Therapist: “Why are you lonely?”

Patient: “Well, my grandfather died a year ago, and I miss him.”

Therapist: “Ok. So, you are experiencing loneliness associated with grief. This is a normal thing.”

Patient: “I know, I’m just not sure what I can do about it other than wait it out, and it’s affecting my life in negative ways.”

Therapist: “There are many things you can do. You can reflect on the moments you spent with your grandfather and be thankful for those moments. You can do something to honor your grandfather, something you feel would make him smile, be proud of, which should open, if you think about it, a whole world of possibilities to you. Grief is an ontological modifier, meaning it never goes away, it modifies who you are moving forward, though the feelings of sadness and loneliness will come and go in frequency and potency, which, of course, differ in every case and with every individual, your particular road to recovery is and will remain unique.”

Patient: “Ok. That makes sense.”

Therapist: “When you encounter these feelings from now on, I want you to remember what I’ve said, and I want you to also remember this: the “re” in recovery means repetition. So, recovery literally means something like repeating or the repetition of covering. Recovery requires—and will continue to require—covering over these instances of sadness and loneliness over, and over again. You’ll have to do this for the rest of your life. Your being has been modified by your loss, and your recovery entails encountering that modification every day.”

Patient: “Sounds sort of like Sisyphus.”

Therapist: “Indeed. And there are both healthy ways and unhealthy ways to do this thing called recovery. It’s up to you to choose what you habituate, and how you care for yourself. This is therapy. You are the therapist.”

 

Occultism Not So Occulted

            I was bored during the pandemic, so I became intimate with the World Wide Web and the occult. What follows is what I came up with. it might be good or bad, but that's not really what I was after when writing this; I was bored, and this web-wandering was interesting to me, at least at the time.    When one reads or hears the word occult one usually connects the term with magic and its hidden practices. Occultism, generally defined, involves a variety of “theories and practices inspired by the knowledge and or use of supernatural forces or beings.”[1] Until fairly recently, occultism was not usually a common talking point in checkout lines at the grocery store, nor was it discussed with much frequency or seriousness in quotidian conversations among friends. Only when some perceived controversy concerning the magical developed in popular culture was occultism investigated by the masses, though perhaps investigate is too strong a word for the vast majority. However, organized religion took and takes such conversations and investigations quite seriously, and it has for millennia, especially those steeped heavily in Christian Fundamentalism. The occult conversation, however, seems to be making its way into contemporary mediums and digital domains, i.e., the grocery checkout line being replaced by social media sites, blogposts, and virtual forums. The reason for such a transition, simply put, pertains to the initiate’s anonymity in a newly established landscape of virtual reality, a quality much appreciated by the surreptitious occultist.

In his book, Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture, Bill Ellis begins with the storm triggered by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and the intense reactions within some Christian communities as a result. Of course, the Harry Potter series is a work of fiction, a work of which the general public would only see or hear of any mote of controversy as the media began to talk about it. The main concern of the Harry Potter series, according to the Christian Fundamentalists, pointed directly at the occult practices being made accessible to “millions of young people [who] are being taught to think, speak, dress, and act like witches by filling their heads with the contents of these books.”[2] Such an argument is nothing new. We can recall Socrates in Plato’s Republic arguing similarly regarding why certain popular myths were unsuitable, especially for the youth. Nonetheless, the Christians’ concern was not that Rowling’s work was popular, but rather what the work seemed to be popularizing: the occult, its practices, and the ease of access to its magic.

Much has changed since 1997 when Rowling published her first book in the Harry Potter series. Indeed, much has changed since Bill Ellis published Lucifer Ascending in 2004. The most remarkable change in popular culture, and perhaps culture per se, pertains to the explosion of the internet and the ease of access one has to an absurd amount of information. A cursory search for the occult on one of the internet’s most popular sites, YouTube, reveals hours upon hours of (seemingly) non-fiction content. From occult supply shops, to the how-tos, and the who’s who of occultism, the sheer amount of information about “hidden” things is staggering. In other words, popular culture is now digitally inundated with all things occult, and whereas Rowling’s Harry Potter never claimed to be true, it is quite the opposite for occultism’s most recent online practitioners.

The aim of my paper will be directed towards the landscape of these newest virtual occultists. Since occultism is a vast landscape itself, my paper will focus mainly on the practice of magic, the no-longer-secret societies, symbology, and their digital entanglement within the World Wide Web of information. What was once fairly difficult to gain access to, which is to say the occult, in its many iterations and forms, appears no longer to be quite so hidden, but instead appears ubiquitously and in plain sight.

 

Toward a New Wave of Digital Occultism

At the turn of the nineteenth century, traditional occult narratives changed drastically with the explosion of industrial capitalism. In his book, Modern Occult Rhetoric, Joshua Gunn traces this trend of “metamorphosing into a phenomenon of mass culture,” back to Francis Barret’s 1801 publication The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer; Being a Complete System of Occult Philosophy. [3] Gunn argues the importance of Barret’s system by stating three specific reasons, the first of which was Barret’s focused attention to “good and bad species of magic,” a distinction spanning back to the Roman Empire.[4] Gunn’s second reason ties into his first, namely, that Barrett’s dedication of a large portion of his work primarily to black magic might have been a deliberate attempt to sensationalize, and thus popularize what was previously mostly occulted:

The Magus contains a section on what to do in case one “accidentally” conjures an evil or familiar spirit. Moreover, the tome contained four pages of color illustrations of principal “Evil Damons,” from “fallen angels” to the “Spirit of Antichrist,” so that in the case of unexpected evocation, the magus could know exactly whom he or she was dealing with![5]

The third and final reason, according to Gunn’s argument, ties into both the first and second, as Barrett’s book strongly influenced a passionate and fervent reader, specifically Eliphas Levi, who would bring magic out of the shadows and into the view of the masses by the middle of the nineteenth century, and Levi would do so with a similar sensational characteristic noted above.[6] If there is one place where the vulnerable and gullible are at the most risk of losing their grasp on conventional constructions of reality, then it must be the mania triggered by sensationalistic methodologies. Sensationalism, after all, can sell just about anything.

The importance of the three aforementioned reasons pertains to a dramatically shifting occult discourse, relocating it from the pursuit of hidden (and forbidden) knowledge into a pursuit of profit and entertainment value.[7] The occult provider as entertainer thus becomes an important theme in the transition into modern (and post-modern) culture, as the main concern trends towards the profitability rather than the practice of the occult. Of course, this is not to say that seeking profitability renders profit-seeking practitioners as inauthentic, though one might as well consider at least a percentage as such, and likely a percentage similar to the previous age’s charlatan in search of a quick buck. Alas, this part of humanity has not changed in the slightest. In fact, one could argue charlatanism has increased exponentially since the birth of the internet. Nonetheless, the importance of understanding the move towards profitability should shed at least some light upon the explosion of occultism in the digital domain(s) which saturate the internet. Consider Gunn’s interpretation of Anton LaVey and the founding of his Satanic Church in 1966, an event which nourishes the provider-as-profiteer sentiment iterated in the aforementioned paragraphs:

Satanism represents the “fetishization” of the occult into a commodity, or the rendering of occultism into a transactable form. That Satanism transforms the occult into an imagistic, social form marks its rhetoric as the last of final expression of a logic that began with the popular representations of occultism of the mid-ninteenth century: as the occult became increasingly visible in the mass media, its meaning as the elite study of secrets receded behind the aesthetic value of its imagery.”[8]

If LaVey and his Church of Satan were responsible for anything, then it was the introduction of Satanism to the masses. LaVey and his church accomplished this by staging “ironic publicity stunts” which were designed to draw attention to the once highly forbidden dark art. Simultaneously, such a public visibility of Satanism was seen as an effort to intentionally infuriate the earlier dominant principles inherent in Fundamental Christianity. Virtual Occultism, in my view, follows the same line of reasoning. Occultism as popularized a profitable spectacle, i.e., as a commodity, then, might explain the expansion of virtual occult gurus and their platforms, since pay-per-click advertisements, page views, and browser searches all generate mammoth amounts of income for both virtual charlatan and non-charlatan, alike. It seems to me, however, that some other force is at play; either something sinister, or something arising out of a predictable consequence of ignorance.

For those in search of occult knowledge on the internet a guru is merely a few quick keystrokes and mouse-clicks away. The newly self-guided initiate might not care whether the guru derives income from his or her platform of choice. Moreover, the new initiate perhaps even considers the guru’s wealth as a proof of his or her success and, finally, views such success as a proof of authentic occult practitioner. The new initiate might view ease-of-accessibility as also a sign of sorts, which is to say, as yet another form of evidence toward authenticity. The number of biases required for such a logic becomes obvious the longer one meditates on the complicated relationship between practitioner and client.

In my uninitiated view, one cannot fully fault the practitioner-as-profit-seeker for the multitude of occult-based websites, even if said practitioner is inherently inauthentic. The newly, self-appointed initiate is equally to blame for the demand of virtual occultism and its digitally supplied content. From online Tarot readings, to numerology, to astrology, to exorcisms, to name just a few examples, virtual divination organizations have drastically broadened their territory, thus narrowing the divide between practitioner-provider and initiate-client. The “supply-side” belongs to the occult-practice provider and his or her commodities, and the “client-side”, by comparison, belongs to the seeking self-initiate.[9] The client’s relationship to the provider is dubious initially, but the client sets the pace for the relationship’s development both in intensity and in its perpetuation. After all, as the platitude goes: it takes two to tango. However, something deeper lurks beneath the surface of this virtual relationship, something which seems to be, in my limited view, very existential.

In the very concept of an online social network resides the notion of decentralized connections made across a vast digital landscape by a multitude of individuals, each of which tend to share a common interest or interests. Inherent in these connections resides the desire for community. In other words, the internet, doing what it was designed to do, brings together ideas and people in a communal manner. On the surface, a desire for the communal seems quite benign. However, if one were to scrutinize this communal aspect, then one might consider it as virtual entanglement of previously unacquainted parties. The obvious consequences of such entanglement, which is to say, an expansion and broadening, is the simultaneous increase in accessibility, i.e., the ability for a viable connection between groups otherwise disconnected; between the practitioner-provider and the initiate-client:

“In the posh community of Scottsdale, Arizona, Bob Larson sits in a basement office, staring intently into his computer screen. A young man stares back, his image blurred a bit by the screen…. The young man, David, is in Norway and, according to Larson, is possessed by multiple demons…Larson raises his finger and traces the sign of the cross in front of the screen. “I’m going to reach out, across the miles, and anoint you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”[10]

No longer must the client desperately await spiritual remediation in the virtual world. Indeed, a cure is but a few mouse-clicks away. All one has to do is merely add the existential panacea to his or her shopping-cart, validate payment, and check out.

Not only did the transition into the digital age usher in a new way of gathering occultism proselytes, “it also dramatically altered the overall social organization of Paganism,” thus hearkening towards a sentiment where such online activity evolves into an actualized virtual reality, blurring the lines between conversion, identity construction, and worldview.[11] Simply put, the digital wave of occult related websites, ease of accessibility, connection, and demand for such groups, seems to demonstrate new wave occultism as an innovative form of virtual mysticism, and one replete with its own, concomitant religion-like devotees. The evidence reveals a movement towards a more solitary initiation rite; one not confined to the sphere of secret societies and lodges, but one consigned to engaging with occultism from the comfort of a computer chair.

The interest of the newly, self-initiated occultist finds its momentum in messaging other occultists or participating in online research, thus revealing a move away from traditional occult structures and gatherings, and a move toward increasingly more individualized forms of practice.[12] According to Joshua Gunn, “[t]he decentering of speech and text in our society of surveillance and publicity heralds the death of the Great Magus as much as it does the Great Orator,” the deaths of which “are one and the same, representing a transformation from the age of modern occultism to the postmodern occultic.”[13]

While some researchers parse out the entertainment value of occult related activities, and while others argue the profitability aspect as crucial, still other researchers readily suggest economic reasons as equally relevant to the digital occultism conversation. As political debates revolve around border security, population explosion, declining job markets, wage gaps, access to education, and the like, the economic qualities of digital occultism seem to coincide with a crisis-like fervency:  

“To the degree that Western societies are failing to provide a secure labor market, job descriptions such as that of the angel adviser have emerged out of the individual searchings and strivings of their members. Not even guardian angels or gods know where globalization, the structural ruptures of Western society or digitality will lead us…. The need for reincarnation may be a signal to feel the good old days as a lifeline within us; the present vanishes into identity crises, and only clairvoyants can predict the future.[14]

Indeed, as any source of crisis has the tendency to generate elevated conversion rates within a variety of belief systems, and since virtual occultism offers its own, unique variety of systems to choose from, the ease of accessibility encourages the initiate to explore an avenue of remedy previously unavailable to the general public. With a simple internet search, one finds a swath of occult services offered. However, according to a handful of scholars, occultism and its many flavors offer no conversion stories.[15] In other words, initiates are not specifically converted to their occult practice of choice, but rather they discover it, as if led by divine digital-navigation, thus lending credence to both their newfound “home,” and the (divine?) process which urged them towards discovering it in the first place, be it by crisis or by providence.[16] For the initiate, much less risk is involved in virtual occultism. No need for public gatherings in secret. No need for secret handshakes or private vocabulary in the public forums. The open-source nature of virtual occultism provides the desired anonymity and secrecy its seekers appreciate. The relative ease of which participants can escape if things get too uncomfortable is made apparent by a quick pressing of a computer’s on-off button.

It would be no stretch of the imagination to predict the emanant ubiquity of virtual, internet-based occultism increasing substantially in the coming years. If ever there is a need to be met, then the chances of the internet providing an answer for said need fares far better than merely average. One could even make the claim we have already reached such a ubiquity, as digital devices are found on just about every individual, regardless of class, race, gender, or socio-economic awareness, thus rendering the occult to represent what used to be hidden, but which is now everywhere and easily accessible.

Moreover, even the device used to access the internet, as some occult researchers have noted, the computer itself can be integrated into the ritual practices of on- and offline occultism:

…well-known Pagan author Patricia Telesco weaves almost every aspect of her computer into her craftworking. For her, program passwords become charms that “[reflect] personal attributes or characteristics that you’re trying to develop”; when powered down, “the [computer] screen becomes an excellent scrying surface”; and in what we might call “font magic,” “boldface can be used to engender courage and strikethrough can be used for [ritual] decreasings and banishings.”[17]

As the above quotation indicates, the approach modern occultists use to signify the importance of technology (their computers included) is to make it a part of the process and, sometimes, the ritual itself. Further still, since both the practitioner and initiate alike use computers to transmit information regarding traditional occult customs, beliefs, rituals, and societies, “many modern Pagans now regard computer technology as an integral part of the modern Pagan path, another magickal tool little different from the candle, the cup, and the cauldron.”[18] Additionally, the internet, the computer, and now the smartphone can be viewed as a type of memory device, a practice deeply respected by occultists of previous eras. The convenience of not having to carry around countless pages of grimoires, alchemical dictionaries and recipe books, incantations, and spells, rituals and sacraments, is not difficult to imagine, especially considering the fact that all one needs to do in order to access such arcana is to reach in one’s pocket or purse, grab one’s smartphone, dip into virtual reality, and retrieve a library-sized inventory of occult material.

            The line between conventional reality and virtual reality is quickly disappearing. From virtual banking, to telemedicine, to online degree programs, web-based dating sites, to internet occultism, to name a few, a new reality is emerging ferociously from the depths of the World Wide Web. Further, this new reality alters the initiates psyche, thus developing a new mode of being, and one inextricably intertwined in the tentacles of virtual entanglement. This emerging techno-world in its many iterations was, of course, exacerbated by the 2020 pandemic. Forced lockdowns and isolation over the course of an entire year, (even longer for some) produced a crisis of global proportion, thus leaving people a substantial amount of time to wander around the virtual world in search of a meaningful solution for terminal boredom, on the one hand, and impending doom on the other.

One is inclined to inquire as to why such a compelling desire for virtual spirituality seems to pervade the lives of countless individuals. One can only guess the reasons, though dissatisfaction of one’s life generally seems to fit the bill. Coupled with crisis, dissatisfaction of one’s life appears as ample breeding ground for the self-seeking initiate, and with the explosion of virtual occultism, the initiate has a variety of options to choose from in order to quell such an existential quandary. The digital techno-landscape of virtual reality is organized in such a fashion as to warrant the exercise of radical freedom, at least in the West. In other words, explicit content, pornography, dark-web drug transactions and prostitution rings, to name a few, all beckon to the virtual wanderer, and not to convert said wanderer, but instead to entice the wanderer to discover the dark recesses of the World Wide Web by him- or herself without limitation. The virtual occultist is no different in this regard: “[i]nfluenced far more by popular culture and subcultural peer pressure, there has, again, been a shift away from the authoritarian aspects of religion and toward the creation of personal spiritual paths.”[19]

Returning to the concept of the World Wide Web as memory device, the real significance of virtual occultism finds itself imbedded within the network of wired ideas. This memory device has influenced contemporary culture considerably:

“From the relatively mundane to the bizarrely esoteric, from approaches to health and wellbeing to conspiracies relating world domination and apocalypse, popular culture disseminates occultural content, creates synergies and encourages new spores of occultural though to emerge.”[20]

By drawing upon a memory device which does not forget, i.e., the World Wide Web, a memory is not only available, but is capable of being imprinted upon the seeking self-initiate. Furthermore, a virtual reality as networked and as expansive as the internet seeks to unite a mass of similarly interested initiates, thus establishing a virtual community of practitioners and clients, alike. However, since the virtual world is a relatively new phenomenon it comes as no surprise that scholarship concerned with a new category of virtual occultism is thin and lacking. Of course, this is not to say that no scholarship exists whatsoever, but rather insists a serious need for further inquiry. Previously neglected and understudied virtual occult research is presently being addressed by contemporary scholars in order to determine whether or not a crisis moment lurks just beneath a massive web of information. These scholars include historians, theologians, and social scientists, to mention a few, each of which bring their own snapshots of (historical) memory into the dialogue concerning digital esoterica.

            As we make our way through the age of information, we find our conscious perceptions being influenced by a wide array of data, from news media outlets to open-source public forums, contemporary culture is not without its fair share of knowledge inundation. With such an overwhelming amount of digitally available information, we find our post-modern selves retreating into the dark spaces offered by virtual reality. A multitude of people are presently carving out their own existences in such dark spaces, the consequences of which will not totally reveal themselves until scholarship collects, interrogates, and articulates large swaths of the aforementioned data. I predict these consequences to illustrate the difference in attitudes and opinions people make regarding such information and its many-faced technological domains. In other words, the further we “progress” into and through the information age, the further away we move from our human sense of community, which is to say, the more occulted we as humans will become. In fact, it is here, in this communally cut-off culture that we find ourselves thirsting for its re-establishment, and it is here, in this age of information that virtual reality offers its fantasy by way of bringing forth that which was previously hidden; its artificial solution to a larger, existential dilemma of attempting to live, nay flourish, in a digital age: “[t]he Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.”[21]

 

Works Cited

Armson, Morandir. “The Search for ‘Meaning’: Occult Redefinitions and the Internet.” The pomegranate (Corbett, Or.) 16, no. 1 (2014): 55–79.

Asprem, Egil, and Kennet Granholm. Contemporary Esotericism. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2014.

Brown, Andrew. BrainyQuote.com, BrainyMedia Inc, 2022. https://www.brainyquote. com/quotes/andrew_brown_104628, accessed December 08, 2022.

Cowan, Douglas E. “Book Excerpt: The Mists of Cyberhenge: Mapping the Modern Pagan Internet.” The pomegranate (Corbett, Or.) 7, no. 1 (2007).

Doering-Manteuffel, Sabine. “Survival of Occult Practices and Ideas in Modern Common Sense.” Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) 20, no. 3 (2011): 292–302.

Ellis, Bill. Lucifer Ascending : the Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

Gunn, Joshua. Modern Occult Rhetoric : Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century. Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 2005.

Lewis, James R. “Becoming a Virtual Pagan: ‘Conversion’ or Identity Construction?” The pomegranate (Corbett, Or.) 16, no. 1 (2015): 24–34.

Nikki Bado-Fralick. “Review of Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet by Douglas E. Cowan.” The pomegranate (Corbett, Or.) 7, no. 2 (2007): 241–.

Partridge, Christopher. The Occult World. London: Routledge, 2015.

---

[1] Gilbert, R. Andrew. "occultism." Encyclopedia Britannica, September 9, 2022. https:// www.britannica.com /topic/occultism.

[2] Ellis, Bill. Lucifer Ascending : the Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

[3] Gunn, Joshua. Modern Occult Rhetoric : Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century. Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 2005.

[4] Gunn, 15.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid., 16.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Gunn, Joshua. Modern Occult Rhetoric : Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century. Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 2005. p. 175.

[9] Cowan, Douglas. “The Occult on the Internet.” Christopher Partridge. The Occult World. London: Routledge, 2015. p. 536.

[10] Partridge, Christopher. The Occult World. London: Routledge, 2015. p. 532.

[11] Nikki Bado-Fralick. “Review of Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet by Douglas E. Cowan.” The pomegranate (Corbett, Or.) 7, no. 2 (2007): 25.

[12] Nikki Bado-Fralick. “Review of Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet by Douglas E. Cowan.” The pomegranate (Corbett, Or.) 7, no. 2 (2007): 31

[13] Gunn, Joshua. Modern Occult Rhetoric : Mass Media and the Drama of Secrecy in the Twentieth Century. Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 2005. p. xxix.

[14] Doering-Manteuffel, Sabine. “Survival of Occult Practices and Ideas in Modern Common Sense.” Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) 20, no. 3 (2011): 292–302.

 

[15] Lewis, James R. “Becoming a Virtual Pagan: ‘Conversion’ or Identity Construction?” The pomegranate (Corbett, Or.) 16, no. 1 (2015): p. 25.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Cowan, Douglas E. “Book Excerpt: The Mists of Cyberhenge: Mapping the Modern Pagan Internet.” The pomegranate (Corbett, Or.) 7, no. 1 (2007) p. 69.

[18] Ibid. 69-70.

[19] Partridge, Christopher. “Occulture is Ordinary.” Asprem, Egil, and Kennet Granholm. Contemporary Esotericism. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2014. p. 115-16.

[20] Ibid., 123.

[21] Andrew Brown Quotes. BrainyQuote.com, BrainyMedia Inc, 2022. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/andrew_brown_104628, accessed December 08, 2022.

 

An Important Consideration

It’s been a decade since I’ve written anything here, so I decided to update this site in order to see if my writing has changed, because my life certainly has. Think about the word decision. Now, think about the word incision, and realize that a decision is a type of cutting, a type of violence. The moment we decide to read something called literature is the moment following a decision, many decisions in fact. In the moment we decide to read literature we have already made a cutting judgment. What are we doing when we read at all, regardless of if what we read is considered literature or not? We’re cutting into something like time, being, “life”, and myriad other oblique nouns. Nonetheless, this essay is about reading, whatever that means.

 That which separates literature from reading a recipe book, or fanfiction, or great journalism is not such an easy distinction to make. Look up the definition, if you haven’t already, I dare you. Defining literature is not as easy as, say, defining gasoline. Maybe defining gasoline isn’t that simple, either, because gasoline has properties and ingredients and levels of potency and concentration in octane. But we have a sense of what gasoline is and does: it’s fuel, and it makes machines go via tiny, controlled explosions. Literature, too, has ingredients, properties, levels of potency and concentration, but defining just what literature is requires a degree of expertise that I cannot hope to claim for myself. I can say, however, the decision to read something called literature already has a value judgment built into it. Reading literature, in my view, is reading something that has stood the test of time, a work that has been previously separated, cut off, and set apart from the rest, for some reason or another, by authorities and experts. Whatever it is, literature remains something mystifying and, at the same time, edifying, and it continues to do so for a long period of that thing called time. What is literature? What is literature’s task? Who decides? I’m not sure, but I think I might know what literature is when I read it.

So it goes with philosophy: the moment we decide to read philosophy we have already done something in the way of inquiring into a concept; a curiosity, even if that curiosity is something as apparently innocuous as wondering what is being said, what is being argued, and why? Nonetheless, if I’m going to write an argument for the reading of philosophy alongside that of literature, then I must first attempt to define just what is philosophy and what is literature, and I’ve already shown that defining literature remains a messy exercise, so maybe the to-be verb “is” has something to do with it: it’s an ontologically rich verb. 

Since defining philosophy exists as an ongoing process, it is considered to be the long, great conversation, after all, then I must do it myself, here, in Richardson, Texas in the year 2023. I define philosophy as the tradition of contemplative writing, but this definition seems inadequate, and for a variety of reasons, because all writing is contemplative, isn’t it? What I mean is all contemplative writing in the tradition known as philosophy. Alas, still inadequate. What I mean is all contemplative writing in what is known as the Western tradition of philosophy. Is this adequate enough? Do we know what I mean when I say the Western tradition? None of us can name all the philosophers who make up this tradition, but do we at least have a sense of what I mean? In these questions should be, at the very least, a sense of consideration when choosing to read philosophy alongside literature. Which philosophy? Which tradition? Which literature? Which time period? So many questions. So many dumb and impotent answers. Writing of philosophy, Karl Jaspers asks:

[w]hat is the task of philosophy today? We know the familiar answer: None—for it is unreal, the private business of a guild of specialists. These philosophers, we are told, occupy university chairs dating from the Middle Ages and meet in futility, at conventions which are the modern occasions for showing off. Their monologues are attested by a voluminous literature, scarcely read and rarely bought, except for a few fashionable publications with snob appeal. If the press, as the organ of public opinion takes note of these books and periodicals which gather dust in libraries, it does so without real interest. All in all, we hear, philosophy is superfluous, ossified, behind the times, waiting only for its disappearance. It no longer has a task.[1]

I hear similar sentiments when I tell people I’m studying philosophy in graduate school. Their questions always tend to sound something like: Really? What are you going to do with that? They rarely get the joke when I respond with something as about as specific as the word “do” in the question you just asked me. If they persist in questioning me, which rarely happens, I just say I’ll teach high school or introduction courses at a community college. Maybe I’ll start with Heraclitus, because I think he’s on to something, and the fact that only fragments of his body of work exists is a commentary on existence itself, and I find that hauntingly beautiful, because that’s how life tends to happen: in fragments. Of course, I understand the meaning of do when I’m asked what I’m going to do with a degree in philosophy. People mean what job, what career, what money-making enterprise am I aiming for in investing such time, energy, and stress in a field that, in Jaspers’ words, “no longer has a task.”

I realize Jaspers is being facetious, here, but philosophy is a sort of specialty. I don’t know many individuals outside of the university setting who read it for fun. I used to, and that’s what brought me to the university. Now, I have to, and I’m not fan of many have-tos. But I respect philosophy; I’m intrigued and profoundly interested in the questions it asks. For, that is precisely the task of philosophy: to ask questions. Not just any questions, but profound, cutting questions.

Now that I’ve briefly described what literature is and what philosophy does, I must focus on one important consideration in bringing these two worlds together. One extremely important consideration is selecting the type of philosophy to go with the literature we’ve made the decision to read, presuming, of course, the literature has been chosen in such a fashion as to warrant philosophical companionship, because I have the sense that literature can, does, and will stand alone, by itself, triumphantly rejecting any external influence brought to bear on it. This is, after all, one of literature’s most prominent characteristics, one of its ingredients. In selecting the philosophical accoutrement, one might ask questions like which branch seems to correspond to the literature in question? Metaphysics, cosmology, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, ontology, political, and my favorite, “other”? Of course, the selection process isn’t as clear cut as it might seem. Don’t all of these branches overlap in some form or another? Some philosophers have written about literature and language, so maybe starting with those particular philosophers would serve as a good starting point. But then we’d have to consider time periods. It might be prudent to consider philosophers of the same period in which the literature in question was written. But this seems too limiting an approach. Regardless, (or regardful) I’m still left with the question why would we want to read philosophy together with literature?, since both seem to be doing similar, yet different things, in different realms, though in a shared universe. What if we chose a topic to investigate in our literature, something like, say, suicide, and then chose a philosopher who has written on that topic, and then compared our findings with what we’ve found in the literature, develop an argument, and then support our argument with both the philosophy and literature together? Isn’t this policy for graduate schoolwork? And then?

When we read Camus and contend with his interrogation of suicide as an attempt to escape the absurd[2], or when we read Cioran’s response that “a book is a postponed suicide”[3], or when we read Hume on suicide[4], what we’re doing is contending with deep existential questions; we are contending with our own existence and the ability to quit it. Literature has some things to say about suicide as well. Consider Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Othello, or Hamlet’s to be or not to be soliloquy. How many works of literature can we think of that concern suicide? Many.

We make emotional investments (or emotions are evoked) when reading literature. When reading literature evokes a feeling, then we tend to want to know why, so we grab a philosophy book, say, on the philosophy of emotion, and try to make sense of the senses we’re making. Or, we recall Kant writing about how appreciating art is a type of moral action, and we want to know why, because that statement reveals to us that we have a certain moral responsibility when appreciating art (reading literature for instance) and though Kant makes a distinction between the beautiful and the sublime, and the sublime is not really attached to appreciating art, but beauty is, it is in this very distinction where philosophy is happening; Kant is making a distinction precisely where judgement is concerned, where a decision is requisite:

…we often designate beautiful objects of nature or of art with names that seem to be grounded in moral judging. We call buildings or trees majestic and magnificent, or fields smiling and joyful; even colors are called innocent, modest or tender, because they arouse sensations that contain something analogical to the consciousness of a mental state produced by moral judgements.[5]

This is part of philosophy’s task: to clarify all sorts of existential questions of meaning, of judgment, of purpose, of responsibility, of time, of (insert ambiguous noun here). Philosophy’s task is to attempt to clarify. Isit working? Isn’t determining whether or not a philosophy is successful also a strange type of judgement?

What is literature? What is literature’s task? What is philosophy? What is philosophy’s task? And, what are we to do by bringing these two together? These are extremely complicated questions. Literature offers the philosopher what he or she desires most: immutable truths.[6] Sure, we may quibble, converse, discuss, or argue over the relationship between, say, King Lear and Cordelia. We might chalk it up to Lear’s madness or Cordelia’s alterity. We might agree with Stanley Cavell that the play’s aboutness pertains to acknowledgement. We might debate over Edmund’s connection to or animosity towards his father, and we might hope to make sense of these connections (concoctions?) through reading philosophy alongside King Lear.[7] We might contend with each other about Shakespeare’s genius residing in a type of paradox or hiding in something like clear ambiguity. We might discuss the reversal of gender roles, the upended familial hierarchy, or the wisdom found in the fool. Whereas the text is indeed open to a buffet of interpretations, it would be a complete falsehood to say that Cordelia wasn’t Lear’s daughter, or that Edmund wasn’t a bastard. These truths are salient, immutable; dare I say absolute? “Doing” philosophy, then, is a natural disposition when reading literature. Reading remains, after all, a type of doing closely associated with the doing of philosophy: inquiry towards clarity. When we read a work of literature, we insert ourselves into the text in one way or another. We imagine scenes or scenarios, we listen to dialogues, and we might even get emotional about seeming injustices. Even if we don’t understand a passage, or if we’re frustrated or bored or don’t like what we’re reading we are still engaging, we are still doing something: “[t]he mind’s first step is to distinguish what is true and what is false. However, as soon as thought reflects on itself, what it first discovers is a contradiction.”[8] This is natural, and it seems Cavell is on to something: acknowledging the text is acknowledging something about ourselves.

Seeing literature through the lens of philosophy and seeing philosophy through the lens of literature are not one and the same thing; there exists some distinction between these two worlds. On the surface we can say that reading literature along with philosophy reveals concepts, notions, models, viewpoints, and ideas which might not have been considered before. Of course, we need some boundaries. Imagine reading Nietzsche through the lens of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., or imagine reading Fifty Shades of Grey through the lens of Aquinas, (if you can even imagine reading Fifty Shades of Grey, or Aquinas for that matter).[9] These questions aren’t ridiculous. Would I be merely forcing a philosopher into fan-fiction? Why can’t I do this? Or, why shouldn’t I do this? Would I be doing Nietzsche or Vonnegut a disservice? Do I need to read philosophy to understand this? Absolutely not. So what, then, is the question?  If we are to consider the enquiry of reading philosophy together with literature, then we need to set up some parameters, and this takes expertise, specialists, which I refuse to lie to you by arguing I have what it takes to set up anything like a parameter. We might say the task of literature is to portray the task of philosophy through its characters, narration, setting, plot, and form, but making these claims requires that most slippery of words in order to do so: the word interpretation. We can be thankful, then, that literature offers us immutable truths, and we can be simultaneously thankful that philosophy provides us with the tools to question these immutabilities.

I’m afraid I’ve not said much as to why we should consider reading philosophy together with literature, but I hope through reading this essay you come away understanding that we should indeed do both, that is read philosophy and read literature, and we should read both together. But determining what philosophy and what literature to read together remains a difficult endeavor, and one which requires a bit of digging and defining. So, asking what is philosophy, what is literature, and what is the relationship between the two? might be summed up in that tiny to-be verb fixed pale-blue-dot-like in the middle of the question, in the middle of that vast space. The question remains ontological, which is to say, existential, so I’ll end here, and then leave that decision up to you.

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[1] Jaspers, Karl. Philosophy and the World: Selected Essays. Gateway Edition. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1963.

[2] Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Vintage, 1991.

[3] Cioran, E.M. The Trouble with Being Born. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Arcade, 2012.

[4] Hume, David. Essays on Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul. Honolulu: World Library, 2009.

[5] Kant, Emmanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Second edition., W.W Norton & Co., 2010. p. 449.

[6] Eco, Umberto. On Literature. New York: Harcourt, 2004.

[7] Shakespeare, William, and R. A. Foakes. King Lear. [New ed.] / edited by R.A. Foakes., Arden Shakespeare, 2004.

[8] Myth of Sisyphus. p. 16.

[9] Warning! Value judgment approaching.