No Future?

Though the story is set in the final days before the world ends, Noah opens like a typical post-apocalyptic film. Nature is nothing but pebbles and rocks, and the human race in an equally sorry condition. In their own eyes they still are images of the divine creator; in reality the human interior is more like the spitting image of the foul surroundings. Since the eviction from Paradise, the children of Adam and Eve have turned into savages, killing and looting. Only one tribe has preserved some purity. Noah and his family live alone. Their goodness is expressed by their care for the natural world. Seth, captivated by its beauty, plucks a solitary flower for his father to see; and though he shares his son's wonder, Noah (with a mien we clearly are supposed to interpret as expressing a reverence for God's creation) explains how Seth now has killed the flower. Their alienation from the rest of humanity is also marked by the fact that they do not eat flesh. Noah's sons are stupefied when learning that humans hunt animals for food.

Noah contains long (in my mind too long, and boring) action scenes. The dialogues are strikingly artificial. The acting is often bad. At one level, this is a not very well-made survival movie (as a guide to the biblical story, it is worse still). Nevertheless, I found Noah interesting for its obvious concerns with environmental issues. The barren landscape is more than a mere mirror or a symbol of the moral landscape of the human soul. Nature's deplorable state is due to human folly. Having interpreted the command to "fill the earth and subdue it" as a carte blanche for exploitation (a clear misunderstanding, because God is obviously pissed-off by it), the humans have transformed the once lush Garden of Eden into a desert. When a now extinct animal is hunted and killed, the thematic backdrop of the movie suggests to the viewer that this is when and how this species went extinct.

When Noah starts preparing for the flood to come while being ridiculed by his neighbours, this is certainly true to the biblical story, but it is also an unambiguous statement about similar attempts today to undermine the environmental whistle-blowers. The movie leaves no one in doubt about who's right and who's wrong: all scepticism is literally drowned when the rain starts pouring down.

Other questions raised are left unanswered. Much of the drama revolves around Man's future existence. On this issue, the Bible is quite clear. When God commands Noah to "[bring] out every kind of living creature that is with you--the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground--so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number on it," (Gen 8:17) Noah, reasonably, never suspects that the notion of "living creature" might exclude human beings. In the biblical story, humanity too is due for a fresh start. But in the movie God doesn't speak so articulate. In fact, apart from a few miraculous incidents, there are no hints of His presence at all. The messages Noah receives all have the form of visions, and to Noah these visions suggest that human beings have no place in God's future plans. Hence, Noah takes care to collect two of every animal, but strictly forbids his own sons to procreate. (Put in the words of some extreme environmentalists, he is convinced that humanity is a cancer that must be cut out for nature to survive.) This alienates him from his family. The ensuing conflict reaches its climax when Seth's wife does become pregnant. Like a crazed Abraham with the knife, Noah threatens to sacrifice his two granddaughters on Nature's altar.

He doesn't of course (after all, there are still humans around), because in the end his fanaticism is softened by his love of children. It is natural to view this as a case of good sense prevailing over madness. But in the movie this is not necessarily so. When Noah, employing God of the Bible's words: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth," finally gives his blessings to the small family, this might indeed be interpreted as a hopeful conclusion. Humanity cannot continue exploiting Nature as before (a condition emphasised by Noah not repeating the whole Bible passage, which continues "subdue [the earth]; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth"), but on the condition that Seth, his wife and their children learn to change their ways, perhaps there is reason for optimism? But the movie leaves room for an alternative (and equally plausible) interpretation of this final scene. Everyone knows what did in fact happen next. Not much did change, at least not for the better. Hence, the environmental challenges facing us today. In this light, Noah's conditional, but still fundamentally optimistic blessing of mankind might strike one as comical -- if "comical" is not too light-hearted a word to capture one’s reaction (some might, after all, think history proves Noah made the wrong decision). This reading of the final scene is supported by the fact that the rainbow (the token of God's promise never to flood the earth again) is conspicuously missing.

Trolleyology.

Siste nummer av Fri tanke omtaler boken Moral Tribes av Joshua Greene. Greene som er direktør for Moral cognition Lab ved Harvard har konfrontert mennesker med et knippe velkjente filosofisk dilemma -- ulike versjoner av det såkalte trikkeproblemet -- og studert hva som skjer i hjernen deres og hvordan dette henger sammen med moralske beslutninger.

En variant av dilemmaet er dette. En sporvogn raser ukontrollerbart i retning fem personer som ligger fastbundet på skinnene. Skrekkslagen ser du alt fra en bro over skinnegangen. Ved din side står også en overvektig mann (eventuelt en mann med diger ryggsekk) og ser på. Kroppen hans er det eneste som er stort og tungt nok til å stanse trikken. Du rekker ikke be ham hoppe, men har tid til å skubbe ham over kanten og ned på skinnene foran trikken. Spørsmålet er hva du ville gjort i en slik situasjon. Ville du unnlatt å gripe inn og latt stakkarene dø, eller hadde du ofret ett menneske for å redde fem?

Greenes forskning avslørte "at de som ikke ville dytte mannen ut i sporet var påvirket av de delene av hjernen som styrer følelsene. Mens de som valgte å redde flest mulig mennesker viste mer aktivitet i de delene av hjernen som koples til rasjonell tenkning." "Når vi styres av følelsene våre," kommenterer Greene, "tar vi avgjørelser som ikke nødvendigvis får det beste utfallet, rent konsekvensetisk," noe som i og for seg virker nokså tilforlatelig; men dermed er det ikke sagt, som Greene også antyder, at konsekvensetikken må være den fornuftigste måten å tenke på og at vi rasjonelt sett bør kaste mannen av broen. Greene opererer med en for enkel forståelse av forholdet mellom empiri og moral. Psykologer har påvist koblinger mellom konsekvensetiske tilbøyeligheter og Aspergers syndrom. Betyr det at autister må ha bedre moralsk gangsyn enn folk felst? Det kunne jo like så gjerne bety at det må være alvorlige mangler ved konsekvensetikken. Sannheten er naturligvis at det betyr verken-eller. Empirisk forskning kan ikke -- i alle fall ikke direkte -- besvare moralske spørsmål. Hvordan -- eller hvorvidt -- nevrokjemiske fakta om hjernen kan veilede oss i moralske spørsmål er i seg selv et moralsk spørsmål som ikke kan avgjøres ved ytterligere studier av hjernen.

Et annet problem med Greenes resonnement, er det antagonistiske bildet av følelser og fornuft hans konklusjoner hviler på. Rent konsekvensetisk betraktet er trikkeproblemet lite annet enn et banalt regnestykke. Vi skal simpelthen velge mellom én og fem. Men hvis problemet var så enkel, hadde vi ikke opplevd noe problem i det hele tatt! Konflikten, mener Greene, skyldes at vi mennesker ikke er rene rasjonalister. Vi tenker at det må være bedre å redde fem liv enn ett, men samtidig føler vi at det er galt å dytte tjukkasen utfor kanten, forklarer Greene, som mener folk har en medfødt aversjon mot denne slags håndgripeligheter. Teorien er at de emosjonelle delene av hjernen utviklet seg den gangen mennesket levde i små samfunn, mens de analytiske hjerneområdene er langt yngre. Dét er grunnen til at vi vemmes ved tanken på fysisk vold, mens hypermoderne drapsteknologi, som bomber fra dronefly, som ofte har langt verre konsekvenser, ikke vekker de samme emosjonelle reaksjonene. Vitenskapelig sett virker dette nokså søkt (uten at jeg med det avviser alt sammen); men det er de filosofiske sidene jeg er mest skeptisk til.

Greene slår kategorisk fast at de kalkulerende delene av hjernen bør styre oss i moralsk dilemmaer: "We should push the fat man, despite our instinctive abhorrence of doing so." David Edmonds som jeg har hentet dette sitatet fra, forteller ikke hvordan Greene kan være så sikker i sin sak; men det er tydelig hvilken filosofisk tradisjon han plasserer seg i. Det finnes en lang historie for mistro til følelser. Følelser har ofte blitt betraktet som ukontrollerbare affeksjoner som forstyrrer dømmekraften. I følelsenes vold -- når sinne, sorg, glede eller forelskelse rår -- gjør vi lett dumheter vi senere angrer. Sunn skepsis er det naturligvis ingenting feil med. Problemet med denne forståelsen av trikkedilemmaet er imidlertid at hvis det kun var instinktiv vemmelse -- eller såkalte Yuk!-reaksjoner -- som hindret oss i å gjøre det rasjonelle valget (som altså er å skubbe mannen over kanten), så burde noen enkle grep være nok til å løse problemet. Å lukke øynene og tenke på noe annet mens man skubbet, ville kunne få alle motforestillinger til å forsvinne. Eller hvis det er selve skubbingen (disse bestemte fysiske bevegelsene) man reagerer på, kunne løsningen være tilfeldig å "komme borti" mannen så han faller utfor. Trikkeproblemet ville i alle fall være løst den dagen noen lager en medisin mot slike følelser.

Enkelte finner kanskje slikt overbevisende. Andre vil derimot mene det er noe galt med premissene her, og at moralske vanskeligheter overhodet løses med slike grep. Det faktum at vi trenger følelser for å se et moralsk problem betyr ikke at problemet kun er en følelse. Medisin som fjerner følelsene fjerner ikke nødvendigvis problemene, men gjør oss kanskje bare blinde for dem. Det finnes således filosofer med en helt annen tillit til følelsene. Blaise Pascal mente eksempelvis at "[h]jertet har sin egen forstand som forstanden ikke alltid forstår." Dette betyr ikke at "hjertet alltid vet best", for følelser kan åpenbart villede oss og få oss til å reagere upassende, og faren for å havne i grøften er der alltid; men argumentet er at følelser bare kan villede den som er åpen for å lytte til og reflektere overdem på måter som også kan veilede oss. Det er en grøftekant på motsatt side også. Overdreven målrasjonalitet og manglende emosjonell åpenhet er noe av det som preger visse typer psykopati.

"Vil det være riktig av oss å la eget ubehag hindre oss i å redde fem liv?", spør konsekvensetikeren. Det problematiske synet på forholdet mellom følelser og fornuft er ikke eneste ankepunkt her. Konsekvensetikeren bryr seg utelukkende (eller nesten) om resultatene, og lite (eller ingenting) om hvordan resultatene kommer i stand. Dermed overser han også hensyn som for mange mennesker vil være sentrale for deres stillingstaken til et slikt dilemma; for eksempel hensynet til det som på engelsk kalles agency, eller hvem som utfører handlingen. Ansvar er et sentralt begrep i mye moralfilosofi og allminnelig tenkning omkring moral. Poenget er at enhver er ansvarlig for sine gjerninger, og ikke for andres. Om jeg skubber tjukkasen ned på sporet, innebærer det kanskje færre dødsfall, men resultatet er også at jeg har noe, nemlig et liv, å svare for. Griper jeg ikke inn, vil flere dø -- men er dét noe jeg kan lastes for? Den eneste skyldige er vel han som har bundtet stakkarene sammen på trikkesporet? Fordi ansvarsbegrepet blir uvesentlig på denne måten, oppfatter mange ren konsekvensetikk som en parodi på alvorlig etisk tenkning.

Denne kritikken kan drives ytterligere et stykke. Sett fra dette alternative perspektivet fortoner ikke Greenes selvsagte løsning seg bare som lite selvsagt eller parodisk, men muligens også umoralsk. Dersom det fantes en enkel og ufarlig måte å forhindre katastrofen på, ville nok mange kalle meg medskyldig dersom jeg ikke grep sjansen. Men Joshua Greene oppfatter meg som moralsk medskyldig dersom jeg vegrer meg for å bruke tjukkingen som bremsekloss også. Hvor mange som deler dette synet aner jeg ikke -- mye avhenger selvsagt av detaljene i situasjonen. (Flere vil nok gi Greene medhold om den tjukke mannen er Adolf Hitler enn om han er (en ikke lenger fastende) Mahatma Gandhi, for eksempel -- eller hvis det er han som har iscenesatt hele katastrofen.) Men for svært mange fortoner ikke dette seg engang som et mulig valg. Hvor mange ville ærlig talt komme på å vurdere å kaste mannen utfor broen? I manges øyne vil bare det å betrakte et menneske som en mulig bremsekloss være tegn på moralsk korrupsjon!

Alt dette innebærer ikke at det er moralsk galimatias å tenke som følger: "Hvis jeg ikke gjør noe, vil resultatet bli langt verre". Det betyr bare tanken er langt fra så innlysende riktig som Greene gir inntrykk av. Bernard Williams drøfter et beslektet dilemma, hvor denne måten å se saken på kanskje er mindre søkt, fordi det i Williams' dilemma er mindre søkt (eller mindre avhengig av en bestemt moralsk grunnholdning) å beskrive situasjonen som et valg mellom to mulige løsninger. Jim ankommer en liten by i Sør-Amerika. På torget ser han tjue indianere linet opp mot en mur foran en gruppe bevæpnede menn. Kommandanten forklarer at fangene skal skytes for å statuere et eksempel om at myndighetene ikke tolererer opprør. Som tegn på godt vertskap tilbyr han imidlertid Jim å skyte en av indianerne i stedet. Går Jim med på dette, lover kommandanten å la de nitten andre gå; takker han nei, vil samtlige bli skutt i henhold til planen. Kommandanten har ved sitt tilbud satt Jim i en forferdelig knipe der uskyldige vil dø uansett hva han svarer. Og han kan ikke bare skyve problemet fra seg, for dermed har han i realiteten valgt en av to! Bernard Williams diktet opp historien for å kunne kritisere konsekvensetikerens tenkemåte. Likevel var også han tilbøyelig til å mene at Jim alt i alt burde ta imot pistolen. Innvendingen var altså ikke at konsekvensetikken trekker feil konklusjon, men at konklusjonen blir trukket på feil eller mangelfullt grunnlag.

(Kanskje er det innlysende at simpel kalkulasjon ikke er tilstrekkelig. På den andre siden, hva som vil være et akseptablet resonnement i en slik situasjon, er ikke opplagt. Tiden er knapp, så det er i alle fall grenser for hvor langt og dypt Jim rekker å tenke. Men la oss for argumentet skyld si at ingen ser grunn til å beskylde Jim for å ha tatt lett på situasjonen når han til slutt griper pistolen med ordene: "Hvis jeg vegrer, blir resultatet langt verre!" Å gutere Jims avgjørelse kan ha flere funksjoner. Ved å si seg enig med Jim ønsker man kanskje å uttrykke støtte og sympati med Jim i den vanskelige situasjonen; kanskje man mener å si at man selv ville ha gjort samme vurdering i samme situasjon. Men hva kan det bety å hevde at dette er hva Jim burde gjøre? Sett for eksempel at Jim allerede i neste øyeblikk og for resten av livet fortviler: "Herregud, hva har jeg gjort!? Jeg har skutt og drept et uskyldig menneske!" Her er det i alle fall uklart hva man kan oppnå med å forsikre Jim om at han tross all sin anger gjorde riktig avgjørelse den gangen. Skylden er det jo han som må leve med. -- En personlig takk fra de nitten overlevende, kunne kanskje atter få ham til å se tingene i det lyset han gjorde til å begynne med....)

La oss vende tilbake til trikkeproblemet og komplisere ting enda en smule. Spørsmålet stilles på en måte som naturlig får oss til å betrakte situasjonen i aktørens perspektiv: Hva ville du gjort i en slik situasjon? Moralfilosofi er ofte aktørsentrert; men aktøren er ikke den eneste som kan ha noe å si på hva en handling betyr. Hva om du ikke var den slanke aktøren, men tjukke tilskueren: Hvordan ville du da ha tenkt? Muligens hadde du sett det som din plikt å hoppe. Eksempler på slik selvoppofrelse finnes. Enkelte tenker i slike situasjoner: bedre én enn fem. Men har sidemannen din rett til å tenke at du bør hoppe? Han kunne kanskje overbevist deg dersom dere rakk å diskutere spørsmålet -- det hadde gjort saken mindre komplisert, eller komplisert på en annen måte (spørsmål om manipulasjon ville dukket opp) -- men her finnes det ikke tid til snakk. Har sidemannen rett til å ta besvare spørsmålet for deg eller til å tvinge deg?

Og hva med fem fastbundnes syn på saken? Hvis vi spurte, ville kanskje noen av dem mene at ja, det riktige alt tatt i betraktning ville være å kaste tjukkingen i døden for deres skyld. Men ville ikke en slik forsikring få alle moralske varselslamper til å blinke? Kanskje burde et lignende ubehag melde seg dersom de overlevende i ettertid takker oss for å ha reddet livene deres på denne måten? (Og hva sier dette om min antydning om at Jim skulle kunne finne trøst i slike takksigelser?) Enda mer interessant blir de overlevndes perspektiv dersom vi ikke, slik Greene og de fleste andre trolleyologer alltid tar for gitt, at det å overleve er et gode uansett hvordan. Det er en kjensgjerning at mennesker ofte opplever skam og eksistensielt ubehag ved selv å overleve katastrofer der andre stryker med. Hvorfor meg!? Sett nå at de fem på sporet har sett alt sammen. De så trikken komme stormende mot dem, og de så hvordan vi stanset den. I det vi frigjør dem fra repene som har holdt dem fangne, forblir tre liggende apatiske på sporet, en spretter opp og kaster seg om halsen på oss, mens den siste av fangene reiser seg opp i moralsk raseri, og med den nettopp nevnte eksistensielle fortvilelsen hudfletter han oss for hva vi har gjort: Hva er du for et menneske!? Jeg blir kvalm! Hvordan kan du innbille deg at du har gjort meg en tjeneste -- gjort noe godt for min skyld!? Jeg hadde mye heller dødd enn bli reddet på denne måten!? Ingen har bedt deg myrde for min skyld!! Og så videre. (Og hva om alle fem gjør det?) Joshua Greene har natuligvis sitt ferdige svar, men hvordan ville du svare for deg?

Om natten/Nachts

Det blå i mine øyne har sluknet i denne natt,
det røde gull i mitt hjerte. Å! så stille lyset brant.
Din blå kappe omsluttet den synkende;
din røde munn beseglet vennens formørkelse.


Die Bläue meiner Augen ist erloschen in dieser Nacht,
Das rote Gold meines Herzens. O! wie stille brannte das Licht.
Dein blauer Mantel umfing den Sinkenden;
Dein roter Mund besiegelte des Freundes Umnachtung.

(Georg Trakl)

The Importance of Being Human.

"A capacity for feeling pleasure and pain is a prerequisite for having interests," Peter Singer writes in Animal Liberation (I am translating back from the Norwegian edition, so the wording may not be accurate), and that, I think, is true. Unless you are using the word in a very peculiar way, ascribing interests to dead things sounds nonsensical. However, it doesn't follow, as Singer has it, that it therefore is just as nonsensical to treat non-conscious entities as moral objects. Singer never questions the assumption that whatever lacks interests, lacks moral status too. That is what I intend to do.

"What is it, exactly, that prevents me from putting that man's eyes out if I am allowed to do so and if it takes my fancy?," Simone Weil asks in her essay called "Human Personality". (I will return to her answer shortly, but in brief it is this: my respect for the whole Human being. She is not denying that the suffering I thereby avoid inflicting is my reason: Weil simply points out that I refuse to harm human beings because I care about human beings in the first place. (Compare: "Of course animals suffer too, but they are only animals after all!")) In order to challenge Singer, let us assume that the man in question has suffered serious head trauma, thus having his mental abilities reduced to those of vegetables. Does this imply that he morally is lowered to their level too? Singer, it seems, is forced by his theory to say so. Some readers might take comfort in the fact that at this point in the argument, the interests of other people are often introduced to the utilitarian equation. This man will have relatives, some will argue -- and they (his relatives) still have interests, among which we must assume an interest in not having their relative, whom they care about, treated as a mere vegetable. So, we would be wronging their interests by doing such a thing. But this argument doesn't help us very much, it simply pushes the question one step up. Why, after all, should they care? He himself literarily cannot care what happens to him anymore. What, then, is there left for them to care about? If the object of their concern (namely, their vegetating relative) has ceased to be of moral importance because he no longer has any interests, then it seems to follow that their "interest" in having him treated with care isn't a genuine interest either, but rather a confused reaction produced by sentimentality gone haywire -- and, then, the question is: Ought imagined interests carry this kind of moral weight? Rather than indulging these relatives in their confused thinking, the best thing to do, morally speaking, would perhaps be to make them see the truth and realise that this is really nothing to be concerned about? And what (to modify the example a little) would Singer say if the man in question had no relatives or acquaintances at all --? Or to put even more pressure on it: Say that his last living relative begged Singer to do it and offered him money for putting that man's eyes out, how could Singer (while remaining true to his theoretical toolkit) possibly not take the assignment?

Of course, by doing so he would cause massive public revulsion (should people hear about it). But having tied moral status so firmly to certain (mental) capacities, many modern moral philosophies have a hard time making sense of this. Why would our stomachs turn (as most people's stomachs certainly would) if we were approached with such an offer? Squeamishness is possibly a part of it. But if that were all, most of us should have little to no problem accepting the money if we could only close our eyes while doing it [or at least it implies that it would be quite all right for us if we, in order to be able to do such things, did our best to stymie our emotional objections]. Restricting moral philosophy to thinking in terms of capacities and corresponding interests, and the rational calculation with these, we see no (morally) significant difference between the dismembering of vegetative human beings and, say, the pealing of a carrot. If the aim is to help us understand our moral lives, then moral philosophy must be permeated by the rich moral language with which these lives are normally lived.

Insofar as having interests is dependent on certain capabilities, and these capabilities are dependent on having a functioning brain (which is what Singer claims), it follows that people in a permanent vegetative state no longer have interests that may be violated. But this is not, except for within a certain philosophical parlance, equivalent to saying that they are no longer morally significant. Experiences and interests, after all, do not exhaust our moral vocabulary. Who counts morally, and in what way, is not simply a question of what (mental) capabilities they possess. This theory simply is too, well, simple. (We do not measure things against one universal moral standard all the time. In fact, that would be (morally) wrong of us. Here's just one obvious example. Were I to start treating everyone -- friends and strangers -- equal, this would, in most people's eyes, mean that I had ceased being a true friend. This isn't a function of "objective" differences between friends and strangers. Different relationships simply ask different things of us.) The more fundamental question is what morally pertinent concepts we can apply where. While "interest" (or "rationality") clearly has no use when talking about seriously brain damaged people, other morally weighty concepts like "dignity" and "honor" do. Losing ones love for -- or, to couch the claim in moral language: failing to keep loving -- someone who's life has been reduced to bodily functions, seems possible too.

When investigating the hypothesis that our concern for -- the dignity, the honor, the human value (but obviously not the well-being) of -- permanently unconscious people may be nothing but sentimentality and self-indulgence, it is instructive to ask: What would it be for a grieving wife, say, to realise that this hypothesis was true in her case? This surely is possible. What I am questioning though, is that this is always the case. Self-pity, I am guessing, is one source of any wife's tears under such circumstances -- she has after all suffered great loss -- but feeling sorry for herself is hardly all everyone is capable of. I have no problems imagining this realisation shattering a wife's self-image and recasting her understanding of her marriage. ("Am I really this shallow! Am I just self-indulgent? Don't I love him? Have I ever?") Such accusations, of course, only make sense if she ought to be feeling for and thinking of her husband too.

"We don't treat someone as a vegetable merely because he mentally happens to be on their level!" This expresses an understanding of what it means for a human being to lose all mental capacities: Human beings may lose their limbs, their wits or their minds; but their humanity -- their moral significance -- cannot be lost in the same sense. (This, I believe, is a central feature of our modern understanding of ourselves. We are all fundamentally equal. Human dignity is supposed to be unconditioned, that it is entirely independent of personal capabilities and characteristics.) Hence, that human body is not simply a body (understood as a "biological material" or "meat"), but remains human, in some crucial sense. "A human body," some might say, a remark which might be an important reminder in some circumstances: Refusing to accept, as mourning relatives sometimes do, that significant changes have taken place in their loved one, means closing ones eyes to reality. However, in order not to mystify our moral instincts, one must keep emphasising the other word in that sentence: What lies in that hospital bed is (not a mere body, but) a human body.

To some this smacks of word-play. But that, I think, is because they mistakenly take "human being" primarily to be a descriptive term, denoting (specimens of) a biological species. "What lies in that bed is not merely a body, but the body of one Homo sapiens," would indeed be nothing but word-play. But only someone with a tin ear for nuances would hear this as a serious attempt at say the same thing with different words. In reality this could only be some kind of crude joke. (In philosophy one sometimes unwittingly tell such jokes.) What makes it a joke, is the fact that "human being" in many circumstances, as in this one, is a morally laden term -- permeated through and through by other terms like value, honor, dignity, etc -- which cannot be substituted this way; but, rather, if it should be replaced, must be replaced, as Simone Weil sometimes does, by terms like "precious" and "sacred".

But isn't this sidestepping a difficulty? What reasons do we have for revering human beings so? What reasons do we have for claiming human equality, when what we see plainly are differences? The philosophical instinct here might be to investigate whether these claims can be substantiated. This instinct is misleading, I believe. Are we to understand these expressions, we are better advised to investigate where and how we learn the meaning of such them, and where and how they are expressed, than to look for a justification. (This reveals me as a Wittgensteinian. Human sanctity/equality is in no need of a metaphysical justification. First, attempting to justify it risks undermining precisely what one hopes to secure, namely its unconditionality. Second, attempting to ground this abstract idea (or ideal) in something firmer is to misunderstand what role this idea plays in our thinking. Human equality is not something we have discovered, or might discover sometime soon, hidden underneath all human differences; it is rather a concept with which we regard and accept these differences: This concept is held fast by everything that surrounds it, by our practices.)

So, then, where should we look? Among other places, to the kinds of cases I have been discussing in this post. Being horrified by the proposal with which I started, is one instance of it. The self-accusations of the self-pitying wife might be another. Through such reactions, our own and others', we see what it can mean to say that a human being, no matter how afflicted by suffering or reduced by illness or injury it is, is still a human being and our equal. "There is something sacred in every man," Simone Weil writes. That is not his rationality, not his ability to suffer, nor is it his interests or his personality: "It is he. The whole of him. The arms, the eyes, the thoughts, everything...It is this man; no more, no less...Not without infinite scruple would I touch anything of this." Such formulations both express and give shape our idea of human value.

Thinking Film.

I would just like to draw attention to this new blog, where Rupert Read and Phil Hutchinson in collaboration with television resarcher Vincent Gaine will be philosophising with and about films. 

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.)