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.