On Board the Ship of Fools

 Fig. 1 Woodcut illustration by Albrecht Dürer for Sebastian Brandt's  

Das Narrenschiff (1494)  

 Fig. 2 Photo by Fabrizio Villa of Greta Thunberg with some of her crewmates 

 preparing to depart Italy for Gaza on a boat - the Madleen - organised by 

the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (June 2025)

 

 

Seeing "professional tantrum-thrower" [1] Greta Thunberg and her dysfunctional crew of activists aboard a sixty-foot sailboat heading across the rather lovely waters of the Mediterranean to Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade of this Palestinian enclave [2], I was reminded of Plato's ship of fools [3] ...  

  

For aboard the Madleen we encounter a group of entitled young people who, despite believing themselves to be politically clear-sighted and possessing an acute sense of hearing attuned to the cries of the oppressed, are actually cloth-eared and blind to reality; people whose knowledge and experience is limited, but who are certain that they are always in the right and therefore justified in shouting down anyone who disagrees with what they say.   

Now, to entrust moral leadership to those who shout the loudest and make the most extreme claims is, I would suggest, profoundly mistaken. 

 

And whilst Greta and her chums may not be wearing traditional jester's costume - having swapped multicoloured motley for the distinctly patterned black and white keffiyeh [4] - they are fools all the same - or useful idiots, as some might say - and theirs is less a humanitaran mission and more a game of larping for Palestine [5] (i.e., a game of role play, virtue signalling, and self-promotion that shamelessly exploits the very real suffering of the people of Gaza). 

 

Having said that, however, the voyage of fools carries great symbolic weight in the Western imagination and perhaps Foucault is right to suggest that the figure of the madman, or joker, or even an autistic and bipolar activist is not merely a ridiculous and marginal one, but one who "stands centre stage as the guardian of truth" [6].      

 

Perhaps, therefore, we should at times write in praise of folly ... 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] A description provided by Julie Burchill in 'Greta Thunberg's pathetic Gaza voyage', The Spectator (4 June, 2025): click here. For those who would like to see Miss Thunberg speaking to the press prior to setting off on her voyage, click here.  

 

[2] The Madleen departed Catania, Sicily, on 1 June, 2025. The 1,250 mile journey is expected to take seven days. As well as the Swedish doom goblin, there are eleven other über-privileged activists on board and 64-year-old Irish actor Liam Cunningham. 

 

[3] See Book VI of Plato's Republic (c. 375 BC). 

      Without actually using the phrase 'ship of fools', Socrates speaks (allegorically) of a ship with a mutinous and foolhardy crew and readers are meant to take away the idea that sound governance always requires expert knowledge and strong leadership; that statecraft is essentially the same as seafaring. 

      The ship of fools analogy has been influential throughout history, appearing in various works of art and literature, often as a criticism of societal chaos and a lack of authority in difficult times. Sebastian Brandt's satirical work, Das Narrenschiff (1494), inspired by Plato's text, further extended the concept.

 

[4] Use of the keffiyeh as a symbol of Palestinian nationalism and resistance dates back to the 1936-39 Arab revolt in Palestine. Outside of the Middle East and North Africa, the keffiyeh has gained increasing popularity among activists and is widely considered to be a sign of solidarity with the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.  

 

[5] See the post of this title published on 8 may 2024: click here. 

 

[6] Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization, trans. Richard Howard (Tavistock Publications, 1967), p. 14. 

 

 

On Plato and Starmer: Noble Liars

Noble Liars: Plato and Keir Starmer

 

 

I. 

 

Q: What unites Plato (an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period) and Keir Starmer (a British politician and lawyer currently serving as Prime Minister of the UK)? 

A: Both believe in the political necessity of falsehoods; of deliberately propagating a noble lie in order to achieve and secure social cohesion and stability. Both understand that this might be seen as morally questionable, but justify their mendacity by appealing to the greater good - and, indeed, their own inherent virtue. 

 

Plato wished to found his ideal city-state - ruled over by golden philosopher-kings - on a myth about the metallic origins of class difference [1]; whilst Starmer, on the other hand, wants to defend his ideal of a multicultural society - ruled over by a woke liberal elite - on a myth that has the red letters DEI running through it like those in a stick of rock. 

 

 

II. 

 

Of course, as someone who has previously written in praise of three great liars - Nietzsche, Twain, and Wilde [2] - and argued that lying is an art not only vital to the functioning of society, but necessary for the preservation of human life in a violently chaotic and inhuman world, it would be hypocritical for me to now condemn Plato and Starmer for their mixture of political pragmatism and cynicism, and to start defending the ideal of Truth at all times and on every occasion (as Kant does, for example). 

 

Nevertheless, I am concerned that when a noble lie is exposed, it can have unfortunate consequences; triggering the very things that those who posit such fear and seek to prevent (e.g., a loss of trust in authority figures and institutions, as well as a breakdown of social order). 

 

And the thing with Starmer is he's such a transparently dishonest figure that everyone knows he's lying all of the time. Starmer risks destabilising the UK and pushing the electorate into either political apathy (they no longer vote), political extremism (they start to vote for maverick figures), or violent protest (they start to throw bricks); for if nothing is true, everything is permitted [3].

 

Notes

 

[1] Plato presented the noble lie - γενναῖον ψεῦδος - in the fictional tale known as the Myth of the Metals in Book III (414d - 415e) of The Republic (c. 375 BC). 

      In it, Socrates describes the natural origin of the three social classes - all born of the same good earth - who compose the Kallipolis. First are the men of gold, who make the best rulers; second, are the men with more silver in their souls, who make the best auxiliaries and are thus destined to assist the men of gold; and thirdly, are the hoi polloi or men of bronze, who have a different set of strengths (and weaknesses) and make the best farmers and craftsmen. 

      Interestingly, although once born into a certain class one cannot leave it, parents with one type of soul can nevertheless produce offspring with a different metallic nature, so there is a degree of social mobility even in Plato's ideal state. Socrates claims that if everyone believed this myth it would have the positive effect of making them care for society and each other.        

 

[2] For the post on Nietzsche in the series on three great liars, published in June 2020, click here. For the post on Mark Twain in the same series, click here. And for the third and final post in the series, on Oscar Wilde, click here. 

      Readers are also invited to click here for a follow up post entitled 'Tell Me Sweet Little Lies' (23 June 2020). 

[3] This so-called assassin's creed is a nihilistic statement par excellence (even if it doesn't simply mean that any action is justifiable or without consequences). For many people, the phrase is taken from a video game first released in 2007; for others, it comes from the 1938 novel by Vladimir Bartol. But I'm sure readers of TTA will recall that Nietzsche also used this phrase in the Genealogy (1887); see Essay III, section 24.   

Who Is Stephen Alexander? A Guest Post by Sasha Thanassa

Stephen Alexander 

A Non-Selfie Selfie (2025) 

 

And how do you see yourself when looking in the bathroom mirror 

through someone else's eyes? 

 

 

I. 

 

Who (or what) is Stephen Alexander, the shadowy figure who blogs at Torpedo the Ark?

 

The multiple possibilities that he himself has playfully suggested in the past include: artist, anarchist, and antichrist; punk, pirate, poet, pagan ... More recently, he has declared himself to be a darkly enlightened philosopher-provocateur whose concerns are no longer with sex, style, and subversion, but more with silence, secrecy, and seduction. 

 

Using these and other terms that arise from within his own writings - as well as from the work of other figures to whom he often refers - I will attempt here to give a brief impressionistic sketch of someone who, like Foucault, neither wishes to self-identify as a unified subject nor feels obliged to remain forever the same [1].       

 

 

II.

 

Again, by his own admission, there are two names that have shaped Alexander's thinking above all others: Nietzsche and D. H. Lawrence; neither of whom he entirely embraces, but both of whom provide him with the critical weapons and crucial conceptual tools for the fight against moral idealism (i.e., the belief that the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are the highest of values and fundamentally connected) and modern humanism (i.e., the belief that behind everything sits the kind and reasonable figure of Man).    

 

Working in the entrails of Nietzsche and Lawrence more like a postmodern haruspex than a forensic pathologist, Alexander has managed on Torpedo the Ark to produce an idiosyncratic (and intertextual) brand of fiction-theory that suspends the genre distinction between philosophy and literature [2]. 

 

Arguably, it is this mode of language and thought that has enabled him to move across other established categories and freely discuss an almost infinite variety of ideas, experiences, and events in a creative and profoundly superficial manner that is always alert to the play (and permissiveness) of language.  

 

III. 

Another name we might mention is that of Simon Solomon; more than a mere commentator on posts or a sometimes contributor, Solomon is a very real (often hostile) presence on Torpedo the Ark and a vital interlocutor. 

It's sometimes hard to tell whether Solomon is Alexander's shadow or vice versa; who's the Jekyll, who's the Hyde (or are they equally monstrous)? In queer ontological alliance - if there is such a thing -  Alexander and Solomon seem fated to remain the best of frenemies [3], each presumably drawing some benefit from their relationship, despite the mutual antagonism [4]. 

IV.

But isn't Alexander just another in a long line of reversed Platonists? 

Perhaps - but what's wrong with that? We need more not less such people. A reversed Plato may still be, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, a reversed Plato [5], but that's better than an unreversed Plato.

 

And besides, as Derrida indicated, the first task of deconstruction has to be reversal (i.e., the locating and overturning of oppositions within a text). That may not be enough in itself - a reversal is not the same as a revaluation - but it's a start on the road toward a new way of thinking.

 

And so, like Lawrence, Alexander encourages his reader to think in terms of immanence rather than transcendence and to climb down Pisgah [6]; to affirm appearances and the natural world of scarlet poppies rather than fantasise about a world above (and/or beyond) this one in which there are eternal white flowers and other Ideal Forms.   

And like Deleuze - another thinker whom Alexander often refers to - he perverts Plato by siding with the Sophists, the Cynics, the Stoics "and the fluttering chimeras of Epicurus" [7].  

 

 

V.

So, have I answered the question with which I opened this post? 

 

Probably not. 

 

Perhaps all I've done is refer to a number of proper names to whom Alexander himself often refers. But then, these proper names serve a crucial textual purpose and contain within them a series of associations (and connotations) that allow us to see how Torpedo the Ark unfolds within a much wider philosophical and literary history and an intertextual space. 

 

When Alexander refers to himself as a Lawrentian, for example, he's not identifying with Lawrence as an extratextual being, but evoking a certain style of thinking and writing.  

 

Using proper names is also, of course, a way of dispersing and disguising the self; like Nietzsche, Alexander wants to be able to declare himself all the names in history [8] - onymic ambiguity rather than unified authorial presence is his aim.  

 

Notes

 

[1] In his introduction to The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault famously writes: "I am no doubt not the only one who writes in order to have no face. Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order." 

      See The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (Pantheon Books, 1972), p. 17.

 -

[2] This has been a long time goal for Alexander; see the introduction to his PhD thesis Outside the Gate (University of Warwick, 2000): click here. 

      Admittedly, he problematically writes here about dissolving lines of distinction, whereas in his later writings, influenced by Derrida, he speaks more about troubling (or curdling) these lines and concedes that the deconstructive objective is not the dissolving or permanent suspension of all oppositions, because, ultimately, they are structurally necessary to produce meaning.  

      

[3] The term frenemy - a portmanteau of 'friend' and 'enemy' - could have been invented for Alexander and Solomon, although Jessica Mitford claimed that it had been coined by one of her sisters when they were children for a particularly dull acquaintance; see her article 'The Best of Frenemies' in the Daily Mail (August 1977). It can also be found in her book, Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (NYRB Classics, 2010), or read online by simply clicking here.       

      

[4] Interestingly, Freud recognised that a close friend and a worthy enemy are equally indispensble to psychological wellbeing and have not infrequently been one and the same person. See Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (Pelican / Penguin Books, 1964) p. 37.

 

[5] See Hannah Arendt, 'Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture', in Social Research, Vol. 38, No. 3, pp. 417-446, (The John Hopkins University Press, Autumn 1971), where she writes: 

      "The quest for meaning, which relentlessly dissolves and examines anew all accepted doctrines and rules, can at every moment turn against itself, as it were, produce a reversal of the old values, and declare these as 'new values'. This, to an extent, is what Nietzsche did when he reversed Platonism, forgetting that a reversed Plato is still Plato ..." (435)

      A revised version of this can also be found in Thinking, the first volume of her two-volume posthumously published work The Life of the Mind, ed. Mary Mccarthy (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977-78). 

 

[6] See the essay by D. H. Lawrence 'Climbing Down Pisgah', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 223-229.

 

[7] Michel Foucault, 'Theatrum Philosophicum', in the Essential Works 2: Aesthetics, ed. James D. Faubion (Penguin Books, 2000), p. 346.

[8] In a letter to Jakob Burckhardt dated 6 January, 1889 (although postmarked January 5th), Nietzsche claims that by becoming every name in history, he (paradoxically) fights the reduction to anonymity and generality. 

      See his Selected Letters, ed. and trans. Christopher Middleton (University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 346.

 

 

Heathen, Hedonistic, and Horny: Notes on Maggie Nelson's Bluets (2009) - Part 1: Propositions 1-120

 Jonathan Cape (2017)

 

 

I. 

 

As long-time readers of Torpedo the Ark will know, whilst, as a nihilist, my default position is always paint it black, I do also have a philosophical fascination with a colour much loved by painters and poets and which Christian Dior identified as the only one which can possibly compete with black: blue. 

 

This includes, for example, the lyrical blue celebrated by Rilke and Trakl; the deep blue invented by Yves Klein; the blue of the Greater Day that D. H. Lawrence writes of; and my fascination with this colour extends to blue angels, blue boys, blue lenses, and blue lagoons.  

 

Thus, no surprise then that I should eventually get around to reading Maggie Nelson's wonderful little book Bluets ...

 

 

II. 

 

First published by Wave Books in 2009, Bluets consists of 240 numbered propositions arranged not so much randomly, but with what we might term considered whimsicality to create the illusion of logical precision and continuity à la Wittgenstein. Each proposition is either a sentence or a short paragraph; none exceeds two hundred words in length.

 

The book documents not only the author's bowerbird-like obsession with the colour blue, referencing many famous figures along the way associated with the colour, but also provides an insight into Nelson's understanding of love and mental health and examines what role - if any - beauty plays in times of heartache or depression.

 

In 2016, she won a MacArthur Fellowship - known to many as the genius grant - and, on the basis of this one book alone I think that Nelson is indeed one of those very rare individuals who probably deserves the title of genius; an original and insightful writer who produces work that is both lyrical and philosophical.  

 

The title doesn't refer us simply to those small and delicate blue flowers belonging to the genus Houstonia, but also to a triptyque by the American abstract artist Joan Mitchell, Les Bluets (1973), which Nelson describes as perhaps her "favourite painting of all time" [a]

 

Here, I would like to provide a commentary on the book, picking up on some of the things that particularly resonate with me or pique my curiosity to know more. Hopefully, in the course of doing so I can demonstrate why the author and critic Hilton Als was spot on to praise Bluets as a "new kind of classicism" that, whilst queer in content, remains elegant in form [b].     

 

 

III.

5

 

Are we to understand that when, like Mallarmé, one replaces le ceil with l'Azur - "in an effort to rinse references to the sky of religious connotations" - one ceases to be a crypto-theologian and becomes a poet-philosopher? 

 

Is it true to say: whereof one can perceive blueness, thereof one cannot imagine God ...     

 

 

18

 

"A warm afternoon in early spring, New York City. We went to the Chelsea Hotel to fuck."

 

For a moment I thought I was reading Young Kim's A Year on Earth with Mr Hell (2020). 

 

But then I read the three sentences following: 

 

"Afterward, from the window of our room, I watched a blue tarp on a roof across the way flap in the wind. You slept, so it was my seceret. It was a smear of the quotidian, a bright blue flake amidst all the dank providence."  

And realised I wasn't.  

 

20 

 

"Fucking leaves everything as it is." 

 

This is a very un-Lawrentian sentence; perhaps the most un-Lawrentian sentence you could imagine. 

 

For Lawrence insists that, on the contrary, fucking is transformational of the individual - changing the very constitution of the blood - and that a politics of desire, founded upon the act of coition, has revolutionary potential. 

 

Like Nietzsche, Lawrence believes that the lover is richer and stronger than those who do not fuck; that lovers grow wings and possess new capabilities. And there arises, he says, a post-coital "craving for polarized communion with others" [c] - not just for cigarettes. 

 

 

26 / 31

 

Nelson says that she's heard that "a diminishment of color vision often accompanies depression" and I couldn't help wondering if that's true; if feeling blue ironically makes the world seem greyer ...?

 

Well, apparently, it is: depression lowers the production of dopamine and this can impair neurotransmitters in the retina, making the world appear less vibrant and colourful. 

 

But then Nelson reminds us of the case of Mr Sidney Bradford, who had his vision restored in his fifties (having lost his sight as a baby) and saw the world at last in full-colour:  he died of unhappiness due to disappointment soon afterwards [d].      

 

35

 

"Does the world look bluer from blue eyes?", asks Nelson, before concluding that's probably not the case. 

 

But, like her, I like to imagine it does.

 

 

56

 

When reminded of Saint Lucy - patron saint of the blind, who was tortured and put to death by the Romans in 304 CE - I can't help thinking of Simone, the teenage erotomaniac at the heart of Bataille's notorious short novel L'histoire de l'œil (1928). 

 

For whilst Lucy didn't - as far as I know - insert the eye of a murdered priest into her vagina, she is often depicted in "Gothic and Renaissance paintings holding a golden dish with her blue eyes staring weirdly out from it".   

 

Depending on what sources one refers to, Lucy's eyes were either gouged out by her captors, or she removed them herself in order to avoid male attention and prove her religious devotion. For as Nelson writes, there are numerous stories of women "blinding themselves in order to maintain their chastity" and to demonstrate their fidelity to God (i.e., the fact that they 'only have eyes' for Christ).   

 

 

62

 

Nelson's definition of puritanism: the exchanging of corporeal reality for ideal representation. Not something that appeals to her: 

 

"I have no interest in catching a glimpse of or offering you an unblemished ass or airbrushed cunt. I am interested in having three orifices stuffed full of thick, veiny cock in the most unforgiving of poses ..."  

 

Fair enough: but this is still an image conjured up with words, is it not? And as Merleau-Ponty pointed out: Words do not look like the things they designate [e].  

 

 

71 / 72 

 

Hard to find dignity in loneliness; easier to find it in solitude. A pair of propostions of such high truth value that we may for all intents and purposes declare them true.  

 

 

101

 

When Nelson's friends were asked "how much time they would grant between 'a blinding, bad time' and a life that has simply become a depressive waste", the consensus was "around seven years". 

 

I suspect - based on my own experience between April 2016 and February 2023 - that that's probably about right; that the seven year mark is the limit. Perhaps that's why when a person goes missing there is a presumption of death after seven years. 

 

(As for how long it takes to fully recover having reached one's limit, that's a question to which neither Nelson nor her friends provide an answer and I suspect it might take longer to retreat from the edge of the abyss than it does to get there.)

Notes

 

[a] Maggie Nelson, Bluets (Jonathan Cape, 2017), Prop. 145, p. 57. Note that I will henceforth only give proposition numbers (in bold) in the post.      

 

[b] Hilton Als, 'Immediate Family', The New Yorker (11 April, 2016): click here. 

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 135. 

      Later, in proposition 201, Nelson does acknowledge the truth of change, newness, and becoming-other: "I believe n the possibility - the inevitability, even - of a fresh self stepping into ever-fresh waters [...]" (p. 80).

[d] This is a real case, although Nelson is taking artistic license with her conclusion. For whilst Bradford did admit to finding the world visually disappointing following corneal grafts - and did die two years afterwards - he also had chronic health issues and no specific cause of death was entered on his death certificate. 

[e] Nelson quotes this line herself in proposition 70. It can be found in the essay 'Cézanne's Doubt', in Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Basic Writings, ed. Thomas Baldwyn (Routledge, 2003). 

 

This post continues in part two (selected propositions from 121-240): click here. 

On Board the Ship of Theseus With Melissa Mesku

Melissa Mesku and the 

Ship of Theseus

 

 

I. 

 

A correspondent who knows her Greek mythology (and her French literary theory) writes:

 

In a recent post [1] you refer to Roland Barthes's reference to a ship that has each of its parts replaced over time until it has been entirely rebuilt and how this reinforces one of the key principles of structuralism; namely, that an object is not necessarily born of a mysterious act of creation, but can be produced via the substitution of parts and nomination (i.e., the giving of a fixed name that is not tied to the stability of parts). 

      Barthes, however, mistakenly refers to this ship as the Argo, on which Theseus was said to have sailed with Jason. In fact, it was a different vessel (of unknown name) on which the former sailed from Crete that has given rise to the question that has so intrigued philosophers. Probably you know this, but I think a note for general readers might have been useful so as to avoid confusion and the spreading of misinformation.    

 

I'm extremely grateful for this email which arrived overnight and my correspondent is quite right in what she says; both about Barthes's error and my oversight in not fact checking what he wrote and supplying a brief note of correction.    

 

II.

 

Of course, my correspondent is not the first person to have pointed out that this famous French theorist misremembered his Plutarch; Melissa Mesku, for example, also mentioned this in a brilliant piece in Lapham's Quarterly a few years back [2].

 

Founding editor of ➰➰➰ - a website that delights in recursion and weirdness [3] - Melissa Mesku is someone I greatly admire for daring to celebrate divergence rather than diversity and I thought it might be fun to examine her ideas in the above essay on Theseus's Paradox ...

 

 

III.

 

As Mesku reminds us, Theseus was the mythical hero who famously slayed the minotaur and returned victorious from Crete on a ship that the good people of Athens decided to preserve for posterity; removing old timber as it decayed and replacing it with new wood. 

 

Perhaps inevitably, this soon attracted the attention of the philosophers, who wanted to know if, after many years of such maintenance, the vessel that remained was essentially still the same ship. Some thought it was; others that it wasn't - and philosophers have been arguing over the Ship of Theseus ever since, inspiring many modern ideas to do with the persistence of identity and the return of the same. 

 

Thus, whether this tale has any historical basis or is simply an invention of Plutarch's doesn't really matter, although Mesku is keen to point out that Plutarch "is known for taking liberties as a biographer, and most of his source texts have been lost to time". Further, she adds, the veracity of Plutarch's story "seems especially dubious when we consider that Theseus himself likely never existed". 

 

Leaving the question of whether he was or was not an actual figure, Mesku rightly points out that "the conundrum of how things change and stay the same has been with us a lot longer than Plutarch". Plato, for example, certainly addressed the problem; as did pre-Socratic thinkers such as Heraclitus, to whom it was clear that you can never step in the same river twice. 

 

Two-and-a-half thousand years later, and philosophers are still puzzling their brains over this, although folksy American thinkers often prefer to articulate the question with reference to an axe belonging either to George Washington or Abraham Lincoln depending on who you ask. Followers of John Locke, meanwhile, prefer to think things in relation to an old sock [4] ...!

 

 

IV.

Moving on, Mesku returns us to Maggie Nelson's reference in The Argonauts (2015) to Roland Barthes's discussion of love and language. For Nelson, the Argo functions as a foundational metaphor - retaining what Barthes imparted to it, but also expanding as "a metaphor for the paradox of selfhood, of the 'I' which is immutable yet undergoes constant change". 

 

Since this is where my interest mostly lies - rather than with the work of the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei or the ancient Japanese method of pottery repair using gold lacquer - I think I'll close this post here if I may. 

 

Like Mesku, I'm amused at how changes to Theseus's Paradox have only "augmented its paradoxical nature", whilst leaving us still faced with the question of "just how much change something can withstand without it changing into something else".

 

As a Nietzschean, however, i.e., someone who has stamped becoming with the character of being [5], it's not particularly concerning to realise that the eternal return of the same is an illusion and that what actually returns is difference.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] The post referred to was entitled 'Argonauts' and published on 27 August 2024: click here.  

 

[2] Melissa Mesku, 'Restoring the Ship of Theseus: Is a paradox still the same after its parts have been replaced?', Lapham's Quarterly (21 Oct 2019): click here to read online. Lines quoted in this post are from this digital version of the work.  

[3] ➰➰➰ (spoken as 'many loops') is a website launched in 2019 that publishes prose, fiction, poetry, photo essays, and artwork alongside various hybrid forms and is preoccupied with the concept of recursion - something which Mesku explains far better than I can here.   

 

[4] Mesku suggests that Locke's version of Thesus's Paradox holds up as a metaphor and might even be preferable with a contemporary audience: "Except for one small problem. Scholars are unable to locate any references to socks in Locke's work." Despite this, it has become, according to Mesku, "the current identity paradox par excellence". 

      Personally, I think Hobbes rather than Locke provides us with a far more interesting development of Theseus's Paradox in De Corpore (1655), where, he asks: What if the discarded parts of the original ship were not destroyed, but collected and used to create a second ship? Mesku notes: "As a thought experiment, Hobbes' version solicits different philosophical proofs and can float on its own like the second ship it posits. Yet it is considered to be a mere addition, a twist - just another plank on Theseus' ship."

 

[5] See Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (Vintage Books, 1968), III. 617, p. 330. Nietzsche opens the section with the following line: "To impose upon becoming the character of being - that is the supreme will to power."

Readers interested in reading the 'Life of Theseus' should see Vol. 1 of Plutarch's Lives, trans. Aubrey Stewart and George Long (George Bell & Sons, 1894). Click here to access it as a Project Gutenberg eBook (2004) based on this edition. Section XXIII is the key section for those interested in the fate of his thirty-oared ship once it reached Athens.

 

 

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. 

Will Absence Make My Heart Grow Fonder of Byung-Chul Han? (Part 1)

(Polity Press, 2023)

 

 

I. 

 

Although Daniel Steuer's English translation of Byung-Chul Han's book Absence was only published last year, the original German text appeared back in 2007 [a], and so we can rightly think of it as one of his early works; more philosophical and less political in tone as it explores the Western obsession with essence in contrast to the Eastern (and deeply foreign) notion of absence.    

 

As Han rightly says: "The concept of 'essence', which unites identity, duration and inwardness, dwelling, lingering and possessing, dominates occidental metaphysics." [1] From ancient Greeks like Plato to German idealists like Kant, essence is the key and be yourself the melody. What is outside and inessential can stay there and remain that way.

 

Even Heidegger, argues Han, "despite his best efforts at leaving metaphysical thinking behind [...] remained a philosopher of essence" [4]. In wanting to let things be he wants things to remain true to their own essence. Ultimately, Dasein both dwells and endures. It does not wander too far from itself (even if it explores the odd woodpath from time to time). 

 

But in Daoism, the wise man is without fixed abode and never stops wandering; evading all substantive determination and having no stable identity, he leaves no trail or name behind him. Daoist wandering may not be the same as Zen Buddhist non-dwelling, "but the negativity of absencing connects the two" [5]. 

 

Ultimately, the "fundamental topos of Far Eastern thinking is not being but the way [...] The way lacks the solidity of being and essence, which is what leads to the emergence of traces" [5]. Westerners talk about finding the way, but by that they really just mean finding themselves; the Eastern wanderer, however, becomes the way and doesn't hope to find anything (walking with neither intention nor direction). 

The Western philosopher wants his soul to blossom; the Eastern thinker, like the flower, doesn't have a soul (and remains nameless). They also remain rooted in the material world and care for the body; eating when hungry, sleeping when tired. Oh, and they also remain silent, still, and inactive.  

 

I have to admit, all of this appeals to me very much - and I say that as someone who has been hostile to (and dismissive of) Eastern thought in the past. It seems to me to that absence and emptiness and meaninglessness may very well lead "not to nihilism but to a heavenly joy [...] being without direction or trace" [13]. 

 

Kant - and those idiots who think happiness is all about being stuffed-full and satiated; all about having purpose and direction - wouldn't like this, but I do. Like Laozi, I'm happy to lead a life "without sense and goal, without teleology and narration, without transcendence and God" [14] - to be, as the Sex Pistols once sang, pretty vacant [b] and to find in this freedom, not spiritual deprivation [c]. 

 

 

II.

 

This is interesting: 

 

"Of course, postmodern thinkers also oppose ideas of substance and identity. [...] The negativity of these thinkers brings them closer to absencing and emptiness, but [...] Far Eastern thinking [...] is alien to them [...] The Far Eastern thinking of emptiness leaves deconstruction behind in order to achieve a special kind of reconstruction." [16]

 

This special kind of reconstruction is worldly immanence - "the 'this-is-how-it-is' of things" [16]. 

 

To be fair, I think Deleuze gets this when he transforms no-where into now/here. And when Derrida insists il n'y a pas de hors-texte - for isn't that similar to the Daoist notion that there is nothing above, beyond, or outside of the immanence of the world ...?

Anyway, the point is this: immanence is a crucial concept - as is "the painful charm of transience" [19] which allows for the development of an art and poetry of blandness, in which things fade out and blow away (again, this reminds me somewhat of Roland Barthes's theory of neutrality). 

 

 

III.

 

If essence is difference and a way of keeping things clear cut, then absencing is a form of indifference; one that un-bounds and makes indistinguishable. It's hard to see the outline of a white flower against a snow-covered backdrop (or a black cat in a coal cellar as others would say). 

 

The East is messy - things flow into each other: "Nothing imposes itself. Nothing demarcates itself from other things. Everything appears to retreat into an in-difference." [22-23]  The West, by contrast, likes strong boundaries and distinctions and closure.

 

Han continues:

"In-difference also fosters an intense side-by-side of what is different. It creates an optimal degree of cohesion with a minimal amount of organic, organized connection. Synthetic composition gives way to a syndetic continuum of closeness in which things do not come together as a unity." [23-24]

The cathedral is a space that is perfectly enclosed; even stained-glass windows are designed to keep the natural daylight out, which is why D. H. Lawrence preferred them in a state of ruin, exposed to the elements, etc. [d]

 

Han, however, seems to prefer a Buddhist temple that is "neither fully closed nor fully open" [26]. The spatiality of the latter "effects neither an inwardness nor a being-exposed" [26]. Doors of white rice paper are preferable to colourful stained-glass windows and standing light without direction is preferabe to a divine radiance from above that is intended to illuminate everything:

 

"The standing light, which has become fully indeterminate, in-different, does not emphasize the presence of things; it submerges them in absence." [27]    

 

It's almost as if white standing light brings a special type of darkness. You don't get that with modern glass architecture which marks the triumph of transparency. 

For Han, then, the Buddhist temple is preferable to the Christian cathedral; the Greek temple; and the shiny American skyscraper of glass and steel. It's not just a question of spatiality and light, but asymmetry; "an aesthetic principle of Zen Buddhism" [29] which "breaks up presence into absencing" [29].

 

I suppose some might say that it's all a question of how one sees things. And this brings us on to the question of eyes:

 

"According to Hegel's philosophical physiognomy, the eyes should be surrounded by the elevated bones so that 'the strengthened shadow in the orbits gives us of itself a feeling of depth and undistracted inner life'." [30]

 

But Eastern eyes, of course, are flat:

 

"Hegel would explain this in terms of a lack of inwardness, that is, an infantile spirit that has not yet awoken to subjective inwardness and therefore remains embedded in nature." [30]

 

But what does Hegel know about the beauty of the absencing gaze ...?

 

 

IV.

 

D. H. Lawrence thought there was nothing more bourgeois than the unfading flowers of heaven. But the Kantian lover of the beautiful would probably delight in such; their "imperishable splendour would most likely [...] make him happy" [33].

 

For sure, he'd not like it if they were revealed to be fake flowers - their artificiality depriving them of "their teleological, even theological, significance" [33] - but their everlasting nature would only intensify his love for them. Plato too dreamed of a divine form of beauty that "neither emerges nor vanishes, neither increases nor decreases" [33]. 

 

But for someone who views the word from a Far Eastern perspective, the most beautiful thing of all about a flower is its transience; the fact that it loses its petals without any hesitation and is content to disappear. For such a person, the bare stem or twig is as beautiful as a flowering plant or tree in full bloom. 

 

In other words: 

 

"In the sensibility of the Far East, neither the permanence [Ständigkeit] of being nor the stability [Beständigkeit] of essences is part of the beautiful. Things that persist, subsist or insist are neither beautiful nor noble. Beautiful is not what stands out or exceeds but what exercises self-restraint or retreats, not what is solid but what hovers. Beautiful are things that carry the traces of nothingness [...] not full presence but a 'there' that is coated with an absence [...]" [33-34]   

 

The Japanese call this wabi-sabi - the art of impermanence that "combines the unfinished, the imperfect, the transient, the fragile and the unassuming" [34]. Even your favourite Clarice Cliff milk jug is made more beautiful by a tiny crack or chip; and every silver bowl is improved when it loses its sheen and begins to darken [e].    

 

Han writes: 

 

"Satori (illumination) actually has nothing to do with shining or light. This is another point on which Eastern spirituality differs from occidental mysticism, with its metaphysics of light. Light multiplies presence. Buddhism, however, is a religion of absence." [35]

 

In the West, people almost want to be blinded by the light; a light either from some transcendent source or an inner light that emphasises the presence of things. Han - like Tanizaki - seems to admire the magic light of absence; a light that does not disturb or dispel the darkness; a friendly light. 

 

 

V. 

 

Finally, a few brief notes on (i) food, (ii) flower arranging, (iii) rock gardens, and (iv) theatre ...

 

(i) It's funny, but one of the complaints of English people is that Chinese food leaves them feeling empty inside five minutes after eating. Han provides a possible explanation: "Emptiness and absence also characterize the cuisine of the Far East." [39] Rice is the perfect example of this; lacking colour, lacking taste, offering no resistance (providing nothing to chew).

 

"Far Eastern cuisine appears empty also because it does not have a centre [...] The meals lack the centre or weight of a main dish and the closedness of a menu." [40]  

 

Further, in the West we like to cut food up with a knife and fork; in the East they assemble food with chopsticks.

 

(ii) The Japanese art of flower arranging is known as Ikebana - which means bringing flowers to life: 

 

"It is, however, an unusual kind of invigoration, because the flower is cut off from its root [...] The flower is invigorated by dealing it a mortal blow. [...] This raises it above the process of slow withering, its natural death. The flower is thereby removed from the difference between 'life' and 'death'. It shines with a special vitality, a flowering in-difference  [...] that has its source in the spirit of emptiness." [40-41]

 

The flower radiates with an unnatural (and transient) vitality; the shining of absence. 

 

(iii) If you have ever walked round a Japanese rock garden, you might have come away feeling a bit disappointed that there wasn't much to see. But that's the point; they are designed as gardens of absence and emptiness. 

 

However, despite their absence and emptiness, "they radiate", says Han, "an intense vitality" [41] and visitors must learn to appreciate the flow of the lines raked into the gravel and the darkness of the rocks. 

 

The Japanese rock garden is another method of paradoxical invigoration: "It invigorates nature by completely drying out its soul" [42] and placing it in a state of satori. 

 

(iv) Traditional Japanese puppet theatre (Bunraku) is also radically different to the world of Punch and Judy, showing that the latter is not the only way to do it. The Western puppet theatre animates characters via funny voices; in Bunraku it's all about the gesture and the puppets remain soulless figures.    

 

Similarly, Noh theatre is a theatre of absence: the costumes and masks worn by the living, human actors are designed to make them look like puppet figures. Even when an actor appears on stage without a mask, "the uncovered face is expressionless and empty" [44]. 

 

And the narrative composition of Noh theatre also adds to the sense of absence; its hard to tell what is real and what is dream - what is past and what is present - things appear only to then disappear once more (probably best not to worry too much about the plot in such cicumstances) [f].

 

 

Notes

 

[a] The German edition was published as Abwesen: Zur Kultur und Philosophie des fernen Ostens (Merv Verlag, 2007). In this post, page numbers refer to the English edition (Polity Press, 2023).  

[b] 'Pretty Vacant' was the third single released by the Sex Pistols (Virgin Records, 1977): click here to watch the official video for the song (which was shown on Top of the Pops) and/or here to read my post written on the track and published on TTA on 30 July 2108.   

[c] Is this also Han's view? It's hard to know. For whilst here he writes that the world "has no narrative structure" and is therefore "resistant to the crisis of meaning" [14], sixteen years later he will publish a book entitled Die Krise der Narration (2023) in which he seems to argue strongly in favour of narratives that anchor us in being and subscribe to a form of Catholicism informed by Martin Heidegger. Anyway, readers who are interested can click here to access the first part of a three-part post on this recent text. 

[d] See the post 'Believe in the Ruins: Reflections of a Gargolyle ...' (16 April 2019) in which I discuss Lawrence's thoughts on religious architecture: click here.

[e] Han at this point refers us to Tanizaki's famous essay on Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows (1933). I have mentioned this work in several posts on Torpedo the Ark (click here, for example) and it partly formed the basis for a paper delivered at Treadwell's Bookshop in September 2023 on occultism in the age of transparency (an extract from which can be read by clicking here). 

 

[f] For the record: I find all theatre irritating and tedious; I do like the tranquility of a Japanese rock garden, but enjoy also the colourful chaos of an English wildflower meadow; and, if obliged to choose, I'd prefer to have steak and chips for dinner than a bowl of egg-fried rice. 

Part two of this post can be read by clicking here.