I find it strange that writers of fiction and writers of philosophy talk to one another so little. They have so many overlaps.
(Maybe it’s happening somewhere, and I’m just missing it. Tell me.)
A few years back, I thought of arranging an academic conference on Writing and Philosophy. But then I decided that framework would only emphasise the segregation.
Academic conference means compulsory fraternising.
So I continue to do my philosophical reading and note-taking in a fairly isolated way, apart from the odd drunken chat.
And also apart from this diary (thank you for reading this far), where I’ve been including Different Ways of Thinking.
Even doing bad, inaccurate, outdated philosophical thinking is worthwhile.
Or I find it so.
I don’t know how it feeds the writing, but it does.
Consider these questions —
whether the world has a beginning and some boundary to its extension in space
whether somewhere, and perhaps in my thinking self, there is an indivisible and indestructible unity — or nothing but what is divisible and passes away
whether in my actions I am free or, like other beings, led along the course of nature and fate
whether, finally, there is a supreme cause of the world, or whether the things of nature and their order amount to the ultimate object, at which we must stop in all our contemplations.
That’s what Kant (using semi-colons, not bullet-points) wrote, around 1780, in The Critique of Pure Reason.
On page 487 of my edition, he continues —
these are questions for whose solution that mathematician would gladly give away his entire science, since it cannot provide him with any satisfaction regarding humanity’s highest and most treasured purposes.
In other words, within maths there is no answer to why maths is worth doing. In fact, maths can’t even give itself a language to ask the question.
Mathematicians should not dare appeal to the innate beauty of their discovered equations, because they have no terms — except external ones — in which to speak of them.
Kant says, not me.
But we should all thank Kant, even if we hate him (because he’s such a crusher and grinder), and don’t want to read him (because he’s so unremittingly Kant) — we should be grateful to him for putting all of philosophy in his retort and reducing it to these four whethers, these four Really Big Questions.
Let’s take them one by one.
What are your thoughts on each?
(Question mark c/o Kenzietreff on Reddit.)
I reckon there's more room for philosophy in novels than there is in books about philosophy. Situation in stories create philosophical question. Life is absurd and that is to be seen in many novels.
Many seem to need conformity and act as group, with no responsibility or direction outside that which enables them to exist unchallenged in a society.
The few oddities reject that and question everything, make their own meaning. Some of us are infinite. But I wonder if by cause and effect, despite my understanding that I invent my realities, that everything is predestined after all. If cause and effect is real, then everything we do is inevitable.
I've worried about these questions all my life and I have no answers. Maybe it's the lack of answers that puts people off.