Intellectual Pleasures

by Joel Marks
Published in Reflections (University of New Haven), no. 5, Spring 1989, pp. 1-3.

Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites and, when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. -- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

I like to parse arguments. I love to parse arguments. Give me a passage of text which is intended to persuade, and I will apply my powers of analysis to make its premises and conclusion explicit. Even if the argument seems clear to begin with, and is beautifully articulated, I derive pleasure from putting it into this dry mold: "A therefore B" (or "B because A").

For example:

A story (perhaps apocryphal) is told that Abraham Lincoln was once trying to convince a friend that all [people] were prompted by selfishness in doing good. As the coach in which they were riding crossed over a bridge, they saw an old razor backed sow on the bank making a terrible noise because her pigs had fallen into the water and were in danger of drowning. Mr. Lincoln asked the driver to stop, lifted the pigs out of the water, and placed them on the bank. When he returned, his companion remarked, "Now Abe, where does selfishness come in on this little episode?" "Why, bless your soul, Ed, that was the very essence of selfishness. I should have had no peace of mind all day had I gone on and left that suffering old sow worrying over those pigs." (Taken from C.E. Harris, Jr., Applying Moral Theories [Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1986], p. 62)

The argument reduces to: "I would have been upset not to do what I did; therefore I did it for selfish reasons."

A rather arid exercise, one might suppose. For me, a sip of pleasure. What exactly is it that I enjoy in this mental activity? Well, there is analysis: getting to the heart of something. I also like to express an idea in its most exact and explicit form. Precision and absence of ambiguity are here the paramount concerns; there is a kind of beauty in this, I find. And then, as well, an enhanced understanding can result, which is intrinsically valuable and satisfying.

I can also state something that is not the explanation of my love of parsing: I do not love it because it is useful. Don't get me wrong: It is useful. It is one of the most useful things in the world! The ability to clarify an argument is an antidote to muddle headed thinking, of which there is a great deal and which causes much woe. Take a look again at the Lincoln argument. It is so convincing in its narrative form, yet it invites critical analysis in its parsed form. As C.E. Harris points out, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. The fact that one is upset does not tell us anything about the nature of what is causing the upset; but the selfishness or unselfishness of one's motives or reasons depends completely on the nature of what is causing the upset. In the Lincoln case, the cause of the upset is the suffering of the old sow; this determines that Lincoln's motives were unselfish after all.

It is my belief that great chunks of scientific psychology and economics, which generally conceive human beings as fundamentally self-interested, rely on the sort of mistaken analysis Lincoln made.1 Nonetheless, I repeat, it is not the usefulness of analysis that explains my special fondness for it. I parse for its own sake. I would pay money to be able to parse arguments. The point I want to stress is that there is a pleasure to be had here. It is one of a set -- a vast set -- of possible intellectual and other cultural pleasures (and of the good kind) that help set human beings apart from other animals.2

So, Julie Andrews, the next time you sing, "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things," take note: Parsing may be one of them!


NOTES


1 Or is purported to have made; I rather think Lincoln was arguing tongue-in-cheek, in an effort at modesty, if this episode occurred at all.
2 Not that I have any disrespect for other animals; but, for better or worse, human fulfillment appears to lie in different directions from theirs.

The Discovery of the Opponym

by Joel Marks
Published in Reflections (University of New Haven), no. 16, Fall 1994, pp. 1-2.

As a wordsmith, I spend a lot of time trying to find that mot juste. (I hope "mot juste" is the mot juste in this case!) It is not always easy to say what you mean -- you know what I mean? The writer or speaker must not only understand the standard definitions of words, but also their special usages in various contexts -- with different audiences, on different occasions, etc. Tone of voice or surrounding sentences can also alter meaning. Ambiguity is ever-present. But of all the linguistic stumbling blocks to comprehension I know of, the most bedeviling is a type of word that has the amazing characteristic of meaning opposite things!

Now, it is certainly not unusual for a word to have multiple meanings. Indeed, this is probably the norm rather than the exception (just as the typical star shines not singly, like our solitary Sol, but as part of a binary system). And this phenomenon blends into another where the same spelling and pronunciation are used for what are considered different words -- so-called "homonyms." It is also not unusual for different words to have opposite meanings -- hence "antonyms." And when they are closely paired to form a phrase, we call the result an "oxymoron" (e.g., "cruelly kind").

But what I have in mind is a sort of one-word oxymoron, or one word that does the work of two antonyms. Alternatively, the situation could be conceived as involving word pairs, which would then be homonymous antonyms, or antonymous homonyms. Furthermore, there seems heretofore to have been no word for this sort of word. I have therefore dubbed it the "opponym."

Herewith follows my personal collection of opponyms, compiled over the years while I was writing about weightier matters.


A Glossary of Opponyms*


argue [transitive verb]: to give reasons for (He argued the point); to give reasons against (She declined to argue the point).

besides: except for (Besides money, we lack for nothing); in addition to (Besides our health, we've fortunate to be rich).

blunt: dull; pointed (blunt remarks).

bracket: include (These figures bracket the whole range); exclude (Let's bracket that issue for now).

cleave: divide (May nothing cleave these newlyweds asunder); adhere (May they cleave unto each other).

confirm: request or receive substantiation (I wish to confirm that the hoped-for event did indeed occur); provide substantiation (ditto!).

consult: to seek advice (She went to the lawyer to consult regarding her upcoming divorce); to give advice (However, the lawyer, who specializes in taxation, was not competent to consult on this matter).

discern: "to detect with the eyes"; "to detect with senses other than vision."

discursive: "moving from topic to topic without order; proceeding coherently from topic to topic."

dust: "to make free of dust"; "to sprinkle with fine particles."

easterly (etc.): from the east; toward the east.

enjoin: command to do; prohibit from doing.

flesh: to cover with flesh; to remove the flesh from.

founder: [noun] one who provides with a basis or foundation for existence; [verb] to sink below the surface and cease to exist.

franchiser: "franchisee; franchisor."

guard: to protect from harm or invasion; to prevent from escaping to freedom.

handicap: a natural disadvantage; an artificial advantage.

impression: a vivid imprint; a vague remembrance.

liege: "a vassal bound to feudal service and allegiance; a feudal superior to whom allegiance and service are due."

modify: "to make minor changes in; to make basic or fundamental changes in."

moot: debatable; no longer worth debating.

oversight: watchful care; a failure of same.

paradox: a seeming truth that is self-contradictory; a seeming contradiction that is (perhaps) true.

pride: "inordinate self-esteem"; "reasonable self-respect."

protest: "to make solemn affirmation of" (protest one's innocence); "to make a statement in objection to."

purblind: “wholly blind”; “partly blind” (i.e., not wholly blind).

qualification: something that suits a person (etc.) to a job (etc.); something that limits one's suitability.

sanction [noun]: a penalty for violating a law; official permission.

temper [noun]: "equanimity; proneness to anger." (One loses one’s temper in the sense of equanimity; one has a temper in the sense of proneness to losing it [in the first sense]!)

temper [verb]: "to soften (hardened steel) by reheating at a lower temperature; to harden (steel) by reheating and cooling in oil."

threaten: One and the same event may threaten [to bring about] war and [to eliminate] peace.

trim: remove from; add to (both with respect to trees).

* Quoted definitions are from Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster Inc., 1985).

Science and Philosophy: Vive la Différence!

by Joel Marks
Originally published in Philosophy Now magazine, no. 33, September/October 2001, page 31

The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.
- Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (3rd ed., tr. G.E.M. Anscombe), item #127

... seeking and learning are in fact nothing but recollection.
- Socrates in the Meno (tr. W.K.C. Guthrie), 81d

Every once in a while I wonder what I am doing. As a philosopher, that is. I do what I consider to be philosophy as naturally as I breathe, and about as often. I philosophize when I work at my computer, as I am doing now; but I also do it when I am walking, or driving, or swimming, or talking. Sometimes I catch myself: "Shouldn't I be paying full attention to what I am doing and not always cogitating in this way? Shouldn't I be more Zen?" But, then, you see, in asking that question I am philosophizing again!

Maybe it's a sickness. There are all sorts of ways to characterize this thing called philosophy, and to dispute those characterizations. Sometimes the activity of trying to establish what philosophy is is called "metaphilosophy"; for this is itself a philosophical question. The funny thing is, you can be doing something every minute of your life and still not know what you are doing. But that strikes me as a clue. Therefore, without further ado, let me propose a metaphilosophical thesis that may help to clarify what I am doing right now!

I would say that philosophy is pretty much in the same business as what we today in English refer to as science: Both are methods of inquiry that involve reasoning and empirical confirmation. There is of course much to discuss about what all of that means, and furthermore to distinguish these two from yet other realms, such as religion. But in the short space available to me here I would like to highlight what I think is the chief distinction between philosophy and science, for it strikes me as being very much at the heart of what I do on a day-to-day basis. Furthermore, I believe the distinction matters, since nowadays many people who are not professional philosophers, which includes most scientists, tend to take a dim view of philosophy precisely because they see it as superfluous to science.

My hypothesis is that science undertakes to generate new data to test its hypotheses, while philosophy, by and large, is content to test its hypotheses against already existing data.*

Suppose one wished to investigate the hypothesis that women are more emotional than men. A scientist might then construct an experimental situation intended to arouse an emotion -- for example, showing disturbing photographs or videotapes, or even perpetrating a phony scene, such as introducing a rude actor -- and then measure the resultant responses among the experimental subjects, such as having them fill out a questionnaire or having trained observers count certain behaviors elicited from the subjects by the situation. Alternatively, and more naturalistically, trained interviewers could be sent out into the community to question randomly chosen respondents about episodes in their life. Finally, all data would be tabulated and statistically analyzed to yield possibly significant conclusions.

But a philosopher would approach the same hypothesis quite differently. He or she might simply think about the matter. A typical line of thought could go as follows: "There is a stereotypical assumption that women are more emotional than men. And suppose it is even true that women -- at least in some societies -- tend to, say, cry more than men. Does it follow that they are more emotional, even in those societies? Well, no. For example, it is equally noted -- again, however truly or falsely -- that men tend to get angry more (as well as more angry) than women. But is not anger an emotion, just as much as the sadness or anxiety that prompts crying? So there seems to be some kind of prejudice in the stereotype that is biasing the very notion of emotion. Hmm." And so on ... without end, really.

The philosopher could as well discuss this issue with others, to discover other ideas and observations which happened not to occur to him or her up until that point, but which are, nonetheless, commonplaces that anyone can confirm. Literature and biography are other sources of "data." And even the scientific literature is fair hunting ground, for once something has become a so-called established or scientific fact (putting aside for now that these too can be questioned), then it is considered to be "known," and so is on a par -- from the standpoint of my proposed distinction -- with phenomena that can be ascertained by personal observation, introspection, discussion, reading, and the like.

This is why philosophy may give the impression of being nonempirical, but that is only because it is concerned primarily with "re-collecting" or "assembling reminders" (à la the epigraphs) from which to draw implications or "put 2 and 2 together," not because its subject matter is purely mental. Science has become a legitimate offshoot of philosophy because the means of testing hypotheses have become more technical and elaborate; and hence also, in dialectic with the development of experimental instruments, techniques, and analyses, the hypotheses being proposed have themselves become more technical. Nonetheless, there remain significant hypotheses about the nature of reality which call for careful and sometimes prolonged reflection, yet do not require, indeed would not be elucidated by, experimental or analogously regimented investigation.

Furthermore, science cannot possibly put philosophy out of business, but can only help to expand its inventory. The appearance of a "new fact" in the world of human knowledge is but the beginning of an understanding of that fact. Any fact is related to other facts, perhaps ultimately to all others. It is these relations that philosophy is committed to explore.

NOTE
* Again cf. Wittgenstein: “One might also give the name ‘philosophy’ to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions” (item # 126, ibid.).

Seany Time

By Joel Marks

Sometimes we wonder how we became the way we are. Was it nature or nurture that made me come to love the same music my mother loved? Now that I've had the experience of raising a child of my own – that is to say, my stepson -- some of the mystery has been resolved for me. Sean’s musical talent probably came from his parents, but at least some of his taste will have come from me.

I think it began when my mother died. I retrieved my LP collection and old KLH phonograph that had been stored at home. The KLH was perfect because it did not skip no matter how much you bounced. And bounce we did, Sean, since your introduction to art music was as an athletic activity. I knew you would want to be moving and not just sitting and listening.

Do you remember? -- Every weekday night, after dinner and doing the dishes, it was "Seany Time." These were some of the most blessed moments of my life. Do you know which one was the best for me? -- when you wanted me to carry you in my outstretched arms while we listened to your "flying music.” (This was "Something's Coming" from West Side Story.) You were stretched out like Superboy. We “flew” together around and around the living room, looking down at the grain of the carpet as if it were trees or clouds far far below. Sean, you were totally into that music, and so was I. We shared the rhythm of it, the imagination. We were one!

The music you especially liked was music we could run to ... the more frenetic the better. Remember how we would chase each other from the living room to the dining room and through the kitchen and up the landing and back into the living room, faster and faster? That was Prokofiev, either the frenzied first movement of the Third Piano Sonata or the magnificent first movement of the First Piano Concerto. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (first movement) was another favorite.

You also had a deep and mysterious side. How many times we sat inside the "boat" you made of the couch and pillows, lights off in the room, peering out into the gloomy darkness (sometimes with a flashlight), waiting for the appearance of the sea monsters. (That was Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta.) Then they would suddenly attack while we tried desperately to fight them off. Other times it would be the approach of a mighty typhoon, roiling the waters, clashing thunder, forcing us to hold on for dear life. (That was Liszt's Totentantz.)

You showed talent on your mother's (actually, her mother’s) somewhat-the-worse-for-wear piano at a very early age. Therefore when my mother died I decided to have her Steinway grand moved to our place. She had been a composer and a pianist. Her spirit seemed at once to enter into you. From upstairs I would hear you picking out tunes by ear and creating your own. "This is a miracle," I would think, holding back the tears. I was determined to have you begin lessons with the perfect teacher I knew. Sean, I'm so proud of you: You've kept it up.

I was also eager to bring you to concerts. You became acquainted with the extraordinary musical resources of nearby Yale University (as my mother used to take me to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center). You first heard Amahl and the Night Visitors there, and Peter and the Wolf (that night the high point for you was after the concert when you got to swing on a tire hanging from a tree in the college courtyard).

And do you remember the Yale student at the "Speed and Fear" concert who played the thrilling third movement of Prokofiev's Seventh Piano Sonata, then jumped on to the piano bench and then into the audience right next to you?

We went to several concerts in the large Woolsey Hall, where we would sometimes sit in the very last row in the upper balcony, and other times in the very first row of the orchestra. Do you remember when the incredibly fat lady was playing the breathtaking cadenza of Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto … and we had to slink out right beneath the piano and then up the aisle, facing hundreds of people in the audience … because you had to go to the bathroom!

(Woolsey Hall is also where I took you some evenings to rollerblade in the courtyard with the Yalies. Always music went with moving for you, Sean.)

So when you are an adult, if you find yourself attracted to “classical” music of a certain sort, this is probably why. This is exactly how it began, Sean. I know … I was there.

A Funny Thing about Consciousness

by Joel Marks

Published in Philosophy Now, issue No. 44, January/February 2004

My local newspaper recently switched from a black-and-white format to color for the daily comics. That is quite an innovation. For my whole half-century-plus of existence, color had been reserved for the Sunday comics section. For a child and, generalizing from personal experience, for many an habituated adult, seeing that journalistic tome wrapped in tinted drawings has been a weekly source of delight. So some marketing genius has now got the idea to spread the joy to the six other days.

I am not amused. Call me a curmudgeon who is set in his ways, but I see no good in the change. The appeal of the daily comics was quite apart from their artwork; instead they -- the good ones -- gave us a daily dose of wit. We are used to seeing through them, as it were; there are characters, jokes, ideas. Now our attention has been drawn to their superficial aspect, and there they are found lacking.

But it hit me with a jolt the other day that a deep metaphysical significance might also be intimated. The materialist project, according to which we are nothing but physical objects of a certain sort, maintains that we can do quite well without consciousness, thank you very much. So wouldn't that suggest that consciousness is just like that superfluous, indeed officious, color that has now been imposed on the funny pages?

I'll take that more slowly. It is obvious that we are physical beings. But are we also more than that? As I related in an earlier column about the psychologists James J. and Eleanor J. Gibson, my own "conversion" into a philosopher came about when I discovered consciousness. I honestly do not know how many of my readers know what I am talking about (and that is relevant to my theme), but simply put I am referring to what I experience when I enter a dark room and turn on the lights. Contrast that to what we would normally imagine to be the interior life of a robot: It could come into a dark room and flick the light switch, then light would fill the room; but there would be no corresponding filling of the robot's being with light. Indeed, there is no darkness in the robot's being either: It is simply not conscious.

When I speak of the light and darkness of interior being, I am speaking metaphorically. But the materialist would caution that I am in danger of taking the metaphor literally, of believing that there is something in existence that is not physical light or darkness, and yet which is not just brain cells either. To me (at least the me who was a nascent philosopher) it was obvious -- really, the most obvious fact in my new philosophical world, and the most marvelous -- that the light of consciousness was neither physical light nor neural matter. After all, I could sometimes still experience it in a darkened room or with my eyes shut (as when dreaming of a lighted room), and there was nothing corresponding to it in appearance beneath my skull (nobody peering inside would have seen a light shining in there ... unless they used a flashlight [Cf. instant water: Just add water]!).

Now, a wizened if not yet wise philosopher, I see so clearly how question-begging that argument is. If the light and darkness, and the interior being itself, are all metaphorical, then their literalness could be anything: even dull grey brain cells!

This business about the new color comics only brings home the point. You see, life went on merrily enough without that color. Indeed, I have suggested that the color is a nuisance, a distraction. Similarly might we not suppose that a robot or android could go about its tasks without a hint of "light" or consciousness? If so, it seems a small stretch to suggest that we ourselves could do so ... in fact, do do so, until some philosophical bozo (or impressionist painter?) happens upon this phantasmic bauble and becomes bedazzled by it.

Furthermore, do we not positively trip over our own feet when we do become aware of consciousness? Who will be the better dancer: the one who moves, or the one who thinks about the moves? Isn't this the meaning of: "You can't learn to ski from a book"? Isn't this what "The Zen of ..." is all about? Become the bow, become the arrow. Do, be, don't think. Do-be-do-be-do.

This is also just what J.J. Gibson said. The title of one of his books -- The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems -- was intended to convey the idea that "sensation" is irrelevant to perception. The balance sense was a favorite example: Although it is just as essential to our functioning as any of the "five senses," it tends to go about its work without invoking consciousness, without our taking notice of it in feeling or sensation. There does not seem to be anything corresponding to light or color or sound or taste or smell or touch to which we need or even can attend when trying to maintain our orientation to gravity. But if we did not perceive its direction, we could not maintain posture or move in a coordinated fashion. (It is only when the system malfunctions that we sense it, as when we become dizzy.)

Ah yes, I am aware of possible objections to my remarks. For example, it may only be certain types of consciousness that are useless or meddlesome, and even then maybe only in certain types of situations; thus, verbal consciousness may often interfere with playing the piano, but a sensitivity to tone and touch could be essential, and verbal thoughts may similarly inform poetic imagery (and writing good "Moral Moments"!). I could also be confusing self-consciousness with consciousness per se. Meanwhile, the gravity sense may be relatively unobtrusive only because it has one simple job: to ascertain which way is down. Even so, a devotee could probably develop a sensibility to equilibrium and an adept describe its phenomenology. Finally, consciousness could be totally physically constituted but still considered to exist for all that.

But those blasted new comics have at least got me thinking that consciousness could be more epiphenomenal than it is the real deal, and hence we ourselves be ... laughing matter.

I Sink, Therefore I’m Not

by Joel Marks

Published in Philosophy Now, issue no. 77, February/March 2010, p. 39

I do have revelations at the kitchen sink. Just a few minutes ago I had one. Of the myriad thoughts always racing through my head, one caught hold of my attention as I was washing a breakfast dish. The idea that struck me was that my washing of that dish was as “determined” as determined could be. That is, in a very local sense of metaphysical determinism, I could sense the inevitability of the event’s occurring as a result of the current and immediately preceding circumstances. Specifically, there were dishes from which I had just eaten sitting in the sink, and I wasn’t about to let them continue to sit there indefinitely because they would become encrusted with the food scraps that could now be easily removed, and would take up space I would want for preparing lunch, and would grow into a pile from more than one meal that would be far more onerous to clean.

This was truly a moment of perceiving my inner robot. I do believe we are all robots – natural ones, of course, as opposed to created in some factory. But everything that we do is ultimately a matter of stimulus and response, granted via innumerable mediations of physiology and so forth. As I washed the dishes I began to review in my mind my morning rounds, beginning with the alarm clock waking me up. It soon became apparent that the short period of time between awakening and washing those dishes was filled with a virtual infinity of mechanical encounters.

As an eternity had already passed by the time I came down to the kitchen, let me begin my story just before breakfast. There was a dish rack full of last night’s dishes, so I proceeded to place the various items in their usual places – the better to find them again in future -- while also keeping out those I would be using again for breakfast. This was not an uninterrupted process, however, since in replacing an item I would also come into proximity of something I would need for breakfast, such as the glass I would use for my orange juice that sat in the cupboard where I was replacing last night’s tea cup. Removing the glass would then prompt me to walk over to the refrigerator, where I would grab the juice carton. This would in turn send me to the kitchen counter, where I would pour the juice. Ah, but I’d reached the bottom of this carton and didn’t yet have enough juice in the glass, so I tossed the carton into the waste bin and returned to the refrigerator to pull out a new carton, which brought me back to the counter, where I opened it … with another brief visit to the bin to toss the seal of the new carton … then back to the counter ….

Well, you get the idea. The point is: it never ends. (Nor, for all I know, does it ever begin). My typing these words is all part of the exact same sequence, one thing leading to the next, with perfect reasonableness in most cases, and in others for unknown reasons but without any deep mystery. An example of the latter might be: Why was I thinking about determinism while washing that dish? But even there I can easily sketch an explanation, although of course I am unable to tell you which neurons were firing, etc. It came about, I am sure, because I had attended a fascinating colloquium earlier in the week about determinism and free will! This is already a subject that fascinates me … which, of course, is why I was attending that colloquium! I could well having been pondering my freedom, or lack thereof, even had I not gone to the colloquium; but it seems plausible that the currency of that colloquium is responsible for the particular force with which my dish-washing exemplified the phenomenon for me this morning.

I now just took a glance at the notes I scribbled down when in the throes of the revelation. “& meanwhile all these thoughts coursing thru my head,” I wrote; then, “(& writing down these words!)” with an arrow pointing to the preceding phrase, and then another arrow pointing to itself (the phrase in parentheses). Yes, of course: even my thinking about determinism was determined by factors internal and external to my body and preceding and concurrent with the thinking. Where in any of this is there room for some “free” act of “will”? Nowhere at all. In fact, there isn’t even any place for me – for an agent who does any of this stuff. What there is is a flow of events, including some that we conceive as experiences of our own self initiating various actions on its own behalf. But the way we conceptualize the flow (probably even including conceptualizing it as a flow) is rife with anomalies and gaps, which current science is filling in and rationalizing. The final result will be a story about what is going on that is utterly different from the tale we are accustomed to tell. And the trickiest part may not be the neuroscience and such but the replacement of our everyday vocabulary with a more scientifically informed one. For example, somehow we are going to have to learn how to talk about ourselves without even referring to “me.” Our present language only enables us to utter nonsense, such as “I do not exist.” Says who, right?


Joel Marks is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of New Haven in West Haven, Connecticut, and a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University. He has his greatest ideas upon awakening, while walking, washing dishes, and taking showers (but not all at the same time). The kitchen sink at which his most recent revelation occurred is the very same one pictured on the cover of his book of Moral Moments published a decade ago. He thanks Joshua Greene for being the stimulus of this essay.

Eight Years Old and Counting

Copyright (c) 2004 by Joel Marks

Published in Philosophy Now, issue no. 46, June/July 2004

Any one thing can lead us to all other things. For me at one time the "one thing" was vision. As I have mentioned in a previous column (in issue no. 42) about the late perception psychologists, J.J. and Eleanor Jack Gibson, the personal discovery that there are not only objects in the world that I see (plus me or including me) but also my seeing them, ultimately led to my becoming a philosopher. But before I had even been introduced to the field of philosophy, I was captivated by vision. Perhaps the first significant manifestation was my hobby of black and white photography in college, under the tutelage of a rooming housemate, Pat Lau. Another housemate, Chip Porter, helped me build a darkroom in a corner of my living room. Then came my undergraduate studies with J.J. Gibson and his graduate students, and post-college I was hired to teach courses on visual psychology at an art school, where the director, Bill Collins, emulated the Bauhaus. Only after all of that did I consider studying philosophy. In the interim, vision had become a passion.

I fancied myself a phenomenologist in that I cultivated visual experience per se. Perhaps a better label would be: visual naturalist -- a collector and cataloguer of specimens in the visual world, which I would record in a diary of observations. And while I adored the work of the Belgian physicist, M. Minnaert, who did the same with optical phenomena, such as rainbows and halos, my quarry tended to be phenomena that could not be explained by optics alone (if at all!). A typical entry:

Wearing a brown shirt ... but I noticed the very thin rim of it rising above my beige sweater looked PURPLE. I checked the light fixture on the ceiling: it seemed to be regular incandescent/exposed bulbs. So then I performed one of those amazing, delicious life experiments (like being in a dream where you know you can fly): I pulled the sweater downward ever so slowly ... and RIGHT BEFORE MY VERY EYES ... the purple turned to brown!!! I repeated, up and down, several times. Albers [Joseph Albers, a modern artist who was famous for his studies of color, including contrast phenomena of this kind]. The watched pot [i.e., I had, in effect, witnessed the magic moment of boiling, or followed the rainbow to its source].

Optics plus physiology, you say? Perhaps. But my interest lay not so much in explanation as in implication (this being the nascent philosopher in me). I also simply indulged in the wonder of it, so in a way I positively did not want it to be explained! Over time the observations became more and more fantastic. There is magic in this mundane world of ours, if you take the time to look at it and reflect (a nicely ambiguous word under the circumstances). I hope to write about these experiences at length some day, but for now let me cut to the quick.

I found that there were two poles of visual phenomena that were instructive in opposite ways. First were those which were commonplaces of veridical recognition, my favorite being the wind. As my stepson Sean had exclaimed one day when he was eight years old while looking out the window: "Look at the wind outside. Man!" It was plain to him, as it had always been so to me, that the wind is visible. Yet when I entered the scientific circles of perception psychologists, I discovered that this was almost universally denied (except by gibsonians). Why? Because the prevailing dogma was that anything which is visible must have color and shape; the wind having neither, its existence cannot be seen but must be inferred from other things seen which do have color and shape, such as bending branches and flying hats.

Well, why let obvious facts get in the way of a good theory, eh? Ridiculous! Thus, I was developing my first skepticism of the "experts" (like a good Socratic) ... and of scientific psychologists in particular (as the psychologist Carol Gilligan was doing from her exposure to their equally ludicrous male biases). But what came as an even more startling revelation was finding that laypersons had also adopted the scientific viewpoint. There is nary an adult of my acquaintance who retains the vision of an eight year old ... and I'm not talking about physiology! This is a case of the emperor's new clothes: "You cannot see the wind, my child. Grow up!" But it is adults who deny their own senses. Just as it is adults who tell children fairy tales and expect them to believe them, even when they become adults themselves, as I continually discover to my amazement. (I spend much of my life being amazed, as you can see -- sometimes pleasantly, as by visual phenomena; other times unpleasantly, as by human stupidities.)

But I spoke of two poles: another kind of visual experience presents us with clearly illusory phenomena, such as the bent stick in water (that isn't really bent). These too are commonplaces, but, despite sometimes giving delight (as when you shake a lead pencil in just the right way to make it appear rubbery), their philosophical "lesson" is usually completely overlooked. My favorite of this type is a wire cube that I keep in my office (I am looking at it right now), which is an absolute chunk of the Twilight Zone -- a true crack in the cosmic egg, to use Joseph Chilton Pearce's evocative phrase -- the looking glass I can walk through any time I please (and not just when I happen to dream of doing so). What this cube does, you see, is rotate ... except, it's not really rotating. Instead, the turning of my head as I gaze at it in a certain way (namely, by Gestalt-shifting it like a Necker cube) is translated into the cube (analogous to the way the earth's rotation is translated to the starry sky).

Please, do visit me some time and I shall show you, because it is boggling. But what does it all mean? What fascinates me is that this rotating cube -- which is not "there" -- is sitting on a cabinet, which decidedly is "there" ... or is it? Doesn't this phenomenon prove that all we ever see is a kind of waking dream? I know that my "reasoning" herein has been quite "loose" ... that the very way I have phrased my account begs all the questions ... and that I have contradicted my own more "mature" musings about materialism in this very column (see issue no 44). But ... I don't want to stop being an eight-year-old!

Mysterious Loss or Something about a Body

Philosophy Now magazine, Issue No. 71, January/February 2009, pp. 45f

One day a piece of paper fell from my hand. I stooped to pick it up but it was not there. There was no place it could have gone: This was just the bare corner of a room, the uncarpeted floor abutting the walls. But the page had vanished. Several plausible, I suppose I should say probable, alternative explanations coursed through my mind; for example, "It has slipped into a hidden crevice." But I was really baffled. I let it go. What else could I do?

As unusual an experience as that was, it represents a commonplace: the loss of something. I do not believe in magic, so I entertain no “metaphysical” hypotheses about the paper’s whereabouts. The page was still in the world somewhere; I just did not know exactly where. I could even estimate its vicinity … surely within a mile of the room, and most likely right inside the room. It had not slipped into another “dimension.” The situation was no more mysterious than losing one’s wallet or, as we say, “misplacing” one’s keys. They are still in a place, but just not the place we expected them to be, such as our pocket.

But the experience gave me to think: Do we not also speak of the “loss” of a loved one? That terminology may similarly suggest that a person who has died has gone to another place. At one moment she was here; the next moment she is … in heaven? Certainly a person can go missing. And for that person herself, the experience might also be of being lost, in the sense of not knowing where she herself has arrived; but she is someplace. It happens all the time. Death seems just a special instance of that; hence also we speak of the departed.

I have experienced death first-hand only once so far. It was of a dog, my wife’s beloved Teddi. We brought her to the vet to be euthanized. Teddi lay in my wife’s lap. She was weak but had enough energy to give me one last long lick. “Oh, Teddi!” I uttered spontaneously. Then the doctor inserted the long needle, and right before my eyes, this lovely creature simply … I don’t know what.

It was for me as poignant as the death of Socrates in the Phaedo. I had never been so overwhelmed by grief. My wife and I could have cried forever. But even more than grief there was … bewilderment. How could Teddi … simply not be? What had happened to Teddi? Had she … gone away? But here before me was the only Teddi I had ever known. Was Teddi really something else? And if so, where had she gone?

After all, had we not now lost her? How many times I had witnessed the escape of one of my wife’s dogs. We all -- Linda, her sons, myself -- wandered through the streets, crying out her name, in search of a lost dog. The dog was somewhere in the neighborhood, of course. We always found her. But where, now, was Teddi to be found?

If you ask the wrong question, you will never find an answer, or not the correct one. Teddi did not go anywhere; she ceased to exist. To speak of “losing” someone is just another euphemism, like “putting to sleep” for euthanizing. It expresses a fond hope: the person will wake up, the person will be found. In a word: The parting is not permanent.

But there is something very interesting to ponder about all of this: What does happen when a being dies? If the person has not relocated, has she at least undergone a change (now she is alive, now she is dead)? But I think that is not a proper description either. Ceasing to exist is not a change of something, for the something no longer is. If a flame gets hotter, it changes (in temperature and color); but if it is extinguished, there is no longer any flame that could have changed in any way. If a person grows older, then she has changed; but when she dies, there is no person anymore.

Something does change, however, and that, I now realize, is a body. For a certain duration, say three-score-years-and-ten, a human body may be alive, and then it will be dead. When it is alive, or alive in a certain way, say, “viable,” a person exists; when it is dead, the person no longer exists. Typically the body continues to exist, but undergoes this change, from being a person to being a corpse. Sometimes the body goes out of existence at the moment that the period of personhood ends, as in an atomic blast; but never will the person outlast the body, no more than an ocean wave could outlast the water. There is no further metaphysics to puzzle over. It is a marvelous thing, to be sure, that a body can sometimes be a person. But it is not fundamentally mysterious.

A simile: a person is like a car with its engine running. When in gear, the car is “awake.” When the car is idling in neutral, it is like the human body of the sleeper, who is unable to move in certain ways but still lives and can awaken and reanimate. But when the engine is entirely rusted and can never restart, the car is “dead”; yet the car body remains. (If the engine is merely removed and put into another car body, it is reincarnated. Thank you, Swami Beyondananda.) So it is with the person and her body. To say that she has died is really to say that a body has ceased to function and lost the ability to start up again. It was not her body; she was its person!

Recognize, then, that thou art a body, in the way that, analogously, a child is a person. Children can be treated as separate entities, forming clubs and what have you. But they are not really distinct from the persons of whom they are an interval between baby and adult. A child as such does not come into being nor go out of existence; a child is a phase of a changing person. We do not typically mourn the passing of the child into adulthood, but recognize that the person is now an adult (Bar Mitzvah).

Just so, a person is a phase of something else that pre-exists it and survives it: the body perdures. Hence, the “passing” of a person is no cause for perplexity since no literal entity has inexplicably vanished, neither to another location nor even out of existence. The person is like time itself, which also passes; but here again, it does not go anywhere, so nothing has been lost in that sense (although the metaphor can be fruitful, as in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu: In Search of Lost Time).

Of course there could still be ample reason for grieving. We may be sad that a body is no longer alive, just as we would be sad that our toy is broken. In fact we may have lost a great deal: the enjoyment of “playing” with another living body, the possibility of certain joint plans coming to fruition, and so forth. We mourn precisely because what we loved is no more. Our grief may also have a moral component, when we consider opportunities that have been lost to another body in its flowering. But none of these losses are of the kind that implies relocation or unknown location.

Does it make any sense to speak of morality with respect to a body, or to a “phase” of a body? Can we owe something to a body? Can one body owe something to another body? Here again I think the analogy of persons is instructive. For example, we do not assign moral responsibility to a child, even though a child is a person. Hence, even in our everyday metaphysics, morality is something that is assigned only to a phase of something else, namely, to a person between the age of majority and senility. I am only suggesting that the person to whom morality is applicable is itself a certain interval, namely, of a body. Furthermore, we do already recognize moral obligations even to dead bodies, for example, not to desecrate them.

Let us therefore praise the body, honor the body, appreciate the body, take care of the body. For it is the plant that blossoms, not the flower.

Time Travel Made Easy

Philosophy Now magazine, Issue No. 76, November/December 2009, page 33

We are all time travelers. Here’s how you can prove it to yourself. Look at your watch now and note the time. Then after you have finished reading this essay, look at it again. You will find that you have traveled into the future. (Note: Make sure your watch is wound!) Indeed, by doing nothing at all, one can and does move into the future.

How about the past? That’s easy too. Just open you eyes: everything you see is in a time previous to the present moment. For vision is a physical process in the physical world and hence takes time; thus by the time you become aware of something you are seeing, it is already in the past. Of course the time lag is infinitesimal. Even when you are looking at something at a distance of several miles, it is for all practical purposes instantaneous since light travels so swiftly. That is very different from hearing something distant, where the medium of air slows the passage of sound considerably.

But the visual effect becomes much more pronounced at night. If the sky is not overcast, simply peer with your personal telescopes, that is, your two eyes, at a star. You are now seeing years into the past. The very closest naked-eye star at night, Rigil Kentaurus (visible from the Southern Hemisphere), is over four years in the past. (The daytime star, the Sun, is a mere 8 minutes in the past … still, that is enough time for it to have gone supernova without your yet knowing about it.) At the top of the sky on a very dark night in November in the Northern Hemisphere you can just make out with your naked eye the Andromeda Galaxy, which is over two million years in the past.

So here we stand, forever moving into the future while forever peering into the past, without lifting a finger, or pushing a lever on a time machine. These are in fact oft-noted phenomena, although never enough to remove one’s fascination with them. My whole life is one of philosophical fascination with the phenomena of everyday life.

I wrote in a previous column (issue no. 41) about an alternative way of conceptualizing time that made time come to a complete and eternal halt. This time I would like to continue to play with the idea of traveling through it. I have in fact discovered a way not only to look into the past or drift into the future but to jump into the past or future and actually live among and interact with people of those different times. And again, it required that I do exactly nothing.

This took place just one year ago, on November 2 (2008). It was a dark and stormy night. (Well, actually I don’t remember.) I planned a jump into the future at precisely 2 a.m. But since I really didn’t have to do anything, I went to bed the evening before as usual shortly before midnight and slept right through it all. Upon awakening the next morning, I was confident all had gone as planned.

Still, to be sure, I needed some empirical confirmation. This came about unexpectedly as I went about my morning routine, which includes flossing my teeth. Since that is a somewhat boring activity, I usually wander over to a front window of my house while I am doing it and view the new day. On this occasion I was taken aback by an unusual sight: my neighbor across the street was climbing into his car to go to work. I had never seen this before because he goes to work before I am accustomed to get up, which is 7 a.m. But there he was getting into his car a little after 6 a.m. And yet I myself had arisen at my usual hour!

I was therefore watching the past, but it was also in “real time.” I had no doubt that I would be able to go downstairs (after putting on some clothes) and greet him as he was getting into his car. In the spirit of experiment, although at the risk of puzzling him, I could even reach out to shake his hand, without fear of there being a gigantic explosion, as if matter and anti-matter had made contact. True, we were now living in parallel but discrepant universes, yet we could interact without event.

I imagine my savvy reader has figured out what happened. It was time to set back the clocks to Standard Time, but I had simply left all of my clocks at Daylight Saving Time. By this means I was able to leap into the future (or the past, depending on the point of view), while letting everybody else do all of the work. The mountain went away from Mohammed, as it were.

My original motivation for doing this was not scientific experimentation but to hold onto that precious “saved” daylight. I had always lamented the loss of an hour at the end of the working (or playing) day come autumn. The “days” were already getting shorter, and this only exacerbated the gloom. Furthermore, it made me groggy for a week, analogous to jet lag. But by simply doing nothing, I was able to avoid all of that in one swoop.

There were also unanticipated benefits. For example, I would never be late for anything. Even if I should happen to be delayed en route to an appointment, or simply forget that I was living in a different temporal universe from everybody else, I would still arrive on time or even early. I could also “sleep in” if I were feeling especially sleepy one morning. All in all, it worked like a charm.

Tune in next issue for further adventures in thought by doing nothing!

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. This is because*, all other things equal, we would expect approximately the same number of accidents in a society with and a society without car seats, since the number of accidents owing to the extra time taken to strap in the child in the former would be offset by the number of accidents owing to not having taken extra time in the latter. But obviously a child stands a better chance of escaping serious injury or death in an accident where a car seat has been employed. 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).

* I thank Ian Smith for this gloss (3/23/2011).

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.