New Year’s Resolution: Go Vegan!

by Joel Marks

Originally published on January 15, 2009, in the blog Vegging Out.

I am a recent convert to veganism – very recent, as this was my new year’s resolution for 2009. But I have been sympathetic to veganism for a long time, and it was a combination of factors that “pushed me over the edge” on January 1st. I’ll tell you what they were, and how it’s been since.

I am a philosophy professor by trade, and so it was natural for me to discuss vegetarianism with my students in courses on contemporary moral issues. Then one day a student, Cindy Casper, asked me, “So, are you a vegetarian?” She was no doubt moved by the persuasiveness with which I had been presenting the arguments. But my intent as a teacher had only been to stimulate my students to think for themselves, not to “impose” any particular position on them. So I thought her question irrelevant. Until I thought about it some more. As a matter of fact the arguments in favor of vegetarianism were utterly persuasive to me; and yet I was not a vegetarian. What sense did that make? Had I, perhaps, been using the supposed virtue of pedagogic neutrality as a screen behind which to hide my own lack of moral commitment? That would hardly serve as a model for my students to live their lives in accordance with reason, which was supposedly the justification for having them take a philosophy course in the first place!

That was the turning point. I became a vegetarian … or so I thought. For at that time – a couple of decades ago – I was very far from realizing what vegetarianism really means. Like many others, I’m sure, I thought it meant: don’t eat meat. Furthermore, “meat” meant mammals: cows, goats, pigs, etc. But I was still eating chicken and turkey … fish of every variety … eggs, milk, cheese …. Honestly, chicken and fish just seemed rather far down on the phylogenetic scale compared to mammals; and I had never even heard of veganism.

Eventually I came to appreciate the beauty and wonder of birds – for instance, while I took my daily beach walk in Milford – and gave up eating those as well. But -- so near yet so far! – the fish in the sea (or Sound) were still strangers to me: unseen beneath the surface. In the back of my mind I suspected that they were fully sentient beings as well, but … out of sight, out of mind.

Then a couple of years ago I began to study animal ethics more seriously in my professional capacity. In the course of my researches I happened upon Friends of Animals in Connecticut and struck up an email dialogue with their legal director, Lee Hall. She opened my eyes to the progress that has been made in the field since the pioneering arguments of philosophers Peter Singer and Tom Regan. That led me to Gary Francione, a law professor at Rutgers and perhaps the most outspoken and articulate promoter of veganism. After reading his articles, I arranged for him to speak at Yale, and after that meeting I could no longer remain content with mere vegetarianism (not to mention, ovolactopiscovegetarianism!)

The argument is simple: If you know the facts about factory farming, then there is no logical distinction to be made between eating animals and eating animal products, such as eggs and dairy, if your concerns are for the welfare and dignity of the animals.

Part 2

Having become convinced of the logical cogency of the argument for veganism, and finding it ethically compelling as well, I was almost ready to take the plunge. A little further dialogue removed the final hesitations.

My concerns were threefold:

1) Had the nutritional adequacy of a strict vegan diet been scientifically demonstrated?

2) If so, was it possible to acquire the proper nutrition without stuffing oneself?

3) If so, was it possible to do so without spending the whole day in the kitchen?

The answer to (1) turns out to be yes and no in very interesting ways. The answer is “yes” in that the American Dietetic Association, among others, approves a vegan diet. See for example http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/advocacy_933_ENU_HTML.htm . Indeed, a carefully designed vegan diet is considered not only nutritious but may also ward off various serious illnesses. The answer is “no,” however, in that nutrition science appears hardly ever to be definitive. We are all acquainted with the flip-flopping of dietary recommendations that shows up in the news from time to time. The reason for this is not that nutrition is a pseudo-science or that nutritionists are sloppy researchers; it is simply the nature of the subject matter. There are so many potential interaction effects in diet, and every one of them would need to be studied on groups of people for a lifetime to be sure of their efficacy and safety, that progress must forever be slow-going and tentative.

What makes this situation interesting, though, is that it applies not only to a vegan diet but to any diet, including our everyday omnivorous one. This telling point was made to me by one of my many helpful correspondents, Victor Tsou, who is affiliated with the new vegan organization L.O.V.E. at http://loveallbeings.org/ . So my special concern about the nutritional adequacy of a vegan diet may have been simply an artifact of my having to make the deliberate effort to adopt it; but in fact it could be nothing but a double standard to insist that veganism prove its health-worthiness beyond the level of certainty with which we know our everyday diet to be healthy.

I obtained a very satisfactory answer to (2) from corresponding with Caroline Trapp, Director of Diabetes Education and Care at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine at www.pcrm.org . She suggested that I might simply have been eating too much. Sure enough, when I turned my attention to serving sizes on food labels and diet charts I discovered to my amazement that in my regular diet I had sometimes been overeating by two or three hundred percent! It does not show on my skinny body for some reason, but I know I felt it in my belly. Although this observation pertains to any diet, vegan or otherwise, it directly addressed my concern about veganism that I would have to eat more than would feel digestively comfortable in order to assure myself of adequate nutrition from plant sources in lieu of animal sources. Not so!

And (3) was answered at the same time. Because now that I saw how simple it was to meet my nutritional needs, it became a cinch to prepare enough food to eat without having to become a chef.

While the final roadblocks to veganism were thus removed, the main lesson I have learned from this experience is that a life-change like this is immeasurably facilitated by having a community of advisors and well-wishers. In addition to those already mentioned, I would attribute my turning of theory into action to many local animal activists it has been my privilege to know, including Justin Goodman, Chelsea Rhodes, Joseph Klett, and Wendy Horowitz. Also, I have received continual encouragement and support for developing my understanding of animal ethics from Carol Pollard, David Smith, and Wendell Wallach at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics.

Part 3

So what has it been like to go vegan? It has turned out to be surprisingly easy and enjoyable. My journey has only just begun, but the trajectory is promising and, indeed, exciting.

The main surprise has been the new physical energy and clarity of mind I experience. This occurred instantaneously: the first day. And it has continued now for the two weeks I’ve been vegan. I attribute it mainly to the reduction in the amount of food I have been eating rather than to the removal of animal products from my diet. But I can’t say for sure since those are two independent variables that have been operative at the same time. I suspect both have something to do with it since animal foods are more fatty and that could induce sluggishness. I am speaking impressionistically, however, and do not know, or care, which is the true cause. The bottom line is that going vegan, which I was motivated and, I believe, morally obligated to do anyway, has turned out to be a delightful experience.

Another offshoot of the reduced caloric intake has been feeling hungrier at meal times. You might unthinkingly suppose that that means I’m not eating enough. But a little more thought should convince you that, quite the contrary: it indicates that I am eating the right amount. For shouldn’t one be hungry when one sits down to eat? (Of course I am not talking about starvation.) Isn’t the point of eating to satisfy the body’s nutritional and energy needs? So if you aren’t hungry, why eat? (My grandmother used to go that one better; she had an expression, “Always leave the dinner table a little bit hungry.”) Furthermore, being hungry when you eat aids digestion.

Lastly, “hunger is the best spice.” This not only assures that one will enjoy eating, but it has particular purchase on the switch to veganism. For we would naturally miss foods from our previous diet and might even find some vegan fare to be unappetizing, at least in our mind. But I have discovered empirically that in very short order, feeling hungry makes that hummus/cucumber/tomato/lettuce/sprouts sandwich look and taste just as yummy as my previously accustomed grilled cheese sandwich did! So on Day One I had put together a vegan sandwich for lunch grudgingly. By Day Two I found myself enjoying it. By Day Three I was anticipating it with gusto.

It is also the case that as one opens up to seeking alternatives to animal foods, one discovers an endless array of plant foods. There is simply no excuse to find a vegan diet uninteresting or unappetizing. I have even found myself enjoying cooking again, which had become a boring routine I tried to get over with as quickly as possible.

Now everything is accelerating. I have become so eager to pursue this diet that today I am going “cold turkey” (so to speak!) by discarding all remaining animal food I had in the cupboard and frig. (Well, maybe I will donate it to the food bank lest the animals have suffered and died in vain.) Goodbye tuna cans! So long cheddar bar! It’s been nice knowing you, but, frankly, I’m already losing the taste.

Another trick of the trade, of which I was reminded by Glen Colello of the Catch a Healthy Habit Café in West Haven, is to eat slowly. (Grandma knew that too.) This not only aids digestion, but also allows your belly time to communicate to your brain when it has eaten enough. So you will feel “full” and stop eating before you stuff yourself.

Glen also emphasizes that changing what one eats is not simply a matter of diet but of lifestyle. How true that is. This may seem daunting at first; but ultimately, as a philosopher, I appreciate that everything that we do has a larger significance. In the case of eating, I have found that, the less meat in my diet, the more meaning in my life.

I would like to thank Allan and Janice Saltzman for their constant encouragement, Lana Golub for her consideration and her fabulous Georgian (Sakartvelan) cooking, Huibing He for showing me the joys of simplicity in the kitchen and of sautéing green vegetables (with salt), and Melanie Stengel for her example of caring and her company on this journey; and all of them for challenging me every step of the way. My further publicizing my resolution in this blog is intended to help keep me honest and persuade others to hop on board.

Joel Marks is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven and a columnist for Philosophy Now magazine. His Webpage is www.moralmoments.com . He wishes to thank Helen Bennett Harvey for her invitation to write this essay for her blog, Vegging Out.

For more information on becoming a vegan, check out my Website, "The Easy Vegan."

Car Seats and the Absurd

Copyright © 2002 by Joel Marks
Originally published in Philosophy Now magazine, no. 38, October/Novemeber 2002, page 51

The extra minute you take to secure your child into her car seat could be just what it takes to bring your whole family into the path of a Mack truck half an hour down the road.

But that is obvious. It is the cruel, rueful, and ironic face of the contingency of existence. And of course it can work the other way around: Had you not taken the extra minute to secure your child into her car seat, you might have driven right into the path of a Mack truck. What does this tell us? Only, one might suppose, that we do not know the future. It doesn't change the fact that the only rational way to conduct one's affairs is to consider the odds: Children in automobile accidents are more likely to survive if they are strapped into a car seat. Therefore it is rational, not to mention morally obligatory, to do this for your child, even though it is within the realm of possibility that there will be a freak coincidence of circumstances, which converts your caring action into a contributing cause of the very catastrophe you were attempting to avert.

Only ... further reflection leads me to make a more bizarre inference. Put aside for the moment our epistemological situation and consider the metaphysics. Do you grant the following? Most accidents where there is a child passenger and an adult who has been responsible enough to purchase a car seat and secure the child into it, will not be due to some such aggravating factor as the driver drunkenly weaving in and out of traffic or drag racing or the like. Rather, the scenario will more likely be one of encountering some other car which has such a driver, or of the first driver's doing something foolishly spontaneous, like miscalculating when the light was going to change, or of his being momentarily distracted, as by the family dog wagging his tail in the driver's face at a bend in the road, etc. In sum, I assume that the typical accident involving a child in a car seat occurs because the car was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Accidents are the thing of a moment, and moments are conditioned as delicately as a house of cards.

But if that is so, then do we not arrive at a rather startling conclusion, namely, that it is not the freak coincidence, but in fact the norm that accidents involving a child secured into a car seat would not have happened at all if the child had not been secured into the car seat? The logic of my argument is that everything else would have remained the same ... ceteris paribus, to use a logician's term. And I think that is a reasonable assumption in most cases. For instance, your not taking an extra minute with the car seat (because you were rushed, say) would not in any way affect whether the driver of the Mack truck takes another drink, or runs the stop light, etc. So that truck would still be at the very spot it would otherwise have been had you taken the extra minute. Except that because you didn't, there would be no accident: Your car and the Mack truck would pass through the same space but at different times.

In other words, although your alternative behavior would indeed affect the whole universe given enough time, the vast majority of the universe would remain the same in the short term. It is like the ripples in a pond after you plunk the pebble in: They will eventually reach the far shore and make the frog croak, but at first a nearby fish will not even notice anything has happened. Just so, the fate of the Mack truck and its driver, and of all who would be affected by them in turn into the indefinitely far future, would not begin to alter until later, after the moment at which the accident would have occurred. Up until then, all else with the truck and driver would be identical, so the accident won't occur provided you are careless about the car seat.

Singing the praises of car seats because your child's life has just been saved by one seems, therefore, as odd as extolling the virtues of kidnappers because your child has just been released by one. It is understandable, of course; there is a certain psycho-logic to it since your relief makes you feel grateful. But in strictly logical terms ... it ain't, is it?

Nonetheless, it is still true that it is rational (and, again, surely also ethical, even morally obligatory) to strap the child in. That is because the epistemology of the human condition leaves us with no rational option for deciding what to do other than relying on known, general probabilities. And in this case they presumably tell us that in otherwise matched populations, the one employing car seats will suffer fewer casualties. You simply cannot outwit Mother Nature on this one.

I conclude that ... life is absurd. (Although it is perhaps also absurd to employ logical argument to arrive at such a conclusion. But then ... life is absurd!) For the summation of the above is that it is rational to use a car seat for the safety of your child, even though on any actual occasion when the car seat shows its effectiveness for that purpose, it has likely also occasioned the risk to which your child has been exposed. In short, the car seat (in any given case but not in general) brings about the need for itself. It sounds like a marketer's dream ... or a metaphysical wizard's "perpetual justification engine" ... or the answer to a theologian's prayers for a Necessary Being ... but it is really a kind of joke, akin to: "Why am I hitting myself on the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop!" Also, this realization seems to have no practical import, and yet it changes everything, like a Gestalt shift (as from the contour of a vase to two facial profiles).

Ubiquitube: Television as Muzak

Published as "Television Sets Are Invading Public Spaces," New Haven Register, June 30, 1998

There were five people in the doctor's waiting room, all of us occupied: some reading, some talking, some just sitting and thinking. Nobody was paying any attention to the television. The television, however, was paying plenty of attention to us. It blared on about various health issues. I don't know if the program was canned or cable; I do know it was annoying.

So I asked those assembled if anyone would mind my turning it off. No one did. But when I hit the power button, nothing happened. Then I tried the volume control, to no avail. I approached the receptionist in her glassed-in enclosure. She had been watching me. When she slid open the window, I asked, "Could you please turn off the television? Nobody's watching it." Her reply: "I'm sorry, Sir, we have no control over it."

Have you noticed how television has become the new Muzak? For many years the public has been warned about the encroachment of videocameras on our privacy: the Big Brother phenomenon. But meantime there has been another kind of intrusion: The importuning tube has become ubiquitous. So television is not only watching us; it demands that we watch it. Call it the Baby Brother phenomenon.

The most irritating instance I've experienced to date was on a long-distance airplane flight. Shoehorned into my seat, I faced a small video screen on the back of the seat in front of mine, which kept up a continual display of ever-changing advertisements. I could not simply sit and stare ahead of me without having my mind filled with repetitive trivia. The stewardess informed us that there was no way to stop it except to watch a regular program instead, but I didn't want to do that either. So I tried to read. But at the top of my visual field the screen would flicker to a new image every few seconds, intent upon seizing my attention once more. This was high-tech water torture.

My main dread of going to a hospital someday is that I will have to share a room with a videophile. But what if it's simply a TV that can't be turned off? Should I even anticipate one over my death bed? Perhaps it will be showing an educational video about the stages of dying. Or maybe a toothpaste commercial will carry me to the hereafter.

Talk about a toothpaste tube: Television is even in your mouth. On my last visit to the dentist the hygienist proudly directed my gaze to a new monitor hanging from the ceiling of the examination room. She then aimed a pencil-shaped device into my mouth, and on the tube appeared a giant image of my tongue and teeth. She was sure I would love to watch as a way to distract or entertain myself while the dental work proceeded. YECH! The saliva-filled cavity made me think of the drooling monster in Alien. I requested to be denied the pleasure of observing this fascinating spectacle.

Students stare at little screens in darkened classrooms, taking the place of people speaking and conversing. Videos are shown on school bus trips; so much for chatting with your friend, or gazing out the window. Televisions entice in restaurants, interfering with attention to your companion or your food. Where will it end? What public space will permit us any degree of privacy anymore, any peace or autonomy, any place for human interaction or focused observation or thoughtful reading or pure contemplation, any opportunity to hone the skills of articulation, response, awareness, or reflection? I try to imagine the limits, but I cannot. It is only a matter of time before rest room stalls are television equipped. What advertiser could resist such a captive audience? Stamp out even this sanctum for reading or thought!

And just add all of these hours to the time Americans already spend watching TV in their homes. This isn't The Truman Show. This is the viewer as 24-hour-a-day prisoner of the medium. While I am still master of my own house, there shall be no television here. This is the last refuge.

A Clash of Symbols

Published as "With Unthinkable Now Fact, Focus Turns to the Living,” New Haven Register, September 8, 2002

When the dust settled, I realized I had traveled back in time. The skyline was the one I had grown up with as a boy in Brooklyn Heights, walking along the Promenade and looking across the East River at downtown Manhattan. The two great bridges -- the Brooklyn and the Manhattan -- framed the right side of the scene. To the left in the distance: the Statue of Liberty. And straight ahead -- no twin towers.

One year ago. Do you remember how strange it was? For days no airplanes crossed the sky. We all took note of such things. But there was much about this event that was not spoken, even though we sensed it.

For one: the powerful Biblical resonance. Often to my mind came an image of the Tower of Babel -- its hubristic aspiration, then its destruction, when humanity was forever split asunder. “World Trade Center” -- the very name recalls that ancient dream. Was this not an event of mythic proportions? Will its memory not become legend? Will it not serve as an eternal symbol? -- although only future history will decide a symbol of what.

But will there any longer be a single history? Maybe it is just another myth that there has ever been a single history. (Could this be what the Tower of Babel story is really about?) For our culture this will be forever a symbol of infamy -- like Pearl Harbor ... and Hiroshima to a Japanese? (And now we too have our Nagasaki.)

To another culture (or cult?) it will be a clear proof that "God was on their side." This act -- brazen beyond description, so intricate, of such magnitude, and crowned by a "success" surpassing even the wildest dreams of its planners and executioners: toppling the entire towers ... and both of them! It could only be an outrageous fiction ... but it happened; hence, it must be by God's hand ... it must contain a divine message. Or so another culture could imagine it.

I think also: David and Goliath.

And if this had been Star Wars, would we not have been rooting for the small band of men who were up against the mightiest power known in the galaxy, with nothing to rely on but their will and their wits (and a lot of luck ... or was the Force with them)?

The images are so confusing, for they do not jibe with the murderous intent of the perpetrators. These were the bad guys!

But the great acts by "our side" will stir us until our own dying days -- concrete acts of heroism, even though we must rely mainly on imagination to fill in the details.

What would you have done? The South Tower has collapsed. The North Tower is ablaze, with thousands of people trapped inside. You are a fire fighter or a police officer just arrived on the scene. It is your job to try to put out the fire and lead as many people to safety as possible. You can't use the elevators, and most of the damage begins above the 80th floor. You have no idea what is going to happen or how long you have. Would it be foolhardy to enter the building? You wish you could calculate the odds, but the odds are incalculable, because the situation is unprecedented.

You are on Flight 93, which has been hijacked. You have heard via cell phone about your likely fate, unless you act. It is your initiative, and your body that must make the difference. You have nothing to lose, but there is still the wall of fear and pain to clamber over.

The firefighters performed their selfless duty. The airline passengers fought for their lives (and the symbolism of our nation's capitol). It is instructive that these very different sorts of actions were equally heroic.

President Bush's reaction upon first learning the news of the attacks was anger. "I was furious," he said. I was completely surprised by his reaction. (Would that surprise him?) What I felt when watching the scene were horror, disbelief, and sorrow. Since then I have had an overwhelming desire to enter into dialogue. He has gone to war. Is that what it takes to be a leader? I think there is a place for both approaches.

I am supremely proud to live in a country whose liberality has permitted an increase in favorable opinion about Islam in the last year (and where I can write this essay without fear). The President has led this "charge" too.

Yet, it is so strange to be hearing open talk by our government, and by its sympathizers (and proxies?) in the press, of attacking another country -- Iraq -- which has not even been implicated in the events of September 11. "Pre-emptive war" is an infinitely useful concept. I have before me a photograph in a Newsweek column by Fareed Zakaria ("Invade Iraq, But Bring Friends," August 5, 2002), captioned "Iraqi training: Ripping raw chickens apart." I recall the propaganda posters that illustrated the chapter about jingoism and yellow journalism in my grade school social studies textbook.

We now have the perfect enemy. He is everywhere. Total and universal and perpetual war seems justified. There is no longer a square inch of this planet that shall be permitted to remain free of governmental control; for any desert, jungle, mountain pass, cave, or slum that is unsecured is a potential haven for terrorists.

So this is what it is like to live in history. I grew up with December 7, but it was mainly celluloid to me. Now we have been sneak-attacked on an island in the Atlantic, as before we had been in the Pacific. But this is live!

But it is still celluloid. How many times have we seen the skyscrapers of New York City obliterated? ... by alien saucers, volcanoes, floods, radioactive monsters, asteroids, even existentialist outlaws (in "Fight Club"). Will somebody create a trailer of all of these episodes, concluding with 9-11?

Had any of the hijackers ever even heard of the movie "The Towering Inferno"? It starred "Connecticut's own" Paul Newman. That flick more than any other captures for me what it must have been like to be in the twin towers on their last day.

And it was pure science fiction cinema to see people fleeing towards the camera down the middle of a city street in lower Manhattan, the buildings forming a perspectival V on either side of the frame, while a billowing debris cloud barreled down on them.

Yet the events of that day have made us aware of our actual vulnerability. I don't mean to terrorists only, but to incoming comets or whatever. Science fiction can become historical fact. A single space rock could wipe out all of humanity forever, at any moment. So will we act in time to "pre-empt" that scenario too?

And there are many other urgent realities, which, while not Armageddon, do not deserve to be ignored either. 3000 perished in one location on September 11, 2001, but 40,000 died that same year on the nation's roads. Is there a war on hazardous driving? How about hiring as many additional highway patrol officers as FBI agents and Special Forces personnel and airport screeners?

And how many millions are victims of natural and human catastrophes in other parts of the globe, which often "merit" only a filler in the local newspaper?

But, then, how much greater still would have been the devastation we ourselves were prepared to inflict with a single "Go" signal from the President to our nuclear forces worldwide (indeed, from even a single submarine built in Groton)?

We have lived with all of that. Do we refuse to live with this? Heretofore people seem not to have hesitated to reside in or visit San Francisco. Now we understand that New York City and Washington, D.C., lie in a fault zone as well.

And how quickly we forgot that, just six months before our modern double-Wonder of the World was leveled, the Taliban had demolished a 2000-year-old double-Wonder, the two giant Buddhas at Bamiyan. In fact, only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is extant. Why? Because the standard operating procedure of all "civilizations" has been to destroy one's enemy's most impressive structures (and put his citizens to the sword). Tourists must in the main remain content to view ruins and monuments and to use their imagination.

So what makes this day different from all other days? Perhaps less than we might have supposed. Our country has been dealt a heavy blow, both in lives and in symbolism. But let us hope that our leaders, while doing what they must, can see beyond the celluloid and the symbols and focus on the living. We are a nation that has been to the moon and back; we do not lack for symbols of our own.


The author wishes to acknowledge valuable suggestions by Nora Porter.

The Geography of Philosophy

Copyright © 2006 by Joel Marks

The following essay was originally published in two installments in Philosophy Now magazine, issue nos. 41 (“The Geography of Philosophy,” August/September 2004, p. 41) and 42 (“The History of the World, Part 2,” October/November 2004, p. 38).

The typical philosophy curriculum in my country completely ignores non-Western traditions of thought. Apparently the latter are viewed as primarily religious in nature and so not properly philosophical, when in fact the very distinction has little significance in those other traditions. Or perhaps they are simply not considered at all; after all, if the teachers themselves were never exposed to such material in graduate school, they are not likely to incorporate it into the syllabi they devise for their students.

I am fortunate to have had a graduate advisor, Joel Kupperman, who was very much "into" Asian philosophy, and so I came to know a thing or two about it. Ever since, I have made it my business to acquaint my charges, who are mainly at the introductory level, with a true introduction to philosophy -- by not ignoring two thirds of the world's great traditions! For just as "The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato" (Alfred North Whitehead in Process and Reality) and so traces back to ancient Greece, there are two other towering traditions that trace back to ancient India and China.

This is the geography of philosophy, if you will. I do not doubt that there have also been native traditions worthy of note in Africa, the Americas, and Australia, but the scope of my own competence is "only" the Eurasian continent (and there too it is perforce spotty, given the enormous extant literatures). It is also a tragic fact of history that those other traditions were suppressed and perhaps decimated by colonialism.

In an attempt to restore some balance to the very conception of philosophy, therefore, I will summarize Western philosophy in twenty-five words or less (as it were), and then provide a longer, but still whirlwind tour of Asian thought. I will also present a number of nonphilosophical factoids to keep the narrative moving along pleasantly. The reader is advised, however, to take everything I say with a grain of salt: This is the World According to Marks. My main intent is to motivate you to explore the philosophy (and history) on your own; it turns out to be quite accessible. Finally I will end on a meet note, in an effort to have the "twain" of East and West meet.

The History of the World, Part 1

East and West have always "met," of course: They are on the same continent, are they not? The very terms are relative. I ask my students (in America): Which direction would you travel to reach the Orient? The correct answer is to stretch out your arms to the sides and point in opposite directions. So why did Asia get pinned with "East" and Europe "West"? (Let us ignore that most of Europe resides in the Eastern Hemisphere!) I presume it had to do with the prevailing trade routes: To get from Europe to Asia, Marco Polo had to go east, and to return home, west. This is also why Asia is the Orient, as oriri is a Latin word meaning "to rise" (old Sol, etc.). (My students are surprised to learn that most of them are Occidentals [from occidere, "to set"].)

The same was true of travel by sea: Vasco da Gama went south around the Cape of Good Hope, but was heading eastward to India. Of course Columbus had another idea: Why not go west to reach the East? He was wrong: Oh yes, the Earth is round -- never any doubt about that -- but it is ever so much larger (or Eurasia ever so much smaller?) than he suspected. To his dying day, Columbus insisted that he had reached India. That is why American cowboys and cavalry were fighting Indians all those years. (We Americans refer to citizens of India as "India Indians.") Columbus had accidentally “discovered” the Occident.

Now for the history of Western philosophy: Ancient, Middle, Modern. Let me amplify! The Ancient period lasted roughly a millennium, from around 500 B.C. to 500 A.D.; Greece and the Mediterranean were the venue. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle constituted its most impressive dynasty, perhaps in all of philosophy, but those who came before and after were hardly mere "preSocratics" and Platonic "footnotes,” respectively! Parmenides, from the pre period, is a particular favorite of mine.

The next millennium is often skipped entirely in introductory philosophy courses, as, again, indecently consorting with religion. Indeed, it used to be called for this reason the "Dark Ages." Probably that was just a lot of (so-called) Renaissance propaganda, trying to stake out its own novelty and superiority to what had transpired just previously. In fact you will find every kind of philosophy during this period, and outstanding thinkers, such as Augustine and Aquinas. Nowadays the era is designated the "Middle Ages" -- a more honorific, if not exactly brilliant appellation -- based on its having existed between now and before!

Finally, we come to the Modern period. It may seem odd to call something five hundred years old "modern," but everything is relative; and there is something to be said for the idea that our way of looking at things today is largely due to preconceptions first conceived by folks such as Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, and Kant (not to mention Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, etc. ad inf.). Some people think we have now stepped into a new epoch: the Postmodern. I myself think it's too soon to tell whether the most recent period of philosophy will have lasted only half the millennium of each of the two preceding.

Running parallel to this Western philosophical tradition has been the Western, or Abrahamic (Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed) religious tradition. What's the difference? In keeping with my thumbnail sketch, I will simplistically pronounce that philosophy and religion deal with the same questions -- Where did everything come from? What is the nature of reality? How shall one live? -- but approach them differently: Each religion provides an answer that must be believed, on pain of being deemed irreligious, while each philosophy provides an answer that must be questioned, on pain of being deemed unphilosophical.

So much for the preliminaries. The discussion of Asian philosophies is taken up in earnest in the next section below.

The History of the World, Part 2

An Asian philosopher once explained the layout of Oriental philosophy to me quite succinctly: Chinese philosophy is Far Eastern, Indian is South Asian, and Islamic is Near Eastern. I shall try to expand on that at slightly greater length below, which carries on the project I introduced above of, you might say, orienting Occidentals to Asian traditions of thought that rival our own in pedigree and scope. (I have, however, relegated Islam to the "Western" tradition due to its Abrahamic lineage.) Although not all Westerners are as geographically challenged as one of my college students who asked, "Where's Asia?" -- many Americans, at least, do show amazingly little recognition of the great philosophical traditions of the rest of the world. I'll offer a few tidbits herein that will, I hope, whet the appetite.

Let us begin with Mother India. As far back as Abraham in the "West" (Near East? Middle East?), the rishis meditated in the forests. Their communions with ultimate reality were eventually written down as the Upanishads, the ne plus ultra of the world's metaphysical philosophies. A very accessible translation into English was rendered by Christopher Isherwood and his Hollywood guru, Swami Prabhavananda. (Isherwood was also the author of Berlin Stories, on which the musical Cabaret was based.) The book is short, as are most of the editions of Asian texts I will recommend for the novice; and all of them, in one version or another, can be found in any half-decent bookstore and on the Internet. Thus, a person can establish his or her first familiarity with the essential Eastern corpus in a few evenings or in a weekend.

The tradition of India is also known as Hinduism (both names from the same root, referring to the Indus river valley where this civilization began). Midway in its history was born a prince, Siddhartha Gautama. The story of how he became the Enlightened One -- the Buddha -- is one of the world's treasures. (A depiction is contained within Bertolucci's charming 1993 film, Little Buddha.) His function as a reformer and then a founder is reminiscent of Jesus, whose anointment as the Christ would come half a millennium later. Both were princes of peace. However, the Buddha is not God, or a god, or a prophet of God, or an oracle of a god. He is, perhaps, a psychologist! I recommend Irving Babbitt's translation of the Dhammapada.

In India, Hinduism eventually embraced Buddhism (as it does all things), and the result was the Bhagavad Gita. Considered a kind of Hindu Bible, it is, again, quite short, and the Isherwood and Prabhavananda version is fine. The text is actually an excerpt from the Mahabharata, the world's longest epic poem, full of gods and heroes and great battles. Interestingly, its philosophical nugget, the Gita, was an inspiration for Mahatma Gandhi's epochal campaign of nonviolent action, by which he accomplished what George Washington had required the spilling of blood to do. Gandhi's deeds and thoughts in turn inspired Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement in the U.S., and both Gandhi's and King's successes were models for Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement in Poland, whose achievements eventually led to the end of the Cold War.

Returning to ancient times: China gave rise to two great schools of thought, Taoism (or “Dowism”) and Confucianism. Their seminal (and short!) works -- the Tao Te Ching (also called the Lao Tzu, after its purported author, a near contemporary of Confucius or “K'ung-Fu-Tzu,” who was himself a contemporary of the Buddha) and the Confucian Analects -- are a study in contrast: the one mystical and paradoxical, the other straightforward and conventional. Both pay heed to the still earlier tradition of yin/yang: the harmony of opposites. These two "opposites" (Taoism and Confucianism) themselves harmonized (this being an Asian trait, it seems, as witness also Hinduism and Buddhism, and contrasting to the bloody relations among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and their relations with the others), although Confucianism became the titular creed of the Chinese civil service for over two millennia, until Mao.

Meanwhile, Buddhism had spread eastward out of India. This fact became very belatedly known to Americans of my generation when we saw images on television of Buddhist monks and nuns in Vietnam immolating themselves to protest repression. This made a lasting impression of the power of meditative self-control (or selfless nonattachment, as the case may be).

A very different face is presented by the Ch'an philosophy of China, which resulted from the blending of Buddhism with the indigenous Taoism of such carefree sages as Chuang Tzu. Thus, Ch'an is a kind of culmination of the two great traditions of India and China. Ch'an continued the eastward migration of Buddhism, to Japan, where it became Zen -- as distinctive and delightful a philosophy as the world has known. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a nonpareil collection of stories and wisdom, compiled by Paul Reps.

But the eastward journey of Buddhism was still not over: In a kind of reverse-Columbus, it struck out towards the rising sun to reach the West (perhaps abetted by the American occupation of Japan after World War II). For in the 1950s on the shores of America there appeared the Beat Generation, whose main figures, such as Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, were heavily influenced by Zen. Kerouac's novel about "dharma bums" -- On the Road -- also became the defining metaphor of the hippies of the following decade, eponymously known (with affection by some) as the Sixties.

To conclude this wild road trip of my own, I note that the beat-niks were Buddhists and the Beat-les were Hindus (courtesy of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi). Thus, from island nations on either side of Eurasia, Asian philosophies migrated to the U.S., where they helped to create the current generation of my students, who have never heard of any of this stuff (except the Beatles).

Gerard Hoffnung: A Biographical Sketch

Copyright (c) 2006 by Joel Marks

Originally published in The Hoffnung Festschrift, edited by Joel Marks and David E.E. Sloane (Essays in Arts and Sciences, Vol. XXI, October 1992).1

Gerard Hoffnung was born at a very early age (as he was wont to say). Unfortunately he also died at one, of brain hemorrhage at age 34. In that short span (March 22, 1925 September 28, 1959) he was able to cultivate an extraordinary range of comedic talents as cartoonist, raconteur, impresario. Above all he was a personality an amazing blend of sophistication and innocence, a fount of gentle but exquisite humor, a man of boundless good cheer, a Santa Claus, a rather large pixie, a creation virtually indistinguishable from his caricatures of himself.

Hoffnung a quintessentially British humorist was born a German Jew, and consequently his early upbringing occurred under some of the least humorous circumstances the world has known. He was enrolled at a little day school for "undesirable" (i.e., "non Aryan") children located next to Himmler's residence! But even at this time Hoffnung was Hoffnung (and how better to underscore the title of one of his records: "The Importance of Being Hoffnung"?): "his face like a firm apple, rich blond hair, blue eyes: a little angel from a distance! If one looked closer, a most un angelic bonfire of mischief sparkled in those eyes."2 Already he was drawing caricatures,3 playing every musical instrument he could get his hands on (especially percussion), and in general making himself the antic center of attention.

An only child with a loving mother in a well to do family, the young Hoffnung was certainly to some degree insulated from the horrors going on around him. He was exposed to high culture at an early age, already a fan of opera and Stravinsky before his teens. He lived in his own world a world that did contain elements of the macabre (as evidenced by some of his earliest childhood drawings). But it is likely that this interest had more to do with the films he loved and his natural attraction to the hyperbolic, the outlandish, the grotesque than anything in the world of politics.4

(It should be noted that the mature Hoffnung was far from indifferent to social issues. His outlook on race relations, homosexuality, nuclear disarmament, the treatment of animals [especially hunting] and, for that matter, the music of Bartok and Schönberg is liberal and impassioned. Joining the Society of Friends in 1955, he became active in their prison visitation program.)

His family left Germany in 1938, when Gerard was 13, and he was enrolled at Highgate School the following year.5 Gerard was the usual cutup, chafing at the rules. Three years later he finally persuaded his mother to let him go to art school, but even here he wanted his own way too much for school authorities: He was expelled from Hornsey Art College. Ineligible for military service because of his German birth, he found work cleaning milk bottles at a dairy until being hired to teach art at Stamford School in 1945 at the age of 20.

But his accelerated life did not leave him teaching for long. His first published drawing had appeared in Lilliput when he was only 15. By age 22 he was a regular in many periodicals and could at last devote himself fully to cartooning...and just being Hoffnung; the Hoffnung persona itself soon came to the fore.6 A talk entitled "Fungi on Toast" was accepted by the BBC in 1950. Soon Hoffnung was appearing on the Sunday afternoon radio show "One Minute Please." In this way he became a national personality.

During the decade of the '50s Hoffnung made his mark. He was a frequent guest on radio and the new television and his work continued to appear in many publications, including Punch, the Daily Express, and the London Evening News. 1952 saw the first of several "comic oratory performances" at Cambridge Union and Oxford Union and also his first book of cartoons, The Right Playmate. In 1953 came The Maestro, the first of six cartoon books on musical subjects. And in 1956 and 1958 Hoffnung achieved his clowning glory two comedy musical festivals at the Royal Festival Hall in London, featuring such works as "Concerto for Hosepipe and Strings" and "Let's Fake an Opera" and involving such legitimate musical luminaries as Malcolm Arnold, Dennis Braine, and Aaron Copland.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the decade of the '50s was also the period of Hoffnung's courting and marrying (in 1952) Annetta Bennett. They appear to have enjoyed a close and productive relationship. In fact, fully half of the Hoffnung bibliography is posthumous, having been brought to fruition by his widow with the same meticulous care one would have expected of Hoffnung himself. Mrs. Hoffnung has also overseen the production of over 100 Hoffnung Music Festivals worldwide, in which both she and their children sometimes participate.7


NOTES

1. The scholarly Hoffnung Festschrift in which this biographical sketch first appeared, edited by Joel Marks and David E.E. Sloane, is still available; for information about where it can be purchased, please contact Marks at jmarks@newhaven.edu. Other excerpts from the Festschrift can be found by clicking here. An expanded version of the sketch was published in the Encyclopedia of British Humorists, edited by Steven H. Gale (Garland Publishing Company, 1996). See also Annetta Hoffnung's magnificent biography, Gerard Hoffnung (Gordon Fraser, 1988). Hoffnung's cartoon and musical oeuvre can be purchased through the Hoffnung Website.

2. Reminiscence of a teacher, from O Rare Hoffnung (Putnam & Co., 1960), p. 99.

3. Over a thousand of his early drawings (beginning in his sixth year) are extant, and have served as the subject of a scholarly study by Dr. S. M. Paine of London University's Institute of Education.

4. Just before he died Hoffnung was planning a Festival of Horror at the National Film Theatre. His drawing for the Festival program's cover shows a vampire drinking a glass of blood through a straw.

5. Hilde took her son Gerard to England for the educational opportunities; Hoffnung's father, Ludwig, went to Palestine to seek his fortune in the family banking business. The war made the separation inadvertently permanent.

6. A curious aspect of this persona is Hoffnung's apparent age. A neighbor notes that in 1945, when Hoffnung was only 20, "He seemed an old man" (ibid., p. 148). Mrs. Hoffnung remarks in her biography of Hoffnung, "I do not know why Gerard's appearance should have been at such variance with his age" (p. 45). On recordings he sounds like a man in his sixties. The misconception persists: In a review of a posthumous Hoffnung Festival Concert in Canada in 1986, Mrs. Hoffnung is referred to as "Hoffnung's daughter, Annetta."

7. Alas, the final Hoffnung concert was slated for 31 December, 2005, in Lausanne.

Facts and Forms, or, Elementary my dear Clouseau

Copyright © 2006 by Joel Marks

Inspector Jacques Clouseau: Facts, Hercule, facts! Nothing matters but the facts. Without them the science of criminal investigation is nothing more than a guessing game. So consider the facts in the case at hand. Fact: Maria Gambrelli was found standing over the dead man with a smoking gun in her hand. Fact: She had a big smile on her face. Fact: No other fingerprints were found on the gun. So what do we conclude, Hercule?
Hercule LaJoy: Why, that Maria Gambrelli committed the murder.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: No, you fool! You are forgetting the most important fact: motive.
Hercule LaJoy: He beat her.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: He was Spanish!
Hercule LaJoy: He tore her dress off.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: Oh, don't be ridiculous. Would you kill someone who tore your dress off?
-- from the 1964 movie, A Shot in the Dark, starring Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau

Hilarity aside, the cited scene from the classic comedy serves as a perfect example of how logic works, or doesn’t.

Clouseau begins by touting facts as the key to solving a murder, or any crime. And indeed, what could be more noble and useful than a total allegiance to the facts? Not only the detective, but the scientist and any genuine seeker will want to become adept at discerning and uncovering facts. It seems to be practically a tautology. But, in fact, the facts fail him utterly when Clouseau draws his final conclusion, which is that the beautiful Maria Gambrelli is not the murderer. Alternatively we might say that the only fact that really moves the inspector is the beauty of the accused.

The logical conclusion to draw about Clouseau’s reasoning, or about any reasoning, is that it is not facts that decide an inference by themselves but also logic. But what is logic if not the compilation of facts? There is a very precise answer to that question, and its name is validity. Its meaning is that the facts adduced suffice to assure the truth of the conclusion. But how do they do that? Is it just a matter of strong belief? Clearly not, for Clouseau certainly has a conviction that Maria Gambrelli’s physical charms guarantee that she should not be convicted; but of course that is absurd. So the assurance provided by the facts, or as they are technically known, the premises of a logical argument must have a more secure source than the subjective psychology of the person who is presenting the argument.

There are many ways to describe the essential logical element of validity. One simple way is to point to various rules. Perhaps the most fundamental rule is this: If it is true that p and it is also true that q is true if p is true, then q is also true. That rule is traditionally called modus ponens. When it obtains, one can say that the conclusion of the argument follows from the premises; that is, they “follow,” not sequentially, but with logical necessity. The conclusion must be true, given the truth of the premises. The rule given has two premises: (1) p is true and (2) if p is true, then q is true. Note that both premises are presumed to be facts. For example, an argument might be that (1) (it is true that) today is Monday and (2) (it is true that) if today is Monday, then tomorrow is Tuesday; therefore tomorrow is (or will be) Tuesday. This argument is valid because, if both premises were true, the conclusion would also be true -- guaranteed.

Note also, however, that validity by itself does not guarantee the truth of a conclusion. Even though the above argument is surely valid, and hence is a logical argument, its conclusion would not be true if one of its premises happened to be false. Thus, if today is Tuesday, then even though Premise 2 remains true – since it is only a hypothetical assertion – the conclusion is false, because tomorrow would be Wednesday. I should also point out that the conclusion of a valid argument that contains a false premise could also still be true. For example: (1) The Sun revolves around the Earth and (2) If the Sun revolves around the Earth, then (provided the Earth’s rotation is not in unitary synchrony with the Sun’s revolution and there are clear skies, etc.) the Sun will appear to move in Earth’s sky; therefore (provided the Earth’s rotation is not in unitary synchrony with the Sun’s revolution and there are clear skies, etc.) the Sun appears to move in Earth’s sky. In this argument Premise 1 is false; however the conclusion is true anyway. Thus, both facts and logic are required for a sound argument. My point in this essay is only to emphasize that facts alone will not suffice to yield sound reasoning.

Inspector Clouseau, therefore, may have been right about all of his facts; but his inference was faulty because of its illogic. The mere fact of Maria Gambrelli’s beauty does not, by any rule of logic, guarantee that she is not a murderer. But suppose Clouseau insisted upon a second premise, namely: If someone is beautiful, then they couldn’t be a murderer. Fine; logic has been restored to the inference. But of course now the argument is unsound since at least that second premise is surely a false generalization. Thus, Clouseau would have won the logical battle, but lost the rational war. Here again we see facts and logic working in tandem; each by itself is insufficient to guarantee sound reasoning.

The reason I wish to stress the importance of logic over facts, however, is that it is the underappreciated sibling of this pair. People generally are comfortable talking about facts and thinking in terms of facts. But this gets us only so far, and produces a lot of mischief by people who present facts and then draw conclusions willy-nilly. For example: “The destruction of the World Trade Center was an atrocity; Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator; therefore we should invade Iraq.” Why does the crucial component of logic (or illogic!) escape notice so often? Perhaps because it is such an abstract notion; furthermore its nature is relational, a “ghostly” connection between one set of “solid” facts (the premises) and another (purported) fact (the conclusion). Yet this is also wherein resides its power. The way logicians capture these phenomena is with the use of symbols or forms; for example, as we have seen, by the use of lower-case letters like p and q, which can function as variables that stand for any statement whatsoever. The resultant “formal” logical rules have universal application, whether they be about Maria Gambrelli or the Sun or a pig in a poke.

Therefore Inspector Clouseau needs to add one more fact to his repertoire, to wit: In order to crack the case, the facts must fit the right forms.