Nietzsche has the following observations about people with vanity:
Clashing vanities. Two people with equally great vanity retain a bad impression of one another after they meet, because each one was so busy with the impression he wanted to elicit in the other that the other made no impression on him; finally both notice that their efforts have failed and blame the other for it. (Human, All Too Human, section six, 338)
These observations seem right, but only roughly. A person who is trying hard to impress others will probably not be able to pay attention to things other than whether he succeeds in his attempt, and hence not be able to be impressed by others. But this is true of everyone, not just vain people. Nietzsche seems to be suggesting that people with vanity are more likely to try hard to impress others than people without vanity (are there such people?), for otherwise the phrase "with equally great vanity" could be deleted and he would still be making the same point.
Let's say Nietzsche is right, that is, that a vain person likes to impress others. However, it is reasonable to think that a vain person would not try to impress just anyone. Being vain, he would try to impress people who have impressed him in the first place, for it is impressing such people that would satisfy his vanity as far as impressing people is concerned.
Now suppose that two people with equally great vanity met, and that they tried to impress each other because each of them had been impressed by the other in some way. If they both failed in their attempt to (further) impress the other for the reason mentioned above, it is not clear they would blame the other for the failure. Indeed, the more they had been impressed by the other, the less likely they would blame the other for the failure. The psychology is fairly simple: the more they had been impressed by the other, the more they would understand why they failed to impress the other --- a person so impressive would not be easy to impress. In that case, their failure to impress does not hurt. And for people with vanity, if it doesn't hurt, it doesn't matter.
2/14/2013
10/12/2012
History and value
At
the beginning of The Curtain: An Essay in
Seven Parts, in a section entitled ‘History and Value’ (pp.4-6), Milan
Kundera discusses the relation between historical consciousness and aesthetic
evaluation. He introduces the issue with an imaginary case:
Let us
imagine a contemporary composer writing a sonata that in its form, its
harmonies, its melodies resembles Beethoven’s. Let’s even imagine that this
sonata is so masterfully made that, if it had actually been by Beethoven, it
would count among his greatest works. And yet no matter how magnificent, signed
by a contemporary composer it would be laughable. At best its author would be
applauded as a virtuoso of pastiche.
Kundera
is well aware of a possible, and natural, response to the above evaluation of
the contemporary composer’s anachronistic piece. Indeed, he mimics such a
response:
What? We
feel aesthetic pleasure at a sonata by Beethoven and not at one with the same
style and charm if it comes from one of our own contemporaries? Isn’t that the
height of hypocrisy? So then the sensation of beauty is not spontaneous,
spurred by our sensibility, but instead is cerebral, conditioned by our knowing
a date?
But
he insists that there is “[n]o way around it: historical consciousness is so
thoroughly inherent in our perception of art that this anachronism (a Beethoven
piece written today) would be spontaneously
(that is, without the least hypocrisy) felt to be ridiculous, false,
incongruous, even monstrous”. Put more straightforwardly, his point is that “it
is only within the context of an art’s historical evolution that aesthetic
value can be seen”.
Is
Kundera right about the relation between historical consciousness and aesthetic
evaluation? This is a big topic and I won’t attempt to show that Kundera is
wrong. What I would like to point out is that he might have conflated aesthetic
experience and aesthetic judgment. Aesthetic experience necessarily has phenomenological
features; by contrast, although aesthetic judgment is usually accompanied by
aesthetic experience, the judgment itself is cerebral and does not have to have
its own phenomenology. In Kundera’s own words, there is “aesthetic pleasure” or
“sensation of beauty”, and there is “perception of art” or “aesthetic value [that]
can be seen”; my point is, the two don’t overlap perfectly.
The
main subject matter of Kundera’s book is the (modern European) novel, but since
he uses a musical example in the passage quoted above, let me use another
musical example to illustrate my point.
Prokofiev’s
first symphony, completed in 1917, was marked by imitation. As the composer confesses
in his autobiography:
I had in
mind the thought of writing a symphony in the style of Haydn … If Haydn were
living today, I thought, he would keep to his way of writing, while at the same
time incorporating some newer ideas. I wanted to compose just such a symphony
--- a symphony in the classical style. I finally gave it the name Symphonie classique
--- firstly because it was so simple: also in the hope of annoying the Philistines, and in the secret desire to
win in the end, if the symphony should prove itself to be a genuine ‘classic’.
The last sentence is intriguing, particularly
because of the combination of the word ‘genuine’ and the word ‘classic’ in scare
quotes. Prokofiev’s first symphony can never be a genuine classic, but it can
be a genuine ‘classic’. As a matter of fact, the symphony was well-received and
is still enjoyed by classical music lovers today. It is not felt to be ridiculous,
false, incongruous, or monstrous.
Is this a counterexample to Kundera’s
view? There is no simple answer to the question. On the one hand, Prokofiev
himself admitted that he imitated Haydn and tried to write a symphony in the
classical style; on the other hand, it could be maintained that the symphony is
not ridiculed because there are enough “newer ideas” in it to distinguish it from
a mere imitation --- the classical
style is more apparent than real.
In any case, we can still distinguish
between the aesthetic experience one has when listening to the symphony and the
judgment one may make about the aesthetic value of the piece. Even if the aesthetic
judgment has to be made within the context of the historical evolution of the
symphony as a form of art, it does not follow that the aesthetic experience
cannot be independent of such a context. We don't have to deny that aesthetic judgment can affect aesthetic experience, but we can at
least imagine that someone who knows nothing about Haydn, Prokofiev, or the
classical style may still enjoy Prokofiev’s Symphonie
classique.
The following is the charming, and
very short, third movement of the symphony; experience it yourself:
9/09/2012
The curious case of Binjamin Wilkomirski (Part II)
Sometimes an identity of a
person has so many elements or aspects that it is not always easy to tell what
it is about that identity that contributes to the meaningfulness of the person’s
life. We have seen that it was by seeing himself as Wilkomirski the sufferer-survivor-reporter
that Grosjean found meaning in his life. The fact that he was not really the
sufferer or the survivor implies that he was not a genuine reporter either ¾ something that did not take place could not be reported. Yes,
Grosjean was still the author of the book, but this was not an element of the
identity in question that could contribute to the meaningfulness of his life,
for the book was not what it was supposed to be. By contrast, if Grosjean’s
book had been published as a novel, then his identity as the author of the book
could have contributed to the meaningfulness of his life.
Grosjean’s case reminds me
of a friend who is a devoted Christian minister, who presumably believes that
his life is meaningful by virtue of his identity as a Christian minister, or,
in his own words, as God’s servant. Let us imagine that in the last few years
of his life he became skeptical about his religious beliefs and finally gave
them up (this is, I have to say, extremely unlikely to happen). Suppose there
were no other identities he identified himself with; should he then believe
that his life was meaningless? It depends. On the one hand, he had to say that
since there is no God, no one can be God’s servant. On the other hand, there
might be other elements in his identity as a Christian minister that could
contribute to the meaningfulness of his life. For example, he might have, in his
capacity as a minister, helped a lot of people deal with their personal
problems. If he himself valued this element of his identity as a minister, and
other people valued it too, then his life could still be meaningful by virtue
of his identity as a Christian minister.
It is risky to focus on
one single identity in such a way that the meaningfulness of your life depends solely
on it. If you have only one identity that you think makes your life meaningful,
and if something goes wrong with respect to that identity, such as if you
actually have a serious misunderstanding of the nature of that identity, or if
you suddenly do not value it any more, your life may turn out to be
meaningless. Grosjean’s is a case in point. If all goes well, then one identity
will suffice; but things do not always go well. Although not all our identities
are chosen by us, some are. It is thus wise, as far as the meaningfulness of
our lives is concerned, to develop what psychologist Daniel Nettle calls
‘self-complexity’. As Nettle explains, “if I am just an academic, and I have an
academic setback, then my whole self seems less efficacious and worthwhile.
However, if I have many other facets to myself, then the effect of the setback
on my identity is much less severe” (Happiness:
The Science Behind Your Smile, p.156). He speaks in the context of discussing
happiness, but it is clear that the same point applies to meaningfulness.
The above point about
self-complexity may give us some ideas about how to live a meaningful life. This
may also be true of the final point I would like to make, which is that a
meaningful life consists in living it rather than in thinking about how to live
it. Part of Grosjean’s problem might be that he was too much aware of the
problem of meaningfulness and tried too hard to make his life meaningful. There
is such a thing as thinking too much and too often about the problem about meaningfulness.
This may be what Wittgenstein means when he writes:
The way to solve the
problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make what is problematic
disappear. … a man who lives rightly won’t experience the problem as sorrow, so
for him it will not be a problem, but a joy rather; in other words for him it
will be a bright halo round his life, not a dubious background. (Culture
and Value, p.27)
8/15/2012
The curious case of Binjamin Wilkomirski (Part I)
In 1995, a book entitled
Bruchstücke. Aus
einer Kindheit 1939–1948 was published in Germany (the English translation
of the book, published in 1996, was entitled Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood). The name of the author
was Binjamin Wilkomirski, and the book was a vivid and supposedly accurate account
of his horrifying experiences as a very young Polish Jewish boy in two Nazi
concentration camps. Being an appealing survivor’s tale with high literary
quality, the book quickly became an international best-seller and received
numerous awards. Wilkomirski gave readings of the book everywhere, was
interviewed on TV, met with and spoke to other Holocaust survivors publicly,
and participated in academic symposiums on the book or on subjects concerning
the Holocaust. He was compared to Anne Frank; if his story was not more moving,
it was certainly more satisfying and probably more inspiring, for he survived
while Frank did not.
But then it turned out
that nothing described in the book about that little Jewish boy had ever
happened. The author was not even Jewish, and his real name was ‘Bruno Grosjean’,
not the obviously Jewish ‘Binjamin Wilkomirski’. Grosjean was a Swiss who had
been born to an unmarried woman and later adopted by a childless couple, and who
grew up to be a professional (but not outstanding) clarinetist. He was born in
1941, the year one of the concentration camps in which the story happened began
to operate, and he had never left Switzerland before adulthood. The ‘memoir’
was based on history books, magazines, and novels Grosjean had read, as well as
films he had seen. His account was first questioned by a Swiss journalist named
Daniel Ganzfrield, whose arguments against the authenticity of it were,
however, considered by some to be inconclusive. The Swiss historian Stefan
Maechler was later commissioned by Wilkomirski/Grosjean’s literacy agency to
investigate the matter, and Maechler proved in great detail that many of the
things described in Grosjean’s book contradicted historical facts.
Graosjean’s book was not
the first autobiography of an alleged Holocaust survivor that turned out to be a fraud,
nor was it the last. What makes Grosjean’s case more interesting and relevant
to our discussion is that Grosjean might actually believe, or at least believe
that he believed, the story he told in his book. Grosjean certainly knew that
he grew up in Switzerland, but he also knew that he was an adopted child. If he
did not remember much the first few years of his life, it was not impossible
for him to believe that he was a traumatized child rescued from the war and
exchanged for a child named ‘Bruno Grosjean’. As social psychologists Carol
Tavris and Elliot Aronson understand the Wilkomirski/Grosjean case, “Grosjean
spent more than twenty years transforming himself into Wilkomirski; writing Fragments was the last step of his
metamorphosis into a new identity, not the first step of a calculated lie”
(Tavris & Elliot, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), p.84).
Let us assume that Tavris’s
and Aronson’s understanding of the Wilkomirski/Grosjean case is correct. What Tavris
and Aronson say next relates the case to the problem about meaningfulness: “Wilkomirski’s
new identity as a survivor of the
Holocaust gave him a powerful sense of meaning
and purpose, along with the adoration and support of countless others”. Grosjean’s
book was, according to Tavris and Aronson, a result of “a quest for meaning in
his life” (ibid., italics added). They presumably do not have a fully developed theory of a
meaningful life like mine when they relate the meaningfulness of Grosjean’s
life to his identity, but their description of the case fits quite well the
account of a meaningful life I have suggested: Grosjean’s sense of
meaningfulness came from his newly found identity, which was valued not only by
himself but also by others; and it was this newly found identity that allowed
him to evaluate his life positively, that gave him directions for how he should
live his life, that he could see as the reason for his existence, and that he
happily believed to be who he really was.
What exactly was
Grosjean’s newly found identity which he thought made his life meaningful? It
may appear that the answer is straightforward: it was his identity as a Holocaust
survivor, or more precisely, his identity as a Jewish boy who suffered from his
experiences in Nazi concentration camps and survived. But suffering in itself
does not give meaning to a life. We would not say that the lives of all the
Jews who were tortured and murdered in concentration camps were meaningful
lives simply by virtue of their suffering, nor would we say that at least the
lives of those who survived were meaningful simply by virtue of their suffering
and their survival. What Grosjean
thought made his life meaningful was his identity as the young Holocaust
survivor who lived to tell his story, which inspired and moved a lot of people.
According to Maechler, Grosjean “truly blossomed in his role as a concentration-camp
victim, for it was in it that he finally found himself”, but what we should note
is that “[v]ideotapes and eyewitness reports of Wilkomirski’s presentations give the impression of a
man made euphoric by his own narrative”
(Maechler, The Wilkomirski Affair: A Study in
Biographical Ttruth, p.273, note 14, italics
added). It was not being the sufferer, not being the sufferer-survivor, but
being the sufferer-survivor-reporter,
that counted for the meaningfulness of Wilkomirski’s life.*
* If
you are inclined to disagree, just imagine that Anne Frank survived but had not
written her wartime diary, or that she had written the diary but neither she
nor the diary survived. Would Frank’s life have been as meaningful as it
actually was?
8/05/2012
Meaningfulness and divine purpose
[Although
I do not believe that God exists, in what follows I will, for simplicity, sometimes
speak as if God exists. I will also assume that it is compatible with God’s
nature that God has purposes or plans.]
Some
people believe that a human life is meaningful only if it fulfills God’s purpose
(call it divine purpose). There are
two ways in which we can be related to divine purpose. In the first way, God
created us to serve a particular purpose, just as a watch is made to serve the
purpose of telling time; there is a divine purpose in us. In the second way,
God did not create us to serve a particular purpose, but God has some purpose or
plan which we can participate in, just as we can participate in an author’s
purpose of writing a book to raise consciousness about global warming ¾
by reading the book. These two ways do not have to be independent of each
other, for God could create us to serve a particular purpose such that we can
participate in another purpose God has simply by fulfilling the former purpose.
It
is obvious that divine purpose is not sufficient for meaningfulness. The mere
fact that God created us to serve a particular purpose does not imply that our
lives are meaningful, for we may fail to serve that purpose. Likewise, the mere
fact that God has some purpose or plan that we can participate in does not
imply that our lives are meaningful either, for we may fail to participate in
it. In either case, even given the divine purpose, whether our lives are
meaningful still depends on what we do.
So
what we should examine is whether divine purpose is necessary for meaningfulness.
Let us begin with Kurt Baier’s well-known criticism of the view in question;
his criticism concerns only the first way in which we are related to divine
purpose. According to Baier, no human being’s life can be meaningful by virtue
of being used to fulfill another being’s purpose, even when that being is God. As
he elaborates:
To attribute to a
human being a purpose in that sense is not neutral, let alone complimentary: it
is offensive. It is degrading for a man to be regarded as merely serving a
purpose. If, at a garden party, I ask a man in livery, ‘What is your purpose?’
I am insulting him. I might as well have asked, ‘What are you for?’ Such
questions reduce him to the level of a gadget, a domestic animal, or perhaps a
slave. I imply that we allot to him the tasks, the goals, the aims which he is
to pursue; that his wishes and desires and aspirations and purposes are to
count for little or nothing. We are treating him, in Kant’s phrase, merely as a
means to our ends, not as an end in himself. (Baier, “The Meaning of Life”, p.120)
How
forceful we consider Baier’s criticism to be depends on whether we agree with
him that God, by creating human beings to serve a particular purpose, treats
them merely as a means. When we treat another human being as a means to our end,
but not merely so, we do not necessarily degrade him. I treat, for example, my
piano teacher as a means to my end of learning to play the piano, but my
treating him that way does not degrade him, for I also treat him as an
independent individual who has his own wishes and desires and aspirations and
purposes that have nothing to do with his being my piano teacher. It can be
argued, however, that if God created us to serve a particular purpose, then God
can only treat us merely as a means. If my piano teacher decided not to give me
piano lessons any more, I could still treat him respectfully as a valuable
independent individual in many other ways (as a good pianist, as a polymath, as
a loving and devoted father, etc.) that have nothing to do with the ends I
have. But if God created me to serve a particular purpose and I decided not to
fulfill that purpose, there does not seem to be anything else in me which would
allow God to see me not as bad (on some religious understanding I would indeed
be considered by God to be so bad that I deserve eternal punishment) ¾
God would see me in the way a watchmaker sees a broken watch.
Divine purpose and meaningfulness can be related by the idea
that, in Nozick’s words, “[a]ttempts to find meaning in life seek to transcend
the limits of an individual life” (Philosophical
Explanations, p.597). If God created us to serve a particular purpose or if
we can participate in God’s purpose or plan, then we will be able to transcend
the limits of our lives by serving God's purpose or participating in his purpose or plan. We will be, in a sense, bigger than our earthly lives
allow us to see ourselves.
But the problem with this view is that transcending the limits of our lives this way does not imply that our lives will then have no limits. The only being who is not limited in any way is God. If being unlimited were necessary for meaningfulness, then only God’s life could be meaningful. Accordingly, our lives would after all not be meaningful even if we fulfilled God’s purpose (in either way or both ways). On the other hand, if meaningfulness does not require being unlimited but requires only that we transcend the limits of our lives in some way, then it is not clear why we have to fulfill a divine purpose in order to transcend the limits of our lives. That is, it is not clear why transcending the limits of our lives in the earthly way does not count at all for meaningfulness. Consider a composer who wrote good (but not great) music, influenced and inspired many other composers to write better music of a certain style, and thereby started an important tradition of music. There is a clear sense in which he transcended the limits of his life as a composer, and such transcendence does not have to do with any divine purpose. If transcending the limits of our lives is necessary for meaningfulness while meaningfulness does not require being unlimited, why should we think that the composer’s way of transcending his limits count for nothing with respect to the meaningfulness of his life? Why should we think that in order for his life to be meaningful he must also transcend the limits of human life as such rather than merely the limits of his life?
But the problem with this view is that transcending the limits of our lives this way does not imply that our lives will then have no limits. The only being who is not limited in any way is God. If being unlimited were necessary for meaningfulness, then only God’s life could be meaningful. Accordingly, our lives would after all not be meaningful even if we fulfilled God’s purpose (in either way or both ways). On the other hand, if meaningfulness does not require being unlimited but requires only that we transcend the limits of our lives in some way, then it is not clear why we have to fulfill a divine purpose in order to transcend the limits of our lives. That is, it is not clear why transcending the limits of our lives in the earthly way does not count at all for meaningfulness. Consider a composer who wrote good (but not great) music, influenced and inspired many other composers to write better music of a certain style, and thereby started an important tradition of music. There is a clear sense in which he transcended the limits of his life as a composer, and such transcendence does not have to do with any divine purpose. If transcending the limits of our lives is necessary for meaningfulness while meaningfulness does not require being unlimited, why should we think that the composer’s way of transcending his limits count for nothing with respect to the meaningfulness of his life? Why should we think that in order for his life to be meaningful he must also transcend the limits of human life as such rather than merely the limits of his life?
7/30/2012
Does size matter?
There
is a kind of reflection that would incite people to look for grand meaningfulness,
the kind of meaningfulness that we presumably cannot find in the lives we are
living here and now. Bertrand Russell expresses such reflection vividly in the
following remarks:
In the visible world,
the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an
infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this
dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with
somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years,
until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.
They divide their time between labour designed to postpone the moment of
dissolution for themselves and frantic struggles to hasten it for others of
their kind.
(Russell, “Dreams and Facts”, reprinted in his Sceptical Essays)
Compared
with Russell’s description of how small we are, which seems accurate, the usual
metaphor that human beings are tiny specks in a vast universe seems an
exaggeration of our size. If even the solar system is only a tiny speck, how
should we describe our smallness? However, what we should ask in this
connection is rather the question “What does the size of us have to do with the
meaningfulness of our lives?”. It does not seem that meaningfulness depends on
the relative size of our existence. If I think my life is meaningful, I would
not think that it was less meaningful simply because I had come to believe that
the universe had become several hundred million times bigger (while my size did
not change). As Frank Ramsey so pithily puts it, “[t]he stars may be large, but
they cannot think or love” (see “Epilogue” of his Philosophical Papers). Whether our lives are meaningful or not depends
on what we do and think and feel, rather than on how big or small we are.
But
then why do some people think the relative size of our existence matters to the
meaningfulness of our lives, or more specifically, why do some people think our
smallness implies that our lives as such are meaningless? I think the most
reasonable answer is that when people think in this way, they see their
smallness as a kind of limit of their lives. Death can be understood along the
same lines ¾ death is a temporal limit of life. Our
smallness is, by contrast, not just a spatial limit, but also a limit to our
abilities: being so utterly small relative to the universe, we are confined to
the extremely tiny space we are in and not able to achieve much even within
that tiny space. There is no better expression of this understanding of how
limits of a life and meaningfulness are related than the following passage by Robert
Nozick:
Consider the most
exalted and far-researching life or role imagined for man: being the messiah.
Greater effect has been imagined for no other man. Yet still we can ask how
important it is to bring whatever it is the messiah brings to the living beings
of the third planet of a minor off-center star in the Milky Way galaxy, itself
a galaxy of no special distinction within its particular metagalaxy, one of
many in the universe. Te see something’s limits, to see it as that limited
particular thing or enterprise, is to question its meaning. (Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, p.597)
On
this understanding,“[t]he problem of meaning is created by limits, by being
just this, by being merely this”, and “[a]ttempts to find meaning in life seek
to transcend the limits of an individual life. The narrower the limits of a
life, the less meaningful it is” (pp.594-595). Hence the quest for grand
meaningfulness.
7/10/2012
Meaningfulness and happiness
When we are thinking
about meaningfulness, we may be inclined to see it as the most important thing we care about, or should care about, in
our lives. I certainly think that meaningfulness is an important issue, and
that the meaningfulness of my life is very important to me, but I am not sure I
would say that meaningfulness should be considered the most important thing in
our lives. Many people do not give any thought to meaningfulness. And even for
those who do seek meaningfulness, there is at least another thing they seek,
and should seek, equally mightily, namely, happiness.
It takes reflection to see the need we have for meaningfulness, while happiness
is something we naturally, or even blindly, pursue. Is there any relation
between meaningfulness and happiness? Of course the answer depends on how we
understand happiness, but it is common for people to think that a meaningful
life must be in some sense a happy life. In some sense, yes, but there are also
other senses of happiness in which a meaningful life is not necessarily a happy
one.
As Susan Wolf
observes, meaningful lives may “frequently involve stress, danger, exertion, or
sorrow” (“Happiness
and meaning: two aspects of the good life”, Social
Philosophy and Policy, 14, p.209), all of which
are incompatible with pleasure. Wolf understands meaningful lives as “lives of
active engagement in projects of worth” (ibid.); it is not difficult to see why
such engagement does not always give us pleasure --- is not necessarily happy
in the hedonistic sense.
As long as happiness is understood phenomenologically, that is, in terms of
some of the subject’s positive feelings, states of mind, or experiences, it
seems that we can always imagine that a person whose life is meaningful does
not have any such feelings, states of mind, or experiences. It is, I think,
true that a meaningful life is usually accompanied by a sense of fulfillment. Although
fulfillment is not the same as happiness, it, as Wolf rightly maintains,
“deserves an important place in an adequate theory of happiness” and should be
considered “a major component of happiness” (ibid., p.220). Nevertheless, there
is still no guarantee that living a meaningful life will give one a sense of
fulfillment. Even for Wolf, who thinks that “the links between meaningfulness
and fulfillment are tight” (ibid.), there is no such guarantee, for she can
only say that “[n]ine times out of ten, perhaps ninety-nine times out of a
hundred, a meaningful life will be happier [through having a sense of fulfillment]
than a meaningless one” (ibid., p.222). Ninety or ninety-nine percent is still
not one-hundred percent, though it may well be good enough.
It
is even clearer that a meaningful life does not imply happiness when happiness
is understood as objective well-being rather than in terms of subjective
positive experiences. A meaning life is not necessarily a life that prospers or
goes well, or a life in which most of one’s important desires are satisfied, or
a life in which one enjoys a high quality of life (materialistically
construed), or a life full of great achievements. I cannot agree more with the
following remarks by Harry Frankfurt:
A life may be full of
meaning, then, and yet so gravely deficient in other ways that no reasonable
person would choose to live it. It cannot even be assumed that a meaningful
life must always be preferable to one that lacks meaning. What fills a certain
life with meaning may be some intricate and demanding conflict, or a terribly
frustrating but compelling struggle, which involves a great deal of anxiety or
pain and which is extremely destructive. Thus the very circumstances that make
the life meaningful may be deeply objectionable. It might be better to live an
empty life than to generate or to endure so much suffering and disorder. (Necessity, Volition, and Love, CUP, p.85)
Viktor
Frankl may be right when he says that “[t]here is nothing in the world […] that
would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the
knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life” (Man's Search for Meaning, Simon & Schuster, p.109), but for a
more balanced understanding of the importance of meaningfulness we have to keep
in mind that there could be conditions so bad that nothing could help one
survive them, not even the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. To
think otherwise is to romanticize human nature.
Some
may insist that a meaningful life is necessarily better than a meaningless
life. Although we do not have to object to this, we should notice that
meaningfulness is only one dimension of the evaluation of life. As far as this
dimension of evaluation is concerned, it is true that a meaningful life is
always better than a meaningless life. Indeed, it is true trivially, for this
dimension of evaluation is understood by us in such a way that ‘meaningful’ is on
the positive side of it and ‘meaningless’ on the negative side (and a gray area
in between). In any case, there are other dimensions of the evaluation of life,
such as happiness, with ‘happy’ on the positive side and ‘unhappy’ on the
negative side (and a gray area in between). It is possible for the very same
life to be placed on the positive side of one dimension of evaluation while
being placed on the negative side of another dimension. This is what happens
when a life is meaningful but unhappy. It is not always clear which dimension of
evaluation should trump which: in some cases it might be better to live a happy
life that is not meaningful than live a meaningful life that is unhappy, but vice versa in other cases.
6/30/2012
Bookmash
Promises, promises,
Diary of a bad year.
Faking it, self to self,
The seas of language,
The mysterious flame.
Walking the tightrope of reason
Climbing Mount Improbable,
I am a strange loop.
6/21/2012
Easier said than done?
In the following passage from his well-known essay on English style, "Politics and the English Language", Geroge Orwell points out some features of a pretentious style:
The keynote [of a pretentious style] is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de-formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un-formation.
The message seems clear: use verbs and the active voice wherever possible. However, in this very passage Orwell himself does not practice what he preaches. He uses phrases like "the elimination of", "in preference to", and "an appearance of" (instead of "eliminate", "prefer", and "appear"); he also uses the passive voice several times in this short passage, and once in the very sentence in which he mentions the passive voice as a feature of a pretentious style.
This has been noticed (the passive!) by Joseph M. Williams, and he rewrites the Orwell passage, avoiding noun constructions as well as the passive voice:
Those who write pretentiously eliminate simple verbs. Instead of using one word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, they turn a verb into a noun or adjective and then tack it on to a general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. Wherever possible, they use the passive voice instead of the active and noun constructions instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). They cut down the range of verbs further with -ize and de-, and try to make banal statements seem profound by the not un-formation. (Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity & Grace, fourth edition, p.6)
Orwell is a terrific writer, and presumably a very self-aware one. It is reasonable to think that he uses the passive voice and noun constructions here on purpose. More importantly, the Orwell passage does not sound pretentious, nor is the Williams rewrite an improvement on it. The reason is, I think, that the subject matter of the Orwell passage is a certain writing style, but the Williams rewrite makes it sound like it is about the people who write in such a style. If the subject is the style rather than the people, then it is difficult to avoid the passive voice and noun constructions.
What we learn from this example is that good writing is not simply a matter of following some rules or principles. There may be rules or principles that you should follow, but what makes you a good writer is your knowing when to break them.
The keynote [of a pretentious style] is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de-formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un-formation.
The message seems clear: use verbs and the active voice wherever possible. However, in this very passage Orwell himself does not practice what he preaches. He uses phrases like "the elimination of", "in preference to", and "an appearance of" (instead of "eliminate", "prefer", and "appear"); he also uses the passive voice several times in this short passage, and once in the very sentence in which he mentions the passive voice as a feature of a pretentious style.
This has been noticed (the passive!) by Joseph M. Williams, and he rewrites the Orwell passage, avoiding noun constructions as well as the passive voice:
Those who write pretentiously eliminate simple verbs. Instead of using one word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, they turn a verb into a noun or adjective and then tack it on to a general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. Wherever possible, they use the passive voice instead of the active and noun constructions instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). They cut down the range of verbs further with -ize and de-, and try to make banal statements seem profound by the not un-formation. (Williams, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity & Grace, fourth edition, p.6)
Orwell is a terrific writer, and presumably a very self-aware one. It is reasonable to think that he uses the passive voice and noun constructions here on purpose. More importantly, the Orwell passage does not sound pretentious, nor is the Williams rewrite an improvement on it. The reason is, I think, that the subject matter of the Orwell passage is a certain writing style, but the Williams rewrite makes it sound like it is about the people who write in such a style. If the subject is the style rather than the people, then it is difficult to avoid the passive voice and noun constructions.
What we learn from this example is that good writing is not simply a matter of following some rules or principles. There may be rules or principles that you should follow, but what makes you a good writer is your knowing when to break them.
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