Kant and Other Minds

Kant and the Problem of Other Minds

1. Introduction

In the preface to the B-edition of the 1st Critique, Kant writes: “No matter how innocent idealism may be held to be as regards the essential ends of metaphysics… it always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us… should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof” (Bxxxix). In this passage, Kant famously argues that we should be able to know – and not merely have faith – that an external world exists. In this paper, I examine how Kant would respond to an equally challenging skeptical worry, namely the problem of other minds. Is Kant as troubled by the problem of other minds as he is by external world skepticism? That is, like his reply to external world skepticism, does Kant provide a transcendental argument for the existence of other minds? Or does he think that it should be treated as a mere article of faith, just like the immortality of the soul, freedom, and God? Surprisingly, Kant’s views on this topic have been largely overlooked. I think this is unfortunate. In contrast to the existing scholarship, I show that Kant actually defends four different positions on the problem of other minds. First, I discuss a skeptical approach that Kant takes in the Lectures in Metaphysics L1. Second, I discuss a more empirical approach that Kant takes in the 2nd Paralogism.  Third, I discuss what seems to be a transcendental argument for other minds defended in the 3rd Paralogism.  Fourth and lastly, I discuss regarding other minds as a matter of ‘moral faith’. In the concluding section of the paper, I evaluate the pros and cons of each approach.  In the end, I argue that while Kant has a lot more to say about the problem of other minds than most scholars typically recognize, none of his solutions seem ultimately satisfactory.

2. The Skeptical Approach: Other Minds in the Lectures

What is the problem of other minds? Generally speaking, it is a worry about whether other people have minds like our own. Most of us naturally believe that others have inner mental lives – that they experience the world, have feelings, thoughts, pleasures, pains, etc. – and we feel justified ascribing mental states to them. The question, however, is not whether we can correctly know another person’s thoughts or feelings. Instead, it is whether we can be rationally justified in believing that they have any at all. While we have a “privileged” first-person access to our own thoughts, we have at best indirect access to the inner mental lives of others. Seen this way, the problem of other minds generates a deep epistemological worry: How can we be rationally justified in believing that other minds even exist?

In the Lectures on Metaphysics L1 Kant acknowledges this epistemological problem. Indeed, these lectures written in the mid-1770’s are one of the few places where Kant ever explicitly addresses the problem of other minds. In his account of rational psychology, Kant discusses the nature of human beings in contrast with “other thinking natures” (28:271). Human beings are composed of (1a) a physical body and (1b) a self-conscious thinking nature. Animals are similar to human beings insofar as they have (2a) a physical body and (2b) are conscious, that is, they have sensory representations. However, they lack (2c) self-consciousness or, as Kant puts it, “the concept of the ‘I’”. Therefore have neither understanding nor reason (28:276). By contrast, angelic beings or spirits are similar to human beings insofar as they have (3a) a self-conscious thinking nature. But they differ insofar as (3b) they are purely immaterial, that is, they exist without a physical body.

Kant argues that we can only problematically assume the existence of angels (28:278). He offers two reasons why. First, it goes beyond any possible experience to know whether thinking natures in general can exist independently of physical bodies (28:277-278). Second and more importantly, spiritual beings themselves can never be an object of cognition, either of outer sense or of inner sense. With respect to outer sense, Kant explicitly writes:   “They [spiritual beings] are no object of outer sense, thus they are not in space” (28:278). Spiritual beings cannot be objects of inner sense either, since inner sense only acquaints us with our own inner mental states.  Thus Kant concludes:   “We can say no more here [about spiritual beings]; otherwise we degenerate into phantoms of the brain” (ibid).

However, all this seems equally true about the existence of other finite minds. Other finite minds can never be the objects of outer sense. As Kant writes:

A thinking being, as such, cannot at all be an object of outer sense: we can perceive through outer sense neither thinking nor willing nor the faculty of pleasure and displeasure; and we cannot imagine how the soul as a thinking being should be an object of outer sense (28:271).

And as we noted before, we can never know about other minds through our inner sense either. Given these conclusions, Kant asks:  “Are we to cognize souls that are outside of us… for which we have no data at all?” (28:275). His answer here seems wholly negative. Since other finite minds cannot be an object either of inner or outer sense, we should regard their existence as equally problematic as the existence of spiritual beings.

3. The Empirical Approach: Other Minds in the 2nd Paralogism

In the 2nd Paralogism of the 1st Critique, Kant returns to the question of other minds.  Similar to the Lectures on Metaphysics, Kant argues that other minds can never be an object of outer sense. As he writes:

We can rightfully say that our thinking subject is not corporeal, meaning that since it is represented as an object of our inner sense, insofar as it thinks, it could not be an object of outer sense, i.e., it could not be an appearance in space. Now this is to say as much that thinking beings, as such, can never come before us among outer appearances, or: we cannot intuit their thoughts, their consciousness, their desires, etc. externally; for this belongs before inner sense (A358).

Kant recognizes that we cannot perceive the inner mental states of others. However, he interestingly suggests that we can infer from their bodies that they have inner mental lives. As he writes:

…thus I can also assume that in the substance itself, to which extension pertains in respect of our outer sense, thought may also be present, which may be represented with consciousness through their own inner sense.  In such a way the very same thing that is called body in one relation would at the same time be a thinking being in another, whose thoughts, of course, we could not intuit, but only their signs in appearance. Thereby the expression that only souls…think would be dropped; and instead it would be said, as usual, that human beings think, i.e., that the same being that as outer appearance is extended is inwardly (in itself) a subject, which is not composite, but is simple and thinks (A359-360, emphasis added).

In this passage, Kant claims that we can view other human beings in two different ways: first, with regard to outer appearance, in terms of their physical bodies, and second, with regard to inner appearance, in terms of their nature as thinking subjects. Given this, Kant suggests that the correlation between our minds and bodies gives us sufficient grounds for inferring an inner mental life from how others behave. In this way, Kant anticipates John Stuart Mill’s famous “argument from analogy.” According to Mill, we can be justified believing in other minds based on a posteriori inductive grounds. As Mill explains:

By what evidence do I know, or by what considerations am I led to believe, that there exists other sentient creatures; that the walking and speaking figures which I see and hear, have sensations and thoughts, or in other words, possess Minds?. . . I conclude it from certain things, which my experience of my own states of feeling proves to me to be marks of it.

We can reconstruct Mill’s argument as follows:

P1. Based on my own case, I know that there is a correlation between my internal mental states and my external behavior.
P2. Other people display analogous behavior

C. Therefore, I infer, based on my own case, that there exists a similar correlation between their internal mental states and their external behavior, i.e., that they have minds similar to my own.

For example, I look at my friend Evan, notice that he looks angry, and form the belief that Evan is angry. According to Mill, this inference is grounded in the fact that when I’m angry, I behave in similar ways. From my own case, I infer by analogy that Evan is angry too.  Thus, Mill argues that we can justify our belief in the existence of other minds via inductive reasoning, generalizing from our own individual case to all others.

Kant’s argument is both resembles and differs from Mill’s. Mill argues that we can consider the ‘signs in appearance’ as evidence for the fact that other people are thinking beings because we are reasoning by analogy from our own case to theirs. By contrast, Kant makes a direct causal inference that other minds exist on the basis of the ‘signs in appearance’. Unlike Mill, he does so without appeal to analogy.  In the end, however, Kant and Mill both assume that external behavior is sufficient grounds for inferring inner mental states in others.

4. The Transcendental Approach: Keller’s Reading of the 3rd Paralogism

Do we find any transcendental arguments for the existence of other minds in Kant’s writings?  Pierre Keller interestingly suggests that we can find one in the 3rd Paralogism.  At A362-3 Kant writes, “But if I consider myself from the standpoint of another (as an object of his outer intuition), then it is this external observer who originally considers me as in time… the time in which the observer posits me is not the time that is encountered in my sensibility but that which is encountered in his own…” Based on Kant’s claims, Keller argues that an appeal to other minds is required for establishing objective knowledge of our identity over time. We can formulate Keller’s argument as follows:

P1. One’s identity over time can be grounded either in a 1st person or a 3rd person perspective (p. 175)
P2. It cannot be grounded in a 1st person perspective, because, from the 1st person perspective alone, I cannot distinguish between what seems to be the case from what actually is the case about my identity over time (p. 176)
P3. Therefore, we need a 3rd person perspective in order to determine one’s identity over time. (from P1, P2)
P4. The 3rd person perspective involves representing ourselves from the perspective of an external observer, i.e., from the perspective of another mind

C. Therefore, in order to establish our actual identity over time, we must be able to think of ourselves from the perspective of other minds. (from P3 and P4)

On Keller’s reconstruction, Kant is offering a kind of transcendental argument for the necessity of positing other minds. We assume that we are identical over time. In order for this to be possible, however, we cannot ground our identity over time by appealing to the 1st-person perspective alone. As Keller writes:

From the purely first-person perspective, there does not seem to be any way of drawing a distinction between one’s representation of one’s identity over time and one’s actual identity over time. In order to get a feel for this distinction, one must be able to shift from the first- to the second or to the third-person perspective. (1998: 176, emphasis added)

Akin to Wittgenstein’s private language argument, Keller suggests that other minds are necessary for distinguishing between what seems to be the case and what actually is the case. Interestingly, this seems to be the inverse of a view Kant defends in the 2nd Paralogism.  As he writes there:

It is obvious that if one wants to represent a thinking being, one must put oneself in its place, and thus substitute one’s own subject for object one wants to consider…; and it is also obvious that we demand absolute unity for the subject of thought only because otherwise it could not be said: ‘I think’ (the manifold of representation) (A354).

Kant argues that in order to be able to represent other minds, we need to think about them from our 1st person perspective. That is, we must represent another person’s mind by putting ourselves in their place. As Keller puts it, “One must already put oneself in the position of another in order to ascribe consciousness to some other person.” By contrast, on Keller’s reading of the 3rd Paralogism, Kant defends the opposite claim.  That is, in order to be able to represent ourselves as enduring over time, we need to think about ourselves from a 3rd person perspective, seeing ourselves as an ‘object’ represented by other minds.  If it was impossible for us to take up this hypothetical perspective of another mind, we would never be able to draw the distinction between it seeming to us to be case and it actually being the case with respect to our own identity over time.

5. Faith Approach: Other Minds as a Moral Belief

So far we have discussed three different approaches that Kant takes to the problem of other minds.  First, Kant provides a wholly negative answer to the problem in the Lectures on Metaphysics.  Second, Kant offers an empirical argument in the 2nd Paralogism. It was argued there that we can infer from the behavior of others that they have minds. Third, on Keller’s reading, Kant offers a transcendental argument for the existence of other minds in the 3rd Paralogism. On this view, other minds are necessary for determining our own identity in time. One final strategy can be found in Kant’s writings about moral faith.  In the “Canon of Pure Reason” of the 1st Critique, Kant defends the view that what he calls ‘belief’ or ‘faith’ (Glaube) does not require evidence in order for it to be rational. Because we cannot know other minds through inner or outer sense, Kant’s appeal to moral faith is important here. On this view, we don’t need to have evidence for other minds to be rationally justified in believing that they exist.

Kant speaks of ‘belief’ as one way of “assenting” or a way of holding something to be true. Kant describes assent as “an occurrence in our understanding that may rest on objective grounds, but that also requires subjective causes in the mind of him who judges [A656/B684].” That is, a person S who assents to some proposition P does so on the basis of some subjective or personal considerations and on some objective or evidential considerations. In this way, S takes her subjective and objective grounds to justify her assenting that P.

Now if S’s assent relies on these grounds, it follows naturally that judging whether S’s assent is rational or not depends on how good her objective and her subjective grounds are. Kant puts this in terms of “sufficiency.” Following Andrew Chignell, we can define “objectively sufficient” grounds as follows:

S has “objectively sufficient” grounds for assent that P = df. S would appeal to things such as arguments, experiences, or testimony that render the proposition she assents to highly probable in being true

For example, take my assent that “Boston is a city in Massachusetts.” I have objectively good grounds for this assent; I’ve been Boston and can testify that it falls within the borders of Massachusetts. What it means for someone to have “subjectively sufficient” grounds is a bit trickier. Chignell argues that there are two different senses in which a ground is “subjectively sufficient.” Intuitively, the first sense of subjective sufficiency is simply when a person takes themselves to have good evidence for their assent. We can formulate the first sense of ‘subjectively sufficient’ as follows:

S has “subjectively sufficient” grounds1=df. S has objectively sufficient grounds (or good evidence) for assenting that P and S would cite those grounds as the basis for that assent

The second sense of subjective sufficiency is when a person doesn’t have objectively sufficient evidence but does have certain practical grounds for her belief. We can formulate the second sense of subjective sufficiency as follows:

S has “subjectively sufficient” grounds2=df. S has subjectively sufficient grounds when S’s assent that P enables S to realize some interest, goal or end that S has

Therefore, S’s assent is rationally justified so long as she has “objectively sufficient” grounds and/or “subjectively sufficient” grounds. S’s assent is not rationally justified if her grounds are both “objectively insufficient” and “subjectively insufficient.”

All assents involve an objective and subjective component. However, these come in varying degrees of justification. As Kant famously argues, in the case of knowledge, we have both objectively sufficient and subjectively sufficient grounds for assent. In the case of opinion, we have both objectively insufficient and subjectively insufficient grounds for assent. Finally, in the case of belief or faith, we have objectively insufficient but subjectively sufficient grounds for assent. In keeping with this, Kant writes: “The word “belief”… concerns only the direction that an idea gives me… that holds me fast to it, even though I am not in a position to give an account of it from a speculative point of view [688].” Belief is assent to a proposition that gives us “direction”. However, beliefs don’t require us, as Kant puts it, to “give an account of it from a speculative point of view.” Instead they just require what Andrew Chignell helpfully calls a ‘non-epistemic merit’.  He defines non-epistemic merits as “a property of an assent that makes it valuable or desirable for a particular subject to have given her goals, interests, and needs.” In fact, for some beliefs, we could never be in a position to cite objectively sufficient evidence. Paradigmatic examples of this sort of belief include God, immortality of the soul, and freedom, that is, ‘the Practical Postulates’.

These are cases of what Kant calls ‘moral belief’. To count as moral belief, assent must satisfy two conditions.  Kant states both of these in his 1786 essay What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking. The first is a negative claim which I will call the “No Evidence Condition” [NEC]. We can find this expressed in the following:

For if it has been previously made out that there can be no intuition of objects or anything of the kind… then there is nothing left for us to do except first to examine the concept with which we venture to go beyond all possible experience to see if it is free of contradiction, and then at least to bring the relation of the object to objects of experience under the pure concepts of the understanding – through which we do not render it sensible, but we do at least think of something supersensible in a way which is serviceable to the experiential use of our reason.  For without this caution we would be unable to make any use at all of such concepts; instead of thinking, we would indulge in enthusiasm (8:139).

There are two features here. First, faith or belief can never contradict the available objective evidence (8:144). For example, I can’t rationally believe that there is a flying spaghetti monster in this room. This contradicts what my senses – and hopefully everybody else’s senses – tell them about this room. Second, faith or belief must have no supporting evidence, i.e., it can never be transformed into a claim of knowledge (8:141). For example, belief in the existence of God or in the immortality of the soul can never be empirically proven. The second feature is a positive claim that I will call the “Need of Practical Reason Condition” [NRC]. As Kant writes:

Far more important is the need of reason in its practical use, because it is unconditioned, and we are necessitated to presuppose the existence of God not only if we want to judge, but because we have to judge. For the pure practical use of reason consists in the precepts of the moral laws. They all lead, however, to the idea of the highest good possible in the world insofar as its possible only through freedom…Now reason needs to assume, for the sake of such a dependent highest good, a supreme intelligence as the highest independent good…in order to give objective reality to the concept of the highest good, i.e., to prevent it, along with morality, from being taken as a mere ideal, as it would be if that whose idea inseparably accompanies morality should not exist anywhere (8:139).

On Kant’s view, rational agents are subject the unconditional commands of morality. In keeping with this, human beings have an unconditional obligation to pursue moral ends that are “absolutely necessary”. One thing which morality commands is that we pursue the highest good. That is, the highest good is a necessary object of morality.  As Kant writes:

[T]he promotion of the highest good, which contains this connection [between virtue and happiness] in its concept, is an a priori necessary object of our will and inseparably bound up with the moral law… (5:114)

In order to realize the highest good, we have to meet two conditions: first, complete moral perfection or “holiness of will” and second a state of happiness proportional to our moral character, that is, our “virtue”. If this highest good is a necessary object of moral willing, then we have to assume that it is possible. In the passage above, Kant argues that practical postulates like God and freedom are necessary conditions for the possibility of the highest good. First, we must presuppose that we have freedom to act as morality demands, that is, to autonomously fulfill our moral obligations. Second, we must presuppose that God exists in order to guarantee that happiness will be distributed in exact proportion to our virtue.  Because God and freedom are necessary conditions for the highest good, to deny either would necessarily make morality a “mere ideal”. For in this case, morality would demand something – namely, the highest good – that isn’t possible to realize. Since we are committed to morality, and since morality insists that the highest good is a necessary object of our moral willing, Kant concludes that we must have moral belief in these practical postulates.

Recall that beliefs can be justified if they have what Chignell calls non-epistemic merits, that is, they enable us to realize some interest, goal, or end that we have. This is what we called “subjectively sufficient grounds” in the second sense. We saw above that the belief in God and freedom have such subjectively sufficient grounds. Though we are never in a position to know that God exists or that we are free, we must believe both, since assent to these propositions is necessary for morality. Here we return to the question of whether the existence of other minds fits the bill for moral belief. Carol von Kirk argues that it does. She argues that we have to assume other minds exist because otherwise, we cannot make our interactions with other people fully intelligible. In particular, other people display moral behavior. As she writes:

When we consider people the only way of making sense of all of their actions is to assume that, in addition to being subject to the natural causal order, they are also subject to an order based upon self-awareness…  For Kant, rationality is not something that is inferred from “the data” because there are no data regarding the moral realm unless rationality is presupposed. Rationality must be assumed at the outset if a particular type of behavior is to be coherent (1980: 54)

So in order to have a coherent understanding of the behavior of others, we must conclude that other minds exist. For such reasons, Kirk argues that there is no problem of other minds for Kant. I want to make a stronger claim here. In contrast to Kirk, my claim is that other minds are necessary for morality in a way very similar to the Practical Postulates. Recall that Practical Postulates like freedom and God are necessary in order to realize the highest good.  The highest good is a necessary object of moral willing. Therefore, we must presuppose such practical postulates – which makes the highest good possible –if morality is not to be, as Kant puts it in the 2nd Critique, “fantastic and directed to empty imaginary ends and… therefore in itself false” (5:114).  In a parallel way, my claim is that other minds are equally necessary conditions for moral action. Morality imposes on us various duties and obligations towards others.  In order for it to be even possible for us to carry out such moral duties, other rational agents would obviously have to exist. So while Kirk argues that we must believe in other minds in order to make sense of other people’s moral behavior, I argue that other minds are necessary for the possibility of moral actions themselves.

6. Conclusion

What should we think about these four different approaches?  Do any of them succeed? In conclusion, I discuss the pros and cons of each view. First, in terms of the skeptical approach, I think that Kant is correct in insisting that other minds can never be an object of cognition for us, either for inner sense or outer sense.  What seems dissatisfying about this approach, however, is that instead of refuting skepticism, it essentially accepts the skeptical conclusion raised by the problem of other minds.

Second, in terms of the empirical approach, I think that Kant’s brief remarks in the 2nd paralogism are significant insofar as they anticipate Mill’s celebrated argument from analogy by appealing to ‘signs appearance’. The problem with Mill’s approach is that it seems doxastically irresponsible.  It generalizes from one individual case, namely, my own, to all other persons.  By contrast, the problem with Kant’s approach is that he seems to simply take it for granted that we can directly causally infer that other minds are the causes of signs in appearence. However, this is far from a satisfactory reply for somebody who doubts the existence of other minds in the first place.

Third, in terms of the transcendental approach, what seems good about it is that, if successful, it is arguably the strongest of all four views discussed here. It makes the existence of other minds necessary for the possibility of self-knowledge, in particular, for knowledge of ourselves as identical over time. In this way, objective self-knowledge entails belief in other minds. This argument, however, faces a serious problem. In the end, it doesn’t seem to prove that other minds actually exist. All that it establishes is that we have adopt a hypothetical 3rd person perspective in order to regard ourselves as enduring over time, regardless of whether anybody occupies this perspective or not.

Fourth and lastly, in terms of the faith approach, what seems good about this strategy is that it is more modest than the others views because it doesn’t claim that we can theoretically know that other minds exist. If successful, it establishes that we are at least rationally justified in believing that other minds exist. However, this argument has its problems too. First, it assumes that we accept the existence of morality and in particular, that we have genuine moral duties to others. Consequently, if a skeptic were to deny morality, this argument would fail to address their worries. Second, the argument is too weak. We are not content with having mere faith about the existence of the external world.  So why should we be content with mere faith about the existence of external minds?  In the end, I think that Kant fails to adequately resolve skeptical worries about the existence of other finite minds.  At best, Kant can establish that their existence is a tenet of moral faith, and never something we can truly know.

Eternal Knowledge and Belief in Spinoza

In his Ethics, Spinoza writes that “He, who has a true idea, simultaneously knows that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt of the truth of the thing perceived.”[1]  The notion in this passage, which is referenced in multiple other passages in the Ethics, is that knowledge is an a priori function derived from that which is eternal.  Spinoza thus considers knowledge of God as the only adequate idea, so that what is known is only that which is completely certain.[2]  As eternal knowledge is completely certain, Spinoza seems to avoid the Cartesian skepticism that rules over the perceptions.  Spinoza relies on his previously explained metaphysic in which all substance is one, that is, that all substance is God, and thus indivisible and infinite.  However, such a notion seems to fly in the face of many variations of the classical foundationalist model of justified true belief epistemologies.  The knowledge is already there, much like a Platonic doctrine of ideas, but is unique to Spinoza because of his doctrine of infinite substance.  Thus, one does not need to prove that truth is had, which differs from the Cartesian method that seeks to correct false ideas to arrive at knowledge.[3]  Furthermore, belief is unnecessary to knowledge because belief is not necessarily of the truth.  Justification of this truth is unnecessary as well due to knowledge being of that which is already known.  Thus, there seems an issue at work here, pointed out by Richard Mason in his article “Spinoza and the Unimportance of Belief,” that Spinoza “gave no clue about how the gap between belief and knowledge might be bridged, beyond a suggestion that immediate intuition seemed enough to sift true from false ideas.”[4]  The answer to this issue seems largely unanswered.  However, while Mason’s claim seems accurate in that Spinoza does not directly address the supposed separation of knowledge and belief, the answer lies implicitly in the Ethics, and is seen upon a closer examination of what Spinoza means by his doctrine of eternal knowledge.  I will argue that Spinoza’s system does indeed account for Mason’s discrepancy between knowledge and belief; it will be seen that knowledge, according to Spinoza’s account, is not entirely separate from belief, but in a particular way entails belief.

First, I must briefly clarify Spinoza’s system.  It is derived from a notably pantheistic metaphysic in which “There can only be one substance with an identical attribute…It does not exist as finite, for it would then be limited by something else of the same kind, which would also necessarily exist…It therefore exists as infinite.”[5]  Such an infinite substance, according to Spinoza, can only be God.[6]  Because there is only one infinite substance, that is, God, “Substance absolutely infinite is indivisible.”[7]  It is from this notion that Spinoza is able to arrive at a concept of an eternal mind.  He writes that “The idea of God, from which an infinite number of things follow in infinite ways, can only be one.”[8]  Furthermore, “Infinite intellect comprehends nothing save the attributes of God and his modifications,” and since there is only one substance, there is only one idea that can be comprehended, specifically God as infinite substance.[9]  Spinoza takes this idea of one infinite substance and intellect and carries it further to show that this notion leads to the deduction that there can only be one mind, so that the seeming individuality of particular minds are actually just infinite attributes of the one substance.[10]  Thus, “Our mind (the one mind or substance, that is, God), in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows that it is in God, and is conceived through God.”[11]  This eternal mind, as recognized by Spinoza, is a natural extension of the one substance, but its main usefulness here is that it explains Spinoza’s position on eternal knowledge, that is, that knowledge is a priori and is of the infinite substance.  Another way of stating this concept is that “Knowledge is of essence…the reflection of the ideal of Being.”[12]  The Cartesian assumption that multiple minds, or a minimal distinction between God and individual self, exist separately is entirely true according to Spinoza’s framework.[13]  Rather, the apparent distinction between the finite substance and infinite substance is actually just a matter of the “points of view of the whole.”[14]  The one substance is thus in an infinite state of comprehending itself, and it does so by an infinite chain of attributes that simply appear as finite within the human mind.

One issue with the notion of eternal knowledge arises when Spinoza seems to believe that the finite mind continues to acquire knowledge after death.[15]  This might seem unreasonable given Spinoza’s metaphysics of infinite substance.  For example, Michael Lebuffe asks the question, “How can Spinoza hold that what is eternal is also a thing that can change over the course of one’s life?”[16]  However, it is precisely this metaphysics that accounts for such a claim.  First, Spinoza’s pantheistic account of substance renders death to the same level that it renders individuality—it seems to merely be a matter of point of view.  That is, death of the individual requires the particular individual.  What is thought to be the particular individual is actually just a modification of Spinoza’s one substance.  Thus, death seems to merely be an alteration of the state of the substance.  Yet this account of death does not entirely answer the issue of change seeming to occur in infinite substance.  The answer is found in Spinoza’s claim that while the eternal mind of the infinite substance does not actually change by increasing or decreasing in knowledge, the finite parts, or individual minds, operate according to “proportions” in order to comprehend the one substance.[17]  Lebuffe explains that “When other parts of a mind decrease, the eternal part of a mind can increase, as a proportion of a mind, without itself changing.”[18]  Thus Spinoza introduces a certain amount of realization into his method.  As noted, the finite parts of the one substance are only finite insofar as they merely seem to be particulars, acting as particulars on a practical level.  Each mind is actually just a mode of the eternal mind.  By introducing proportions, to increase the part of the mind that is eternal is to increase in realization of the eternal mind.  Death is one way that this process is furthered, and so it can be seen that change does not actually occur, but rather infinite and finite knowledge remains immutable.

I suggest that by recognizing that there is a certain degree of realization involved in the reconciliation of supposed differences between finite and infinite minds, Spinoza’s system no longer seems to be antagonistic toward classical foundationalist notions, but is rather seeking to fulfill the demands of a suitable epistemology.  Jon Miller writes that Spinoza’s a priori system of knowledge is not an effort to undermine foundationalism, but has the goal of correcting probabilistic systems such Descartes’ system, as “Any philosophical system, then, if it is to be satisfactory, must begin with what is epistemically basic.”[19]  By outlining an a priori metaphysic, Spinoza seeks to make truth and justification the same; it is on this a priori knowledge that all other knowledge is based on.  Thus it provides the foundation upon which other knowledge can be justified.

In response to the apparent separation between knowledge and belief, it is important to understand that from Spinoza’s system can be inferred an implicit distinction between belief alone and knowledge that entails belief, which I claimed earlier that Spinoza supports implicitly within his metaphysic.  As demonstrated, Spinoza’s a priori system sets up a series of basic truths that are known.  From these truths are derived that God, substance, and mind are one and infinite.  To reconcile supposed changes in finite minds, it is recognized that the finite minds are actually just part of the infinite whole and are in the infinite process of realization.  This is why Spinoza writes that “The mind’s highest good is the knowledge of God.”[20]  He implicitly means that even after death the mind is still infinitely realizing God as infinite substance.  Thus belief is contained within knowledge.  Belief is not completely absent, as Mason might suggest, but is part of the realization process of the eternal mind.  Knowledge of God, as Spinoza demonstrates, is definite so that it is absolutely known.  It is unimportant for Spinoza to make belief a separate condition for knowledge since it is already entailed by this system.  Furthermore, belief as a condition in itself leads to probabilistic doubt, a flaw that Spinoza recognized in Descartes’ system.  By forming an a priori system of absolutely certain basic truths, “Spinoza is concerned to minimize the harmful effects of beliefs that cause strife and disorder,” therefore avoiding the pitfalls of Descartes’ methodical doubt.[21]  Descartes recognized that knowledge of God was all-important, although Spinoza sought to correct some errors in his methodology.[22]  The invocation of infinite substance as God and eternal mind allowed Spinoza to avoid issues with uncertainty present in Descartes, as well as form a certain and basic foundation on which one can have knowledge.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benedict de Spinoza. Works of Spinoza: The Ethics, translated by R. H. M. Elwes. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955.

Edmund Gettier.  1963. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis 23, no. 6, (June 1): 121-123.

Jon Miller. 2004. “Spinoza and the A Priori.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34, no. 4: 555-590.

Leon Roth. Spinoza, Descartes, and Maimonides. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963.

Michael Lebuffe. 2005. “Spinoza’s Summum Bonum.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86: 243-266.

__________. 2010. “Change and the Eternal Part of the Mind in Spinoza.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91: 369-384.

Moira Gatens. 2012. “Compelling Fictions: Spinoza and George Elliot on Imagination and Belief.” European Journal of Philosophy 20, no.1: 74-90.

René Descartes. Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993.

Richard Mason. 2004. “Spinoza and the Unimportance of Belief.” Philosophy 79: 281-298.

 

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[1]Spinoza, Benedict de, Works of Spinoza: The Ethics, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955), 114.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Mason, Richard, “Spinoza and the Unimportance of Belief,” Philosophy 79 (2004): 284.

[4] Ibid, 282.

[5] Spinoza, Ethics, 48.

[6] Ibid, 45.

[7] Ibid, 54.

[8] Ibid, 85.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid, 96.

[11] Ibid, 262.

[12] Roth, Leon, Spinoza, Descartes, and Maimonides (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), 110.

[13] Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993), 46.

[14] Roth, Spinoza, Descartes, and Maimonides, 110.

[15] Spinoza, Ethics, 267.

Lebuffe, Michael, “Change and the Eternal Part of the Mind in Spinoza,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (2010): 369.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Spinoza, Ethics, 266.

[18] Lebuffe, Change and the Eternal Part of the Mind in Spinoza, 370.

[19] Miller, Jon, “Spinoza and the A Priori,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34, no. 4 (2004): 565.

[20] Spinoza, Ethics, 205.

Lebuffe, Michael, “Spinoza’s Summum Bonum,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 86, (2005): 251.

[21] Gatens, Moira, “Compelling Fictions: Spinoza and George Eliot on Imagination and Belief,” European Journal of Philosophy 20, no. 1 (2012): 76.

Descartes, Meditations, 17.

[22] Ibid, 25.

Clarifying ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytic’

Is there or is there not a distinction between what is called analytical and what is called continental philosophy? We’ve talked about this some, but the answers are so far, unsatisfying.

It is necessary to remove one objection to this inquiry before I begin. That is, that there is no continental/analytic distinction, or there isn’t one anymore. I’ll make a brief, imprecise argument against this here.

1. When I’m talking to members of this symposium about the distinction, we seem to be referring to something similar and understood amongst ourselves.
2. It is useful clarify what one means in a group of one’s peers.
3. It is useful to us to discuss the distinction.
4. A false distinction would be a waste of time to talk about.
5. Therefore it is describing a real distinction.

However, that doesn’t mean that we are using the words ‘continental’ and ‘analytic’ well, so the conclusion of this clarificatory process could be that we should use different words. But with that out of the way, let’s begin. I’ll explain two senses which seem insufficient, and then provide a potential solution.

(1) The usual sense in which we seem to delineate the two is something along the following lines: Analytic thought is depth-oriented, whereas continental thought is breadth-oriented. This isn’t wrong, exactly, but it is unclear what is being said. Obviously a good analytic philosopher wants to incorporate his conclusions into some kind of broad philosophical system, and continental philosopher wants to know how specific points cooperate in his outlook. Additionally, the farther we move from the positivists and British or Hegelian idealists, the more this seems to break down. Yes, an analytic work can be overly concerned with absolute precision (e.g., maybe Gettier discussions in epistemology), but a contemporary continental work can be equally narrow on the issues with which it is concerned. Both have come to assume a prior, accepted framework in which their work is done.

(2)Another way we’ve described it discussion is that the difference is one of method. Philosophical investigation seems to have very tight rules for the analytic. Defining one’s terms clearly, for example, is absolutely necessary. Possibility, necessity, right, good, justification, and so on, all have specific meanings and must be used accurately for meaningful discourse to proceed. The continental, on the other hand, can seem flippant with words she uses. For example, Derrida: “Deconstruction, by definition, cannot be defined.” Obviously, this is some kind of a joke, or a word game, the analytic might say. However, at times the continental will speak paradoxically and meant to be taken very seriously. The analytic cannot abide this. So, the method seems to be different.

This is more accurate than (1), as I hope to explain in my concluding paragraph. However, there are at least three problems with this explanation. First, the “tight rules” of the analytic have not been well-defined, and there doesn’t seem much reason to try. Vague guidelines can be made (clarity, precision, involvedness, comprehensiveness) but this isn’t a real definition of the essence of analytic philosophy. It is more of a description of its accoutrements. Second, because the continental is essentially defined negatively, (as not-a-follower-of-the-analytic-rules) it is equally vague.

(3) Though (2) is not sufficient to explain the distinction, it does point us in the right direction. There is a sense in which we are talking about a method of philosophizing. However, philosophizing is not the same as composing philosophy, which seems to be where (2) goes wrong. Those guidelines of analytic philosophy seem to exist because they describe loosely the way analytic philosophy is composed. However, the way analytic philosophy is written is expressive of something more fundamental in analytic thought. (1), however also helps in constructing this analysis, because the difference in philosophical method seems to be a difference in the order of operations of the “schools”. My proposition, then, is this:

1. What we have meant by an analytic philosopher (as philosopher) is one who attempts to work from the objectively meaningful to the subjectively meaningful. Definitions are proposed, [objective] propositions accepted or rejected, and then connected together to form a “book” of propositions about what one believes about the world. Questions are first directed against individual propositions, and then (if at all) the systems of those propositions in general.

2. What we have meant by a continental philosopher (as philosopher) is one who attempts to work from the subjectively meaningful to the objectively meaningful. A structure (one could even say narrative structure) is proposed – Marxism, Hegelianism, deconstructionism, etc. This becomes then the subjective method by which one applies and appropriates propositions about the world. Questions are first directed against individual propositions, and then (if at all) the systems of those propositions in general.

Let’s take two small, quick examples:

1. “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amount to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” –Albert Camus
2. “I will stay on this course until I know something certain, or, if nothing else, until I at least know for certain that nothing is certain… [G]reat things are to be hoped for if I succeed in finding one thing, however slight, that is certain and unshaken.” — Rene Descartes

I use Camus and Descartes because neither is really continental or analytic, historically speaking. Camus is concerned with valuation, Descartes with certainty. Descartes is the most obvious possible example: Mathematical logic (something objective), essentially, will dictate and put together a system of philosophy for oneself (subjective). His cogito ergo sum is metaphysical, and thus a justifiable starting point for philosophy.

Camus’s project is similar in some ways—he too is looking for a kind of certainty. However, this certainty is not whether something exists, exactly, but rather one is able to live, whether there is a way to orient oneself toward the world that will result in meaningful interaction. Indeed, for Camus, humanity must rebel against the cruel, empty “objective” world. (Dostoevsky’s classic and similar sentiment is noted below as a further example.)

1 and 2 above, I think, are  what we have generally meant by the analytic/continental distinction. Whether or not we should retain those words to describe the distinction (or philosophers themselves) is a different matter altogether.

I wrote this rather quickly, and I’m a little ashamed of it, but I wanted to get it posted or I’d never do it. There are still some issues with my final solution, I think, and I’d like to hear your thoughts about it if you have the time. Let me know, at least if (A) this seems clear in general, and (B) if my proposed definition seems superior or inferior to the preceding definitions.

(“… I have shaped for myself a Credo where everything is clear and sacred for me. This Credo is very simple, here it is: to believe that nothing is more beautiful, profound, sympathetic, reasonable, manly, and more perfect than Christ; and I tell myself with a jealous love not only that there is nothing but that there cannot be anything. Even more, if someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth, and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with truth.” –Fyodor Dostoevsky)

Authenticity in Voltaire’s Candide and Henrick Ibsen’s The Wild Duck

The way in which one responds to and interprets the world and their situation therein, can be approached either authentically or inauthentically, with an aim for truth or avoiding truth of the reality of an individual’s situation and the world in general. Within Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck and François Marie Arouet de Voltaire’s Candide, both authors provide characters that are inauthentic, people who want to escape the world which does not match up to their idea and desire of how the reality of the world should be. The characters Dr. Relling in Ibsen’s play and Martin in Voltaire’s novel share a similar conclusion that truth is too difficult to accept and a person’s happiness can be attained only by escaping truth. By presenting these characters perspectives, Ibsen and Voltaire reveal the negative consequences of their conclusions, in order to show that truth can be understood and appropriated, that life can be lived accordingly, and as a consequence, to a better extent.

In The Wild Duck, Ibsen presents a life problem which various characters engage in, giving their personal philosophy concerning the way in which the character who has the problem, Hialmar Ekdal, should deal with it. This rhetorical strategy allows Ibsen the ability to explore and critique the various characters perspectives. The problem that Hialmar faces throughout the book is one that is brought about when Gregers Werle, as a consequence of his self-assigned mission, reveals to Hialmar that his wife Gina was involved in an affair previous to their marriage. What this mission is and what philosophy he holds, another character Dr. Relling reveals: “He went round to all the cotters’ cabins presenting something he called ‘the claim of the ideal,’” to present truth at all costs, believing that after realizing the truth, a person can appropriate their lives in a way that leads to a more authentic, truth driven life (The Wild Duck, 66). When Hialmar discovers his wife’s affair with Gregers’s father, who he believes might be the father of Hedvig, Hialmar’s daughter, he decides that he is going to disown Hedvig as a daughter and leave Gina to Greger’s surprise.

In light of this situation, Ibsen then forces the question as to how one is to respond to the various problems that arise in life which are difficult to acknowledge, which mirrors the human situation in general, namely how one is to deal authentically with the world in conjunction with the desire for, and knowledge of, truth, while not responding in such an exaggerated manner like Hialmar, and how to go about seeking truth unlike Gregers. The character within the play who articulates this problem most clearly is Dr. Relling. It is he who shows the problems inherent in Gregers’s “truth at all costs” philosophy, by showing that his motives are not in the “fearless spirit of sacrifice” as he thought, rather to redeem himself through Hialmar, not Hialmar himself: “you are always in a delirium of hero-worship…” (101). Thus it seems Ibsen presents Relling as a character that has some understanding of reality, as it is truly.

Although he finds problems in Gregers’s philosophy, he too has a problematic view on perceiving truth, which is suggested by his title doctor. His idea of handling truth is one who like a doctor, diagnoses and attempts to rid Hialmar’s problem in such a way that is often mistaken as a cure: to give a medicine which numbs the pain. This then leads him to conclude, “Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke” (103). Relling is in some sense speaking on behalf of the underlying perspective, which he, Hialmar, and Gregers all hold, namely one which indulges in delusion in order for an escape. What separates Dr. Relling from the others is that he is the only one who recognizes the perspective that the three share, that it is better not to know the truth at all but relieve one’s self of dealing with it. By way of Relling’s realization, Ibsen then is able to articulate the quasi romantic escapism he and many people hold, which often appears in different forms, which forces one to acknowledge the problem of escapism, in order to make way for Ibsen’s character Mrs. Sorby. Ibsen presents her as the only one who appropriates her situation authentically, dealing with the personal problems she faces without escaping, with a mind to perceive things honestly, and understanding herself accordingly. As Relling’s philosophy leaves no room for truth, he provides no wisdom towards dealing with life, and as Relling’s antidotes do not help Hailmar’s situation, Ibsen reveals that this is an absurd option.

While Ibsen focuses on individual situations, Voltaire addresses a metaphysical problem, which is more universal, namely the problem of evil. Like Ibsen, Voltaire deals with authenticity and the various ways people often wrongly respond to the reality of evil in the world. At the beginning of the novel, the problem which Voltaire poses surfaces when he leads Candide through various situations which bring out the random evil in the world, from pillages, raping, abuse, and natural evil, in order to test Candide’s metaphysical belief that “all is for the best in this world” (“Candide,” 389).Throughout his journey, Candide meets another philosopher whose opinion is radically different from the other philosopher Pangloss, who is Candide’s teacher. The narrator reveals that like Candide, Martin has experienced a great deal of evil: “he had been robbed by his wife, beaten by his son, and deserted by his daughter” (412). While Candide keeps hoping, Martin did the opposite, assuming a stoical and cynical character, placing no hope in the world. Thus when dealing with the evils of men, he concludes, “What do you expect? That is how these folks are,” and as for the whole problem, “I don’t suppose it’s worth the trouble of discussing” (425). This leads Candide to the conclusion, “You’re a hard man.” Martin reveals why, “I’ve lived.” With this sort of understanding and knowledge which resembles Dr. Relling’s, Martin is able to see through the decadent optimism of Candide’s belief, “as I survey this globe or globule, I think that God has abandoned it to some evil spirit…” (412). Martin shows that regardless of the evidence against Candide’s perspective that all works for the best, he continues to believe it.

As a consequence of Martin’s perspective, he is able to share some legitimate insights, but like Relling, his outlook too has its problem. Voltaire wants to show that while a stoic or cynic might be warranted in some sense for believing that there is no hope for this world and that one should become reserved and careless towards these problems, this view is just as much an escape, or worse, a fatalism. The problem with Martin’s view is that if one believes that things will never change, this alleviates the responsibility of trying to make things better. Martin then finds the philosophy of Eldorado appealing: “[W]hen you are pretty comfortable somewhere, you had better stay there” (408). But like the Turkish farmer at the end, Voltaire concludes that “we must cultivate our garden,” or work in one’s area to enlighten one’s self and others in order to mitigate the evil within the world: “the work keeps us from the three great evils, boredom, vice, and poverty” (437). The problem with Martin and Eldorado is that they neglect the rest of the suffering world by believing this—escaping the problem rather than dealing with it.

Both Ibsen and Voltaire in their writings deal extensively with truth and the problems with the predominant tendency towards any escapist philosophy. As Ibsen and Voltaire demonstrate, dealing with both personal problems and the world’s problems as a whole are never solved through escape. As they see it, it is better to understand truth and the difficulty of living with such, enabling one to live life to a better extent.

Works Cited

Ibsen, Henrik. The Wild Duck; The League of Youth; Rosmersholm. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918. Print.

Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet. “Candide.” The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. Ed.     Sarah Lawall. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2006. 375-438. Print.

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The Role of Others in the thought of C.S Lewis

The way others perceive us highly influences our own self-perception. The way in which we regulate our lives is often in accordance with others’ perceptions, and what they expect of us. Both Jean-Paul Sartre and C.S Lewis saw that it was necessary to reinterpret the role of others in our lives in order that we might define ourselves authentically. Jean-Paul Sartre famously declared in his play No Exit that “Hell is other people,” and Lewis, in his book The Great Divorce, utilized images of Heaven and Hell to explore the self’s relation to others. Lewis’s analysis, however, will show why people wrongly conclude, as Sartre did, that others necessarily play a negative role in our lives.

One thinker to treat others as an important variable for an individual’s self-recognition was the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber. In his book I and Thou, Buber noted that our experience of the world rests on the individuals attitudes towards others: “The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks… The one primary word is the combination I-Thou.The other primary word is the combination I-It.”[1]There is no separating others from who we are, for when we say I as a particular individual, we must refer to another individual also. Therefore our being is tied into ‘the other.’ We can see other individuals as things and objects, as an ‘It,’ or we can see people as an undefinable, infinite, ‘Thou.’  Buber stressed that we see others as a thou, because only when we recognize that a person is more than an object of our experience, and that we cannot define who they are, do we experience ourselves and the people who we interact with fully. This is the problem with saying “I-It,” because like an object which has a specific use, people only have meaning insofar as we define them as something.

Jean-Paul Sartre saw that others necessarily see us in the light of the I-It, because the distance between the I and the opposing other is infinite. Because of this, we can never perceive people beyond an It. Since we cannot control how others view us, Sartre noticed that we feel that we are subject either to conform to their definition of who we are and win their approval, or to rebel and attain the freedom to define ourselves at the expense of the approval that we desire. Either way, our identity rests in the other. Sartre communicates this perspective in his play No Exit. The play begins with Garcin, a middle aged journalist from Rio who realizes that he has arrived in Hell. At first, Garcin is surprised to find that Hell is not what he expected it to be, for he meets no flames and finds no torturer. Considering Hell is a place of punishment, the overarching question then becomes “where are the instruments of torture?”[2] While lacking any apparent means for punishment, Garcin notices that Hell has finality to it: the furniture in his room cannot be moved, and he cannot close his eyes, everything is fixed; Hell cannot be changed or escaped: “it’s life without a break.”[3] This is an important detail, for it emphasizes not an aspect of Hell, but the reality of earth that had previously gone unnoticed. Another character named Inez then joins Garcin in his room. Although she finds out that Garcin is not there to torture her, merely his presence is enough to torment her, for he immediately begins to annoy her: “Must you be here all the time, or do you take a stroll outside, now and then?”[4] Inez too torments Garcin in a similar way, but it is her judgment that bothers him, that he cannot change: “do you really think I look like a torturer?”[5] Lastly, another woman named Estelle appears, and the three begin to discuss their situation.

Each of the characters notices that they can see nothing but one another. This leaves them completely exposed to the eyes of the others. Estelle realizes that this is disturbing, for she can see herself only insofar as Garcin and Inez do, “Come, to me, Estelle. You shall be whatever you like… deep down in my eyes you’ll see yourself just as you want to be…” regardless, Estelle does not find this comforting, “I can’t see myself properly… I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and Heaven knows that it will become.”[6]  Estelle becomes an object for the other two to define, losing her freedom to define herself as she would like. Although Inez is willing to help her, and recognizes Estelle as the person Estelle desires to be, Garcin does not. For the rest of the play she is set on getting it. Garcin then reveals that Estelle’s situation applies to him and Inez as well: “If you make any movement, if you raise your hand to fan yourself, Estelle and I feel a little tug. Alone, none of us can save himself or herself; we’re linked together inextricably.”[7] When Garcin realizes that Inez and Estelle are aware that he died while running away from the war in his country, he feels their judgment: that he is a coward. Although Estelle assures him that she finds his decision to be legitimate, it is Inez’s recognition that he desires: “You’re a coward, Garcin, because I wish it… And yet, just look at me, see how weak I am, a mere breath on the air, a gaze observing you, a formless thought that thinks you.”[8] And thus, even when the door to his cell opens, he remains, “It’s because of her I’m staying here.”[9]

Sartre reveals that around other people we become a different self that is rooted in another person. Therefore other people necessarily limit our freedom; I become defined in the eyes of another, whereas when our person is an object for ourselves, we are free to choose from an infinite number of possibilities to make ourselves into whatever we should choose. The worst part of Hell lies in its finality, because it brings the possibility of change to a close. Considering all three characters are unsatisfied with how they lived their lives, Hell forces them to recognize the harsh reality that “[a] man is what he wills himself to be” and that “one’s whole life is complete at that moment [death], with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for summing up. You are—your life, and nothing else.”[10] Inez, Estelle, and Garcin are left to suffer the judgments that one another place on each other’s decisions. Thus Sartre, like Garcin, concludes, “There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!”[11]
Although Sartre’s conclusion seems to be rather pessimistic, he presents us with a problem that our experience can testify to. As it seems that our recognition of the other’s consciousness is essential for consciousness itself, it is reasonable to conclude that the way we perceive ourselves is through the eyes of the other. Hell in Lewis’s novel The Great Divorce bears a significant resemblance to No Exit in that its punishment is others. I will argue that although Lewis recognizes that Hell is other people in some sense, Lewis transcends Sartre’s perspective through a theological interpretation of others. He attributes our dislike of others to a manifestation of our selfish desire for ourselves and not God, and notes that when we recognize that we are nothing without God and relationships, Heaven, not Hell, is other people.

Lewis’s novel, like Sartre’s play, also begins in Hell, with the narrator standing in line for a bus that is to depart to Heaven. Interestingly, the residents of Hell display an immediate dislike for each other. One character reveals that this hatred for others is so intense, that there are innumerable houses in Hell: “As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he’s been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbor. Before the week is over he’s quarreled so badly that he decides to move… You’ve only got to think a house and there it is. That’s how the town keeps growing.”[12] Lewis’s conception of Hell is important, because although Hell is real, its reality is made up by what the residents desire it to be. When the narrator arrives in Heaven, he sees that it is large and expansive; the colors are bright and the grass is hard. The landscape emphasizes the ‘realness’ of Heaven, and the Spirits or the Heavenly residents in comparison are completely visible, and can walk around on the earth of Heaven without any trouble, opposed to the residents of Hell, who are “fully transparent… smudgy and imperfectly opaque when they stood in the shadow of the tree,” and find Heaven, quite literally, too hard to grasp.[13]  Throughout the rest of the story, the Spirits of Heaven and the Ghosts from Hell engage in various dialogues, all of which reflect the moral that Lewis wants to communicate through this story. In the preface to The Great Divorce, Lewis explains that the book is a criticism of the underlying philosophical presupposition behind William Blake’s attempt to marry Heaven with Hell, “that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable ‘either-or,’” and that there is  “some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found.”[14] For Lewis, there is no mean between Heaven and Hell; the good is reality, the bad is created ex nihilo out of our imagination, it proceeds out of nothing. Thus, “The whole difficulty of understanding Hell is that the thing to be understood is so nearly Nothing.”[15] Therefore Lewis’s use of imagery allows him to communicate this unique position, which emphasizes the realness of Heaven in comparison to Hell.

This then is the problem that all of the ghosts (aside from the narrator) share: to have a little bit of Heaven with a piece of Hell. One ghost who is approached by a Spirit instantly finds that the Spirit makes it uncomfortable: “I don’t want help. I want to be left alone.”[16] This is interesting, for the ghost desires solitude not because the Spirit is inhibiting his individual freedom, but fears his illuminating eye. Another interesting parallel between the ghost and the Spirit is that, while the Spirit is openly nude, the ghost is thoroughly concerned with how it looks: “It’s far worse than going out with nothing on would have been on Earth. Have everyone staring through me.”[17] The transparency of the ghost leaves it wide open for the others to see, which it finds horrifying, as it no longer has the ability to hide, to place an imaginary barrier between it and others. Hell, which is manifested in the presence of others, lies not in the other, but in the self. In Heaven, “There are no private affairs,” the ghost is afraid that his being will be revealed.[18] According to Lewis then, our discomfort with others should not lead to a rejection of the other; rather we should embrace the other.
What Lewis is anticipating here, is that God himself is the ‘ultimate other,’ and only in Him do we find our true self.  In the Problem of Pain, Lewis explains,“To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man—to be an ex-man or ‘damned ghost’—would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will.”[19] Interestingly, Lewis utilizes the image of a ghost also in this citation, and explains the reasoning behind its usage: we need God to reveal who we are before our eyes, to bring us out of our self-centered delusion into reality. As Lewis sees it, the other is necessary for any sort of morality. Thomas Watson traces this underlying theological position that Lewis assumes in The Great Divorce to St. Augustine’s idea of the fall of Lucifer: “Satan, who, with a number of apostate angels, chose to lift themselves up in amor, the love of secondary goods, and separate from God and Heavenly communion. In so doing, Satan and his followers lost true being, which is had only by remaining in communion with God.”[20] This idea is central to Lewis’s argument against Blake and to his stylistic approach for writing, because he wants to show that Man’s reality resembles Lucifer’s, because it is in choice were he ends up. Given this, Lewis suggests:

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that      the doors of Hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that ghosts may not wish to come out of Hell, in the vague way fashion wherein an envious man ‘wishes to be happy’: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self- abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good.[21]

Lewis’s italicization of the word inside suggests that the self is Hell: we remain in Hell by locking ourselves inside ourselves. And thus, the one in Hell gets what he wants, “He has his wish—to lie wholly in the self and to make the best of what he finds there. And what he finds there is Hell.” This explains why the ghosts distrust the Spirits so much, even though the Spirits are only there to help them, because trusting another person requires that we admit that we are not completely independent, that we are not above another. For Lewis, to become completely vulnerable, admitting that we are incomplete ‘ghosts,’ is part of the first move we can make towards becoming truly human.

Other people then, are not so much Hell, but are one of the closest things that we have to Heaven on Earth. They, like God, can bring us out of ourselves, help us recognize our faults, and are therefore necessary for our well-being: “The taste for the other, that is, the very capacity for enjoying good, is quenched in him except in so far as his body still draws him into some rudimentary contact with an outer world.”[22] No one, as Lewis suggests, would desire to live in a world that is devoid of others, for our experience makes nothing clearer that other people make up most of our greatest joys. We see this during the last conversation between the Tragedian and the Lady, at the moment she makes him laugh, because for that small time period he goes outside himself, because “No people find each other more absurd than lovers.”[23] Therefore the reason why we, like the ghosts, often have a problem with others is that in the eye of the other we are forced outside of ourselves for a brief moment, and become annoyed that we should have to recognize what we really are. This we see also at the beginning, when the narrator notices that the passengers on the bus are hostile towards the driver, even though he “[c]ould see nothing in the countenance of the Driver to justify all of this.”[24] According to Lewis, it is a symptom of an inflated ego that makes the presences of others so unbearable.

The enjoyment of others, much like Heaven, lies in choosing either ourselves or God. During one conversation, a Spirit tells a mother, “You cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.” This strikes her as absurd, because she feels that she knows what true love is, for she had given all of her life to her son, even after his death. In another conversation, one ghost is recorded criticizing a Spirit because he had been a murderer. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” asks the ghost, to which the Spirit responds “I do not look at myself. I have given up myself… And that was how everything began.”[25] For the mother and the murderer alike, our love for others, either for a son or for a murderer, is only possible if we first love God, recognize him as a thou, not as an It: “For love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.”[26] Thus, “the whole treatment consists in learning to want God for His own sake.”[27] The murderer admitted he was nothing and was forgiven, the ghost admits neither, and ends up treating the Spirit as an it. Although the ghost criticizes him, the Spirit is not bothered and does not get mad at his judgments, because he recognizes him as a thou, not because he needs to, but for who he is. The same is true for the mother even though she loved her son, for she still treated him as an it, because her love was driven by her need to love. But if she were to first love God for his own sake, she would be able to love her son a thou, a child meant not only for her, but also for God. This then, is the root of all love, “we shall have no need for one another now: we can begin to love truly.”[28] Throughout the story, this becomes a reoccurring issue that the Spirits address: our desires often begin well, but end up being about us and become a source for pride. This essentially is the punishment that people receive in Hell, “The trouble is they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course) by just imagining it.” [29]   Enjoying others lies then in our choice to go outside of ourselves, to recognize everyone as thou, not because we need to, but that we should love them truly  for who they are, and thus, recognize their reality apart from us. Lewis points out that otherness is implied in creation, and is necessary for the possibility of love: “He caused things to be other than Himself that, being distinct, they might learn to love Him, and achieve union instead of sameness.” Love is the fullest expression of harmony, as it demands that we recognize that others are equally in importance to us and take their well-being into consideration. In Heaven, “The Glory flows into everyone, and back from everyone: like light and mirrors”[30], for everyone is focused on what is greater than them, “we think only of Christ.”[31]

Although Lewis’s and Sartre’s philosophies differ drastically when it comes to the role of others in our lives, and on other topics such as Hell’s existence itself, there are similarities that exist between No Exit and The Great Divorce. The biggest similarity between the two is the emphasis both place on the finality of Hell, forcing us to focus on our choices: good or bad. As one Spirit notes, “What concerns you is the nature of the choice itself,”[32] and like the Spirit, Garcin acknowledges, “I made my choice. A man is what he wills himself to be.”[33] Because of this, Lewis and Sartre both made a point to express the freedom that the characters had to leave Hell. In this way, Lewis and Sartre utilized the image of Hell to communicate the implications they thought their ideas had on our lives more effectively. In this way, both writers treat Hell as a sort of thought experiment, as it emphasizes the importance for us to choose. Thus Hell represents a reality which had already in some sense existed on Earth. For Lewis, those in Hell get to have only themselves; for Sartre, they get to have others.

While they shared some similarities in their stylistic usage of Hell, it is not hard to see that Sartre’s philosophy is based on the mentality that Lewis criticized. According to Lewis’s understanding, it is no surprise that we find Inez, Garcin, and Estelle in Hell, for “Hell is a state of mind” while “Heaven is reality.”[34] An interesting parallel between Sartre and Lewis is that both use sensorial perception to communicate the realness of their situation, although Lewis emphasizes the realness of Heaven, Sartre emphasized the realness of Hell; and it is why the two emphasized the realness of one and not the other, that we discover where the conflict lies. For Sartre, Hell is in the eyes of others. Therefore, the Hell that we experience in the presence of others is the most real. For Lewis, Hell is an imaginary place created out of the desires of the ego, and thus Heaven is real, because it is where the other exists. As Lewis showed throughout The Great Divorce, though Sartre’s conclusion “Hell is other people”[35] seems legitimate prima facie, it is in the end lacking because others do limit us when we understand the world as an It or a place only for our needs. Of necessity, they would always get in the way. If we are always caught up in our self, others become Hell, because they do not allow us to continue to live in an imaginary, ego-centric world. Yet when we look away towards the good outside of ourselves, who we are and what we do is not founded on us, “the soul is but a hollow which God fills in.”[36]

WORKCITED

Buber, Martin. I And Thou. Great Britian: Hesperides Press, 2008.

Lewis, C. S. “The Great Divorce.” In The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics. roughcut ed. Grand Rapids, MI: HarperOne, 2007.

Lewis, C. S. “The Problem of Pain.” In The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics. roughcut ed.  Grand Rapids, MI: HarperOne, 2007.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit, and Three Other Plays. Vintage International ed. New York: Vintage,             1989.

Watson, Thomas Ramey. “Enlarging Augustinian systems: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and      Till We Have Faces.” Renascence 46, no. 3 (Spring94 1994): 163. Religion and     Philosophy Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed April 22, 2012).

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[1] Martin Buber, I And Thou (Great Britian: Hesperides Press, 2008), 3.

[2] Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit, and Three Other Plays, Vintage International ed. (New York: Vintage, 1989), 4.

[3] Ibid., 5.

 [4] Ibid., 9.

 [5] Ibid., 8.

[6] Ibid., 21.

[7] Ibid., 29.

 [8] Ibid., 44.

 [9] Ibid., 42.

[10] Ibid., 43.

[11] Ibid., 45.

[12] Lewis, C.S., “The Great Divorce,” in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics [Deckle Edge] Publisher: HarperOne; Roughcut Edition (New York City: HarperCollins, 2007), 471.

[13] Ibid., 477.

 [14] Ibid., 465.

 [15] Ibid., 507.

[16] Ibid., 498.

[17] Ibid., 499.

 [18] Ibid., 481.

 [19] Ibid., 625.

[20] Watson, Thomas Ramey. “Enlarging Augustinian systems: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce and     Till We Have Faces.” Renascence 46, no. 3 (Spring94 1994): 163.

[21] Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pg. 626.

[22] Ibid., 623.

[23] Lewis, The Great Divorce, pg. 533.

 [24] Ibid., 468.

 [25] Ibid., 480.

 [26] Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pg. 639.

 [27] Lewis, The Great Divorce, pg. 518.

 [28] Ibid., 532.

 [29] Ibid., 473.

[30] Ibid., 523.

[31] Ibid., 488.

 [32] Ibid., 504.

 [33] Sartre, No Exit, pg. 43.

[34] Lewis, The Great Divorce, pg. 504.

[35] Sartre, No Exit, pg. 43.

 [36] Lewis, The Problem of Pain, pg. 635.

Some Ideas Concerning Morality in Andre Gide’s The Immoralist

Andre Gide’s The Immoralist presents us with a picture of the protagonist Michel, and his three year journey through Europe wherein, as the provocative title suggests, he experiences a dramatic change in his moral character. Whether or not the change in Michel’s moral perspective is an improvement, Gide leaves to the reader, writing The Immoralist in a manner similar to Gustave Flaubert, whose book Madame Bovary leaves out the moral commentary of a narrator, letting the actions of the characters speak for themselves.

At the beginning, Michel recounts his experience of tuberculosis which nearly kills him, but survives because of his wife’s care and his strong desire to live. Interestingly, Michel attributes  the strength of his will-power more so as the cure.  As the story progresses Michel becomes more enamored with this idea of the will, believing that living is for the strong and death for the weak. He then appropriates this perspective into his ideas concerning morality, anticipating a moral philosophy reminiscent of Friedrich Nietzsche’s, whose ideas of overcoming and the will to power taught that remedying moral flaws, like a disease, is a challenge that can be fixed if an individual’s will is strong enough; physical health is symptomatic of the bodies strength to overcome it’s sicknesses; moral health reveals the strength of the will to overcome itself and its flaws. And thus, “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” Once the body overcomes a sickness it is guarded against it, attaining the power to live; and man achieves a moral character by willing through the situations that would overcome him and render him powerless. This dramatic change in Michel’s perspective elicits a desire for Michel to rediscover himself:

“The accumulation of all acquired knowledge in our mind flakes away like a cosmetic and in places lets us see the bare flesh, the authentic being that was hidden… From then on, that was whom I strove to discover: my authentic self… the one rejected by the Gospels… From then on, I despised that secondary acquired self-superimposed by my education. I had to shake off the burdens”

Gide is concerned with our motivation for what and why we do things. As Michel would have it, it is utilizing our freedom that we become something. This sort of thinking that Michel adopts calls into questions the general motivation for our actions, namely the conventional, making him an ‘immoralist’ in this sense, because by choosing and acting in a way outside of society’s ready-made moral prescriptions, he sins against what Nietzsche often referred to as the ‘herd’s morality.’ This idea we see most clearly in Michel’s friend Melanque, who reveals how he self-consciously perceives himself and how this differs from the way in which people generally perceive themselves and others:

“They seem surprised today that a man of reproachable morals can still possess a few virtues. I can’t find in myself the good and bad points they claim to discover; I exist only as a whole. I seek only what is natural, and, for each thing I do, the pleasure it gives me tells me that I was right to do it” (62).

Gide presents us with a problem; for if we create ourselves, we create how we should live, and thus, our own morality, making the reader’s job as spectator difficult for as Melanque points out, who we are is complex; saying ‘you are bad’ or ‘you are good’ is too easy; we might act in a way that others consider ‘bad’ at one point and ‘good’ at another, but in either case the decision is up to us. So are we either? If morality is the outcome of our choice, who is to say that anything is good or bad? Considering our arbitrary choices are forced to agree with an equally arbitrary ‘code’ of morality, why shouldn’t we disagree if we feel that we must? As Melanque would have it, most are afraid of their own freedom, terrified of their ability to become something: “Laws of imitation; I call them laws of fear. People are afraid of finding themselves alone, and they don’t find themselves at all. This moral agoraphobia is hateful to me; it’s the worst kind of cowardice. And yet it is only when alone that people are inventive.” Later on, Michel conveys a similar idea, “I came near viewing decency as nothing but restriction, conventions or fear… our mode of life had turned it into the mutually binding, banal form of a contract” (86). Common morality is the outcome of a fear to authentically choose something; a code by which we can safely, without any thought, live with others and their idea of who we should and should not be.

Although these ideas that Melanque and Michel follow are appealing, and offer much wisdom concerning how we should go about making ourselves, not as blind followers but as leaders, Michel admits an important point at the beginning of the story that enlightens us as to whether his commitment to his philosophy is legitimate: “To be able to free oneself is nothing; the hard part is being able to live with one’s freedom” (9). This becomes the underlying moral question of the book that Gide forces Michel to answer. In order to understand whether Michel handled his freedom correctly, Gide parallels Michel’s rise to health with his wife’s fall into sickness. Forgetting that in the beginning it was his wife’s love and care that truly enabled him to become healthy again, Michel plunges into an intense state of self-centeredness, completely ignoring her when she acquires a fatal illness, instead of reciprocating the love that she showed him. Michel, at least in this way, carries his and Melanque’s philosophy to the wrong conclusions: “sometimes I called upon my willpower protesting against that hold over me, saying to myself: ‘Is that all you’re good for, you would-be great man!’” (88). This is what Michel fails to see: that his choice to love necessarily limits. According to Martin Buber in his famous I and Thou, “In the eyes of him who takes his stand in love, and gazes out of it, men are cut free from their entanglement in bustling activity. Good people and evil, wise and foolish, beautiful and ugly, become successively real to him… Love is responsibility of an I for a Thou” (15). Whether it is love between friends or between spouses, Buber points out that our relations to other human beings entails that we are responsible for one another, for seeing the other not as means to our own ends, but as ends in themselves. The lesson that Michel is forced to learn through the negative consequences of his actions, which is concentrated in his wife and her death, is that by disregarding others when he has chosen to love is not a legitimate choice. Thus, as Melanque reveals, “One must choose. The important thing is knowing what you want” (65). Melanque recognizes that Michel chose his wife and therefore the responsibility of loving her, separating Melanque’s adventurous lifestyle from Michel’s domestic one: “To envy the happiness of others is folly; you wouldn’t know how to make use of it. Happiness shouldn’t come ready made, but should be custom made. I’m leaving tomorrow; I know that I’ve tried to cut this happiness to my own measure. . . . Hold onto your peaceful domestic happiness. . . .” (66). Michel’s envy for Melanque’s lifestyle is not legitimate, for his situation is different; a situation that Michel chose himself.

I would argue that one of Gide’s intentions for The Immoralist is to make a case for both an immoral and moral way of living. As we saw, Gide seems to suggest that being an immoralist, in so far as it means that we approach living consciously, willing and choosing what we think is legitimate, is morally good; for adhering to mere traditions created out of habit is almost intuitively inauthentic, and even dangerous; a commitment that is in itself immoral, although some may see it as moral. It might be the case that Gide wants to revitalize those traditions that become banal through blind choice, and inspire us to choose traditions and conventional standards because they are good; a practice which also weeds out the bad. This leads us to the moral that Gide wants to communicate, namely the importance of choosing correctly, morally, with a heart for others and ourselves; using our freedom in an effective way.

A Rough Essay on Depeche Mode and Faith

About a year and a half ago, I was looking at the website of a band whose music I enjoy, Iszoloscope. I noted some of their influences, wrote them down, and listened to a few songs by each of them. Depeche Mode stood out as a brillant band with substantive, meaningful lyrics. DM’s music has certainly gone through many transitions (e.g., the difference is quite significant betweenSpeak & Spell [1981] and Playing the Angel [2005]). However, the first album I listened to and purchased, Violator, is a decent sample of their work. It’s not as dark as their Black Celebration, but it retains the same depth of emotion and strength of articulation that it had. Also, this album is one of their most purchased in the US, and if you’ve heard any of their songs, you’ve likely heard one from here. Indeed, if you’re a big fan of Johnny Cash or Marilyn Manson, then you’ve heard the lyrics to “Personal Jesus.” They’ve both done covers of the song. It was the first song I heard by them and it is certainly one of their best all-around tracks. The music is phenomenal, and the lyrics are rhythmic, moving, and subtle. The song expresses something that is common to human experience in a fresh and profound sense: The nature of faith–without God.

However, before developing the ideas of this song specifically, it is necessary to briefly outline some of the major themes in DM’s work. Depeche Mode’s “philosophy,” if one may talk about bands expositing a philosophy, is essentially a post-theistic modernist humanism. Depeche Mode never speaks like the “New Atheists” (read: “bad Voltaire knock-offs”), pretentiously scoffing at God’s lack of existence (“John the Revelator,” Playing the Angel, gets close, though). Rather, the world in which DM operates is a world where there is simply no recourse to God. Human relationships are, therefore, of primary importance. Human symbology and social practices have meaning and teleology even though they may have no essential meaning (“Blue Dress,” Violator is the best example, but “World Full of Nothing,” Black Celebration develops the same idea). DM even deals with the human experience of what Christians would call sin (“Halo,” Violator, “When the Body Speaks,” Exciter, “The Sinner in Me,” Playing the Angel). There is no escape from banality, ugliness, and imperfection. Though DM regularly asserts that human relationships are the partial answer to the desperate nature of existence, even other people are often simply a drug which briefly allow us escape from the importance issues in life (“Sweetest Perfection”, Violator). As all good atheists do, they powerfully articulate the despair that the definitively insoluble problem of evil brings upon us (“Precious,” Playing the Angel). Modernism, here I mean the presumption that reason is the provider of the criteria by which we adjudicate between potential explanations of reality, as such is not explicitly developed in their work, as far as I know, but it is a necessary presumption of the concepts in many of their songs. The song “Stripped,” from Exciter, deals with this to some extent with regard to developing one’s individuality and interacting with other individuals. In sum, in a godless world, where reason makes us cynical, forcing the recognition of the horror of existence and death upon us, each individual must struggle forward, attempting to find fulfillment in the only life there is (“Damaged People,” Playing the Angel).

Finally, then, “Personal Jesus” should be placed within this developing philosophy of Depeche Mode.  It opens with the bold phrase: Reach out and touch faith. This line really expresses the central message of the song. The last word, faith, seems an odd word for DM to use, given their philosophy. The speaker of the lyric claims to be the “personal Jesus” for the respondent.  He is “second best” to Christ, but the respondent has to take what he can get. The speaker is there, “someone who cares…someone to hear your prayers.” He is near–all that you must do is pick up the phone, and he’ll be there for you.

First, Depeche Mode is implying a prescriptive statement here: Faith should be something grounded tangibly. The reason you should “take second best” is because Christ isn’t there, he doesn’t care, and he doesn’t respond to your prayers. DM is not trying to convert anyone to atheism. They do not offer any arguments for God’s non-existence. DM is reaching out to the individual who feels unknown and alone; that is, the one who already agrees with them that Christ is silent in their helpless position. Whereas Christ asks for a leap of faith, the personal Jesus is “flesh and bone”—an empirical ground for your faith is present whenever you need it. The term “personal Jesus” implies something itself: each person needs a being who cares about them in their individuality.

Second, therefore, faith is fundamentally relational. As an example from Christian theology, consider the difference between Melanchthon’s definition of faith as assensus and Luther’s as fiducia. The former defines faith as an intellectual affirmation of the truths of Christianity, whereas the latter is something similar to a relational dependence upon and trust in Christ. Depeche mode accepts something along the lines of fiducia, although the ultimacy of the dependence-relation is necessarily mitigated somewhat. Personal contact is what leads to faith and belief in the person who takes the place of Jesus.

Lastly, this faith is capable of three things according to the song: self-definition, forgiveness, and the reception of supplication. The Christian God is silent when an individual is trudging through some of the worst parts of life. Whether we are suffering because of pain, another’s pain, or because of the recognition of our own sin, Christ’s love is often conspicuously absent. Other people, however, and those closest to us, will often still be there in those times. One’s self is inextricably bound to such relationships, and it is through the comfort of other caring individuals that we find our questions interacted with and our sinful selves lovingly accepted.

Depeche Mode gets things wrong about faith, but aside from that they don’t hold to an ontology that makes faith meaningful in its essence, not much. That’s a huge “aside from,” but considering they don’t hold to such, it’s more surprising how much they get right. The describe faith as it is often considered it the Christian religion, but they change the object of that faith. They put their faith in a different entity, yet they still strongly recognize the human need for acceptance, forgiveness and deliverance.

As a side note, it may seem that there are additional problems here. This song ignores the difficulties of putting one’s faith in another, both from the perspective of the person putting faith in the other, and the other failing to live up to the standards of good faith. However, that isn’t the purpose of this song, and they do deal with those issues in other places. DM is acutely aware of the fallibility of human existence. See “I Want It All,” Playing the Angel, for the former problem, and “It Doesn’t Matter Two”, Black Celebration for the latter. These problems are there considered, but whether they are able to adequately solve them is entirely a different question.

In the end, of course, Depeche Mode is just a band, and they don’t claim to present an utterly consistent system of philosophy. As the hymnists for an existentialistic humanism, however, they are exceptionally well-suited. “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” wasn’t a theology, but it moved people emotionally through the song to Lutheran principles in the lyrics. Similarly, “Personal Jesus” is a powerful expression of the humanist’s plight without Christ.

[Note: I originally wrote this in a different context, so forgive some of the preparatory material included that makes it so long. I intend eventually to write a series of posts on Depeche Mode, because I think their work warrants at least some critical investigation. If it ever materializes, the first post will recap a lot of what is in that prolegomena so that other posts about the band (hopefully one per album) can simply refer back to it.]

An Apology/Review for “The Next Three Days” dir. Paul Haggis

“The Next Three Days,” directed by Paul Haggis and starring Russell Crowe, is unfortunately underrated. I remember walking out of the theatre with friend, both of us enamored with the film, and talking about its interesting portrayal of the human experience. Ever since I came home and saw the unfortunate reviews that night, I have wanted to defend it against its critics. It really is worth a viewing, and the overwhelmingly negative-to-mediocre reviews about it need some kind of counterbalance.

Crowe’s character, John Brennan, a normal English professor is trying to break his wife out of prison where she has been sentenced to life. John has no proof of her innocence. Every appeal has resulted in her conviction of murder, and the flashbacks to the evidence of the case seem to strongly implicate her. He simply trusts his wife’s character. There is no scene that gives determinative evidence to the audience, either, and they begin to wonder if John’s sacrifices for his wife are justified. He tries making fake keys, meeting with an escaped convict, watching YouTube videos, and it becomes nearly a frightening obsession. John becomes less socialable and more crazy. A scene depicts his wall like the famous one in “A Beautiful Mind.” The last half or third of the movie is a bit more like a conventional thriller, but retains the uncertainty until the very end.

The movie is consciously Quixotean, with John’s trust in his wife taking the place of Quixote’s insanity, and his attempts to break her out of prison often reminiscent of the charge toward the windmills. This is what drives the movie, and if it is appealing at all, makes it so.

Many critiques of this movie really miss this point of the film entirely. David Roark’s review from Christianity Today exemplifies this problem thoroughly:

“But the most absurd aspect is the premise [of the movie] itself. Regardless of how much he loves his wife, there’s no way a normal, intelligent person like John could ever reach the decision he does as a solution to his problem. Plus, there’s no reasoning behind his ability to go from scholar to action hero overnight.”

The famous Roger Ebert has the following to say:
“The film might have been more convincing if [Crowe had] remained the schleppy English teacher throughout. Once glimmers of “Gladiator” begin to reveal themselves, a certain credibility is lost. The movie is a competent thriller, but maybe could have been more.”

All I can say to Roark is exactly. Like it or not, you can’t very well critique the movie for this, that’s the point of it. The movie presents the viewer with the expression of the unadulterated relationality of a human being. It’s meant to be extreme, and it is meant to speak to the strongest desires of hope in the human heart.

As usual, Ebert’s criticism is written well, but many of his statements are as vague as an astrological reading. He only critiques the movie on this one point–that it is incredible. The rest of his critique either relies on this point or expresses his apathy about the film. It’s, of course, fine not to like the movie, but since Ebert is paid to write about it, I wish he were a bit clearer on why the movie is mediocre.

This movie’s theme is primarily existential and emphasizes relationality rather than rationality. His decision to break his wife out of prison is thus comprehensible, if not rational. The movie is not unaware of his irrationality; by the end, even his wife is telling him to give up. Also, his transition from professor to action hero is much more believable than these critics make out, interpreted correctly. First, he’s not actually an action hero, and doesn’t even resemble one until the final part of the movie. Second, he flubs up constantly, making believable mistakes until the end of the movie when his plan is systematized and in place. Third, the improbability of the plan is implicitly recognized my Brennan himself. However, he wills to attempt the near-impossible rather than accept his wife’s fate and her despair.

This main theme, the quest of John Brennan, reminds me of a quote from Gabriel Marcel:

“Hope consists in asserting that there is at the heart of being, beyond all data, beyond all inventories and calculations, a mysterious principle in connivance with me, which cannot but will that which I will, if what I will deserves to be willed by the whole of my being…To hope against all hope that a person whom I love will recover from a disease which is said to be incurable is to say: It is impossible that I should be alone in willing this cure…It is quite useless to tell me of discouraging cases or examples: Beyond all experience, all probability, all statistics, I assert that a given order shall be re-established, that reality is on my side…I do not wish: I assert; such is the prophetic tone of true hope.”

The movie isn’t perfect; I think the ending scene with the detectives (don’t want to spoil it for you) could have and should have been excluded. However, it’s the only movie that I’ve seen that does such a good job presenting human love, its relation to our desire for radical idealism, and our hope for that sympathetic principle at heart of reality.