Between you and reality is a Pile of Books
The Real World and the Written Word
I’ve never been happy with the written word. That's a statement which may sound odd for a writer to make. Some talks I did in Liverpool in 2010 made a big thing of the fact that the people whose ideas who changed the world most never wrote a word. I went on to Plato, who was himself worried about this idea of writing.
Now then, let me find those talks and quote my own words! ‘Following Socrates, Plato was wary of writing. He suspected that, in the way that the written word objectified philosophy, it could become an excuse not to live it. He thought that, in the way it tidied philosophy up, it could become a means of concealing a meaning that can only be experienced.’ (Philosophizing Through the Eyes of the Mind, 2010).
https://www.academia.edu/744886/PHILOSOPHISING_THROUGH_THE_EYE_OF_THE_MIND_Philosophy_as_Ethos_and_Praxis
This may seem very paradoxical. But not really.
The way of philosophy is not reading books and writing books – it is a practice, an ethos, a way of being and living. This is to restore philosophy to its Socratic origins. Language lives only in context and usage; in the dictionary, words mean nothing. The same applies to philosophy. Reading and writing philosophy can become an excuse not to live it. I’d just be cautious about this notion of ethos and be careful not to lose philosophy as a critical and reflective discipline concerning truth and meaning.
I’m just wary of words and writing.
Aubrey Meyer gave me this wonderful tale and quote the other day:
‘50 years ago an old mystic said to me at my wedding (I was 20), "Aubrey between you and reality lies a great pile of books." (He then went on to say, in a man's life there are three things: his birth, his marriage, and his death, and for Aubrey that leaves one of them.’
I like that story so very much. It makes sense to me. In terms of the old division, I am a realist rather than a nominalist. I’ve been writing for so long now that it’s obvious I’m writing the unfinishable book, unfinishable because the reality I’m interested in evades capture in the written form. But I shall carry on writing, if only to convey that message. I’m gratified that so many people have contacted me in recent years on the things I’ve written, often things I’d forgotten about, like the work on Spinoza, and have clearly taken something from them. I’ve never been possessive about words. It’s that ‘real world’ beyond our words that I’m interested in.
As for the three things in life, I was intrigued by this article:
‘The Louvre's closure proves art cannot survive climate change’
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/jun/06/louvre-closure-flooding-paris-climate-change?CMP=share_btn_fb
I’ve always been intrigued by the tale of Michelangelo’s ‘ice sculpture’. It’s the greatest snowman ever. His biographer Vasari says this:
“It is said that Piero de’ Medici, who had been left heir to his father Lorenzo, often used to send for Michelangelo, with whom he had been intimate for many years, when he wanted to buy antiques such as cameos and other engraved stones. And one winter, when a great deal of snow fell in Florence, he had him make in his courtyard a statue of snow, which was very beautiful…” (Life of Michelangelo, p. 332 in the Penguin Classics translation by George Bull.)
But the sculpture couldn’t last. A couple of days later, the most beautiful snowman in human history, one of Michelangelo’s earliest masterpieces, disappeared, never to be seen again.
Why would Michelangelo pour all his genius into making a beautiful snowman, and submit his genius to inevitable destruction and disappearance?
Michelangelo made an immense contribution to civilisation. But he knew that all that is created must end.
“We too were men joyful and weary like you, and now we are lifeless, we are only earth, as you see. All that is created must end. All, all around us, must perish." (Michelangelo).
I’m doing my little bit for "the coming ecological revolution." That was the title of another book I wrote:
The Coming Ecological Revolution: The Principles and Politics of a Social and Moral Ecology, 2011
https://www.academia.edu/6879045/The_Coming_Ecological_Revolution_The_Principles_and_Politics_of_a_Social_and_Moral_Ecology
The future age will be an Age of Ecology … if we are to have a future at all. It just makes me wonder why we carry on, in face of a seemingly inevitable ruin. We do what we have to do in order to be, as part of our healthy flourishing. I can go with that. Anything else?
Sic transit gloria mundi is a Latin phrase that means "Thus passes the glory of the world." "Worldly things are fleeting."
I’ve got another quote here: ‘The World is Speedily Coming to an End. Everyone Wants to Write a Book’.
Now why do I keep on writing then? Why this book that I am currently working on, Being and Place? I feel like Michelangelo with his snowman.
Amazingly, in the middle of all this building work, I have managed 20 pages of writing on Being and Place these last few days. Here is an unedited passage from it:
‘The truth is that the facts about climate change and global warming, the decline of oceans, the loss of species, and their consequences for human society are certain to get worse before they get better. That is why we need a vision of the long-term good to inspire, motivate and obligate individuals, a psychic retooling to develop responsiveness on our part, and an institutional and strategic remodelling enabling us to engage in effective action. We need to build our moral, psychic and institutional capacities with a view to acting for the long term. If we remain focused on short term response, we will be overwhelmed by events. Any reasons for hope we have lie beyond the immediate horizons, on the far shores of politics, looking forward to a time when we have succeeded in stabilizing the carbon cycle, have brought carbon levels back down to where they were before the Industrial Revolution, ended the destruction of ecosystems and the loss of species, and restored the chemical balance of the oceans. To do this in the long run requires that we create in the short run the governmental bodies, public policies and economic systems calibrated to planetary realities. Such a biospheric politics would fundamentally alter our timescapes from the near to the long term. Creating such a politics is our greatest challenge. Without it, our scientific knowledge and technical know-how will continue to fall short, locked within institutional and psychological parameters geared to quick results, immediate payoffs, and instant gratification. We need to create the character and foster the capacities that enable us to undertake the substantial task of long term social transformation. Like those who took part in the collaborative effort to build the great cathedrals of Europe, we will need the vision, the commitment, the endurance and the faith to undertake a project that will come to fruition only long after we have gone. We need a transcendental vision that raises our gaze beyond the horizon. Nothing else will suffice. A pragmatic concern with immediate workarounds and responses will not suffice, and needs to be attached to transition strategies taking us from the present into the future.’
I’ve been listening to Paul Simon’s Cool, Cool River.
Interesting lyrics
“And I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours I feel sure”
"O quam cito transit gloria mundi" ("How quickly the glory of the world passes away")
- Thomas à Kempis.
Yet, as that article on Paris and the Louvre makes clear, and as Michelangelo’s life and art makes clear, that ‘glory’ matters to us. We carry on building, sculpting, painting, writing. Maybe that’s our way of accessing this ‘real world’, making as much conscious sense of it as we can via our limited tools. In ruin of hope, to hope all things. We are transcendental beings. Words are blunt instruments.
I’ve attached a document to my "About Me" page with all my favourite quotations. It’s 17,000 words long, of course. Richard Feynman is in there a few times.‘I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.’― Richard P. Feynman
So I shall carry on writing.
But we need that 'pile of books' all the same. It's called civilisation.
There are other quotes from Feynman too:
'Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.'
― Richard P. Feynman
'Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.'
― Richard P. Feynman
What can I say? I’ve been very undisciplined, very irreverent, not respected protocol, not played by the rules, been very prolific with words. I've written my own pile of books through wondering about ‘the real world’. And, of course, that world eludes my grasp.
But I shall carry on writing all the same.
Being at One: Making a Home in Earth’s Commonwealth of Virtuehttps://www.academia.edu/12999996/Being_at_One_Making_a_Home_in_the_Earths_Commonwealth_of_Virtue
I should really get this one published NOW. It’s been ready in its unedited 900 page rough draft for over a year. I’m seeing lots of ideas in here now coming out every day, importance of ideals, visions, ethics, psychology etc.
Of Gods and Gaia was a decent rage against planetary engineering, and an affirmation of politics and ethics, real change as a change in behaviour and a transformation of socially structured patterns of behaviour. It’s the most controversial thing I’ve written. It was gloves off at times. I should have looked more closely at the possibility of a technological innovation that respects planetary boundaries. Instead, the focus is on demolishing the mad delusions of those who think our technology has turned us into gods.
https://www.academia.edu/2588815/Of_Gods_and_Gaia
The Coming Ecological Revolution: The Principles and Politics of a Social and Moral Ecology
https://www.academia.edu/6879045/The_Coming_Ecological_Revolution_The_Principles_and_Politics_of_a_Social_and_Moral_Ecology
Way too long at 660 pages! I need an editor!! I finish, get bored, move to my real work, Being and Place. It’s all on this one. This is my snowman. Maybe I don’t finish it because I don’t want to submit it to inevitable ruin? Maybe philosophizing as an active process immanent in the world is what it’s all about, not some final written form.
Being and Place
https://www.academia.edu/5786760/Being_and_Place_Reason_Nature_and_Society