Category Archives: Philosophy

Thoughts on Maundy Thursday

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I am a child of autumn; I expect the world to be cool towards me, even chilly, and I am always looking out for the next winter storm. I am not an optimist, nor am I–unless I am really at ease–a touchy feely kind of person. But I do love spring, and I love to be warmed up.

Strangely enough, Maundy Thursday, Green Thursday, the Thursday of Holy Week, the week in the Western Christian year leading up to Easter, was always one of my favorite holidays. This might be mostly for the food, which is featured elsewhere, but is also because so much of the Last Supper distills what is best and most important to the Christian faith. In Germany, Easter in general and Green Thursday in particular is also a celebration of the return of life, of spring, to the world.

The old name—Maundy Thursday—derives from Old French or English corruptions of the first words of the Gospel scripture read at that nights Mass:

Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos.
A new commandment I give you, that you love each other as I have loved you.

It commemorates, it celebrates, the culmination of Jesus trying to train his disciples. One more time he tells them to love each other. He tries to reinforce that idea as he washes their feet and shares a meal with them. Love one another. There are legends that the longest living of those disciples, John, at the end of his life, said little more than “Little children, love one another!” The author of one of the Gospels could only summarize his and his master’s life work, his God’s message as Little children, love one another!

But loving is not a new commandment. Earlier in his career, Jesus had taught that all the law could be summarized as Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, etc., and Love your neighbor as yourself. “But who is my neighbor?” you might ask.

When I moved to Nashville, alone and much younger and scared than I could admit to myself, still raw and scarred from my first kidney transplant, it was a strange collection of lesbian and gay neighbors who first ate with me, kept me company and patched me up emotionally. Eventually, my neighbors were a rather strange but true Philosophy department which provided me with a home and great suppers, the staff of an LGBT newspaper I helped with printing and editorial work and with whom I talked almost daily, and the divinity student–deeply religious, yet always trying to act casually about their faith–who inhabited the Disciples Divinity House.
It was a convicted killer who became a good friend and was the best roommate I have ever had; it was a young couple I shared a house with, and lives with, and who taught me how to bake my own bread and honored us by asking us to god-parent their new daughter.

When we moved to Kentucky newly married, it was a wonderful small town congregation that gave us a place to stay and allowed us to be part of their lives. When we had a child, they sent us food—including a whole turkey and a 3-layer pink cake—as well as gentle support and advice. We shared lives with these neighbors, even burying some of them.
In Kentucky, it was also an odd pack of secular humanists at the University who nourished me, providing me with company, support, and even a couch to sleep on in an ice storm.

When I moved back to East Tennessee to wait for my second transplant, it was a quirky little congregation by Buffalo Creek that held me together, sharing a table with us, giving us a place to live and people to talk to. After my transplant, it was also a maintenance and grounds department staffed by North American, Korean, African, Eastern European and Indian seminarians who were neighbors to me.

Now, my literal neighbor is a retired High School coach and Baptist. When I felled a tree across his fence and into his yard, he ran out of his house, and his first concern was: “Are you OK?”
My neighbors are also a fascinating collection of booksellers and barristas who buoy me every day. When the unreality of seeing myself in an antique store sent me spinning, they were the ones I came home to.

Each of these neighbors has come into my life—often not by any choice I made—and has added to that life and made it infinitely richer; at some points, they even made life possible.

Love is a commandment, my Christian friends, but, for all of us, let me suggest that allowing yourself to love and to be loved is rewarding and enriching.Mundi Novum

I don’t know about heaven, my lovely ones, but when I am with you, I am back in a garden.

Peace be with you,

Dr. Bear

Why we need Poetry and Cheese

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Cheese & Poetry 1

The last time I taught Plato, my students picked up on a passage I had never really paid any attention to before. In the third book of the Republic, Socrates and his listeners are discussing a hypothetical community (a Greek polis, or a republic, or a metaphor for the soul). Socrates is building this hypothesis from the ground up, and trying to keep it simple. Glaucon, with whom he is arguing, objects: “No luxuries?” Socrates responds “I forgot; they’ll have salt and oil and cheese and figs, country herbs and acorns to roast by the fire.” Glaucon objects passionately, arguing that they will need real luxury goods, like imported sauces, fine furniture and concubines.
My students were kind of fascinated by the idea of there being an argument about what members of a community need to spice up their meals. I was fascinated by the idea that this argument came at an earlier point in a book that ends with Socrates exiling the poets because they couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth. Even Socrates, however, recognizes that we can’t just live on wheat and barley cakes; we need salt and olive oil, herbs and figs, and cheese.

There is nutrition, the need to just get something eaten in order to keep going, but there is also food that delights and amazes and makes everything better, food that is an experience in itself, food that makes you just want to stop and be in that moment and find joy in what you have just encountered.
For me, that is often cheese.

Cheese.
It does something that is simply remarkable. It is all produced in a very similar way—cow, goat or some other kind of milk—but it varies from country to country, region to region, and each is remarkable and wonderful in its own way.
The sharpness and character of a Sharp Cheddar, or the similar but different flavor of Red Leicester, the creaminess but surprising oddness of a Roquefort, the mellow smoothness but complex nuttiness of a firm Emmentaler, the rich butter taste of a Gouda or a Havarti, the smooth roundness of fresh Mozzarella as it complements the freshly sliced tomato, the sharp leaves of basil and the rich olive oil.

Each experience is more than just something to eat; it is something remarkable. It is joy condensed into a physical experience.
This experience might be a different food for you, but for me, it is cheese.
This experience is also of a form of beauty.

Beauty.
I am not sure I can define it, but I find it constantly, and it is one of my great joys, one of the things that keeps me going. As I usually do when I can’t quite explain something, let me tell you a story.

A few years ago, a dear sweet man whom I admired and loved passed away. No, this isn’t that kind of a story; Earl had lived a very long, very full life,  was surrounded by a huge loving family, was well thought of by most who knew him, was at peace with his world and his God, and so his passing on was not too tragic. All death is a sadness for those left behind, but he had not left a legacy of ghosts and wounds, but of love and love, and of music, so we celebrated his funeral with mixed sadness and joy.
At the funeral, one of his sons played the violin in tribute to his father, accompanied by his wife. They are both professional musicians, and incredibly talented, but what they produced was remarkable.

They played Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending.

For just one moment, time stood still.
That one moment I sat in awe.
It was too wonderful for words, a sensation too beautiful for thoughts.
The sounds around me were joy in the middle of sadness condensed into a physical experience.

I do not know much about larks. I do not know anything about souls or heaven.
But at that moment, I understood Earl’s soul rising to heaven,
like a lark ascending.

We live in a world of pain, but even more, a world of bleak grayness.
We need beauty.
We crave and we create beauty great and small, huge joys and little ones; we need beauty, we need poetry and we need cheese.

Poetry.
We need to hear of the eternal voyage from Homer:

“Sing to me of the man, Muse,
the man of twists and turns,
driven time and again off course,
once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy.
Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds,
many pains he suffered, heartsick on the open sea,
fighting to save his life and bring his comrades home.
But he could not save them from disaster, hard as he strove –
the recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all,
the blind fools, they devoured the cattle of the Sun
and the Sun god blotted out the day of their return. . . .”

We need the call to human adventure and exploration from Whitman:

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,

I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)”

The disjointed sensuousness of e.e. cummins:

somewhere i have never travelled,
gladly beyond any experience,
your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Echoing Schiller, I would say that this is joy condensed into an experience with words; even the joy of a poem that makes us ache and weep allows us to walk drunk with fire.

A good bit of cheese, the first bite of summer’s home grown tomato, a poem, a piece of music–each time we encounter them, each of them transport us like a first kiss. They are like the first spring sunshine upon whatever makes up the human psyche. They nourish us. Joy nourishes us to allow us to be who we should be. Beauty nourishes us to make us who we should be, and even what we might be. It helps us to find that which goes beyond good; it suggests better.
ending321

My motto, my creed

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My dear friends & gentle readers,
I have, unfortunately, had a cold this week, and, quite fortunately, a house guest, and am, as usual, running a little behind.

being right

I thought this would be a good time to discuss my motto: “Being right is no excuse for sloppy thinking; neither does it excuse unkindness or incivility.”
Originally, it grew out of a bad habit of mine in philosophy. I have generally found that I am much clearer, and argue much more effectively, when I am discussing, explaining or defending philosophical standpoints that I do not share, or ideas which I disagree with. Sometimes, this led to misunderstandings of what my actual positions were. At one particular point in my career, I found myself in a nest of Fichteans—not unlike a wasp nest, except that wasps do perform some sort of useful function in nature. I felt, and still feel, that Fichte’s early 19th century quest for transcendental foundations was misguided, and, even though it purports to be a logical part of the Kantian project…Wode_Toad

Yes, yes, Wode Toad, I know, but…

So, I found that it was difficult to argue against this position on how the mind shapes thought based in a very abstract German Idealism (the heirs of the German thinker Emmanuel Kant), and argue for a position on how the mind shapes thought based in observation of how humans actually function in human cultures and societies (the heirs of the German thinker Johann Gottfried Herder). The root of my problem was that it just seemed so obvious that the way to discuss thought was to actually pay attention to how human beings –in practice—think. Eventually, I asked myself “What would Herder do?” and left historical philosophy for social philosophy.

But, to begin a sentence with a conjunction, while I was still in the thick of this debate, and to remind myself that I still had to carefully argue for and defend the obvious, I put a sign up in my office that read:

“Being Right is No Excuse for Sloppy Thinking!”

A little later, I found myself as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for a wonderful Ethics professor, and was suddenly responsible for 124 students in a Professional Ethics class. The prof, a scrappy East Coast, Irish-American, ex-nun who also raised horses with her partner, was decidedly liberal—not radical, but liberal. One of the brighter students was a young Southern Baptist who had just returned from 2 years of missionary work, and he was, as you might expect, decidedly conservative.
At first, I found myself in the rather odd position of a referee. However, at some point early in the class, I was able to take him aside and sell him on the idea that if he was actually right, then he should be able to prove his ideas—or, at least, present and defend them in such a way as to meet her & philosophy’s standards. I shared my motto, telling him that “Being Right is No Excuse for Sloppy Thinking!” Because Baptists are, for the most part, good modernists and believe in absolute truth, and believe in the idea that truth is, at least in part, knowable and defendable, he accepted that position. As a result, he worked harder and— strangely enough—began to pay better attention to her actual positions, especially the ones he disagreed with. Neither of the two, of course, actually changed their opinions, but both of them started taking the other seriously.

However, there is more to life that rational argument. Many folks seem to believe that if they are right, that also gives them some sort of right and dominion to not care about the other human being them encounter during the average day. Our lives are filled with all sorts of interactions with our fellow human beings—some big and significant, others smaller and less so. Because we are human, we tend to pepper these interactions with kindness and cruelty, civility and rudeness, generosity and sullenness, hospitality and aloofness, patience and impatience, humor and ill-temper. For reasons I cannot explain, although I have given a great deal of thought to the matter, those who believe themselves in possession of some sort of absolute truth seem to be much less patient, and much more inclined to lash out at the rest of us. Once, during a communion meditation, I asked what it is about going to church on Sunday morning that makes Christians the most disagreeable customers to deal with on Sunday afternoon (something asked by almost all of my friends in retail or food).
I understand the temptation of being impatient with fools who do not understand what you understand or know what you know. Who hasn’t, at some point, wanted to, just yell:

You idiots! How can you not see the difference between Yams and Sweet Potatoes! They aren’t the same species; they aren’t even the same family or genus! They aren’t even from the same hemispheres! It’s not a subtle difference only clear to specialists like the designated hitter rules in the American and National Leagues, or the doctrinal differences between Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and the various Protestant denominations; this is a real, tangible difference! One is a monocot and the other is a dicot!

(Ok, maybe not that, but you get the idea. Insert your own personal hobby-horse, political view point or grammatical pet peeve here.)

The point is, each of us knows some things that other people do not know; each of us is right about something that somebody else is wrong about.

Wode Toad would like to point out that “impact” is not a verb, that you need to use your turn signal before you change lanes, that corporations Wode_Toad2should have reasons for making major changes like removing furniture, that electronic readers and lime in beer are both despicable, don’t even get him started on the difference between a Caffè Macchiato and a Latte Macchiato, and that you should always use the Oxford comma and always write a letter back when you receive one!
Wode Toad says: “thank you for listening.”

Being right about something doesn’t make us better; it gives us an obligation, a Noblesse Oblige, to help those who need that knowledge or to share it with those who would benefit by it. Being right does not excuse us from being kind or civil; it is precisely we who are right who should know better.

Perhaps there is a bit of an ironic tone to my motto, but I am confident in its truth, so confident that I do try to live by it. I am too old, and have spent way too much time among us mortals to have much confidence in our claims to be absolutely right. If it is possible to be completely right, it seems probable that clear, critical thinking, kindness and civility might bring us closer.

Regardless of being right, I am confident that clear thinking, kindness and civility bring us closer to being good, and that just might be all right for now.315signature

Why Philosophy?

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My Dear Friend Jim,
Thank you so much for steering me towards the “Was Wittgenstein Right?” blog on the New York Times Website. It was intended to be provocative, and–predictably enough–I’m provoked. The author, Paul Horwich, reiterates Wittgenstein’s attack upon traditionalPhilosophy Strand (that is to say, academic) philosophy’s claim to produce a unique kind of knowledge–a type of meta-knowledge underlying the other sciences and disciplines, and its claim to solve a unique–and vital–kind of problem. Because of this strong attack upon the academy, Horwich suggests, Wittgenstein is pariah in most Philosophy Departments today, yet his criticisms should be listened to.
Dr. Horwich seems to be employed, so the anti-Wittgenstein jihad does not appear to be very effective. My own work is heavily influenced by Wittgenstein, so my sympathies lie with him, but then again, I am not a professional academic (and, I have to admit, few of the brilliant women and men I went to graduate school with are, but that is hardly due to bias, but more do to various other academic and economic factors). I would, however, like to say a few words in defense of my calling, especially since I dismissed it so glibly in my last letter to Giedra. Let me try to answer the question “do we need philosophy?” in several different ways, since it can–as most questions can–be several different questions.

Do we need philosophy?

Know ThyselfObviously, there are things we need more. Carpentry, food, medicine and many, many other things come to mind. However, I would say that we also do need philosophy. Literally, philosophy means the love of wisdom; who could question our need for that?
Beyond just knowing “stuff,” most of us suspect there might be a type of knowledge we call wisdom, an ability to understand the choices we are faced with and to make the best choices, an ability to look behind the noise of public or popular opinion or behind the common sense of received traditions, and to try to penetrate to something beyond it. In an age of rhetoric and promotion, in an age of facts and information, we suspect there is something more, and that this something more is truth.
Granted, the large claims of a good deal of philosophy to penetrate this truth and lay it out scientifically have yet to be successful–as Wittgenstein points out. Yet, in a humble way, a more humbel quest might be possible. We would love to be wise enough to understand what that truth might be–or even just to catch enough of a fleeting glimpse of it to try to set our courses by it. Sophia, that holy wisdom that the ancients built temple for, and whom the Hebrew Scripture describes as calling in the streets and at the city walls, she still calls us–not to our deaths like the Sirens, but to a better life.
Philosophy, in its broadest sense, is the systematic search for that wisdom. Yes, we can catch a glimpse of wisdom in Poetry or Religion, but philosophy aims for a clearer, rational, accessible path towards the answers that draw us all near. Has my discipline achieved this? Well…

Do we need Philosophies, then?

pb 001All those little systems or theories like Platonism or Hegelian Idealism or Existentialism?
A long time ago, I spent a few years working in Human Resources Management, trying to help people to understand their benefits packages–retirement, insurance, flexible reimbursement accounts, etc. For the most part, I had people yell at me over the phone for 8 hours a day, and I tried to fix the messes that had been made. For a while, I had a temp helping me. She had a horse farm and a divorce, and–between one and the other–she needed an extra income.
Cindy once told me she didn’t know much about Passage Difficilephilosophy, but her grandfather had left her a beautiful set of leather-bound classics, and when she was feeling down, and the world seemed hopeless, she would pour herself a glass of scotch, get the Roman Philosophers off the shelf, and read until the world seemed right again.
I could give you many, many criticisms of the Roman Philosophers she was reading–probably Epictetus or Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. However, what they, the Stoics, write about is the idea that the world as we encounter it each day is senseless and brutal and hard, but that the universe as a whole is governed by reason and ultimately–on a macro-scale–makes sense.
Were the Stoics right? I don’t know; I can certainly give you a thoroughgoing critique of the Stoics failures. Did, however, the Stoics bring Cindy a little bit closer to wisdom? Yes, I think they did. Stoicism developed fully and consistently might not have had all the answers, and might not have been a good option for Cindy to fully embrace, but Cindy’s opportunity to read that slave, that senator, that emperor trying to develop the ideas of carrying on with dignity in a world that seemed to not make sense brought something to her life that helped her on her own quest for wisdom, and which stirred within her that love for wisdom.
I don’t think that the Stoics did this in spite of the fact that they embraced an overly ambitious, grandly worked out, and ultimately unsuccessful project, but precisely because they did. Their philosophy–those writings, and that piece of the ongoing philosophical conversation they were engaged in–was what ultimately moved Cindy, and which allowed her to think through their writings.

Do we need philosophers?

LecturerWell, yes. I’m not sure how many, or how much they are worth, but we do need people who will pursue these paths clearly and consistently, even if the philosophies they arrive at might not be ones which we can accept. We also need people who will talks us through these philosophies, and who will try to get us to think “philosophically” ourselves. It is probably good that we are not all philosophers, but it might still be good if some of us are so that we all might try to pursue wisdom just a little more.

Do we need philosophy?

Yes, we do need philosophy. No, philosophy isn’t really getting anywhere. Neither are most runners; they spend hours out on the road in all sorts of weather, but always end up where they started. However, they find that running helps them do many other things better and leaves them better off in general. Learning philosophy, reading philosophy, thinking philosophically, all these might make us just a little better at pursuing wisdom, and wisdom remains a worthwhile goal.

Certainly, philosophy has its limits. Thinking does not, in itself, make a bad world better. Philosophy is bad at healing heartache, and one cannot rationalize oneself out of a depression. For that, one needs other things–the kindness of friends, the glory of the Cheese & Poetrymountains, a lot of love, God, if you have him, some silliness, some dancing, and maybe medication, and certainly simple beauty like music, poetry, and cheese.

 

But I shall write about poetry and cheese another time.

Things to consider if acquiring a Philosopher

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Dear Giedra,
Thank you for your question.
If you are considering acquiring a philosopher, there are many things you should know first, and many things to consider.

Know ThyselfOver the twenty five centuries they have been around, many different breeds–perhaps hundreds–have developed. Some are bred for hunting, some for fighting, others, especially in the academy, are quite domesticated. Others have gone feral, and can be found roaming freely in bookstores & coffee shops (or, in my case, both). Some archaic breeds still flourish, some are virtually extinct. I can’t remember the last time I saw a wire-haired Leibnizian, but Spinozists seem to resurface every few years. There don’t seem to be many pedigreed Hegelians anymore, but many of the popular 20th Century breeds had some Hegelian blood.

Some philosophers are witty and urbane, sophisticated and conversational, fluent in several languages and capable of stylish dress, able to speak knowledgeably about art, literature, poetry, history and pop culture, interested in fine food and sparkling conversation, or, on the other hand, they can be analytic.

Either way, a word of caution: if they start using really long, confusing words like “equiprimordial,” “temporality,” “transcendental,” or “Being,” hit them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. This sort of behavior may seem minor or even cute at first, but trust me: in the long term it must be stopped.Dr Bear in Vest

The charm of having a philosopher is their strange relationship to the world of ideas. Remember how in a fairy tale everything–even the very air–is charged through and through with magic? For your philosopher, everything–even time and space (OK, maybe especially time and space)–is charged through with ideas. Ideas animate the world, hold it together to allow us to make sense of it, and allow us to reassemble it to see that might be, and sometimes even what should be.

Philosophers are generally interested in, fascinated by, even obsessed with patterns and connections. What sort of connections or patterns are there in the universe? In being itself, or just in the way we perceive or conceive our world? How about the connection that links statements about the world in such a way that if the statement “if this, then that” (or A → B) is true, and if “this” (A) is true, then “that” (B) is true, or why it is that if all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal.

An important detail which you will notice is that your philosopher will pay a lot of attention to logic. More than anything else, folks assume that philosophers spend a lot of time in vague bleary abstraction, and that isn’t the case. The core, the very heart of Philosophy is logic, and proof is really as important to the writing of philosophy as anything. This is one of the reasons why learning about the “History of Ideas” is so misleading: it is all summary of the conclusions, whereas Philosophy is really much more about the path to the conclusions than about the product. There are also clear standards and procedures. The philosopher’s goal is to spend time in precise bleary abstraction. Precision, logic and clarity are to philosophy what living a sinless life is to Christianity: very important and generally ignored.

CategoreisAnother important detail is that your philosopher probably will not take a great deal of interest in details or specifics. Individual things are only interesting in what they reveal about a class of things as a whole, or about the categories of things into which a philosopher seeks to divide the world. The underlying connections or substance, the huge patterns, the universals are of interest to them, the particulars are only a tool to get to what is true of all things. Specifics are for the sciences.

In general, an easy thing about philosophers–if Philosophy Strandthey are house-broken–is that they won’t bother you with pesky demands for attention, or to be walked or groomed or have a ball thrown for them. If you can provide them with a steady supply of books, they will generally manage to entertain themselves.

One final word: many question why, in this sophisticated age of Farmville and Furbys, and tablets that can deliver information or entertainment (or that terrible gorgon which is their mutant offspring, “info-tainment’–trust me, I am not infotained!) instantly, why should we still have philosophers. My reply that they are mostly harmless, but still serve an important function: to question and argue, and–if they are good philosophers–make us question and argue. Yes, 2000 later folks are still arguing over what Jesus said, and talking about Julius Caesar, but 2500 years later, folks are still arguing with Socrates, still engaged in the same endeavor–systematic wonder–with which Sophia–Wisdom–first captivated him. all philosophy

Yours, affectionately,
Dr. Bear.

The silly, silly meaningfulness

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 Valentines Baloons 2That silly, silly meaningfulness; the language game of love

Shake ShackWhen night is almost gone, but before the next dawn has come, sometimes, you can see a brilliant star, the brightest star, in the eastern sky; it is the morning star.

What do we talk about when we talk about the morning star? Believe it or not, this kind of question was the sort of thing that dominated discussions within earlier 20th Century Linguistic Philosophy. You see, the morning star isn’t really a star, nor does it particularly belong to the morning. The referent—the object that the phrase refers to—is the planet Venus. Strangely enough, Venus is also occasionally the evening star, depending upon when you see it. Obviously, although they both refer to the planet Venus, the phrases “morning star” and “evening star” don’t mean the same thing at all. Regardless, however, of this quirk of words, both phrases mean something, and we understand both. Language doesn’t always work in clear equivalence or rules.

What do we talk about when we talk about love?GCC3

Nothing. If we analyze the things we say to people we love, most of the things we say are meaningless in themselves, and many of the things we say are downright silly. From Shakespeare’s Orlando calling upon the Thrice-Crowned Queen of Heaven to bear witness to his love to MacBratney’s Nut Brown Hare loving his little bunny to the moon and back, the words don’t really “refer” to anything in a meaningful way. From “My love is like a red, red, rose…” to “Love you more!” they are games we play. What the words do is connect the participants in a specific conversation as players in a game—the only important game—in a distinct, intense and very personal way.

What do we talk about when we talk about love?

Like playing a game of “Keep It Up” with a red balloon, the point of the language game of love is to keep the ball in the air, the game in motion, the participants connected, the love alive, and the beloved loved.

What do we talk about when we talk about love?GCC1

Of course, we can give our loved ones bread and soup, or bake a Valentine’s Day Ginger and Chocolate Chip Cake for our co-workers, but there are an infinite variety of ways to play this game. The language game of love can be an individualized school lunch packed with care, the Marx Brothers routines my dad and my uncles did for each other and for my grandma after my grandpa’s funeral, a game of catch with a child or dog, and, of course, the mystically silly dance of sex.

What do we talk about when we talk about love?

Of course there can be the cliché red roses and chocolates of Valentine’s Day, or of locking a padlock with you and your lover’s heartlocknames on it on a public place, but there is so much more. The language game of love is the gestures and questions of still being curious about the stranger you have lived with 20 years, standing up to meet a lover at the end of an exhausting day, or washing the dishes, pots, and pans for somebody who has cooked your supper. It is shining your shoes, buying a new tie or putting on lipstick to win the heart of someone you see every day.

These things have no logical content and they are not sentences that can be diagrammed or translated into the IFFs, tildes & horseshoes of Logical Language L.
Yet they are the most important things we ever say, ever have said, or ever will say.

So, speak of love. Tell someone something silly, silly, and meaningful today.

Why should humans be moral?

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My dear Emilee,
You asked me “Why should humans be moral?”
That is a really big question. It is also a very important question, and one which can open the door to long conversations and many more questions.Hello Questions

However, the question is phrased in such a way that makes it difficult, almost impossible to answer, and in such a way that always leaves a little gap of doubt. Why be moral implies that goodness–kindness and courage and honesty and generosity and whatever other moral words we humans use–are separate from us, alien to us, almost like a remarkably fancy yet highly impractical (and, need I mention, very costly) fedora which we can choose to put on our heads or choose to leave in the front window of the Haberdashery in State Street.
Morality is best not a noun, but an adjective describing humans, or even an adverb describing how humans are human. I would really prefer not to use the word “moral, ” but instead to ask “Why should humans be good?”

Of course, I really prefer to ask “why should humans be good?” because it is an absurd question. Good is desirable. Why should food be good? Because good food is–by definition–better than bad food. Why eat bad bread? Why should music be good? Why should I try to make this a good answer? Although trite, it is quite simply the case that goodness is good. A human being doesn’t desire to be a not good human being; if it is within our power, we are as unlikely to deliberately choose not to be good as we are to choose to be hideous, or even choose to be uncoordinated or unpopular.

Goodness is good, but we certainly do get sidetracked.
There is within most of us–within everybody I’ve met, and I have met many, many people from all the hemispheres & continents–a desire to be good, and generally, some sort of moral sense that suggests what that goodness might be. I am under no illusions that we actually are good–a day or two working retail or being a barista will show you that humans are capable of being saints and fiends and everything in between–but they each want to understand themselves as good, and be understood as good, and judge others as good or evil.

Yes, there are sociopaths, but they are exceptional, not typical (albeit amazingly common any place that serves espresso drinks).

Yes–and this is not at all exceptional–we often ignore the desire to be good. We human beings want to take shortcuts, and we want to taste forbidden fruit. “Yes, I want to be good, but it would be so much easier to tell a lie than to deal with this right now.” “Yes, I desire to be good, but I also desire the feel of her soft skin warm against mine.”

Yes, there are many different ideas of what it means to be a good person. There are disagreements within cultures, and there are incommensurable differences across cultural lines, but underneath these there is a desire to be good. In fact, one of the reasons the disagreements are so ferocious is how strongly we feel about being good.
We want to be good, and we want to be thought good. We don’t want our friends, our families, our acquaintances, or even total strangers to think we are a louse, a jerk, a letch, a cheapskate our mooch, a liar, a coward, and insensitive lout or a douche-bag. We want them to think we are a good person, in part because ultimately that is the only way we can know ourselves to be good. Sometimes we internalize the judgements of the world to create an interior judge, but we also externalize our own conscience, looking for concurring second opinions.

So, my dear young friend, my long-limbed albatross flying across the seas, my dear Emilee, my answer is, in short:
There is no Why should humans be moral. Morality, like rationality, like bipedality, like fondness for sugar and salt and fat, is part of human being.

The vital question isn’t why, but how?

…and that leads to a whole mess of new questions and conversations.Menu