On the Metaphysics of the Soul Contra the Aesthetics of Existence

In the end, as a philosopher, one has a choice to make: to concern oneself either with inner being, or outer beauty; the metaphysics of the soul, or the aesthetics of existence. 

Of course, it may be that these questions are constantly linked. But there is no necessary relationship; rather, it's contingent and variable. Thus, push comes to shove, one is obliged to think the care of self primarily as a question of ontology, or as a question of style; two very different projects, even if they have a common starting point and common goal (what is known as the good life). 

Broadly speaking, those who choose to be soulful naturally tend towards mysticism and notions of God and immortality. They often allow their asceticism to flourish negatively as a contempt for the body and things belonging to the material world and this is why they frequently end up badly dressed, marginalized from society and prone to violent fundamentalism. Like Jesus or Osama Bin Laden.    

Those who choose to be stylish, on the other hand, tend towards materialism and notions of artifice and superficiality; they have no time for thinking about the soul when there are flowers to look at, wardrobes to furnish, and bodies to penetrate. However, they often allow their cynicism and irony to make them apathetic, which is why they can end up looking good, but devoid of feeling or enthusiasm, and this can make them attracted to cruelty and perversion. Like Sade or Dorian Gray.

There are dangers, therefore, in either affirming the soul as an ontological reality distinct from physical existence, or affirming the latter - bios - as something to be shaped and disciplined according to a set of elaborate procedures. But each attempt to account for the self takes a certain courage; those who choose to live in desert caves are not to be sneered at, but nor are those who prefer to practice their philosophy either in the bedroom or on the catwalk.

Having said that, I obviously prefer the libertine or the dandy and their modality of truth-telling, to the prophet or holy fool who would sacrifice the entire world for the sake of saving his own precious soul.        

         

Margaret Nolan: Artist, Actress, Object

Margaret Nolan (IMDB)
Photo © 2011 Silver Screen Collection 
Courtesy of gettyimages.com 

The case of Margaret Nolan, the London-born glamour model turned actress become artist, interests for a number of reasons, not least of all because she is a woman who has struggled to take control of her own image and personally confront the issue of sexual objectification.

Miss Nolan started her career - as many aspiring young actresses do - by stripping for the camera and she soon became a popular pin-up within the amorous imagination of the early 1960s, often featuring in magazines under the name of Vicky Kennedy (her pseudonym serving to disguise her identity, preserve her modesty, and distance her from the industry in which she worked; she wasn't a nude model per se, but merely playing the part of such).

Gradually, her more legitimate acting roles increased in number and importance and she appeared in many theatre productions, films, and television shows, under her real name. This famously included playing a masseuse called Dink in the James Bond movie Goldfinger (1964).*

For some of us, however, Miss Nolan is most fondly remembered for her roles in several of the Carry On films, including Carry on Girls (1973), in which she (predictably) plays the buxom beauty Dawn Brakes and is involved in a rather convincing - and at the time controversial - catfight with the Barbara Windsor character, Hope Springs.

But of course, such scenes are now long behind her. Today, Miss Nolan works as a visual artist, producing interesting (sometimes vaguely disturbing) images assembled from cut-up publicity pictures; a somewhat naive attempt to deconstruct the socio-sexual stereotype she embodied and challenge the male gaze to which she was made subject throughout her modelling and acting career. Naive, but something for which she should nevertheless be applauded.

Margaret Nolan: My Divided Self 

This and other works can be found on her official site: 

margaretnolan.co.uk 

* It might also be noted that it was Miss Nolan - and not Shirley Eaton - who appeared in the film's title-sequence by Robert Brownjohn, wearing a bikini and painted gold. This image immediately became iconic within popular culture, but, unlike some (mostly male) art critics and film theorists, Miss Nolan denies there was - or is - anything liberated or liberating about it. The fact that it served simply to secure her a shoot for Playboy would seem to confirm her view.

On the Art of Speaking Without Speaking

A speaker presenting work in an approved manner; i.e., staying resolutely 
with the script and making no attempt to engage or interact with the audience

Although I frequently present work in public, as a rule I never speak without notes and prefer where possible to read without deviation or interruption from a carefully prepared text - much to the annoyance of members of the audience who subscribe to the metaphysics of presence and feel they are entitled to my fully being there in the capacity of speaker. 

I do this for a philosophical reason; namely, to counter the Socratic prejudice that speech is superior to writing and that thinkers should pride ourselves on their ability to memorize information and chat freely in an impromptu manner, thereby demonstrating a lively intelligence and an essential depth of true knowledge or wisdom. 

Put simply, I don't want to speak from the heart, or reveal the secrets of my soul. Like Derrida, I think it's perfectly legitimate - and important - to challenge the privileging of speech over writing (something that remains crucial to the structural presuppositions of philosophy). Indeed, if I had my way I'd use one of those voice synthesizers made famous by Stephen Hawking to depersonalize the whole performance still further and counter the pernicious stupidity of phonocentrism in this manner.

Thus, for me, writing is never a mere supplement to speech and the spoken word is not sovereign, or in a superior (because in a more direct and immediate) relationship to thought itself. And, although I'm quite happy to read a script in public, if invited to do so, I insist on my right to somehow absence myself from the whole event (cloaked, as it were, in anonymity, ambiguity, and invisibility) and to speak in a voice that is not necessarily my own.

I'm not then what might be thought of as a parrhesiast - a free-speaker of the truth without concealment. Nor am I one who says what he means and means what he says. Rather, I offer perspectives, not personal opinions or beliefs, and I attempt to move about in a transpositional manner without attaching myself anywhere.

That said, I would like to think that, as a philosophical provocateur, I share something with the parrhesiast and that is the courage to risk offending my listeners; of irritating them, of making them angry and provoking them to conduct which may be abusive (You're worse than Hitler) or even violent.

In sum: there's no fundamental bond between what I say and what I may (or may not) think, but I am prepared to piss people off. Mine is a modality not of truth-telling per se, but of enigmatic provocation. Or perhaps - as one woman said following a presentation at The Hospital Club - a form of mental illness ...        

         

On Owing a Cock to Asclepius (The Death of Socrates)

The Death of Socrates - Jacques Louis David (1787)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY)

I have long accepted Nietzsche’s interpretation of the last words of Socrates in The Gay Science (IV 340); accepted, that is to say, that the latter passes a final terrible judgement on life characterized as a disease from which one is cured by death. This despite the fact that such an interpretation obliges one to overlook everything else that Socrates said, or suspect that beneath his cheerfulness he was secretly a pessimist and a decadent.

But Foucault has persuaded me to reconsider this issue and give Socrates the benefit of the doubt; to accept that the above interpretation simply doesn’t hold good philosophically, even if it’s a wicked and polemical pleasure to think it true. If we examine the textual evidence carefully, then we simply cannot go along with Nietzsche and imagine that Socrates has, at the very last moment, broken down and suddenly revealed his hidden nature.

Rather, Socrates is affirming what has always been manifest in his teaching: the disease for the cure of which Asclepius is owed a cock, is that of false (often popular) opinion – not life; a disease of thinking that corrupts the soul. He tells his friends and followers who ask for posthumous instruction: ‘Don’t do anything new or different, just do what I’ve always told you to do: take care of yourselves.’

But then he adds one further remark; acknowledging his debt of gratitude to Asclepius and the need for the sacrifice of a cock. Contra Nietzsche, Foucault reads it thus: Socrates wants to give thanks for the god’s assistance, as a healer, to all those who have undertaken care of the self “For we should not forget ... that if we are concerned about ourselves, it is to the extent also that the gods have shown concern for us.” 

In an important and persuasive (rather moving) passage, Foucault continues:

“So you can see that Socrates’s death, the practice of his parrhesia which exposed him to the risk of death ... the practice of his truth-telling, and finally this devotion to inducing others to take care of themselves just as he took care of himself, all form a very closely woven ensemble ... whose threads come together for the last time in the sacrifice of the cock. It is the mission concerning the care of oneself that leads Socrates to his death. It is the principle of ‘caring for oneself’ that, beyond his death, he bequeaths to the others. And it is to the gods, favourable towards this care of oneself, that he addresses his last thought. I think that Socrates’s death founds philosophy ... as a form of veridiction ... peculiar precisely to philosophical discourse, and the courage of which must be exercised until death as a test of the soul ...” 

  - Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 113-14. 

However, there are of course many other readings of the final section (section 118) of the Phaedo - including that by Eva C. Keuls, who, in her 1985 study of sexual politics in ancient Greece entitled The Reign of the Phallus, understands the last words of Socrates as a crude joke; a reflection upon one final death-defiant erection, caused by the action of the poison, that he uncovers to the amusement of his friends.

If Nietzsche's is the most malicious and Foucault's the most touching, perhaps this interpretation by Keuls is the most amusing and in keeping with Socrates's reputation as a bit of a satyr.

I Wanna Be Your Dog (On Cynicism and Modern Art)

Statue of Diogenes the Cynic (Sinop, Turkey)

I don't want to live in a barrel, carry a lamp, masturbate in the market place, or even spit in the faces of the rich (well, maybe sometimes). But, nevertheless, one is repeatedly drawn back to the figure of Diogenes and to Cynicism; a philosophy constructed in direct opposition to Platonic Idealism with its transcendent forms and characterized by Michel Foucault as a courageous method of truth telling, public provocation, and ascetic sovereignty.

I suppose, above all, Diogenes provides us with a model not so much of the good life, or a beautiful existence - he leads a dog's life and is prone to ugly behaviour - but of extreme honesty. Honesty not as a matter of policy, but as something fundamental upon which we can build a distinctive ethics and politics; "connected to the principle of truth-telling ... without shame or fear ... which pushes its courage and boldness to the point that it becomes intolerable insolence" [165].

In other words, Cynicism is a form of punk philosophy and the Cynic can be characterized as a man of parrhesia; a free-speaker, but also someone who can be outspoken and a bit of a loudmouth. Indeed, when asked what was the most attractive virtue in a man, Diogenes replied the ability to speak candidly (without rhetoric or the shadow of a lie).     

But Cynicism is more than this, for it also has a decisive relationship to nihilism. That is to say, it's a form of realism, but the relationship it establishes to reality is not one that flatters or augments the latter; rather, it lays it bare (it strips and exposes the world and violently reduces human existence to its material components).

This, according to Foucault, is why artists of the avant-garde have long been attracted to Cynicism and willingly allowed their work to serve as a vehicle for the latter in the modern world, establishing a "polemical relationship of reduction, refusal, and aggression to culture, social norms, values, and aesthetic canons" [188].

We can think of this as both the anti-Platonic and the anti-Aristotelian character of modern art; a Cynical attempt to reveal and speak the truth (regardless of who it offends) and to change the value of the currency ...


See: Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Halloween

Cover of the Dead Kennedys single Halloween 

(Alternative Tentacles, 1982)

Another Halloween approaches ... 

And the groaning you can hear is nothing ghostly or ghoulish, but the sound of weariness from people like me who dislike the manner in which the supermarkets and other forces of corporate-media spectacle have co-opted the Day of the Dead and transformed it into a vapid and vacuous celebration of fake blood, phony horror, and false festivity. 

For what is Halloween today other than an opportunity for happy shoppers and law-abiding citizens to dress-up and behave like pretend monsters? Their costumes, no matter how elaborate, fail to cover up their conventionality and conformity; their masks and make-up don't disguise the fact that they have the same white faces smiling sheepishly underneath that they pride themselves on for the rest of the year. 

As Jello Biafra once sang: "I can see your eyes / I can see your brain / baby nothing's changed!"

And on the morrow, when the plastic pumpkins are put away and their all too human mold goes back on, then the real horror begins again; the recurrent nightmare of their daily lives full of fear of otherness, self-loathing, social-regulation, and the judgement of God. 

One almost wishes for a real zombie apocalypse ...       

After the Orgy: Rise of the Herbivores

Édouard Manet: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1862-3)* 

When asked, twenty-five years ago, to characterize the present, Baudrillard described it as after the orgy. It was then and remains now a brilliant characterization.**  

Although the orgy in question doesn't refer merely to a feast of the flesh, but, more widely, to modernity's explosive liberation in every sphere, this obviously includes a sexual component and it's this that I wish to comment on here, with reference to what are known in Japan as the herbivore men. 

The problem with revolutions, says Baudrillard, is that they never turn out as expected or as hoped - and this includes the so-called sexual revolution. By freeing sex from its containment within bodies and their organs and thereby allowing it to enter into a state of pure circulation and incessant commutation, it has become increasingly subject to indeterminacy and virtual indifference (in all senses of the word).  

Thus, rather than the promised utopia dreamed of by the priests of love who thought they could fuck their way into the future, we witness a gradual fading away of sexual beings, of men and women, of what we had mistakenly believed to be natural desire, and even of biological function. And we end up with asexual beings and celibate grass-eaters, who have little or no interest in dating, marrying, and reproducing (if pushed, they might express an interest in cloning or parthenogenesis).

And so to the land of the rising sun ...      

Sōshoku danshi is a term coined by the writer Maki Fukasawa to describe those young men who express no wish for a conventional love life, or, indeed, to struggle in the macho world of business. Recent surveys conducted amongst single Japanese males in their twenties and thirties found that two-thirds were happy to be considered herbivores (a figure large enough to seriously concern a government which was already worried about falling birth rates).

According to Fukasawa, such men are not entirely sexless, but they have a non-assertive and casual attitude towards pleasures of the flesh; many choose to have exclusively on-line relations, for example, or to masturbate with pornography; others enjoy the company of actual women, but prefer loving friendships that are free from sexual imperatives and conjugal duties.

Of course, this trend is observable in many advanced societies and is not exclusively a Japanese phenomenon; who hasn't inwardly groaned on occasion with displeasure and boredom at the thought of having to groan with sexual pleasure and excitement; what man (or woman for that matter) hasn't resented the pressure to perform and conform to gender stereotypes?

After the orgy, one just wants to chat over coffee, go for a stroll in the park, order a salad, or roll over and sleep ...

Notes

* For me, Manet's picture provides evidence that there have always been young dandies more interested in discussing fashion and philosophy, oblivious to the appeal of naked female flesh. Arguably, the rather bored young woman peers out of the canvas in the hope of catching the eye of a carnivore.   

** See: Jean Baudrillard, 'After the Orgy', in The Transparency of Evil, trans. James Benedict, (Verso, 1993). 

This post was suggested by Katxu, to whom I'm grateful.

Simon Schama Versus Rod Liddle

A furious Simon Schama finger-points at Rod Liddle on BBC's Question Time 

(15 Oct 2015) and tells him to stick to writing his hack journalism 

and turn his "suburban face from the plight of the miserable". 

I've no reason to dislike the historian and art critic Simon Schama: he's clever, good-looking, cosmopolitan, and compassionate; he's even born on the same day as me (13 Feb). But in his recent clash on the BBC's Question Time with Rod Liddle, Schama did reveal a side of himself that is perhaps not quite so admirable or attractive; a proneness to dismiss those who don't share his moral and sentimental humanism on the subject of Syrian refugees as suburban.  

It is, of course, a term of disparagement with a long and unedifying history amongst English intellectuals; one that is loaded with class contempt for those upon whom they look down and regard as crude, common, and narrow-minded.

And so, whilst I'm perfectly happy for Schama to discuss the European migrant crisis with feeling, he's wrong (and disingenuous) to characterize those who prefer to address the issue as an urgent political problem that requires a practical solution which considers the needs not only of the displaced, but of the native populations asked to absorb a huge influx of people foreign in language, culture and tradition, as provincial and uncaring, or in some way prejudiced. 

Indeed, one is tempted to remind Professor Schama of what he said a few years ago when defending Israel's right to take military action against Hezbollah (including the bombing of cities in Lebanon): "Of course the spectacle and suffering makes us grieve. Who wouldn't grieve? But it's not enough to do that. We've got to understand."

- This Week, BBC One, 24 July 2006

Precisely! And that requires a cool head and what might seem to those who can afford to enjoy the indulgence of tears, a certain hardness of heart.              

Note: those interested in seeing the Question Time clash between Mssrs. Schama and Liddle (as well as reading the latter's take on it in his blog for The Spectator) should click here.

Oh Bondage Up Yours! (A Slice of Punk Nostalgia)

A model for Vivienne Westwood wearing an Exhibition Tartan Bondage jacket 

and Lyon Tartan Bondage trousers (Anglomania, A/W 2015)

viviennewestood.com 

I'm not entirely convinced by the Nietzschean notion of eternal recurrence, but it's certainly true to say that within the fabulous world of fashion everything comes around again; yesterday's daring new looks so outmoded today will be marketed as avant-garde all over again tomorrow. 

Even designers who think of themselves as radical and revolutionary, invariably return to their old designs and recycle ideas. So it is, for example, that Vivienne Westwood is once again flogging her tartan bondage lines first seen all those years ago at Seditionaries. 

Of course, ripping garments out of their cultural and historical context robs them of their fetishistic power and subversive potential; transforming clothes for heroes into items of fancy dress for those who long for a past they didn't experience, or those who vainly wish to relive their youth. 

But, well, there you go: even ageing punks are prone to nostalgia and a certain wistfulness; just like the old rockers and hippies before them whom they so scorned. It's nothing to be proud of, but nothing to really feel so ashamed of either. 

Indeed, when I saw one of the models on Westwood's website wearing her mismatched tartan bondage jacket and trousers, even I couldn't help remembering with a certain poignant joy those years gone by when I would hobble around the streets of Soho still thinking of myself as a sex pistol and still fiercely loyal to Malcolm and his project of pop-cultural provocation:

Portrait of the artist as a young punk (1985) 

Sing if You're Glad to be Grey (On the Desire for the Neutral)

Last night, at dinner, a woman told me I was a colourful character. She meant it as a compliment (I assume), but if there's one thing I don't wish to be it's a character. 

People who have character, don't need to be characters; in the same way that people who have a certain vital intensity don't need to be seen to be larger than life. Characters, and individuals who are larger than life, are invariably just dullards behaving in a loud and boorish manner; the sort of people I try to avoid. 

As for being colourful, even that's something I find troublesome. These days, I aim for a certain achromatic neutrality or greyness and to be a man without qualities, like the mathematician Ulrich, in Robert Musil's (appropriately unfinished) novel; ambivalent, indifferent, lacking any essential self and viewing the world in all its vulgar excess of colour and violent enthusiasm with cool analytical passivity.

Those of a philosophical disposition have always appreciated that grey is the most beautiful - for most noble - of colours. During the Renaissance, it played an important role in fashion and art; Rembrandt, for example, had a palette made up almost entirely of complex shades of grey. 

Those who associate grey with boredom and conformity and perceive only an absence of colour, lack sophistication and subtlety. Let them wear their blues and browns in order to display their character; men in the know and men of style still favour a grey suit (light in summer, dark in winter) and understand like Roland Barthes that it is the Neutral alone which escapes and deconstructs the black-and-white binaries that structure meaning and produce the arrogance of certainty in Western thought and discourse.