Frankenstein's Monster x Ludwig Wittgenstein [1]
'Thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of the living ...' [2]
I.
Philosophers, like monsters, "are creatures that fail to meet prevailing measures and norms by radically exceeding or falling short of them ..." [3].
Their form of life - to use a term favoured by Wittgenstein in his later work - is unconventional to say the least; and some might even describe it as inhuman, although that is perhaps going a little too far, as even the most monstrous (and unintelligible) of philosophers share certain practices and customs with others and their thinking ultimately springs from the same bio-cultural reality [4].
In sum: philosophers are not monsters per se; but their thinking is a monstrous form of life; i.e., both unnatural and prophetic [5]. And such a monstrous form of life "is not homogenous and smooth; its language is not a common and transparent one; it is not the unanimous and harmonious sound of angelic tongues" [6].
II.
According to the film theorist and philosopher Noël Carroll, the word monster is - rightly or wrongly - one that might easily be applied to philosophers.
Why?
Because monsters, like philosophers, "are unnatural relative to a culture's conceptual scheme of nature. They
do not fit the scheme; they violate it. Thus, monsters are not only
physically threatening; they are cognitively threatening. They are
threats to common knowledge" [7].
As David Birch notes: "There is an uncanny parallel here between the characterisation of monsters and the work of philosophers." [8]
Indeed, we might even conclude that the best collective noun for a group or gathering of philosophers might not be a school, but a den of monsters.
Having said that, I repeat what I say at the end of section I: philosophers are not monsters per se; but their thinking is a monstrous form of life ... And, for me, the person who has developed this line of thought to its nihilistic limit, is Ray Brassier ...
III.
In a book that I often return to and never tire of reading - Nihil Unbound (2007) - Brassier savages those philosophers who would attempt to stave off the threat (he would say promise) of nihilism by safeguarding the experience of meaning and everything else that humanity clings to and believes in.
In brief, Brassier wishes to accelerate the process (or logic) of disenchantment that began with the Enlightenment and turn philosophical thinking into what he terms the organon of extinction:
"Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity." [9]
However else we might describe this speculative realism, it's certainly not thought as most people think it; it's thought in a monstrous form; "throwing us into a world we no longer recognise, and that does not recognise us" [10].
Notes
[1] Obviously, by linking the names of Frankenstein and Wittgenstein I do not wish to imply that the latter was a fan of Mary Shelley's 19th century queer
gothic novel. Indeed, as far as we know, he never read the book, nor did
he refer to it in any of his writings.
And whereas Shelley was very much influenced by
David Hume - her novel might even be read as an exploration of the tragic consequences of a skeptical worldview and
the limitations of empiricism - the same cannot be said of
Wittgenstein, who had a largely negative view of the 18th century
philosopher.
Interestingly, as David Birch reminds us, there is an astonishing passage in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) in which Hume confesses that philosophical solitude results in his feeling like 'some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in
society, has been expelled all human commerce, and left utterly
abandoned and disconsolate' (Treatise, Book 1, Part 4, Section 7).
See David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?', The Philosophers' Magazine - click here. I shall return to this essay later in the post.
[2] Ray Brassier, Preface, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. xi.
[3] Jasmin Trächtler, 'Speaking in Monster Tongues: Wittgenstein and Haraway on Nature, Meaning and the "We" of Feminism', in Forma de Vida (2023): click here.
[4] Should AI systems ever achieve independent consciousness, we might not be able to say the same of them. For perhaps they'll reason in a way that is truly posthuman (or techno-monstrous) and we'll no more be able to understand than we would a speaking lion; see Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1953).
[5] The word monstrous derives from the Latin mōnstruōsus (from monstrum), meaning unnatural. But it also etymologically relates to the Latin verbs mōnstrare and mōnēre, which mean to reveal and to warn.
[6] Jasmin Trächtler ... op. cit.
[7] Noël Carroll, 'The Nature of Horror', in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol. 46, No. 1 (Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59. Click here to access on JSTOR. The lines quoted here can be found on page 56. They are also quoted by David Birch, in his article cited above.
[8] David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?'
[9] Ray Brassier, Preface, Nihil Unbound ... p. xi.
This quote is not only pinned above the desk at which I write, but pretty much encapsulates what Torpedo the Ark is all about; i.e., that the disenchantment of the world "deserves to be celebrated as an achievement of intellectual maturity, not
bewailed as a debilitating impoverishment" and nihilism is the "unavoidable corollary of
the realist conviction that there is a mind-independent reality, which,
despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the 'values' and 'meanings' which we would drape
over it in order to make it more hospitable" [xi].
[10] David Birch, 'Are Philosophers Monsters?' We should note that Birch is speaking of Hume here, not Brassier.
