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Art historians even nowadays still talk about a “Morellian method.” Let us see of what this method consisted. Museums, Morelli said, are full of paintings whose authorship has been attributed inaccurately. But to restore each painting to its real author is a difficult task: often these works are not signed, have been re-painted or are in bad condition. In such a situation it is indispensable to be able to distinguish between originals and copies. But to do this, Morelli said, one should not work (as is usually done) on the basis of the most striking features of paintings, which for this very reason are the easiest to imitate: the lifted-to-heaven eyes of Perugino’s figures, the smile of Leonardo’s, and so on. One should rather examine the most negligible details, those least influenced by the characteristics of the school the painter belongs to: the lobes of the ears, the fingernails, the shape of the fingers and toes. In this manner Morelli discovered, and painstakingly cataloged, the shape of ears typical of Botticelli, that of Cosmé Tura, and so on: these traits were present in originals, but not in copies.

Carlo Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of a Scientific Paradigm” (1979)

In the essay from which this passage is taken, Carlo Ginzburg lays out the theoretical underpinnings of what has come to be called, and largely thanks to Ginzburg’s efforts, microhistory. In particular, Ginzburg adopts what he calls a “semiotic paradigm” (284). As with the Morellian method described above, what this semiotic approach involves is a “deciphering of signs” (281). The earlobes as painted by Botticelli, the clues left behind at a crime scene, or the symptoms a patient presents to their doctor, each are a sign for something else, and something that is the real target of the investigation—determining whether the painting is an original or a forgery, identifying the criminal, or diagnosing the illness. In the context of doing history, Ginzburg has adopted a similar approach. In his book The Cheese and the Worms, for instance, Ginzburg takes up the heresy trial of a 16^th century miller, Menocchio. As Ginzburg later describes the perspective one could take of this project, as one that “could have been a simple footnote in a hypothetical monograph on the Protestant Reformation in the Friuli,” and a footnote that Ginzburg transformed into a book” (Ginzburg 2012: 203). Now this footnote, or the “negligible details” of a simple 16^th century miller could be taken, on the semiotic paradigm Ginzburg adopts, to be a sign for something else, and in this case the religious beliefs of peasants of the Friuli region. This approach to history has come to be called microhistory.

The Nazis would have been unthinkable without the First World War, and here, right at the beginning of the story, we see something else: the trauma of defeat left millions of Germans believing a particular narrative about the war not because it was demonstrably true, but because it was emotionally necessary. The nation had been gloriously unified in the sunshine of August 1914, or so most Germans thought. Yet, in the cold rain of November 1918, betrayal and cowardice at home–the “stab in the back”–had brought defeat on the battlefield. Neither part of this narrative was accurate, but the contrast between August and November allowed the Nazis to promise that they would bring back the unity of August once they had defeated the treason of November. What a nation believes about its past is at least as important as what that past actually was.

The Death of Democracy, Benjamin Carter Hett

In Benjamin Hett’s book on the fall of the Weimar Republic, The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Fall of the Weimar Republic, there are eerily familiar echoes between 1930s Germany and the contemporary rise of autocratic power throughout the world, the United States in particular. Hett explicitly acknowledges these similarities, pointing out that in contrast to the “glow” that came with “the end of the Cold War,” he claims that “our time [meaning the time when this book was published, or 2017] more closely resembles the 1930s than it does the 1990s.” Although it is almost a cliche to draw parallels between 1930s Germany and the aspirations of Trump and many of extremists on the far right that Trump encourages, there was a a comment that stood out for me in Hett’s analysis. This is the necessity of lies, or as the pull quote above argued for, the role that lies played in the processes that made it possible for the Nazis to come to power and undermine democracy in the process. At the very basis of Nazi power was a big lie, or at the very least a narrative that strays far from the truth but was nonetheless “emotionally necessary.”

“Rehearse this thought every day, that you may be able to depart from life contentedly; for many men clutch and cling to life, in the same way that those who are carried down a rushing stream clutch and cling to briars and sharp rocks.”   —  Seneca, Letter 4

“A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”  — Spinoza, Ethics 4P67

“One would require a position outside of life, and yet have to know it as well as one, as many, as all who have lived it, in order to be permitted even to touch the problem of the value of life; reasons enough to comprehend that this problem is for us an unapproachable problem.” — Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

It’s been more than ten years, but the memory is very much alive of the night my stepmother called to tell me that my father had died, suddenly, while on a run the day before he was to race in the L.A marathon. Of the many overwhelming thoughts and emotions that came upon me that night, one of the first was the realization that everything had suddenly and irreversibly changed; things, I realized, will no longer be the same. This thought was much more than an intellectual grasp and insight; it felt much more real than that. Within 24 hours I was on a plane and back home in Laguna Beach. Walking in town that beautiful March night I couldn’t help but think of how, despite the fact that my father was no longer walking the streets of Laguna, the moon and stars that lit up the night sky were the same as the night before and will continue to be the same long after I succumb to the same fate as my father, the night sky being implacable and unaffected by the changes that affect our lives. It is no wonder the Ancients referred to the night sky as the heavenly sphere, the eternal realm distinct from the earthly sphere of changing human affairs.

I know that my thoughts and feelings regarding my father’s death are not unusual – it is from what I can tell a very common reaction to the loss of a significant person in one’s life. My reaction is also probably not unique to sudden deaths either. I had a similar reaction to my stepfather’s death from colon cancer. Although we knew his death was coming, the actual event of his death left me with a similar feeling of the transformative nature of what had happened. But there is something about sudden deaths that accentuates, or brings to an extreme, an important truth about our relation to death.

It is this truth about our relation to death that motivates, I would argue, the claims made in the quotes that lead off this post.

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This is cross-posted at NewAPPS

With a provocative title such as this, it is easy to imagine how the rest of the story will go. Philosophy, one will read, no longer has an effective role to play in society. One could perhaps draw on the authority of Stephen Hawking and argue, as Hawking does, that philosophy is dead and serves no purpose for it is now physics that best provides the answers to the questions that were once the focus of philosophers. The title may also lead one to anticipate the economic argument where philosophy is portrayed as being one of the most useless of the humanities degrees with the subsequent encouragement that one pursue, for the sake of their professional future, a more economically viable degree.

If either of these arguments are what the “philosophy has no future” title intends, then there are counter-arguments at the ready. With respect to the first, there is plenty of room to argue, as many have (see Laurie Paul’s essay for example), that the physics Hawking encourages presupposes a metaphysics that leaves plenty of opportunity for traditional philosophical questions to gain traction and in turn foster cooperative engagement between philosophy and science (Roberta’s excellent post along with Eric’s post on dark matter are cases in point of just such cooperation). There is also plenty of evidence to challenge the common assumption that philosophy is not a good degree to pursue in order to get a lucrative job upon graduation. Far from being a hindrance to future economic success, philosophy majors on the whole earn more than graduates with other degrees (see this story [h/t Catarina]). Philosophy majors also outperform students from other majors when it comes to standardized tests – e.g., LSAT, GRE (see this).

These counter-arguments are persuasive and as far as I’m concerned definitively undermine the two assumptions that may appear to motivate the title of this post. These assumptions, however, are not what motivated the title. What motivated it instead is not the notion that philosophy has no future because it has been displaced by competing forces that have now taken over the future that philosophy could once claim, but rather that the very attitude that philosophy ought to have such a future is itself derivative of a philosophy that has no future.

I would propose defending, to state the thesis more directly, a contemporary reworking of Camus’ philosophy of the absurd.

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If the lesson of Seneca’s first letter to Lucilius is to recognize, in light of the fact that we are “dying daily,” that our time is precious (see this post), the second letter cautions Lucilius to avoid what is no doubt a likely consequence of this recognition: namely, the conclusion that we ought to hurry up and live intensely and in haste for there is precious little time. This is the opposite of how we are to live if we are to live to our “purpose” (Letter 1). For Seneca to live in such haste, to hurry about from place to place, person to person, and book to book, “is the sign of a disordered spirit.” The key is for one to “remain in one place and linger in one’s own company,” be content with a few friends, and read just a “limited number of master-thinkers.” Hurrying about from place to place, person to person, text to text, may give one a vast number of acquaintances but no friends, and yet if we are to live to our purpose and fulfill “today’s task” (Letter 1), we will become a friend to ourselves, persons, and texts. In short, and most importantly, we will become a friend to thought.

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After a good couple of years posting at NewAPPS, although less and less frequently of late, I’ve decided to return to my own blog as the site where I’ll put up some of the ideas and concepts I’m working on, opening them up for discussion and hopefully helpful feedback. Although Read more…

This is cross-posted from NewAPPS (where I’ve been posting for a while, though I may begin posting more here) John’s nice post has reminded me of the importance of repetitive series for Deleuze (an issue I also discuss here). Picking up on John’s discussion of the perception of colors, series play an important Read more…