of observation, because the operation of becoming observer had required the previous development of possibilities of new relations, a self-organizational process that would open the universe to new self-organizations. Something that, for instance, might occupy the same tridimensional space as currently observable matter but, at least in its early development stages, without inteferring [sic] with it. Who said possession must imply extreme seizures, flying furniture, throwing up green stuff and a 360° head twist? You know prions, those proteins inducing other proteins to re-fold and change shape with destructive effects for cells – well, let’s imagine something like that but at a different level of reality and maybe without short-term perceivable consequences. Some n-dimensional process showing itself as a second superimposed tridimensional space pulsating in our world of phenomena like a glitch. You think of the devil as a horned beast that would need to impregnate people or cattle to reproduce, but instead think of it as a metastitious creature that can self-ensamble [sic] in the proper conditions from the proper scratch material, and then not reproduce itself but expand, occupy, amplify and diffuse (like some graphic novels’ cosmic hyper-villains) what we would call ‘darkness’ because from our point of view it’s an infiltrating outside – until darkness, imperceptibility, invades and consumes all the known matter and all the known energy of the known universe, metabolizing it into the dark matter of non-knowledge. A demon lurking in the silence that lies behind life’s noise.5)Germán Sierra, The Artifact (Lawrence: Inside the Castle, 2018), 92-94.

 

References

References
↑1 Alia Al-Saji, “The Temporality of Life: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the Immemorial Past,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 45, no. 2 (2007), 177-206: 181.
↑2 Al-Saji, “The Temporality of Life,” 181; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception trans. Colin Smith (New Jersey: The Humanities Press, 1962), 239-240 / [“secretes time […] project[ing] a double horizon of the past and future around the present” trans. Donald Landes (London: Routledge, 2014), 249.]
↑3 Al-Saji, “The Temporality of Life,” 184.
↑4 Ibid., 186-188.
↑5 Germán Sierra, The Artifact (Lawrence: Inside the Castle, 2018), 92-94.