Grayling on Wittgenstein.

I finally read A.C. Grayling's book on Wittgenstein. Having heard rumors about it, my expectations were not too high. Grayling's presentation of Wittgenstein's thinking is never truly deep. But as far as a very short introduction goes, his explanations of the private language argument, rule-following and so on are detailed enough. However, there is an undercurrent of hostility skepticism running through the book, which surfaces when Grayling, on the concluding pages, launches a series of objections to "Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and his method of doing it" (p. 132). I could make this a short blog post by simply professing my agreement with this rather sour review on Amazon, but I will elaborate a little on it.

Wittgenstein's philosophy is not beyond criticism, of course, but Grayling's critiques seem to grow out of a misunderstanding of that philosophy.

[P]hilosophy is in Wittgenstein's view a therapy; the point is to dissolve error, not to build explanatory systems. The style is accordingly tailored to the intention. It is vatic, oracular; it consists in short remarks intended to remedy, remind, disabuse. This gives the later writings a patchwork appearance. Often the connection between remarks are unclear. There is a superabundance of metaphor and parable; there are hints, rhetorical questions, pregnant hyphenations; there is a great deal of repetition....Wittgenstein's style is expressly designed to promote his therapeutic objective against the 'error' of theorizing (p. 132).

As a description of Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and his method of doing it, this isn't too off. But readers are, according to Grayling, best advised to ignore these aspects of Wittgenstein's thinking. His programmatic remarks about philosophy, his "own official avowals about therapy and the avoidance of theory" (p. 133) are deceptive. Wittgenstein denies that his writings contain systematically expressible theories, "[but] indeed they do" (p. viii). A careful examination of his scattered remarks will uncover a philosophical theory of meaning and language with "an identifiable structure and content, even if neither, in their turn are as transparently stated and as fully spelled out as they might be" (p. 133). This conclusion, however, is possible only by doing substantial violence to Wittgenstein's texts. But this is a consequence Grayling is ready to accept, as he finds no merit in Wittgenstein's writings as such: they fail in a major philosophical duty: "namely, to be clear" (p. 133). Wittgenstein's organization of his thoughts is obscuring rather than illuminating their philosophical content. Not only are his writings summarizable "but in positive need of summary" (p. viii).

There is one way of taking this as a charitable interpretation of Wittgenstein. When someone rambles, one should do one's best to make out what he is rambling about. From a different perspective, however, this is entirely misplaced charity. Taking Wittgenstein seriously as a philosopher, requires taking his writings and the conception of philosophy they express seriously too. Language sometimes confuses us. Often we react by searching for order in the complexity. But this is confused too. Order is not what we need (nor is it to be found). The solution is getting an overview. Hence, Wittgenstein's writings are designed to ease the grip this and other deep-rooted philosophical ideas have on our thinking about language and the world, not by replacing these ideas with new ones, but rather by making their status as metaphysical ideas perspicuous to us. If we think there must be something common to everything called "games", or else they would not all have the same name, Wittgenstein's suggestion is: Don't think, but look! (PI, 66) When philosophers use a word -- "knowledge", "being", "object", "I", "proposition", "name" -- and try to grasp the essence of the thing, he encourages us instead to ask if the word ever actually used in this way (PI, 116). When our thinking ties itself up in philosophical knots, what we need is not another theory, for theorizing is often what gets us into trouble in the first place, what we need are methods for untying these knots.

Hans Sluga (whose latest Wittgenstein book I also read this summer) agrees with many of Grayling's descriptions of Wittgenstein's writings. But he makes something entirely different of them:

Wittgenstein covers an exceptionally wide range of philosophcal and quasi-philosophical matters and ... he manages to speak about them with an unusual freshness, in a precise and stylish language, often with the help of surprising images and metaphors. This has suggested to ... a group of readers that what is of greatest interest in Wittgenstein's work is the manner in which he engages with philosophical questions. On this view, Wittgenstein teaches us above all some valuable methodological lessons (p. 16).

At one point, Grayling calls this "a neat apology for obscurity". Further down the same page, however, he suggests:

Perhaps the value of Wittgenstein's work lies as much in its poetry, and therefore its suggestiveness, as in its substance. There is no doubt that in this respect Wittgenstein's work has stimulated insights and fresh perspectives, especially in philosophical psychology, which have helped to advance thought about these matters (p. 133).

At first blush there seems to be a tension here. If Wittgenstein has helped advancing thought, he has done so by helping us see our thinking afresh. Descartes' cogito argument, for instance, troubled Western philosophers for centuries. How could we possibly break out of the prison of our own minds? The so called private language argument doesn't solve this problem, but if it convinces us that the question is confused, the argument might dissolve the problem for us. By curing us from confused thinking, a successful Wittgensteinian "therapy session", one might argue, results in the exact opposite of obscurity. But Grayling doesn't think so. On his view, philosophy (unlike therapy) is not simply combatting wrong perspectives on things, but also constructing explanatory thought-systems. And it is of course true that Wittgenstein's writings seem obscure when read as attempts to rise to these demands. However, as I have argued, I believe Grayling is wrong in assuming that Wittgenstein (contrary to everything he writes) is trying to answer to these demands.

Here I am not arguing that all philosophy should be conducted in the manner of Wittgenstein (in a sense that would be impossible: if we were never tempted to theorize, "therapeutic" philosophizing would be superfluous too). What I can offer, though, is an example of how such philosophizing might work. Grayling writes that...

... it is a mistake to suppose that reminding ourselves of the main uses of words like 'good' and 'true' is enough, by itself, to settle any questions we might have about the meaning of those terms. Indeed, it is notoriously the case that question about goodness and truth, which are paradigmatically large philosophical questions, cannot be resolved simply by noting the ways 'good' and 'true' are as a matter of fact used in common parlance -- that is, in the languagegames in which they typically occur. It would seem to be an implication of Wittgenstein's views that if we 'remind' ourselves of these uses, philosophical puzzlement about goodness and truth will vanish. This is far from being so (p. 115).

When someone asks what "good" means, a Wittgensteinian would answer with a question: "What particular use of the word 'good' are you thinking about?" The meaning of "good" depends on whether you are thinking of a good taste, a good night's sleep, a good footballer, a good deed, or a good person. Forcing you to reflect harder on what you meant, this challenge might convince you that your initial question was confused. On the other hand, this needn't work, because you might, as Grayling suggests, just as well rephrase you question: "Not 'good' used in a particular way, but goodness as such." This, of course, is the kind of philosophical puzzlement Wittgenstein's "therapeutic method" is designed to combat. The fact that such reminders don't always work certainly is no proof that Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy and his manner of doing it is wrong. It only proves that his therapy doesn't always work. And there is no problem with that. Because Wittgenstein never said, as Grayling has him saying, that reminders about ordinary language use by themselves could make philosophical puzzlements go away. In addition one needs the will to receive these reminders in the right spirit. Philosophy, on Wittgenstein's account, is a fight against one's own temptation to view things in a certain way. It is not a given how that fight will end.

Aeroporto di Fiumicino. Et mulig møte.

- Pappa, hvem var det du møtte?
Jeg forsto ikke hva hun mente, datteren min. Vi satt under solseilet på taket av feriehuset i Italia. Spørsmålet kom som rett ut av det blå.
- Nei, hvem tenker du på? Når da?
- På flyplassen.
Fremdeles uklart. Jeg møtte ingen på flyplassen det jeg kunne huske, ingen jeg visste hvem var i alle fall. Mente hun den damen i informasjonsskranken, hun som hadde vist oss veien til bussen?
- Nei, han mannen, han med alle politimennene.
- Åh, han, sa jeg. - Det var en berømt fotballspiller, men jeg møtte ham vel egentlig ikke. Jeg så ham på flyplassen. Han så jo ikke meg, og vi sa ingenting til hverandre, så det var egentlig ikke noe møte å snakke om.

Mange hadde kanskje ønsket å kunne skryte av å ha møtt, for eksempel, Lionel Messi på en flyplass, men det er fordi "møte" signaliserer en sosial sammenkomst av betydning. I mitt tilfelle sto jeg i en krok og passet koffertene da denne berømtheten, omringet av sju bevæpnete politimenn, småløp forbi meg. Jeg kan skryte (hvis det er skryte jeg vil) av å ha sett ham, at han passerte like forbi meg, eller at jeg kunne kjenne lukten av ham ... eller, nei ..., men jeg kunne ha skrytt av at jeg kunne ha tatt på ham hvis jeg bare ville (skjønt dette hadde utelukkende være en antydning om avstanden mellom oss -- på ett tidspunkt var han kun én meter unna!! -- og ingen beskrivelse av den reelle situasjonen, for hadde jeg gjort det minste forsøk på beføling hadde lovens lange og mange armer satt en kontant stopper for det -- og dessuten hvilken interesse skulle jeg ha av å ta på vedkommende?), men jeg kan på ingen måte si at jeg har møtt ham. Dette betyr ikke at andre umulig kunne se misunnelige på meg og tenke at jeg har møtt Lionel Messi, eller at andre, under lignende omstendigheter, vil kunne si at de har "møtt" Michael Jackson, Barack Obama eller Jesus. Det betyr heller ikke at jeg mener at folk tar feil om de på denne måten forsøker å uttrykke hvilken betydning en slik hendelse har hatt for dem. Det betyr bare at det for min del kreves det en viss kontakt -- ikke bare fysisk nærhet, ikke bare fysisk kontakt heller, men en viss interaksjon -- før jeg vil snakke om "et møte". (Jeg har ingen definisjon å by på, men er det ikke merkelig å si at jeg har møtt noen som aldri har møtt meg?) Antagelig går det en slags nedre grense nettopp ved det gjensidige blikket. Vi snakker jo om blikkontakt: Vi kan møte noens blikk, så hvorfor ikke snakke om et "blikkmøte"?

Jeg kom til å tenke på dette da jeg i dag leste følgende anektode i et essay av Asbjørn Aarnes:

En lærer i folkeskolen gav elevene en stiloppgave: Fortell om et dyr du har møtt. Tolv-trettenåringene stod og lurte en stund: Møter man dyr? Er det ikke bare mennesker man møter? En tenksom liten kar kom frem til læreren med et spørsmål: "Jeg så engang en hjort som kom svømmende mot meg over et vann. Hjorten så på meg, det så jeg. Kan jeg da si at jeg møtte ham?""Ja," sa læreren, "så du den i øynene, da kan du si at du møtte hjorten." (Har fjellet ansikt? Naturfilosofiske essays. s 30-31)

(Hei igjen, forresten. Jeg har vært lenge borte. Jeg legger skylden på ferietid og at jeg har vært opptatt med andre skriverier. Forhåpentligvis vil bloggingen ta seg opp igjen utover høsten.)

What I Draw from Drawing.

As you may have noticed, lately I have posted some of my own drawings on this blog. (I have done this once or twice before, even linked to my never-to-be-completed web page my "art".) Even though this is little more than showing off, or making a fool of myself, as the case may be, I have discovered that I enjoy seeing my doodles out there, so I may continue submitting sketches and drawings to my regular posts in the future.

What then do I draw from drawing? I am not sure, exactly, apart from the fact that I love doing it. But give me a little time, and I should be able to come up with some intellectually more respectable reasons for yielding to my lust. Drawing clearly has to do with perception. Drawing is mostly seeing correctly. When I am sketching, especially when drawing from life, I am concentrating on perceiving only what I perceive, not what is supposedly there. This exercise may have some spill-over effect to my other interests. Drawing sometimes feels like fighting certain temptations, not unlike doing philosophy. Wittgenstein's warning, "Don't think, but look!" (PI 66) is just as useful to an artist as it is for the philosopher. Don't think that this a hand, and that hands have five fingers on them, but look -- study the shape of the object in front of you, how does it appear from this particular perspective, don't draw what is hidden from view, how many fingers do you actually see, and so on. Drawing, therefore, is learning to see. You learn to trust your own eyes -- not blindly(!), but because you know you have made your vision more reliable through hours of concentrated practice. Kids running around can of course be disturbing. This kind of disturbance, however annoying it may be, is not really why concentration is essential to drawing, however. I am thinking more of silencing my own voice than shutting out those around me. Again, there is a similarity with philosophizing. Drawing too, some say, is a quest for understanding. This is often true, I think -- and as with philosophical understanding what is required is not so much analyzing tools and a talent for categorization as a simple will to listen. A good drawing session has the form of a conversation. The draughtsman too has things to say, obviously, but there is always the danger of becoming a talkative know-it-all who doesn't take other opinions seriously. Sometimes we scrutinize someone's ideas in search for symptoms. This might result in a diagnosis. That is what understanding someone means in psychiatry. But this is not conversing. The understanding of someone that might come from a genuine conversation, i.e. when we are tuned in to each other the right way, is more akin to becoming familiar with each other, getting, as we say, to know that other person. When drawing, particularly when drawing from life, I am, in similar fashion and for similar reasons, trying to calm down my own voice, telling me this and that about whatever I am looking at, in order not to interrupt the object in front of me. Another name for this efferent concentration, the other-directed concentration I am aspiring to when drawing from life, is attention. "Attention," according to Simone Weil, "is the rarest and purest form of generosity." So there you are. Yielding to a lust contributes to my virtuousness!

Enough rambling!

This will never become an art blog, let alone a blog devoted to investigations of the act of art making, because, as you will appreciate by now, I have a hard time expressing (in understandable terms) what drawing is, what it means to me and what one can learn by it. One who manages to just that is John Berger. He truly knows what he is talking about, both as an artist and as an art historian, and his writings are always eloquent and a pleasure to read. In particular I have enjoyed, obviously, Berger on Drawing. His book About Looking, which is less devoted to drawing, but discusses photography, perception and art in more general terms, is also inspiring -- and it opens with the, by now, classic essay "Why Look at Animals". Ways of Seeing, first published in 1972, has been highly influential in that it focuses on, and to some extent has altered, how we look at pictures. I have yet to read Bento's Sketchbook, with the subtitle "How does the impulse to draw something begin?", but as it promises reflections on sketching soaked with philosophy, Baruch (or Bento) Spinoza's in particular, the book sounds almost too good to be true: "Bento's Sketchbook is an exploration of the practice of drawing, as well as a meditation on how we perceive and seek to explore our ever-changing relationship with the world around us."

There is any number of good how to-books out there, books that teach you different techniques, what pencils and brushes to use, how to achieve certain effects and so on; but the best book I know of that aspires to teach people to use their eyes, is Betty Edwards' book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. I bought my copy on a visit to the US many years ago, and made good use of it. This is very much an anyone-can-learn-how-to-draw-properly kind of book. Like learning how to read, it doesn't require any special gift, nor is there any mystery about it -- it is just a matter of learning to do certain things the right way. As the title suggests, the book is based on some theory about the two brain hemispheres having different capabilities, one side specializing in linguistic tasks, the other in visual-spatial. Edwards makes claims to the effect that the linguistic side is too dominating, and that this is what needs fighting if we are to learn how to draw anything but stylized images of things. I don't know how well supported these theories are, and frankly it doesn't matter. Who cares whether the theory is true or false, so long as the treatment works? I always thought the theoretical parts of the book unnecessary. You do not need to tell a child anything about its brain for the reading exercises work. In Norwegian the book is titled Å tegne er å se, which translates as "Drawing is seeing", and that is quite enough for me.

Here is a youtube video based on the book:

Bukspretting som forskningsmetode?

I 1986 ble en internasjonal avtale mot kommersiell hvalfangst undertegnet. Avtalen åpner for begrenset fangst til vitenskapelige formål. Siden avtalen trådte i kraft har Japan fanget mer enn 10.000 hval i havet sør for Australia. Alt kjøtt selges på det åpne markedet i Japan. På dette grunnlaget trekker Australia i disse dager Japan for retten. "We have taken this case because we believe the whaling being done by Japan is blatantly commercial whaling and is not for any scientific purpose. It is in breach of the international convention," forklarer Bill Campbell, en australsk sakfører ved domstolen, som mer enn antyder at Japan kun har iført sine hvalfangere rene hvite labfrakker. John Frizell fra Greenpeace legger til at "All necessary research on these whales can be done by non-lethal means." Det er muligens en overdrivelse, for det hender jo at forskere "må" begå drap i forskningens navn, men som primær forskningsmetode virker dette nokså suspekt, også på en lekmann som meg. Er man interesert i å lære disse dyrene å kjenne, hvordan de lever sine liv, hvor de gyter (heter det "gyting" hos hvaler?) og så videre, må man vel kunne studere dette uten å ta livet av dem? Japan på sin side avviser alle anklager om at forskningen skulle være et skalkeskjul for kommersielle interesser, og bedyrer at fangsten gir forskerne viktig informasjon. "Japan's whaling activities are conducted purely to enhance science for conservation and sustainable use, and we'll make our case based on those facts," forklarer en anonymisert kilde ved utenriksdepartementet i Tokyo.

Her er et skudd fra hoften. Hvis det ultimate målet med forskningsfangsten virkelig er å forhindre overbeskatning og utrydding av artene, må kanskje anbefalingen forskerne lander på bli at denne typen forskning opphører. Riktignok fanger Japan "bare" tusen hval i året, hvilket ikke betyr allverden, men australske myndigheter har regnet ut at dersom alle undertegnende nasjoner var like ivrige på forskningsfronten, hadde mer enn 83.000 hval måttet bøte med livet årlig bare i Sørishavet, og det hadde vært en katastrofe for bestandene.

[Norge har for øvrig aldri signert denne avtalen og fanger hval på samme måte som alltid, iført hvalfangerutstyr.]

Dom i saken faller først om noen uker.

I mellomtiden, her er noen flere saker jeg har underholdt elevene mine med.

Picture Book.

As friends of this blog will have noticed, lately I haven't been blogging as much as I once used to. One reason is that I have been trying to get some serious philosophy done. More importantly, though, I have been busy working at the local school. Work is fun, but, because I have mainly spent time with the first graders, quite exhausting too. After school, most kids from first through third (and some from forth and fifth) grade attend the school's daycare centre. Here I get to help them do their homework, chat with them, play football, and philosophize too; but what I enjoy most of all is sitting down with these kids doodling. Many of the kids have never known grown ups to draw before and find this inspiring. It is rewarding for me too. Playing with pencil and crayons alongside a bunch of ten and twelve year olds with a massive hang up on the grotesque, makes my imagination venture into unknown territory.

Having no philosophy to show for the past month, I thought I could at least offer my readers proofs that I haven't abandoned them out of simple laziness. So here are a few of the drawings from these few weeks.

But it's not all about monsters and zombies. Kids also love small fury animals...

...and goofy clowns.

Finally, here's a picture of some of my fellow draftsmen watching a movie on a rainy day.

In a most delightful way.

Ole Martin Moen forsvarer hedonismen i Morgenbladet:

For å forstå det må man se på hva slags problem hedonismen forsøker å løse. Spørsmålet jeg stiller er hvilke ting i livet som er verdifulle i seg selv, og ikke bare som middel henimot videre mål. Om man undersøker de andre tingene filosofer foreslår som verdifulle, som kunnskap, kjærlighet og så videre, kan man vise at disse verdiene har én ting til felles, de er middel til å oppnå et nytelsesfullt liv. Å oppnå nytelse og unngå smerte er det eneste som er godt i seg selv.

Journalisten stiller et naturlig oppfølgingsspørsmål om rusmidler og smertestillende medikamenter. Finnes det noen kobling mellom Moens hedonisme og hans liberale holdning til narkotika? Moen tror ikke det:

Jeg har vært for legalisering hele tiden. Og hedonister må være åpne for at dersom vi kan få en intens lykkeopplevelse for eksempel av narkotika, kan man ikke automatisk avvise det som lite verdifullt. Vi bør selvfølgelig være bekymret for bivirkninger, men dersom vi kunne tenke oss at det fantes rusmidler som ga intens lykkefølelse uten bivirkninger, så var det bare å kjøre på.

Riktignok ser han ett potensielt problem her. "Som hedonist vil jeg gjerne at verden skal bestå, og om alle er ruset hele tiden, kan det være at vår verden faller sammen, så det er kanskje ikke å anbefale." Men hvis vi forestilte oss en lykkepille, fullstendig fri for bivirkninger, som heller ikke ga noen rus, bare endret den kjemiske væskebalansen i hjernen og ellers lot alt være som før, da var det kanskje bare å kjøre på? Her er det mange uklarheter. Jeg vet ikke engang om et slikt medikament er tenkelig. For dersom væskebalansen i hjernen endres, så må vel det påvirke mange andre ting også? "Den lykkeliges verden er," med Wittgensteins ord, "en annen enn den ulykkeliges." (Tractatus §6.43) Verden og tilværelsen ser mye lysere ut for den som er lykkelig, for eksempel. Full av lykkepiller ser vi utfordringer der vi før så problemer. Dette -- altså at vi tar ting på en mer positiv måte -- kan neppe kalles en bivirkning av at hjernekjemien endres, men er nettopp hva vi håper å oppnå med en slik pille. Men hva skal vi si når lykkepillen, fordi den fyller oss med en følelse av lykke, påvirker måten vi gjør ting på? Ofte kan man jo se kvalitetsforskjeller på arbeid utført med glede og gledesløst pliktarbeid. "Tilsiktet virkning" kan det ikke være snakk om her: kvalitativt annerledes håndverk kan ganske enkelt ikke være målet med et medikament. Bør vi oppfatte slike konsekvenser som bivirkninger av pillebruken eller bør vi betrakte dem som ringvirkninger? Hva vi faller ned på er langt på vei et spørsmål om språklige preferanser. Min egen språkfølelse tilsier at "ringvirkning" passer best i de tilfellene der konsekvensene er til det bedre. Der lykkefølelsen, som hos manisk-depresive i deres maniske faser, resulterer i ukritisk arbeidseufori og ditto resultat, er jeg (fordi "bivirkning" i mine ører låter negativt) mer åpen for å snakke om "bivirkninger" av pillebruken (skjønt i en ikke-medisinsk betydning av ordet). I og med at skillelinjene mellom tilsiktet virkning, bivirkninger og ringvirkninger ofte er vanskelige å trekke opp, er det heller ikke klart hva Moen mener når han tenker seg "rusmidler som [gir] intens lykkefølelse uten bivirkninger". Formodentlig tenker han på rusmidler uten avhengighet og uten psykiske og somatiske skader.

En person med dårlig selvbilde vil naturligvis ønske å kunne komme på bedre tanker, ønske å kunne forandre negative tanker og følelser til positive. Jeg vet ikke hva Moen mener med "automatikk", men jeg er enig i at, dersom dette kan oppnås ved bruk av narkotika, "kan man ikke automatisk avvise det som lite verdifullt". Dette gjelder ikke bare for hedonister. I visse tilfeller vil det være uproblematisk å svelge en pille som ved et trylleslag kan kaste lys over tilværelsen. Det springende punktet er kanskje hva det dårlige selvbildet handler om, om det er berettiget eller ei, for eksempel. Det er forskjell på et tvers gjennom hederlig og på alle måter godt menneske som sliter med depresjoner, og en person som bebreider seg selv fordi han rett og slett prioriterer feil og ikke strekker til. Negative tanker og følelser er ikke alltid et onde. Noen ganger er negative tanker bare negative og/eller symptomer på sykelig depresjon. Andre ganger er negative tanker og følelser på sin plass fordi de forteller oss noe viktig om virkeligheten. Moen diskuterer ikke dette viktige perspektivet. Ta en far som tilbringer hele dagen på kontoret og knapt ser ungene sine. En lykkepille vil muligens kunne fjerne den dårlige samvittigheten. Hvis pillen ikke er avhengighetsskapende, bør han da benytte muligheten? Hvis egen lykkefølelse er alt som betyr noe, skulle det være alt i orden. Det finnes vulgær-hedonister som tenker i den retningen. Det gjør ikke Moen: "Det er ingenting i hedonismen som tilsier at det må være egen lykke man skal strebe mot. Hedonisme er en teori om hva som er godt. Det videre spørsmålet om hvem sitt gode man bør fremme, er et annet spørsmål." At pappa sitter glad og fornøyd med seg selv på kontoret bøter jo ikke på ungenes savn. Men sett at også kone og barn -- og alle andre impliserte parter -- gikk på slike (harmløse) piller, slik at de ikke savnet far i huset, men tvert imot gikk omkring med en intens lykkefølelse. Var det da bare å kjøre på? Finnes det resurser innenfor rammene av hedonismen til å se noe problem med det?

Dreaded analogy...not so fast.

Here is Coetzee with another take on the dreaded analogy between animal cruelty and the Holocaust, this time in his own voice:

The transformation of animals into production units dates back to the late nineteenth century, and since that time we have already had one warning on the grandest scale that there is something deeply, cosmically wrong with regarding and treating fellow beings as mere units of any kind. This warning came to us so loud and clear that it you would have thought it was impossible to ignore it. It came when in the middle of the twentieth century a group of powerful men in Germany had the bright idea of adapting the methods of the industrial stockyard, as pioneered and perfected in Chicago, to the slaughter – or what they preferred to call the processing – of human beings.

Of course we cried out in horror when we found out about this. We cried: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like cattle! If we had only known beforehand! But our cry should more accurately have been: What a terrible crime, to treat human beings like units in an industrial process! And that cry should have had a postscript: What a terrible crime, come to think of it, to treat any living being like a unit in an industrial process!

Whether you accept this argument or not depends, at least, on whether you accept the premise that human beings and animals are similar in morally significant ways. (You may admit all the empirical similarities Coetzee draws on even if you don’t, but in that case you are likely to dismiss the moral analogy he draws on the back of these similarities as a non sequitur.) If you accept something along the line of Peter Singer’s idea of the expanding circle of moral concern, then you might concur that treating any living creature as a production unit is similar to treating human beings like that. The moral power of the analogy would presumably weaken as you move further and further away from origo, but as long as you don't overstep the outer boundaries of the circle, it won't loose all power. Inside the circle of moral concern, you can always describe such treatment as a violation against our common creatureliness, or something to that effect. I am prepared to say things like that myself. Though, I am not sure exactly what saying this amounts to. (Nor am I, for that matter, certain where to draw the periphery line.) But it surely entails that no living creature can be treated any way we please. However, the Nazis were not simply refusing certain living beings admission to our community of fellow creatures, they were denying certain human beings admission to our idea of a common humanity too; and that makes a (moral) difference, doesn’t it? On the other hand, one could, as Matthew Pianalto points out, suggest that this question is nothing but further evidence of our inherit speciesism.

Other important differences between factory farming and the Holocaust are also too often overlooked by people who are horror-struck by undeniable similarities. The Nazi crimes were not “merely” to treat living beings as units in an industrial process (nor was it merely to treat human beings this way); the aim of the Nazi’s was to exterminate certain human beings, to eliminate the Jews and to wipe the Earth clean of them. In this respect the (admittedly factory-like) Holocaust didn't much resemble factory farming. Extermination camps were launched as the final solution to the Jew problem. With the problem finally solved, the murders would have stopped too simply because there would have been no one left alive. The industrial stockyard aims at something altogether different: it aims for eternity. Factory farming is a perpetual enterprise, where animals are ceaselessly being brought into the world for the purpose of being killed, to paraphrase Elizabeth Costello. I agree with her that this is a significant difference (though I am not sure I follow her when she claims that factory farming therefore dwarfs any evil the Third Reich was capable of). The extermination camps and the industrial stockyard are strikingly similar in some respects -- in that they employ many of the same methods, for instance --, but the extermination camps were, unlike the modern stockyard, fueled by hatred for their victims and aiming for their annihilation. In this respect the Holocaust was more analogous to a merciless war on vermin than to the merciless meat industry.

Many people disagree with this “dreaded analogy” because (as I have pointed out in the preceding paragraphs) this is far from a perfect analogy; but then again, there is no such thing as a perfect analogy. A perfect analogy simply wouldn’t be an analogy at all. Finding differences doesn’t necessarily undermine the possibility of connecting the dots (that depends on the number and the character of the differences one is talking about). On the contrary, a non-perfect fit is a prerequisite for talking about an analogy between two subjects at all.

"The reasons why the Allies fought against Germany were complex, but many people believe rightly that the Holocaust itself would have proved sufficient reason," Raimond Gaita has written, but “no one can seriously wish to respond, to the slaughter of animals as though it justified taking up arms against farmers, butchers and people who work in abattoirs.” To this I would like to say: in one sense yes, maybe, but in another sense no. "Fighting" is of course a complex term with many applications. Hence there are numerous ways of fighting an evil. It may be true that no one is prepared to shoot and kill farmers and butchers (though, as I pointed out here, whatever truth there is in this, it is hardly of the empirical kind), but many people do walk the streets daily in protest against what butchers and farmers are doing; they write about it, talk about it; they refuse to be accomplices in the wrongdoings by boycotting their products, and try to convince others to follow their lead. Many people would be very relieved (though, perhaps not as relieved as they were when the Holocaust ended (but, then again, how to compare?)) if the horrific treatment of animals that Coetzee describes were to come to an abrupt end. Boycotting and walking the streets in protest is, of course, not the same as taking up arms, but may still be an analogous reaction.

What troubles me with expressions like “animal holocaust” or “eternal Treblinka” is not that one rhetorically bridges a gap between two kinds of horror, but, rather, that one steps too quickly from one to the other as if there were no gap there at all. Stuart Rachels does so with this one-liner. Seemingly blind to all the important differences, such rhetorical moves strike me as both insensitive and unthinking. That being said, I do not think it is impossible to connect the two phenomena in reasonable and non-offensive ways. Consider this quote by Wittgenstien:

Supposing you meet someone in the street and he tells you he has lost his greatest friend, in a voice extremely expressive of his emotion. You might say: "It was extraordinarily beautiful, the way he expressed himself." Supposing you then asked: "What similarity has my admiring this person with my eating vanilla ice and liking it?" To compare them seems almost disgusting. (But you can connect them by intermediate cases.) (Lectures on Aesthetics, II, §4)

Is this analogous (!) to our own question? I suggest that it might be. People may of course be divided over how many intermediate steps one needs (and what steps they must be) in order to make the connection, but if one can, through sensitive employment of intermediate cases, connect one's delight in someone's expression of sorrow with one's delight in eating vanilla ice cream, then, I believe, one can also, as Coetzee (to my mind not quite successfully) attempts to do, namely to draw the connecting line from people's horror in face of the Holocaust (the murdering of human beings on an industrial scale in order to get rid of them) to his own horror in face of modern food industry, where billions upon billions of living beings are being turned into production units in order to be slaughtered and used for food, without behaving disgustingly.