But what is closer to me than myself?
Assuredly I labour here and I labour within myself;
I have become to myself a land of trouble and inordinate sweat.
St Augustine
All things shall be well
You shall see for yourself that
All manner of things shall be well...
For as the body is clad in the cloth,
And the flesh in the skin,
And the bones in the flesh,
And the heart in the trunk,
So are soul, and body, clad and enclosed in the goodness of God.
Julian of Norwich
These two quotes, by two different “saints” have inspired me these last few years. I came across both quotes a few years ago, just before my thirtieth birthday. The six months prior to this happy occasion was a time of turmoil and soul-searching. Thirty seemed to me the mark of adulthood. Perhaps the dim recesses of my cloudy mind were unconsciouly shaped by the image of Christ, who began his ministry at the age of thirty. So turning thirty loomed up before me, because if Christ had figured out his divine mission by this age, I’d better get on with things and discover mine. The thought did not actually occur to me in that way. Instead, it manifested itself in a berating that went something like this:
“Petra, you’ve made a mess of your twenties – and that’s OK, you can be young and foolish in your twenties. But now it’s time to pull your finger out. If you don’t get it together now, you will find yourself a loser by the time you are forty. There are no second chances for forty year olds. This is it - it is now or never.”
So there was a bit of self-flaggelation, and also a fair bit of introspection... typically pious responses to the self-recriminations.
So my thirtieth birthday was a milestone, or a millstone…and at the time something within these two quotes resonated within. I thought I might write a post on these quotes, which have served me well as intuitive inspiration. I think perhaps the time has come to make some things a little clearer to myself, to engage in a little philosophy and see where it leads.
It is a delicate and risky business trying to capture one’s intuitions. Like a child trying to catch a butterfly on a spring morning with her little five year old hands, I am unlikely to capture anything as magnificent as a butterfly. Impressions become thoughts, but before I can capture them and hold them to the light for illumination, the fleeting thoughts take wing and, like a little child, I become impatient at my task.
It seems it may be better to remain in childish content, chasing the butterflies, admiring the beauty and freedom of my impressions and intuitions.
The alternative, and heaven forbid this should be the task of philosophy, is to proceed as an entymologist, a lepidopterology specialist who pins his object to a board for detailed study and examination.
So how to proceed? Shall I proceed as an entymologist, and pin my impressions and intuitions down onto a board for closer examination? Will my knowledge increase? Or will I simply find myself staring at my once vibrant, living intuitions and find they are dead? Will my inspiration become a caricature of something once vibrant and living, now forever comically preserved in death? Shall I remain with my childish impressions?
Long may the butterfly live in captivity! I will catch those ideas flitting about my mind in a net and see where they lead me.
The words flit through my mind, ephemeral and light. Augustine is the first to come down. He is easier to grasp, to catch.
His words so closely echo my own. Augustine is solid and substantial. Augustine offers the blood, sweat and tears to which my Dutch Protestant heritage has so ably conditioned me. Well do I hear his words – I have become to myself a land of trouble and inordinate sweat. These are the words of experience – of living in this world, this life. These are the words of concrete reality, of the messiness of our human existence from which there is no escape. Perhaps these are the words of the condemned sinner, of the cursed Adam, of a soul in bondage. Or perhaps there is some hope – perhaps these are the words of the prisoner of Plato’s cave, who is released from his chains, compelled to stand up and begin the steep ascent to the light...
I am not sure of the images that accompany the words, I am not sure if they are adequate... pin them down...pin them down!
If I thought for a moment philosophically, I might say these words represent the concrete, the particular, the existential dimension of life. Heidegger was fond of this particular St Augustine quote. It has been some years since I read Being and Time as an undergraduate student and the finer details escape me. Nevertheless, the impression remains, something like a permanently furrowed brow earned from wading through pages of complicated terminology and strange ideas.
But the permanently furrowed brow comes also from another impression. When I first read Heidegger, I was confronted with myself in the inglorious cesspool of life. If I innocently began philosophy looking for a “higher purpose”, for a ladder to heaven, I was quickly disabused of grandeur. Heidegger claims philosophy begins with the description or the phenomenology of human beings in their every day, ordinary way of life. This is the most difficult task we face for what is closer to me than myself, the “I” of my every day? This being, closer to me than myself is
Dasein, which means literally –
being-there or being-here.
Dasein is fundamentally defined as a being rooted in temporality – the original unity of the future, the past and the present. This is seen in a three-part ontological structure:
existence, thrownness and fallenness.
Welcome to Heidegger’s twilight world, where all words you once knew become strange, and your clear and distinct ideas become enveloped in shadows. From what follows it will become clear Heidegger is obscure, difficult and appears at times nonsensical – all necessary credentials of the European philosopher who wants to influence the next generation. Existence is not the here and now, but represents the phenomenon of the future – Dasein’s potentiality-for-being. Throwness is the way Dasein finds itself in the world, in a space where possibilities are bounded by history and tradition and thus always limited. This represents the phenomenon of the past – Dasein’s past as having-been. Fallenness is the phenomenon of the present, where Dasein exists in the midst of beings which are both Dasein and not Dasein, between being and beings. Dasein exists in this three-part ontological structure and can only understand its own authentic being within this structure. There is no essence beyond the temporality of Dasein. My authenticity comes to be when I face my mortality. There is no escape from this way of being-in-the-world.
It is precisely here in this cesspool world that we find ourselves bogged down, hemmed in on all sides – in a land of trouble and inordinate sweat. There is no access to being, or to any knowledge, apart from Dasein, being here in this life, in this time, in this space. We are thrown into this world, and removed just as quickly by blind chance. The purpose in life is to realise our (limited) potential, while we have life.
Like I said, the details are sketchy and my apologies to Heidegger, but if at least some of these ideas seem familiar, it is indicative of the influence of Heidegger on this generation.
As part of the second generation after Heidegger, reading Heidegger did not introduce me to the cesspool of life, but perhaps simply reinforced my experience of life as a series of unfortunate events.
Now I don’t want to admit the destructive force of nihilism (which comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing, which means not anything, that which does not exist. It appears in the verb “annihilate,” meaning to bring to nothing, to destroy completely. Hence the destructive force of such a philosophy) in my own life and thinking, but sometimes the little devil on my left shoulder wants to come out and play.
So occasionally, when some fool jokingly asks me – what is the meaning of life? or what have you learnt? I like to tell such fools –
I’ve learned sometimes life’s a bowl of shit, sometimes life’s a bowl of smarties. One minute you’re happily shoving handfuls of smarties into your mouth, when suddenly you realise the whole experience has turned to shit.
I know – what depth and profundity (or profanity – take your pick).
So perhaps, and now I am really turning my back on the philosophical ladder to heaven, perhaps you might say Heidegger embodies for me the experience of living life as a bowl of shit. Now Heidegger is sometimes referred to as a secular Kierkegaard, and seventy odd years before Heidegger, Kierkegaard understood the truth that life can be a bowl of shit. But the reason I prefer Kierkegaard over Heidegger is that for Kierkegaard, the bowl of shit is not the whole story of human existence. While he overwhelmingly finds himself confronted with the bowl of shit, he at least believes in the possibility of smarties.
So here I return to the noble world of philosophy and introduce the lovely Julian of Norwich. Julian of Norwich symbolises for me the universal, the abstract, the idealist dimension of life. Let Augustine be the steep ascent from the cave, Julian of Norwich is the moment the philosopher turns towards the sun and sees the true source of light of this world and finds her home within this light.
Now what is the true source of light of this world? All sorts of special interests groups might throw their hat into the ring for this one. I would prefer right now to let them fight over the scraps, while I follow the philosophical road less travelled.
I would like to do this by introducing Heidegger and Kierkegaard’s number one arch enemy – the Patron of German Absolute Idealism – G.W.F Hegel. Hegelianism is summed up in the dictum – the rational alone is real. Our ideas do not simply organise or categorise reality, or experience - they are what is real. Actually, to say our ideas is to mislead. Reality is not the expression of our thoughts, but the expression of infinite or absolute thought or reason. Through our thinking, the rational process becomes aware of itself, becomes infinite. You might say, we are vessels through which Reason becomes aware of itself. So there is no I that thinks, but Reason reflecting on itself through me. Being is not found primarily in the concrete reality of human existence, but in the purely abstract discipline of logic. Logic is the form of metaphysics that begins the process of reducing reality into a unified and manageable system – which culminates in transcendental idealism. This system is deductive and discovered via a dialectical method. It begins, not with any world of human experience, but with the timeless and spaceless Absolute, of which the phenomenal world is a derivative, and to which it is destined to return. The dialectical method leads to a system of conceptual triads, where each proposition logically connects to another into an integrated whole – a magnificent structure of Thought. To every thesis belongs an antithesis which becomes a unity under a higher synthesis. So being has its logical opposite, non-being, and from the unity of these opposites comes becoming. The apex, the mountain peak of these triads, is the synthesis of Idea and Nature into Spirit. The absolute Idea is that which alone is being, eternal life, self-knowing truth, and it is all truth. Nature is the external expression of Idea, separated from Idea, and returning to Idea in the unity of Spirit. If for Heidegger, history and tradition are results of blind chance, in which we struggle to make something of Dasein, for Hegel, the cosmos and history are the necessary and concrete expression of Absolute Thought. Hegelianism aims for nothing less than a magnificent vision of the history of the universe, and the grand development of human consciousness as the necessary self-revelation of Absolute Reason. If my writing is becoming extravagant and ornate – it is only because of the sheer awe one experiences when faced with Hegel’s world.
Existentialism, growing (arguably) out of Kierkegaard and Heidegger, is the extreme rejection to Hegelianism. Life is not rational but fundamentally irrational and absurd. The Hegelian sees himself in life as a swimmer slicing through the water with an impressive freestyle, buoyed by the crisp, clear waters of an olympic swimming pool. The existentialist sees life as treading sewage in a stinking cesspool where we just manage to keep our head above the sludge. If he is reconciled to this reality (like Camus’ Sisyphus) he chuckles ironically at the deluded Hegelian olympic champion. If he has given way to despair, he laments his lost dreams, ceases even to tread water and is swallowed up by the sewage of life.
So are Heidegger and Hegel the philosophical answers to the inspirational of Augustine and Julian of Norwich?
I don’t think so. If Augustine is climbing the steep ascent from the cave in Plato’s famous story, Heidegger remains content with the shadows thrown by fire on the wall of the cave. That is perhaps not fair to Heidegger but it may yet apply to those who are "existentialists", and who “heroically” tread water in the cesspool of sewage. Augustine does not labour without purpose or end. He labours within as he strives to ascent from cave into the light, trusting there is a light at the end of the path, there is a world beyond the mouth of the cave.
Perhaps Julian of Norwich beheld the light beyond the cave during her visions. But such visions came during a prolonged illness. And when you read Hegel, he might strike you as one who beheld the sun and has brought its truth into the shadowy world of the cave. But this would be too much to say of a man who fumbled through his notes during his lectures and who was so solemn, he was nicknamed “the old man”. A glimpse of the light appears to come at a price. If Hegel arrived at his magnificent system by his own labour, his own struggle, it became a cheap inheritance to the next generation and it was to some of Hegel’s self-righteous followers that Kierkegaard aimed his wrath.
And so I am going to come to my conclusion, or lack thereof. I thought engaging in a little philosophy might make my inspirational intuitions clear to myself. I thought I could catch my intuitions with a butterfly net and study them in captivity. I had hoped for a fruitful insight into my intuitions with the aid of some very impressive, credible European philosophers. But, although all four people encountered today seemed somewhere between the shadows of the cave and the light of the sun, none could tell me something definitive of the world beyond the mouth of the cave.
And perhaps that is as it should be. The only way to go beyond the cave is to climb the steep ascent myself. As to that compelling question, hovering all this time in the background - what is the source of light beyond the mouth of the cave? There are plenty of contenders who will sell you the answer at a bargain price. Beware of such cheap imitations! To paraphrase Kierkegaard, it may yet be better to remain with Socrates on the steep ascent... There may be an awful lot of shit to deal with , but the smarties will be the real thing.
Saints and philosophers are fun to play with for a while, but I will set my butterflies free to return from whence they came, beyond the mouth of the cave into the world of light. I will continue to climb the steep ascent.
