Whatever It Is, I'm Against It!

 Groucho was a punk rocker

 

I.

 

I have given several attempts to explain what the polysemic phrase torpedo the ark - borrowed from Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen - means to me, including:

 

(a) to have done with the judgement of God ... [click here]

 

(b) to hate everything ... [click here]

 

(c) to find everything funny ... [click here]

 

But, every now and then, I get emails from readers asking me to further elucidate. And so, I thought I'd offer a new definition - this time one inspired by Groucho Marx, rather than (a) Gilles Deleuze, (b) the Sex Pistols, or (c) Larry David: 

 

Torpedo the ark means ... Whatever it is, I'm against it!    

 

 

II.

 

This amusing line is sung by Groucho playing the role of Prof. Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Head of Huxley College) in the 1932 Mark Brothers film Horse Feathers (dir. Norman Z. McLeod).

 

The original song - 'I'm Against It' - was one of several musical numbers in the movie written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. 

 

Verses include:

  

I don't know what they have to say 

It makes no difference anyway 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

No matter what it is 

Or who commenced it 

I'm against it!

 

Your proposition may be good 

But let's have one thing understood: 

Whatever it is, I'm against it!

And even when you've changed it 

Or condensed it 

I'm against it! [1]

Such wonderful comic nihilism nicely supplements the earlier interpretations of the phrase torpedo the ark and builds upon my own natural impulse to say no, nein, and non merci to everything - including those kind offers and opportunities that it might make more sense to accept and take advantage of [2].    

 

This obviously shows a perverse streak in my character, but there you go; if someone opens a door for me, I turn and walk away. Similary, if someone invites me to join their literary society, political party, social network, or private members club, I again remember the famous words of Groucho Marx [3].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] To watch Groucho perform this song - the opening number of Horse Feathers (1932) - click here. 

 

[2] See the post 'Just Say No' (1 Aug 2014): click here. 

 

[3] Groucho Marx is believed to have said: "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of it's members." Or something very similar to this; no one knows the exact wording or the precise circumstances of its employment. This amusing line was first reported by the Hollywood gossip columnist Erskine Johnson in October 1949 and it has been repeated ever since.

 

 

Thanks to Thomas Bonneville for suggesting this post and reminding me also that the Ramones have a track entitled 'I'm Against It' which can be found on their album Road to Ruin (Sire Records, 1978): click here to play a 2018 remastered version on YouTube.  

 

The Funniest and Sweetest Person: In Memory of Richard Lewis (1947-2024)

Curbing their enthusiasm: Richard Lewis and Larry David

(Photo credit: HBO)

 

 

I. 

 

Some people think Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were the funniest duo in the history of comedy. 

 

And they were funny, no doubt about it - and hugely popular as a live act as well as on film, TV and radio - but I wouldn't call them the funniest duo in the history of comedy. 

 

At any rate, I prefer Larry David and Richard Lewis on screen together in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

 

 

II. 

 

Regrettably, I'm really only familiar with the latter due to his regular appearances on Curb throughout all twelve seasons of the show [1], where he played a fictionalised version of himself and, as in real life, an old friend of Larry's with whom he shared beautiful to watch comedic chemistry [2].   

 

However, I was very sad to read the press announcement of Lewis's death a couple of days ago, aged 76, and I shall over the next few weeks and months familiarise myself with the neurotic, self-deprecating (sometimes disconcertingly dark) stand-up comedy with which he made his name in the 1970s and '80s.     

 

Larry David paid tribute to his friend of over fifty-years by describing him as "the funniest person and also the sweetest".

 

Lewis & David (with admirers) c. 1975

 

Notes

 

[1] Richard Lewis has appeared in 41 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm out of 114 episodes so far aired. He also appeared in the hour-long special (or pilot episode) which aired on 17 October 1999 (dir. Robert B. Weide). 

      Click here to watch Lewis and David bicker and banter their way through seasons 1-11 and here to watch their (now very poignant) appearance together in episode 3 of the twelth and final season: 'Vertical Drop, Horizontal Tug' (dir. Jeff Shaffer, 18 Feb 2024), in which Lewis tells Larry he's putting him in his will which the latter, of course, doesn't want: "If bequeathed, I will not accept."

 

[2] Richard Lewis and Larry David were born a few days apart in the summer of 1947 at the same hospital in Brooklyn, but didn't meet until they were aged twelve when attending a summer sports camp - instantly and intensely disliking one another, according to Lewis. Fast forward over a decade, and they crossed paths once more whilst on the New York comedy circuit, this time forging a firm (life-long) friendship.

 

     

Notes on Socrates and the Ethics of Sobriety (A 6/20 Paper by Maria Thanassa)

Curbing their enthusiasm: Socrates, Maria Thanassa & Larry David 

 

 

I. 

 

According to Maria Thanassa [1], notions of sobriety and intoxication are central to Plato's Symposium and Socrates is shown to be a man of self-restraint above all else; he drinks, but never gets drunk; he loves, but never succumbs to erotic ecstasy (even remaining somewhat indifferent to the charms of Alcibiades).

 

Socrates, in other words, is a man who, like Larry David, knows how to curb his enthusiasm [2] and keep his wits about him. It's not so much that he lacks passion, but he prefers to master his desires. For Socrates, sobriety guarantees the integrity of his nature.

 

But, as becomes clear later in her presentation, Dr Thanassa is not only concerned with the doings of ancient Greek philosphers. She is interested also in how the idea of sobriety can be reactivated within a contemporary culture she thinks of as intoxicated (and infantilised) by a form of liberal Dionysianism that promotes the freedom of the individual and self-expression.           

 

In other words, a bit like the Greek lyric poet Theognis, Dr Thanassa wants people to exercise a degree of control and not act in a shameless or foolish manner (enslaved by their own base instincts); to behave in an ethical and stylised manner, carefully cultivating the self [3]. 

 

II. 

 

This might make Dr Thanassa sound like a bit of a killjoy or a member of the morality police; i.e., one who wishes to enforce a code of conduct and is concerned when people transgress certain social rules. Fortunately, however, she is saved from becoming a battle-axe like Granny Hatchet [4] by that which Socrates and Larry David are both masters of: irony. 

 

Maria ironically tempers her own enthusiasm for telling others to curb their enthusiasm before it tips over into zealotry. Like Socrates - and Larry David - she seems at times to try out and test philosophical positions without ever allowing them to become points of principle or dogma. 

 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't take what Dr Thanassa says seriously - just not that seriously. And it certainly shouldn't stop us from enjoying the wine served at the end of the paper, for as Alcibiades might remind us, the 6/20 is, like the symposium, a drinking party as much as a forum of debate.

 

Having said that, food and wine is served at the 6/20 to help facilitate conversation between those in attendance, not to induce drunken excess and vomiting on the way home [5] - something that the host, Mr Christian Michel, would almost certainly not approve of.          

 

III.

I think the part of Dr Thanassa's paper I enjoyed the most was the section in which she (following Martha Nussbaum) discussed Socrates as someone who, in his strangeness, stands apart from other men - and indeed, the human condition itself. 

 

As already mentioned, Plato depicts Socrates as someone who is absent when he should be present; who drinks but does not get drunk; who is impervious to cold and hunger; who values beauty but remains unaffected by its physical manifestations; and who feels erotic desire but does not fully succumb to the pleasures of the flesh.

That certainly makes him sound like a queer fish and, according to Dr Thanassa, the oddity of his character when combined with his satyr-like ugliness makes him not only different, but genuinely other - inaccessible, impenetrable, and impossible to shut-up, even when sentenced to death.  

 

I can see why so many of his fellow Athenians hated him, just as so many of Larry David's friends and neighbours seem to find him impossible at times. But the above traits only increase my admiration for Socrates; he may lack empathy, but at least he recognises that even the most tragic events (such as the death of a pet parrot) have a comic aspect and that the philosopher must be free to ridicule, mock, or criticise everything under the sun - even if this risks offending others [6]. 

 

As the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: Socrates could abstain from those things that most are too weak to abstain from and enjoy in moderation those things that many indulge in excessively to their shame. His strength, his ability to endure, and his sobriety marked him out as a man of perfect and invincible spirit [7].  

In sum - and I think this was Dr Thanassa's closing line (borrowed from Baudelaire) - Keep smiling with Spartan serenity [8] and remember that curbing your enthusiasm means choosing not to burst into flame even though, as a philosopher, you will burn with a very special type of passion.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dr Maria Thanassa presented a short paper entitled 'Curb Your Enthusiasm: On Socrates and the Ethics of Sobriety' at Christian Michel's 6/20 Club (London) on 20 Feb 2023. This post is based on my recollection of what was said and I apologise to Dr Thanassa should I misrepresent her ideas in any manner. 

 

[2] The Socrates / Larry David connection and comparison has been made before; see, for example, Daniel Coffeen's excellent post on the philosophy of Curb Your Enthusiasm on his blog An Emphatic Umph: click here. 

      Coffeen rightly argues that both Socrates and Larry are characters who interact with the world in a fundamentally different way from most other people, refusing as they do inherited terms and questioning beliefs and norms of behaviour at every opportunity: "But whereas Socrates is really only concerned with big ideas about truth, morality, language, politics, Larry takes on the micro interactions of the social." 

      I was rather disappointed, considering the title of her paper, that Dr Thanassa didn't make more of the relationship between Socrates and Larry David. 

[3] This is suggestive of Foucault's later work and I was pleased to hear Dr Thanassa refer to such later in her paper, as well as to Nietzsche's idea of what constitutes the most needful thing - the constraint of a single taste - if an individual is to give style to their lives. 

[4] Granny Hatchet (Caroline Nation) was a member of the American temperance movement in the late-19th century and early-20th century, who famously smashed up liquor joints with a handheld axe. See the recent post written on her life and times: click here.   

[5] See the poem by Theognis in Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC, ed. and trans. Douglas E. Gerber (Loeb Classical Library / Harvard University Press, 1999), lines 477-496, quoted by Dr Thanassa on the night. 

[6] See my post of 14 Nov 2017 - 'Torpedo the Ark Means Everything's Funny' - click here. 

[7] I'm paraphrasing here from Meditations 1.16 - a passage quoted by Dr Thanassa in her paper. 

[8] See Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life', in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Phaidon Press, 1995), p. 29. 

      What I say here of the philosopher is, of course, what Baudelaire says of the modern dandy - another figure who understands, style, sobriety, and self-restraint.

 

I would like to express my gratitude once more to Maria for producing a fascinating paper and to Christian Michel for hosting another very enjoyable evening. This post is dedicated to them both and I hope it brings them some pleasure. 

Will Absence Make My Heart Grow Fonder of Byung-Chul Han? (Part 2)

 

Cover of the original German edition (2007) [a]

 

 

I.

According to Byung-Chul Han: "Anti-gravity is the fundamental characteristic of the Western soul, even of Western thinking." [48] 

 

Hegel, for example, is bored by inertia and hates the heaviness of matter: "Anti-gravity is the fundamental trait of Hegel's 'spirit'." [49]

 

And even Zarathustra was opposed to the Spirit of Gravity and wished to see young people become light of foot like dancers and for dancers to become birdlike, so that they may experience the incredible sensation of taking flight [b]. Weighed down by the Spirit of Gravity, they are prevented from ever loving themselves and discovering their own goodness, says Nietzsche. 

 

Of course, this all goes back to Plato who conceived of the human soul as striving towards the divine and infinite: "Its feathered wings allow it to shed its heaviness and float upwards towards the gods [...]" [50]

Far Eastern thinking, by contrast, "is pro-gravitational [...] insofar as it seeks to accomodate itself to the weight of the world" [51], rather than inciting resistance. Keep your feet on the ground seems to be the message.

 

 

II. 

The sea was angry that day my friends ... But that's okay, because maritime adventure is another popular metaphor in Western philosophy: "Conquering stormy seas is seen as a heroic undertaking." [56] 

 

Both Hegel and Nietzsche love to compare thinking to setting out on an endless ocean; for the former - perhaps the most hydrophobic of all philosophers - this requires real courage; for water is the most mendacious of all elements "because it permanently changes its form, because it does not have a form of its own at all" [57] [c] and fails, unlike solid ground, to offer stability (an important aspect of essence):

 

"Western thinking has its source in a desire for solid ground. It is precisely this compulsive desire for permanence and clarity that makes every deviation, every transformation, look like a threat." [58]

 

Kant also relies on a metaphor of seafaring to illustrate his concept of thinking; he trusts in a good captain to navigate with knowledge and to keep the boat clear of dangers: 

 

"The Kantian art of helmsmanship conquers the sea by framing it with a system of principles and fully charting it with coordinates." [58]. 

 

Reason will triumph over the darkness of the oceanic depths, tame the wild waves, and keep the ship off the rocks. Even Heidegger subscribes to this, although he argues for the importance of exposing thought to the abysmal sea.

 

This is not a very Chinese way of thinking: for Chinese philosophers the mind is as great as the sea and in fact they form a unity. Thus, the sea is no threat to man: "Someone who is as big as the world will not be hindered or impeded by anything in the world." [62] 

 

There's no angst in the Chinese model; it's far more carefree and effortless: "You are effortless when you do not set anything against the world, when you fully unite with it." [62] 

 

Thus, as Han concludes: "Chinese thinking involves an altogether different relationship to the world; it is characterized by a deep trust in the world" [63] - and a love of water, in which is seen the highest goodness:

"Because it lacks all solidity, water does not exercise any coercion. It is yielding and flexible. Thus, it does not encounter any resistance. As it does not assert itself, does not resist anything, does not oppose anything, it does not compete in strife." [64] [d]

 

Water, we might say, seduces, although this is not a term that Han uses. He concludes this interesting chapter on land and sea (and ways of thinking) with a convenient summary of what has been discussed:

 

"For the Chinese, the sea is not a symbol of chaos or the abyss, nor is it a mysterious place that lures adventurers. It is neither the sea of Odysseus nor that of Kant and Hegel. It is a place of in-difference, of the unbounded and inexhaustible. In the Far East, the transition from land to sea is not experienced as a transition from a firm ground to an unstable support. It is a transition from the limited to the inexhaustible and comprehensive, from difference to in-difference, from fulless to emptiness, from presencing to absencing, from holding fast to releasement (Gelassenheit). This is true not only of Daoism but also of Zen Buddhism. The moment of satori (illumination) is one of a great transition that leads to an oceanic feeling." [68-69] [e] 

 

Han continues:

 

"For the Chinese, water, or the sea, is the symbol for a thinking or a behaviour that, from moment to moment, adapts and snuggles up to the transforming world [...] The world is not abysmal. It is merely manifold in its manifestations. It is not a being but a path that permanently changes course. Far Eastern thought does not circle around identity. Transformations and change are not felt to be a threat. They just represent the natural course of things, to which one needs to adapt." [69]

 

The Chinese sage does not feel the need to set sail and conquer the world - he's happy just to snuggle up to the latter and be shaped by it ... One is almost tempted to say: Like a woman [f]. 

III.

 

Because we are so caught up in grammar - the metaphysics or presence of God within language - it makes it very hard for a Westerner ever to really think or speak or see the world like someone from the Far East. 

 

Han's native Korean, for example, doesn't presuppose an active subject - in fact the subject is often left out of things altogether, which is problematic for Westerners who find it hard to conceive of a subject-less happening; we have to have an actor behind every action (be it a human actor or a god) [g]. 

 

Han writes: "The subject is a slave who is under the delusion that he is master." [81] What would be noble, from a Buddhist perspective, would be to escape this delusion (and subjectivity) entirely.    

 

Would it be noble also to remain silent? Confucius often wished to remain silent. But Han is at pains to point out that Confucius's silence "does not aim at the unsayable, the mystery that cannot captured by language" [82]. Nor does he want to remain schtum because he thinks language is insufficient "and cannot signify its object adequately" [82]. 

 

In fact, the unsayable - that which escapes language - "is not a theme in Far Eastern thinking" [82] - it's a Western thing: "Language is renounced in favour of a remainder that can be expressed only in song" [82], for example. Or silence is affirmed as the only thing that can do justice to this extralinguistic residue (be it metaphysial, asthetic, or ethical in character). 

 

The silence of Zen masters is an empty silence; it does not refer to anything, but is designed to make others think about the reality of the world, which just is as it is, neither secret nor mysterious; "there are no murky depths" [83] for philosophers or psychoanalysts to uncover or root around in like pigs in search of truffles.   

 

 

IV.

 

The final chapter of Han's book is on greeting and bowing, i.e., forms of friendliness - although, interestingly, he suggests that originally to greet someone "must have involved emitting a dark, gutteral, threatening sound" [90], as, etymologically, the word means to attack, provoke, or unsettle.

 

Somehow, even as a (slightly shy but also somewhat cheeky) three-year old, I already knew this; which is why I was not just being friendly when I stood on my front garden wall and greeted strangers passing by [h].   

 

Han writes:

 

"Initially, the other represents a possible threat and danger to my existence. The other has an usettling effect. The gutteral sound of gruozen is probably an immediate reaction to the primordial threat posed by the other, another human being. By emmitting a gutteral, threatening sound I challenge the other to fight." [91]  

 

Eventually, once there's a degree of mutual recognition, the greeting becomes more of a form of reassurance; it tells the other that they are accepted and that you mean no harm to them. But, crucially, both parties remain separate; a greeting does not instantly or automatically create intimacy; the greeter greets the other across a pathos of distance and from within their own essence. 

 

Offering a friendly greeting lets the other be in their essential otherness - it's not aiming at some form of merger; it says I'm me and you're you. But the Japanese do not verbally greet with a grunt, they bow ...

 

According to Han, bowing is all about absencing oneself from the scene; there's no exchange of gaze or mutual sizing up. In a deep bow, parties form a flat plane between them, levelling out difference. Neither party bows to the other, they bow rather into the empty space between them. Technically speaking, no one is greeting or being greeted; and no one is subjugated or subjugating. 

 

Han writes: "A deep bow does not mediate between persons, does not reconcile anyone with anyone else. Rather, it empties and de-internalizes those involved into absencing individuals." [98]

And that's why bowing is so philosophically important; it's not just a form of politeness, but a way of negating essence and identity [i].

Notes

 

[a] I am using the English translation of this work by Byung-Chul Han, translated by Daniel Steur as Absence, (Polity Press, 2023) - all page numbers given in this post refer to this edition.  

 

[b] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'On the Spirit of Gravity'. 

      Readers who are interested might also like to see my post entitled 'On Dance as a Method of Becoming-Bird' (10 Oct 2015): click here.

 

[c] Later, Han will note that whilst water may not have a form of its own, "it is anything but 'amorphous'. It always has a shape, because it takes the form of the other in order to unfold. It is friendly because [...] it snuggles up to any form." [64]

[d] This way of thinking isn't entirely unknown in the West - one thinks, for example, of Henry Miller's insistence on loving everything that flows - but, on the whole, it's undoubtedly true that we in the West prefer things to be dry and solid. Readers who are interested might like to see the post published on 7 June 2013: click here.

[e] Again, this line of thought is not entirely alien to Western thinkers; Zarathustra, for example, tells his followers that in order to be overhuman they must become a sea so as not to be defiled by the polluted rivers of the all too human world, although, admittedly, that's not not quite the same thing as the oceanic feeling of oneness that Far Eastern philosophers champion and Han concludes that Nietzsche - for all his attempted reversal of Western metaphysics - "remained a Western thinker" [70]

      Interestingly, Freud - another great Western thinker - argues that (if it exists) the oceanic feeling is a primitive form of egoism preserved from infancy.     

[f] I'll let readers decide whether that's a  good or bad thing, but would remind those in need of reminding that even Nietzsche toyed with the supposition that truth might be a woman; see the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil. If that's the case, then that pretty much changes everything; no phallogocentic certainty; no solid foundations or fixed forms, etc. (Again, I'll let readers decide whether this would be for better or for worse.) 

[g] Han notes: "For Asian aesthetic sensibility, something that happens without a subject being involved, without the imprint of a doing, is both noble and beautiful. The imprint of a subjective act is a typically Western motif." [84] 

      Nietzsche, of course, attempted to think deeds without an actor, but, says Han, he was unable to "turn from the philosophy of doing and power to the philosophy of happening" [85], which is why he remained very much a Western thinker and "more or less attached to subjectivity" [85].

      As for Heidegger, whilst he "may have repeatedly allowed himself to be touched by Far Eastern thinking" [88], he also remained in many respects a Western thinker attached to the idea of essence. And if he frequently used the trope of the way, his way "differs from the way as dao" [88]. Ultimately, Heidegger's being is a bit more mysterious and withdrawn than the being-so of Eastern thinking, which is what we might call everyday immanence.   

[h] See the post entitled 'Say Hello Then!' (3 Aug 2018): click here.

 

[i] I'm pretty sure Roland Barthes recognised this in L'Empire des Signes (1970), though I'm not sure Larry David fully appreciated this in episode 7 of season 8 of Curb Your Enthusiasm (2011). See the post entitled 'Shit Bow: Larry David and Roland Barthes on the Art of Japanese Etiquette' (26 Oct 2017): click here. 

 

 

To read part 1 of this post, please click here. 

Reflections on Vita Contemplativa by Byung-Chul Han (Part Three)

Cover of the Portuguese edition 

(Relógio D'Água, 2022) [a]

 

 

I.

The ethics of inactivity rests, according to Byung-Chul Han, on timidity. For it is timidity which increases our attentiveness (our ability to listen) to others and to the world. 

 

I'm not sure about this, however, and wonder if the German word Scheu might better have been translated as shy. For shyness, it seems to me, is not quite the same as timidity; it lacks the nervousness or fearful aspect of the latter and is more about instinctive reserve [b].

 

But maybe I'm mistaken: I'll leave it to any passing etymologists to decide the matter ...  

 

 

II.

 

"The root of the current crisis is the disintegration of everything that gives life meaning and orientation. Life is no longer borne by anything that supports it, and that we can support." [48]

 

In other words - words first uttered by a madman 150 years ago - God is dead. One might have hoped that we'd moved on from here and realised that nihilism needn't be dressed in the gloomy dark colours of the late 19th-century. Personally, the last thing I want to do is give life meaning and point it in the right direction. 

 

Nor am I interested in ideas of immortality and the imperishable - when Han uses these words I think of D. H. Lawrence mocking those who desire to witness the unfading flowers of heaven [c]. 

 

I'm sorry, but I like the impermanence of things and the fact that all things pass. What Han calls temporal structures - annual rituals and festivals - may provide the passage of time with a certain architecture or narrative, but they don't, thankfully, make time stand still. I'm all for preserving the rhythym of life and allowing being to linger, but that doesn't mean stopping the clocks.    

 

Nor do I want incontrovertible truths - even if they are said to make happy (there's more to life than happiness and there's also more than one type of happiness). And I'm sick of being weighed down by powerful symbols. 

 

The latter may very well influence our behaviour and thinking "at the pre-reflexive, emotional, aesthetic level" [50] - and symbols may be excellent at creating the shared experience that enables the formation of a socially cohesive community - but that doesn't always result in compassion, does it? Just ask those who lived under the swastika, or hammer and sickle.      

 

"A community is a symbolically mediated totality." [51] That's Han. But it could be Heidegger. Or might be Hitler. And if my failure to long for a "wholesome, healing totality" [51] makes me a splinter or fragment lacking in being, that's fine. Liberal society has many downsides - it isolates the individual and forces them to compete - but living in some kind of people's community that promises fullness of being and salvation is not something I desire.  

 

Although, having said that, I do understand the attraction of what Lawrence terms a democracy of touch [d] and I suspect that's the sort of community Han is thinking of when he talks about creating ties between people invested with libidinal energy (though I'm not sure that Eros is the answer to everything).  

 

 

III.

 

Having got roughly half way into (and thus also half way out of) Han's book, let us remind ourselves of his central argument: "the highest happiness is owed to contemplation" [53] - not action. It's an argument we can trace all the way back to the pre-Socratic philosophers. 

 

Ultimately, we act in the world so that we might one day be afforded the time to sit and wonder at the world. Being free to gaze in silence and stillness is the reward for all our efforts. If, as Heidegger says, Denken ist Danken, then to gaze in awe with eyes opened by love is also to express gratitude - and, more, to give praise:   

 

"The ultimate purpose of language is praise. Praise gives language a festive radiance. Praise restores being; it sings about and invokes the fullness of being." [55]  

 

To which we can only add: Hallelujah! - and quickly turn the page ...

 

What Han basically wants is to have at least one day of holy inactivity per week: to reinstate the idea of the Sabbath in which time is suspended and man is released "from the transient world into the world to come" [60]. 

 

I've no objection to that (even if I remember keenly the boredom I felt as a child each and every Sunday). But I do tire of his religious language (as I do when listening to Jordan Peterson, for example).

 

 

IV.

 

Han spends a good deal of time in the chapter entitled 'The Pathos of Action' critiquing Hannah Arendt's political thinking. But that wasn't what interested me. Rather, it was the material on Socrates and his daimon that caught my attention ...

 

It seems that the latter does not encourage Socrates to speak, rather it prevents him from acting, as he makes clear in this passage from the Apology:

   

"Perhaps it may seem strange that I go about and interfere in other people's affairs [...] but do not venture to come before your assembly and advise the state. But the reason for this [...] is that something divine and spiritual comes to me [...] a sort of voice [...] and when it comes it always holds me back from what I am thinking of doing, but never urges me forward." [e]

 

This strikes a chord with me because I also have a daimon of non-commitment holding me back in this manner; one who persuades me to turn away from every door that is opened and decline to accept any opportunity offered. People think it's perversity on my part - or a lack of self-confidence combined with a lack of ambition - but it's not; it's this mysterious demon which Han terms the genius of inactivity.  

 

According to the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben - quoted here by Han - this demon is both what is closest to us and what is most impersonal about us; that which is beyond ego and individual consciousness; that which shatters the conceit that we are fully in control and free-willing; that which "'prevents us from enclosing ourselves within a substantial identity'" [79][f].  

 

Han follows this up with the following fascinating passage:

 

"The properties that make us someone are not genialis; that is, they do not accord with the genius. We meet with the genius when we cast off our properties, the mask we wear on the acting stage. The genius reveals the propertyless face that lies behind the mask." [79]

 

This countenance without properties is what we might also call the faceless face; or perhaps even (borrowing a term from Deleuze and Guattari) the probe-head [g]. To be inspired, says Han, is to lose face and cease being someone "encapsulated in an ego" [79]; i.e., to be enthused is to become self-detached. 

 

However, as Larry David teaches, it's vital to curb enthusiasm. Or, as Deleuze and Guattari say, caution is the golden rule when dismantling the face and/or building a body without organs; "you have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality" [h].

 

This, arguably, is the most important - and most often overlooked - point in A Thousand Plateaus.  

 

V.

 

The crisis of religion, says Han, is a crisis of attention: "It is the soul's hyperactivity that accounts for the demise of religious experience" [86-87] - and, indeed, the destruction of the natural world. 

 

I don't agree with Han that a Romantic [i] and religious understanding of the world is necessary, but it might help to just slow down a bit and appreciate not just one another, not just birds, beasts and flowers, but even inanimate objects (each one of which vibrates and radiates at the centre of its own paradise). 

 

This doesn't mean uniting with the infinity of nature, it means rather living cheerfully in the material realm on a flat ontological surface, or what Lawrence calls (after Whitman) the Open Road. The goal is not a community of the living, but a democracy of objects wherein all things can interact in a vaguely friendly manner but outside of any transcendent system of meaning.   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Although this is the cover of the Portuguese edition - featuring some of Cézanne's nude bathers - please note that page numbers given in this post refer to the English translation of Byung-Chul Han's work by Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2024), entitled Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity.

 

[b] I have written in praise of shyness in a post published on 27 May 2014: click here.

 

[c] Referring to the kingdom of heaven established after the material universe is destroyed, Lawrence writes: "How beastly their new Jerusalem, where the flowers never fade, but stand in everlasting sameness. How terribly bourgeois to have unfading flowers!" 

      See D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 144.

 

[d] See Stephen Alexander, 'Towards a Democracy of Touch', chapter 13 of Outside the Gate (Blind Cupid Press, 2010), pp. 262-275, wherein I examine and develop Lawrence's idea introduced in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928). There are also several posts published on Torpedo the Ark that discuss the idea: click here for example.

 

[e] Plato Apology, trans. Harold North Fowler, (The Loeb Classical Library / Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 115. Han quotes this section (31 c-d) from a different edition; Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, (Hackett Publishing Co., 1997).

 

[f] Han is quoting Giorgio Agamben writing in Profanations, trans. Jeff Fort, (Zone Books, 2007), p. 12. 

 

[g] According to Deleuze and Guattari, beyond the face "lies an altogether different inhumanity: no longer that of the primitive head, but of probe-heads [...]"

      See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (University of Minnesota Press, 1987), p. 190.

 

[h] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 160.

 

[i] Han seems to see himself as a disciple of Novalis, the 18th-century German poet, novelist, philosopher, and mystic. He certainly subscribes to a similar model of Romanticism, writing, for example, that the Romantic idea of freedom is a corrective to our liberal-bourgeois notion of individual freedom, just as the Romantic conception of nature "provides an effective corrective to our instrumental understanding of nature" [92]. 

      He also argues that to Romanticise the world is to give it back "its magic, its mystery, even its dignity" [94] and that it is a mistake to describe "the Romantic longing for a connection with the whole" [96] as reactionary or regressive. It is, rather, a fundamental human longing. Obviously, I don't share Han's Romantic idealism or fervour and don't think I want to live in a promiscuous future world in which things don't only touch but permeate each other and there are no boundaries.     

 

 

To read part one of this post on Byung-Chul Han's Vita Contemplativa, click here. 

 

To read part two of this post on Byung-Chul Han's Vita Contemplativa, click here. 

 

On Curbing One's Enthusiasm for Kafka's Drawings

 

"One of these days I’ll send you a few of my old drawings, to give you something to laugh at. 

These drawings gave me greater satisfaction [...] than anything else." [1]  

I.

 

What constitutes a doodle? 

 

I have to agree with Larry on this one: the beauty of a doodle is that it invites interpretation [2]. If more than merely a scribble, a doodle is not a detailed drawing possessing clear representational meaning. 

 

Sometimes, even the person producing the doodle has no idea what it is they've drawn. For a doodle is often composed of simple abstract lines and shapes, produced randomly without any conscious effort. 

 

A doodle is often made, in fact, while one's attention is elsewhere; such as speaking on the phone, for example, or bored out of one's mind sitting in a business meeting.  

 

Personally, I don't think there's anything foolish about these drawings and that they may very well warrent investigation by those interested in the workings of the brain. But, having said that, I'm not sure they always deserve to be framed and put on the wall, or published in a book - even when the doodler is a famous author, for example.

 

Which brings us to Kafka ...

 

 

II. 

 

In 2019, hundreds of drawings by Kafka were discovered in a private collection that had been locked away for decades. And three years later, they were published in a big book by Yale University Press, with an introductory essay by Judith Butler, in which she describes the drawings as "images that have broken free of writing" [3].

 

Kafka himself had instructed his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to destroy the drawings. But, as is so often the case, his wishes were ignored, proving yet again that if you are a writer and you really don't want your juvenilia, marginalia, and unpublished (often unfinished) works to see the light of the day after your death, then you had better make sure you destroy this material personally before it's too late to do so.   

 

Still, it is as it is and we are where we are; the drawings survived and have now been placed within the public arena, so we can all pass judgement upon them ...    

 

 

III.

 

I suppose the first thing to say is that  these images - by the criteria outlined above - are not naive doodles, even if Kafka himself dismissed them as such and did, in fact, consign many of them to the rubbish bin. They betray just a little too much skill and attention to detail and it should be remembered that Kafka had, whilst a student (1901-06), taken drawing classes and attended lectures on art history. 

 

Max Brod could certainly see the ingenuity (and the humour) of the images and rightly recognised that they would one day have great fascination for lovers of Kafka's work (although whether that justifies his preserving them against Kafka's wishes remains debatable).

 

But, whilst I do like many of the pictures, I'm not sure they quite merit the praise that has been poured over them by various commentators who, whilst unanimously agreeing that Kafka possessed genius with a capital G, disagree about whether he understood words and pictures as entirely independent of one another, or existing on a single plane and walking arm-in-arm, as one reviewer put it [4].      

 

For me, they're good and have a certain dynamism. I also love the fact that, as Andreas Kilcher points out, most of the figures are not fully elaborated bodies:

 

"They are not fleshed out and situated in three-dimensional space, they do not have fully devel­oped physiques. On the contrary, they are generally free-floating, lacking any sur­roundings, and in themselves they are disproportional, flat, fragile, caricatured, grotesque, carnivalesque." [5]

 

But they're not that good and I'm not sure how seriously we should take them as artistic statements in their own right. Nor do I think them vital for an understanding of his written work. 

 

And so, as ever, one might do well to curb one's enthusiasm before forking out £35 for a copy of the book (particularly when, with Christmas just around the corner, you can probably persuade a loved one it would make a lovely gift).  

 

 

(Yale University Press, 2022)

 

      

Notes

 

[1] Kafka writing in a letter to his fiancée, Felice Bauer, in February, 1913. See Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, ed. Erich Heller and Jürgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (Schocken Books, 1973), p. 189. 

      In this same letter, Kafka rather amusingly claims: "I was once a great draftsman, you know, but then I started to take academic drawing lessons with a bad woman painter and ruined my talent."

 

[2] See the third episode of season ten of Curb Your Enthusiasm, 'Artificial Fruit', (dir. Cheryl Hines, 2020): click here and here for scenes discussing what does and does not constitute a doodle.

 

[3] See Butler's introduction to Franz Kafka: The Drawings, ed. Andreas Kilcher with Pavel Schmidt, trans. Kurt Beals, (Yale University Press, 2022). 

[4] Benjamin Balint, 'Graven Images' in the Jewish Review of Books (Spring, 2022): click here. 

 

[5] Andreas Kilcher, 'Discovering Franz Kafka's Nearly-Lost Drawings', trans. Kurt Beals, Literary Hub (1 June, 2022): click here.  

 

 

My Debt to Jewish-American Humour

Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, and Phil Silvers (as Sgt. Bilko)

 

 

I.

 

Humour, said Freud, is a means of obtaining pleasure from life, no matter what. 

 

In other words, laughter is a way of overcoming suffering as well as an antidote to that all-too-human tendency to take ourselves seriously. 

  

That's why the most profound comedy is often rooted in misery and self-mockery (even self-hatred). And that's why the best humour in the world is Jewish in origin ...

 

 

II.

 

I'm certain that the tradition of humour in Judaism can be traced way back, but I'm a late 20th-century boy and so I'm mostly interested in the humour that developed amongst the Jewish community of the United States and shaped the worlds of film and television in the last seventy years, rather than the subtle theological satire expressed in the Talmud, for example.

 

Antisemitic conspiracy theorists often claim that the Jews are overrepresented in the world of banking and maybe that's true, maybe not [1]. But what cannot be denied is that a disproportionately high percentage of American comedians and comic actors have been Jewish [2].

Of course, Jews have significantly influenced and contributed to the development of the modern world in many fields - art, philosophy, science, politics, business, etc. But I'm particularly grateful for their role within the world of entertainment. 

 

For my childhood was made happier by Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, and Phil Silvers as Sgt. Bilko. And today, the comic genius of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld continues to exert a huge influence over my understanding not only of what constitutes funny, but of how I view the world (ironically and with curbed enthusiasm).

 

 

 

Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David

 

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The idea that Jews are good with (and greedy for) money is one of the oldest antisemitic stereotypes. It's undeniable, however, that Jews are well-represented in finance and business. See the article on Jews and Finance on myjewishlearning.com which nicely puts things into historical and cultural context, explaining why this is so. 

 

[2] In 1978, Time magazine claimed that 80 per cent of professional comedians in America were Jewish, even though Jews only made up 3 per cent of the U.S. population at that time. Click here to read the article 'Behaviour: Analyzing Jewish Comics' (2 Oct 1978).    

 

 

On the Daughters of God

Portrait of Tammi of Nazareth

the onion.com

 

"And I sayeth unto thee: Look upon mine eyes, which rest within mine head; 

not upon mine bosom, wherein no wisdom dwells."

 

 

I. Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace

 

A friend of mine, who happens to be a specialist in medieval religious art and literature, recently gave birth to her third daughter and joked: 'I just need one more and God's people can be restored!' I sort of smiled at this, but, at the time, had no idea what on earth she meant by this.

 

However, after thinking about it - and doing a bit of biblical research - I realised that she was referring to Psalm 85 - and the so-called Four Daughters of God who loved nothing better than meeting up and exchanging kisses [1].

 

Of course, these four daughters were allegorical; they personified the virtues of Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace and their uniting in Love signified the triumph of God and the fact that mankind was forgiven its sins and redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ. 

 

Attempts to pornify the motif - which was extremely popular in medieval Europe - by imagining scenes of incestuous lesbianism, are uncalled for, as the kisses were given in innocence [2]. At any rate, most people had become thoroughly bored with the idea by the end of the 17th-century, though some, like William Blake, remained fascinated by the Four Daughters. 

    

II. Tammi of Nazareth

  

In September 2010, The Onion published a piece under the headline 'New Evidence Suggests God Also Had Incredibly Busty Daughter' [3], according to which:

 

"In a discovery that biblical scholars say could alter our most fundamental understanding of Christianity, recently unearthed manuscripts suggest that in addition to His Son, Jesus Christ, God also had a daughter with absolutely humongous breasts." 

The article goes on:

"The documents, found in a cave near the Jordanian-Israeli border and estimated to have been composed circa A.D. 200, recount the life, teachings, and death of Jesus' well-endowed twin sister, Tammi of Nazareth."

And it continues in much the same comic-blasphemous (breast-obsessed) vein throughout. 

 

It's juvenile, certainly, but it is also amusing to read that whilst Tammi "promulgated similar ideas as her sibling, and appeared to possess the same miraculous powers", she found it difficult to preach the gospel as followers were only interested in gaining "a better vantage point from which to observe her 'heavenly radiance'" hidden beneath a thin linen vestment. 

 

 

III. Jane

 

Funny enough, Larry David anticipated this idea of a comely daughter born of God in a season 5 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, first broadcast in October 2005 ... [4]

 

In a now classic scene, Larry's Christian father-in-law (played by Paul Dooley) has purchased a nail used in the movie The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004) - not a film that Larry much cares for, wishes to watch, or discuss. And so he quickly changes the subject and takes the conversation in an irreverent (some might say sacrilegious) direction:

 

Larry David: 'You're nuts about this Jesus guy, aren't you?'

 

Cheryl's Father: 'Yeah. Well, I have a personal relationship with Christ.'

 

Larry David: 'Really? See, I could see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl, like if God had a daughter ... Jane. I'll worship a Jane. But, you know, to worship a guy ... like a little kinda, you know, it's a little gay, isn't it?'

 

Although his wife, Cheryl, attempts to shut him up at this point, Larry is determined to expand upon the idea:

 

Larry David: 'I would worship Jane, if he had a daughter Jane, I could have a relationship with a Jane.'

 

Cheryl's Father: [Increasingly annoyed and irritated] 'He didn't have a daughter!'

 

Larry David: 'It's a shame it wasn't a girl. That's all I have to say.'

 

Cheryl's Father: [Disgusted] 'Ugh!'

 

Larry David: 'Good looking woman ... Zaftig ... Good sense of humor ...'

 

Cheryl David: [Exasperated] 'Okay, that's fine.'

 

Larry David: 'If he had a daughter, everybody - everybody - would worship Jane. That's all I'm saying.'

It's an interesting point, as Jules would say. 

 

And I think Larry is on to something: we don't need a pale and sickly looking Jesus with his crown of thorns - or even a weeping Virgin - for our saviour; we need a voluptuous woman who knows how to laugh (and make laugh) - more Marilyn than Mary [5].          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Psalm 85:10 (KJV): "Mercy and Truth are met together; Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other." 

      This psalm is a community lament, probably written during the period of Israel's return from Babylonian exile. The people seek forgiveness from God for their unfaithfulness and restoration of their former status and power. The closing section expresses confidence that salvation will come.

 

[2] The Hebrew word for kiss in Psalm 85 doesn't refer to an erotic act per se, but, rather, to something exchanged by near relatives when greeting one another. In medieval Europe, where the visual motif of Justice and Peace kissing was first introduced, such an act was even more widespread than in the ancient Jewish world. However, because (male) artists have a penchant for nude (female) figures, renditions of Justice and Peace kissing were often (inappropriately) sexualised.

 

[3] 'New Evidence Suggests God Also Had Incredibly Busty Daughter', The Onion, (23 September, 2010): click here to read online. 

 

[4] Curb Your Enthusiasm, S5/E3, 'The Christ Nail' (2005), dir. Robert B. Weide, written by Larry David. Click here to watch the scene on YouTube.

 

[5] Thanks to the season 5 finale of Curb, we know that not only does Larry look forward to meeting Monroe in heaven, but that the latter is also a big fan of Seinfeld. See 'The End', S5/E10, dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, (2005). Marilyn is played in the episode by Susan Griffiths. 

 

Why You Should Never Wish Happy New Year to a Nietzschean

 

 

I. 

 

I don't know the origin of the zen fascist insistence on wishing everyone a happy new year, but I suspect it's rooted in the 18th-century, which is why in 1794 the Archange de la Terreur - Louis de Saint-Just - was able to proclaim: Le bonheur est une idée neuve en Europe ... [1]

 

Such a new idea of happiness - one concerned with individual fulfilment in the here and now and realised in material form, rather than a deferred condition of soul which awaits the blessed in heaven - had already become an inalienable right of citizens in the United States.

 

Whether Jefferson was inspired by the English empiricist John Locke - or by the French philosophe Jean-Jacques Rousseau - is debatable. But, either way, the pursuit of happiness was declared a self-evidently good thing that all Americans should uphold and practice [2].        

 

It might also be noted that 1776 was the year that Jeremy Bentham famously wrote that ensuring the greatest happiness of the greatest number was the mark of a truly moral and just society [3].   

 

 

II. 

 

So what's the problem?

 

Well, the problem for those who take Nietzsche seriously, is that this positing of happiness in its modern form as the ultimate aim of human existence makes one contemptible. 

 

That is to say, one becomes the kind of person who only seeks their own pleasure and safety, avoiding all danger, difficulty, or struggle; one becomes one of those letzter Menschen that Zarathustra speaks of [4].    

 

Nietzsche wants his readers to see that suffering and, yes, even unhappiness, play an important role in life and culture; that greatness is, in fact, more often than not born of pain and sorrow. This is why his philosophy is a form of tragic pessimism.

 

And this is why it's kind of insulting to wish a Nietzschean happy new year ... [5] [6] 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Louis de Saint-Just made this remark in a speech to the National Convention entitled Sur le mode d'exécution du décret contre les ennemis de la Révolution (3 March 3, 1794) - only four months before he went to the guillotine, aged 26, along with his friend and fellow revolutionary Robespierre.  

[2] The famous line written by Thomas Jefferson in the 1776 Declaration of Independence reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

 

[3] This phrase - often wrongly attributed to J. S. Mill - can be found in the Preface to Bentham's A Fragment on Government (1776). 

[4] See Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 'Zarathustra's Prologue', 5.

 

[5] Similarly, one should refrain from wishing happy new year to a devotee of Larry David; or, at any rate, be aware that there's a cut off after which it's no longer appropriate to do so. See episode 1 of season 10 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, entitled 'Happy New Year' (dir. Jeff Schaffer): click here.

 

[6] Having said that, see the post published on 1 Jan 2016 entitled 'Sanctus Januarius' for a Nietzschean new year's message: click here.