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‘Sleeping Beauty’ Does Not Represent Rape Culture

Note: This is a pretty long post based on a lot of research. Please take the time to read before commenting!

An image recently appeared on my Facebook feed, which I have reproduced in the header of this post. The full strip, created by Chris Allison of Toonhole, was either intended to parody the language of consent, questionable narratives in old Disney films, or both.

Ha ha - clever

I almost left it there. But comments beneath this image were unusually interesting for a Facebook post. Most lent their support to a view expressed by one individual in the following words: 

“He was saving her life, that’s implied consent.” 

Another commenter chimed in to opine that the very necessity of a non-consensual kiss to the narrative was indeed “rapey”: if the story had been written in a modern context, the Prince’s True Love™ for the princess would have sufficed on its own to wake her from eternal sleep.

(I personally find this an amusing proposition, and consider that such unembodied love is rather too Platonic for modern sensibilities, and also hazards many more discontented exceptions to the [apparently] sticky subject matter. Nevertheless, I don’t intend to argue about the kiss in this post.)

But our commenter had something more interesting to add: the original version of Sleeping Beauty involved more than a kiss. Indeed, the Prince in this story took advantage of the princess while she was sleeping!

The Brothers’ Grimm

I was immediately intrigued by this claim, and also skeptical.

I grew up with the Brothers’ Grimm as a kid, and read every story in the volume kept in my dad’s library several times over. I did not remember Little Brier-Rose (the title it took in that copy) involving such a lurid detail; and indeed, the Grimm Brothers were not afraid to publish scarring things (Bluebeard anyone?)

But hey, some things pass you by as a child, and I could have been wrong.

It didn’t take much digging to figure out I wasn’t:

Finally he came to the tower and opened the door to the little room where Little Brier-Rose was sleeping.

There she lay and was so beautiful that he could not take his eyes off her. He bent over and gave her a kiss. When he touched her with the kiss Little Brier-Rose opened her eyes, awoke, and looked at him kindly. D. L. Ashliman

Fearing I may have found an abridged translation of the Grimm fable, I sought out other sources. 

It’s not in Project Gutenburg Not on the Internet Archive Not here either... ...or here.

So let’s just clear this up right now: unless someone can produce the secret copy of Little Brier-Rose which contains it, there is no rape in the Brothers’ Grimm version of Sleeping Beauty.

Charles Perrault

In point of fact, I am led to understand that Grimm’s Little Brier-Rose was based on a much earlier story called The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood by French author Charles Perrault in 1695.

In every version of this story that I have found, not only is rape manifestly absent, but so is a kiss, or physical contact of any kind ~

He approached with trembling and admiration, and fell down upon his knees before her.

Then, as the end of the enchantment was come, the Princess awoke, and looking on him with eyes more tender than could have been expected at first sight, said:—

"Is it you, my Prince? You have waited a long while."

This is true of the translations by A.E Johnson, Charles Welsh, Samber & Mansion, and D.L Ashliman.

Older Versions of Sleeping Beauty?

Every “10 Shocking Stories Behind Disney Films” listicle crows about the supposed rape in the original Sleeping Beauty.

I’ll have to take the 11 other “horrifying origin stories” on faith for the time being, but I think I’ve pretty conclusively established that rape was simply not present in Disney’s inspiration for Sleeping Beauty: it wasn’t in Grimm, and it wasn’t in Grimm’s source.

But let’s be charitable to our clickbaity commentators. An awful lot of them are keen to insist that it’s there, somewhere, if you only go back far enough to the Very. First. Sleeping Beauty.

So I’ve decided to look, and after a lot of research, I’ve come to the following conclusions: an old version of Sleeping Beauty sort of contained rape (but it’s complicated), and an older version definitely did. 

So, why did I name this post ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Does Not Represent Rape Culture?

Three simple reasons:

The version (Grimm’s) of Sleeping Beauty with which almost everyone is familiar, and on which the Disney film is based, contained no rape. Moreover, even the version that tale was based on (Perrault’s) contained no rape. Thus it’s unfair to say that popular iterations of Sleeping Beauty are “based on a story containing rape”, because they are not.

The older version which certainly does include rape is so incredibly different from the later fable in so many ways, it’s not even fair to say Sleeping Beauty is “an adaptation of a story including rape”; better to say it was loosely inspired in a superficial way.

This version which contains rape is not the oldest version of the Sleeping Beauty story, and so it’s not even fair to say that “the original Sleeping Beauty contained rape”.

If popular iterations of Sleeping Beauty are not based on any story containing rape, and the story is not “adapted” from an older story containing rape, and the oldest known successor of Sleeping Beauty contained no rape, I therefore stand by my statement: Sleeping Beauty does not represent rape culture.

So let’s get into the details.

Two sources come up: Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone, and an anonymous Arthurian romance called Perceforest. Both are claimed to contain a proto-Sleeping Beauty story involving rape, and Basile is said to have been the inspiration behind Perrault, and Perceforest is said to have been the inspiration behind Basile.

Through this long chain, the Grimm story is said to be based on Perceforest, and likewise so is the classic Disney animation.

Sun, Moon, and Talia

Sun, Moon, and Talia is the portion of Basile’s Pentamerone said to contain rape. It shares a few elements in common with the popular Sleeping Beauty tale, but is mostly unrecognizable.

Talia, the daughter of a great medieval lord, is prevented from ever approaching flax, because “seers and wise men” advise her father that flax will endanger her life. Nevertheless - as these stories tend to go - Talia happens upon flax anyways: a splinter of it gets under her fingernail, and she falls into a death-like state. Her grief stricken father preserves her in the upper story of his house, until a king comes...

And this is where things get tricky, because most summaries one can find online say that the king raped Talia, and as a result she gives birth to twins while sleeping.

...only, this element of Pentamerone is simply not present in the English edition by John Edward Taylor, published in a collection by Macmillan & Co. in 1911.

In this text - which is published in Project Gutenberg, and Wikipedia’s primary source - the king shows up, tries to awake Talia, and wistfully leaves when she does not awake. Afterwards, the twins just show up - according to the narrator, “from I know not where”.

At last he came to the room where Talia was lying, as if enchanted; and when the King saw her, he called to her, thinking that she was asleep, but in vain, for she still slept on, however loud he called. So, after admiring her beauty awhile, the King returned home to his kingdom, where for a long time he forgot all that had happened.

...so where’s the rape?

Wikipedia cites another “unexpurgated” version of the story shared by an English professor named Linda Hagge to her page on the Iowa University Website:

As [the king] looked at her, and tried to wake her, she seemed so incredibly lovely to him that he could not help desiring her, and he began to grow hot with lust. He gathered her in his arms and carried her to a bed, where he made love to her.

Aha. Now we are getting somewhere. But I need more: one can only assume this is original work, because the verbiage cannot be found anywhere else.

Here is the version on D.L Ashliman’s site:

when the king beheld Talia, who seemed to be enchanted, he believed that she was asleep, and he called her, but she remained unconscious. Crying aloud, he beheld her charms and felt his blood course hotly through his veins. He lifted her in his arms, and carried her to a bed, where he gathered the first fruits of love.

Interesting. 

It’s definitely not much of a jump to assume that “gathered the first fruits of love” is a euphemism for rape. But given the non-trivial variation between these texts, I want to know what the original said.

Without much help from Google Translate (which cannot process Neapolitan, but Italian is similar), I felt my way around the relevant passages in a digitized version of the original. To the best of my reckoning, this is the relevant excerpt:

ma, non revenenno pe quanto facesse e gridasse e pigliato de caudo de chelle bellezze, portatola de pesole a no lietto ne couze li frutte d’ammore e, lassatola corcata, se ne tornaie a lo regno suio

I can only assume that “couze li frutte d’ammore” does translate as “first fruits of love,” which aligns with Ashliman’s version, and so the charge against Pentamerone is probably vindicated.

Phew. So at least one version of Sleeping Beauty involves a rape (probably, and euphemistically); what about the older Perceforest?

Perceforest

There was no chance in the world that I could find this text online, much less the original version in its original language. And so whatever I found in the shelves of my university library would have to do.

Thankfully, this turned out to be no issue. Perceforest is a sprawling work, and when I found the relevant passages in Nigel Bryant’s massive translation, I quickly realized there was no chance of a translation goof.

Simply put, a girl named Zellandine - vaguely reminiscent of Brier-Rose/Talia/Beauty - is indeed raped while asleep, by a knight named Troylus. However, the differences between this narrative and Sleeping Beauty are very obvious. 

Here are a few -

1. Perceforest is not a fable or a fairy tale

I have emphasized the tremendous size of this work, and want to emphasize it again. It is much more like a novel than a fairy tale, in that it tells a prolonged story that spans many chaotic chapters. 

Indeed, Troylus and Zellandine meet 140+ pages in advance of the chapter which Bryant (anachronistically) calls Sleeping Beauty. There, Troylus meets Zellandine, who is instantly smitten with him, and gives him a coat of arms to use in tournament. When they part ways, nothing has occurred; their story is taken up later.

This is quite a departure from every narrative covered so far, wherein the Prince figure only encounters the Brier-Rose figure in her chamber.

2.  Zellandine is chronically ill, not cursed

Whether this makes Troylus’ actions better or worse, Zelandine is not under a spell; there is no prophecy and she does not have any unfortunate encounters with a spinning wheel.

Zellandine ends up in an unassailable sleep without reason or explanation, worrying her father, the lord Zelland. All the doctors in the kingdom are summoned to cure her, and none can do it. When Troylus shows up, he is begged for help by a member of Zelland’s household.

3. Troylus is coerced to rape Zellandine, and feels conflicted about it

Here’s the meat of it:

We are told that nobody is sure why Zellandine is even alive given her condition, but the narrative hints that some pagan power is at play: 

They say the goddess Venus, whom she's always served, keeps her in good health.

In the meanwhile, Troylus’ mental condition is not in good shape:

Troylus, whose mind had been altered by herbs or spells, replied so inanely that Zelland took him for a simpleton.

It is in this altered state of consciousness that he is approached by the goddess Venus, and told in veiled language that he must lay with Zellandine to cure her:

When you pluck from the slit / The fruit that holds the cure / The girl will be healed

Troylus is confused by this, and asks for clarification. Venus coyly replies,

The verses have no need of gloss! / I'll just say this: / Love will find the slit

When Troylus finally locates Zellandine, he is tormented by the thought of even kissing her. He asks her for permission, but she naturally does not respond. He argues with himself internally:

Sir knight, no man should breach a girl's privacy without her leave, and he certainly shouldn't touch her while she sleeps!

But eventually he decides it is his duty, and kisses her anyways. When this does not wake her, he pleads with Venus to heal Zellandine.

Venus responds by taunting him:

What a coward you are, knight! You're all alone with this beautiful girl, the one you love above all others, and you don't lie with her!

It is not necessary to reproduce the rest, and we need not argue that Troylus’ actions were right; that being said, it could be an interesting ethical question: would rape be justified if it were the only way to save a human life?

Without answering that question - and regardless of the answer - it should be clear that something rather more complex is occurring here than Troylus discovering Zellandine and having his way with her as a display of power.

4. Troylus is not acting out of True Love™

So far I’ve gathered that much of the rhetorical force behind claiming the prince raped the princess in Sleeping Beauty is the idea that rape was seen in the story as a manifestation of True Love, which would of course be morally reprehensible, and incompatible with modern values.

But this clearly is not the case, given Venus’ involvement in the text. In classical art and literature, Venus is a sexual entity, capricious, cruel, the consort of Vulcan, god of fire: she is a great but amoral force; the personified embodiment of human libido.

Under her influence, Troylus’ actions are explicitly held up as an example of Venereal love, something in a completely different category than True Love. Hence, his actions are not shown as something to be imitated, and indeed they are explicitly shown to defy his Chivalric reason.

In Summary:

I think the points spelled out so far clearly indicate that Troylus’ actions in Perceforest are one morally ambiguous event in a complex sequence of events with no definite conclusion, and the similarities between it and Sleeping Beauty are superficial rather than substantial.

If readers wish to check my claims, I have uploaded the relevant passages from Bryant’s Translation as PDF documents, in conformance with Fair Use laws in the U.S.

Passage #1 Passage #2

The Earliest Version of Sleeping Beauty

Supposing a reader takes issue with every point I have raised so far; there is one final point I think it is impossible to refute. The earliest version of Sleeping Beauty is thought to be found in Brynhildr, and her story does not involve rape of any kind.

Helaena May has a great summary:

Odin, in his wrath at having one of his valkyries defy him, pricked Brynhild’s fingers with the sleep-thorn—a plant with sleep runes inscribed upon it. As Brynhild fell into an endless sleep, Odin uttered his curse: that should she ever wake, she would be married and know more humble work. Not to be undone, with her last words, Brynhild countered with her own vow: she would only marry a man who knew no fear and was therefore worthy of her.

For years, Brynhild slept, her helm covering her face and her armour over her body, undisturbed from sleep. There came a time when a man discovered her, making his way through various perils though not knowing she was there. Upon seeing her form,  the man lifted off her helm and slit open her chainmail so that she might breathe more freely. Immediately, Brynhild awoke with a start, so happy to be without the leaden weight of sleep upon her. She praised the daylight she thought she would never see again and asked for the hero’s name: he was called Sigurd.

This story - the oldest “version” of Sleeping Beauty - is utterly innocuous.

Why Does This Matter?

It’s curious that I’ve written six pages of text to defend Sleeping Beauty against the accusation that it’s a story based on rape. But there’s a very simply reason why I’ve done it.

Fairy tales remain one of the few literary possessions shared in common by most people in the modern world. Not only are they beautiful, and not only do they teach us something important, but they create a common language in which we speak. They communicate archetypes to us by which we measure other narratives.

I will always remember the many long nights I spent as a child wrapped up in the aging covers of Brothers' Grimm. I felt then that I was reading something very important, even though I wasn't sure why - and I still think that.

Sleeping Beauty is a valuable tale that doesn’t deserve to be maligned with a knowing smirk by young readers because they saw a Buzzfeed article which said it had something to do with rape. The seemingly endless campaign by popular writers to besmirch the reputation of every good thing in the world is something I may never understand, but I'll combat it whenever possible.

[brshutt]

Himlen hänger stjärnsvart: A Translation and History

Long ago, I discovered a song that I now listen to every Christmas/Advent season. How I found it is suitably oblique to memory, but I have since learned that it is a traditional Swedish song for St. Lucia’s Day. Sometimes called by its first line Himlen hänger stjärnsvart, this roughly translates to English as “the sky hangs starry black”.

Although it isn’t my favorite version, this is the best I could find on YouTube:

While not as musically rich, this second version contains the expanded text of the song, and also includes visuals that will be explained later:

Here are the lyrics, from Julsånger:

Himlen hänger stjärnsvart och snön ligger blå och mörkret är så beckmörkt och stjärnorna så små. Skumma ligga stigarna där mänskobarnen gå, och tysta ruva stugorna med snöskägg på. Då komma väl de hundra, då komma väl de tusen Lusseknektar vandrande kring husen.

De vandra kring med stjärnljus, de vandra kring med bloss, med masker och med narrspel, en jublande tross. De bulta hårt på rutorna så isen går loss, de buga sig, de bjuda sig till gästning hos oss. De vandra kring med visor som jubla och tralla, så backarna och skogarna de skalla.

For a long time I have wanted a verse translation of this song in English to sing with the tune. Sadly no matter how hard I have searched, I have never managed to find one.

I therefore took the work upon myself. With help from The People’s Dictionary, Google Translate, a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary, I came up with something that I find satisfying enough:

Starry Dark is Heaven*

Starry dark is heaven and blue is the snow  The blackness presses hard and the stars are shining small Gloomy are the winding paths where little children go And round the silent village flow'ring bushes grow Then come they in the hundreds, then come they in the thousands With saffron buns they go around the houses.  They wander round in starlight with torches aglow With masks and merrymaking, a fun and lively row They rap the tiny windows so the ice a'falling goes They bow themselves, and make themselves the guests in our homes. They wander making bright song, cheers and trolling ring, The hills and forests echo with their singing

Background

All of the information I can find on this song comes from the Swedish Wikipedia. It appears to have been written in 1902 by K. G. Ossiannilsson, a writer and translator; it was later published in a collection called Samlede dikter. Ossiannilsson is also responsible for the anthem Sveriges flagga (Swedish Flag), indicating both his nationalist and religious feeling.

In 1928, Ossianilsson joined the National League of Sweden, now notorious for its pro-Nazi stance. After the end of WWII ended Ossianilsson left the league, seeming to renounce the Nazis in his poetry.

Himlen hänger stjärnsvart is well-known in Sweden as a popular children’s song, and it is frequently performed for St. Lucia’s day.

St. Lucia’s Day

English speakers occasionally mistake the song for a Christmas carol, but this is not the case. Instead, it celebrates a figure known to Sweden as St. Lucia, or Lucy in the anglosphere, who has her own holiday on December 13th.

According to tradition, St. Lucia died during the Diocletian Persecution of the 4th century after being ousted as Christian to Roman authorities by her would-be pagan husband. The Swedish holiday surrounding her legacy is rich with symbolism, and most likely co-opts elements of pre-Christian Scandinavian culture.

In a country with long, harsh winters, the 13th of December is historically significant as the Winter Solstice, or longest night of the year. Not only does the day usher in a gradual nearing of the sun, but in spiritual terms, Lucia symbolizes the dawning of Christ’s light as the year approaches His nativity.

[Lucia] is represented as a lady in a white dress (a symbol of a Christian's white baptismal robe) and red sash (symbolizing the blood of her martyrdom) with a crown or wreath of candles on her head. In Norway, Sweden and Swedish-speaking regions of Finland, as songs are sung, girls dressed as Saint Lucy carry cookies and saffron buns in procession, which ‘symbolizes bringing the light of Christianity throughout world darkness. In both Protestant and Catholic churches, boys participate in the procession as well, playing different roles associated with Christmas, such as that of Saint Stephen. -Wikipedia

We see here the procession of children, lights, and baked goods referenced in Ossiannilsson’s song, as well as the symbolic end of Winter (’De bulta hårt på rutorna så isen går loss’). 

The traditions and music represent a startling contrast between natural and divine, dark and light, mortal and immortal, trembling and joy; the hope of sun in a northern, wintry clime becomes the hope of Salvation for the entire world. 

For all of its beauty and meaning, I think the holiday is well worth remembering by those in the English speaking world.

*This is not a word-for-word translation, but I have stayed as close to the original as I knew how to. I welcome input or corrections from any Swedish speaker!

[brshutt]

Excesses in Post-Colonial Scholarship

The Horseshoe Theory

There’s a weird but fairly perennial issue in politics: the extremes of any ideology begin to look an awful lot like one another, until at some point, it’s almost impossible to distinguish them.

I don’t like politics very much, and I try to keep my head unsullied by its deceptively complex simpleness as much as I can. That being said, there’s a pretty obvious point to horseshoe theory:

Most of us have some friends - or at least some acquaintances - from the far right, and the far left (that’s not to assume that none of my readers are on the far right or far left, or even that I’m not; but I’m using the word ‘far’ in a relative sense). 

Not only do we find ourselves in profound disagreement with both groups of friends at different times, but we are sometimes impressed by the problems which oddly recur between them, as if they agreed on a matter, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

But in fact, they do seem to agree. They are so extreme, they’ve gone all the way around the world and nearly ran into one another along the way. A little bit farther, and perhaps the differences would completely disappear.

Let’s take some object cases:

Nazi Germany and The USSR (became authoritarian, resorted to ethnic cleansing and death camps, involved personality cults)

White and Black Nationalists (nowadays, these groups actually had the sense to join forces, even though they used to hate one another; they both want to see the world divided up along racial lines)

The far left and far right in American politics (conspiratorial, authoritarian, demand segregation, use dirty tactics to gain power)

Now obviously these are somewhat fuzzy observations. It’s impossible to predict in exactly what ways pairs of extremes may begin to resemble one another, but...it happens anyways. If you deny it, you’re either a political science major who (understandably) hates to see historically different schools of thought lumped together so unceremoniously, or you are yourself an extreme ideologue, and you cherish whatever trifling distinctions persist between you and your enemy.

Enough of you, hypothetical naysayer: I say this is a useful tool on some level, and now I’m going to use it.

In Academia

Let’s get to the main point: I think this horseshoe effect happens in realms besides politics, including academia. Specifically, I think it happens in anthropology, social theory, and religious studies between two very broad fields of scholarship: colonialism, and post-colonialism.

As I've continued my long-term research project on native Australian culture, it has occurred to me fresh why I absolutely loathe Western, leftist dominant academia, especially when it comes to the fields I mentioned above.

Post-colonial scholarship is supposed to "decolonize" the histories of native lands. That is to say, it's meant to purge the study of other cultures from the biases we (the West) may have introduced when we first encountered them. On the face of it, I think that's a good goal. 

We should try to see the world through the eyes of other people, or we will not understand them, and - for instance - trying to think of Aboriginal Dreamtime religion exclusively in terms of Christianity is not a very fruitful endeavor.

But this is just the problem: the "otherness" of the "other" cultures is implicit in this practice. Every single topic I have researched so far nauseates me with this hypnotic slogan: 

"Unlike in Western culture..."

"Unlike Westerners, the Aborigines did not see rocks as dead, lifeless things to be dominated, but as living entities."

"While we Westerners don't like death, the Aborigines thought death was just a part of life. In fact, it was basically the best part of life." 

"While stupid, ugly Westerners think you have to wear clothes, the smart Aborigines thought clothes were stupid.”

Listen. I’m really tired of this.

First of all - Mr. Post-colonialist - I don't believe you about these claims. The proposition that native peoples were 100% different from us in every way is more absurd than the notion that they were 100% like us, and it reeks of ideological motivation rather than sound scholarship. 

For goodness’ sake: we’re all human beings. And because I am one, I know there's a certain switch in every human brain which goes, "Oh, that's a rock. Rocks aren't alive the same way fishes and lizards are." 

That's not a Western thought. That's a human thought. And while I understand that cultures have differences which extend to psychological bedrock...we still share that bedrock in common.

Secondly, it’s time for horsehoe theory.

This system - even more than the last one, perhaps - defines other cultures exclusively in terms of their relationship to the West. While I’m not certain about this, I think we can partially blame the approach on Derrida's concept of "Différance," which suggests that all meaning is constructed by the contrast ("Difference") between terms. In other words, we can only understand Dreamtime religion by understanding how it isn’t like Christianity.

Well, obviously it's helpful to compare native cultures to concepts we are already familiar with...

...but that's just what colonialism did!

If you only emphasize differences and not similarities between two societies, you "otherize" a culture more severely than if you would if you only emphasized the similarities. 

So in my experience, post-colonialism has attained a ridiculous extreme. If the goal was to escape Western conceit - Mr. Post-colonialist - you failed terrifically because your motivations only shifted from imperialism to a childish inferiority complex writ large. 

It's really, really bad scholarship both ways.

Frankly, I'm tired of reading your papers and watching your documentaries. I constantly roll my eyes and read between the lines of your delirious exoticism. And what do I find out every single time?

Surprise, surprise: Aborigines aren't aliens from another planet. They buried their dead, had mourning rituals, made tools out of rocks, and they wore clothes.

[brshutt]

Uncertainty

Image by marcodalingo

Empty horizons Fearful and barren Untrodden footpaths lie Stretching ahead

Twisted and tangled Waste of deception No fellow travelers Living or dead

Ponderous burden Strapped to my shoulder Tome of the ancients who trod here before

Everyone quarrels None in agreement I alone mediate All of their words

Should I take this one, Should I take that one? North-East, or South-East or straight to the West?

Sometimes I wonder Whether it matters Maybe the principle Lies in the choice

But a suspicion Won't leave me alone: Some lead to nowhere and One leads to home.

[brshutt]

"The issue with scientism is not that its philosophical arguments are questionable, although they are. The issue is that the advocate of scientism does not understand that he is involved in a philosophical discussion at all. Indeed he resents the existence of this discussion, feels threatened by it, and is deeply troubled when he reflects that other people value what he does not understand. He does not want to sit at the table with other reasonable and informed people. He wants to kick over the table, denounce the people who are sitting at it, appeal to his authority as a member of the lab-coat-wearing elite, and, in short, to stifle our curiosity and our willingness to think for ourselves. When he says we ought to be curious, he does not mean we ought to be curious in a general sort of way, about the good life or knowledge or history or the arts, but only about his particular field of interest, his personal claims to knowledge, and how we can contribute to the project he thinks is the only one worth pursuing. It never seems to occur to him that the same curiosity that led him to embark on a scientific career, in what was perhaps a more idealistic and open-minded youth, might have led someone else into a different field of knowledge, and that they too might have something worthwhile to say."

[brshutt]

Join us as we explore the philosophy of Thales, who said the entire world was made of water! This video is the first in a series covering Western Philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to the 21st century.

[brshutt]

Münchhausen and the folly of ‘absolute proof’

I’m not sure how long the Western world has been plagued by a stubborn notion that anything which is to be believed must be absolutely and rigidly proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. 

I suppose sentiments of this kind must date back at least to Descartes, who famously decided that the one thing he definitely knew beyond a shadow of a doubt was that he existed.

Of course, most - but not all - people agree with Descartes’ simple reasoning. Some have taken issue with his ‘cogito ergo sum’, claiming it is a kind of tautology, or instance of circular reasoning. I’m inclined to say it’s not, and I think it’s easy enough to show that the argument is airtight.

But not everyone does agree with the argument, on the simple grounds that they disagree with even deeper unproved premises which Descartes finally failed to address. These include the validity of the basic laws of logic and the assumption that thought is real and not illusory, among others.

Therefore, in the end, as logical as we pride ourselves in being, absolutely everything we believe can finally be traced back to the simple act of ‘seeing’, as by Aristotle’s noesis. Unless we ‘see’, as plainly and clearly as we see the sun that the propositions "A is B" and "A is not B" cannot be true at the same moment of time and in the same sense (law of non-contradiction), there’s simply nothing that can be done to prove it. There’s little to be done arguing with someone who rejects ideas so fundamental, that their inability to agree amounts to nothing more than a defect of the mind’s eye. They suffer, in a sense, from a deficit which amounts to intellectual blindness.

This is the level on which “logic” breaks down into nothing less than common sense. Philosophers of the classic tradition are mainly okay with this fact, but modern humans are decidedly uncomfortable with it, having been raised in the Scientistic tradition which - refusing to admit Philosophy has any part with Science - takes the Philosophical underpinnings of Science for granted, assuming somewhere in the back of its mind that these have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by somebody at some time. 

After all, there’s no point looking back, ONLY LOOKING FORWAAAAARD!!!!

(Sorry, I get fed up with these types, okay?)

Russel’s folly

Among the modernists who liked the idea of ‘absolute proofs’, and wanted to validate their thinking with airtight, non-circular arguments were Bertrand Russel and Alfred North Whitehead. The result of this kind of thinking was the Principia Mathematica, a three volume, dizzying tome which famously took hundreds of pages just to prove that 1+1 = 2.

An impressive man, no?

The goal of the work was, in Russel’s own words, “to show that all pure mathematics follows from purely logical premises and uses only concepts definable in logical terms.”

Too bad that the whole project was an epic failure. Okay, so that’s just like, my opinion man. Principia was highly influential, and wasn’t a total failure. But it did fail to achieve it’s main goal.

Kurt Gödel had to come along and wreck Russel and Whitehead’s “absolute proof” with his devastating incompleteness theorem, which settled once and for all that what Russel and Whitehead wanted was impossible as a matter of principle.

It turns out that a system of mathematics cannot proved the way Russel had religiously believed it could. All systems of mathematics contain undecidable propositions.

Can I explain the proof to you? No, I can’t even understand it. But I have it on very good authority that this is the consequence of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem.

The münchhausen trilemma

So here is something I think we should teach to first graders. Something that should be hung on the doorposts of Universities, STEM centers, and research labs.

Münchhausen’s trilemma is named after a quaint story involving a man who gets himself and his horse stuck inside a bog. He manages to get himself out of the sticky situation by pulling himself up by his own hair.

This absurd little tale is exactly what it’s like trying to prove anything with logic, without finally coming back to simple assumptions that cannot be proved. 

Hans Albert formulated the trilemma like this (which I have shamelessly lifted from Wikipedia):

All justifications in pursuit of 'certain' knowledge have also to justify the means of their justification and doing so they have to justify anew the means of their justification. Therefore, there can be no end. We are faced with the hopeless situation of 'infinite regression'.

One can justify with a circular argument, but this sacrifices its validity.

One can stop at self-evidence or common sense or fundamental principles or speaking ex cathedra or at any other evidence, but in doing so, the intention to install 'certain' justification is abandoned.

You will never get a better or more certain proof than truths which are self-evident. I suppose this makes people uncomfortable, since it seems to compromise the Scientistic notion of science, which says that Science alone is the arbiter of everything there is to know. For some, it’s a shocking realization that Science itself is predicated on non-Scientific truths.

Sadly (assuming you are the sort of person who finds simple facts of life sad), that’s just the way the world is. That’s the way it always has been. And that’s the way it’s always going to be.

[brshutt]

A person who admits to having succumbed to temptation has more integrity than the person who sells out, then fixes the books, but both suffer its loss.

Lynne McFall, Integrity

[brshutt]

A Possible Solution to Fermi’s Paradox

Much ink has been spilled over the Fermi paradox. From a secular point of view, the existence of aliens is statistically certain. 

So why don't we see any? Why haven't they contacted us? Where are they? 

So many solutions have been proposed - that any existing aliens are in a stone age, that alien civilizations have all died out, or perhaps the distance between us and them is insuperable. The possibilities go on and on.

A Misanthropic Conjecture

I'd like to propose a completely different solution that I haven't encountered before, and I will begin by asking a question: What makes us so sure that if aliens existed they would be eager to contact us?

Perhaps aliens exist, and perhaps they are fully aware of us. And perhaps they are completely and utterly disinterested, disgusted, or even terrified by what they have found.

It is perfectly plausible that aliens are misanthropic; that they dislike humans, or even hate then.

[brshutt]

Study Guide to The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I have been interested in self-studying philosophy for a long time, and I am now taking it up as my minor in college. I have compiled this systematic guide to philosophy for my own benefit, however, it may prove beneficial to others as well.

Obviously, I am talking about Western philosophy, and not Eastern philosophy, which is a subject all of its own (and a very interesting one at that).

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is an excellent source of philosophical articles that are both thorough, and accessible. However, I have not been able to find any systematic index of articles from the SEP which make reading through it chronologically possible. Therefore, I have written an outline of important thinkers beginning with the pre-socratics, and I am linking them to respective entries in the SEP.

This guide is a work in progress, and currently has the major disadvantage of not categorizing various philosophers into specific schools of thought. I may try to work these in at a later time, but for now I am focusing on chronology rather than fitting them into categories. The SEP should do that by itself.

The Pre-Socratics

Thales of Miletus

Anaximenes

Heraclitus

Anaximander

Parmenides

Zeno of Elea

Empedocles

Democritus

Pythagoras

Diogenes

Classical Philosophy

(These three thinkers are extremely important, and intimately connected to one another)

Socrates

Plato

Aristotle

Ancient Non-Socratic Schools of Philosophy

Sophism

Protagoras

Gorgias

Skepticism

Pyrrho

Epicureanism

Epicurus

Hedonism

Aristippus of Cyrene

Democritus (although a pre-socratic, he is often associated with this school)

Stoicism

Zeno of Citium (NOT to be confused with Zeno of Elea, a pre-socratic)

Epictetus

Marcus Aurelius (although he came significantly later)

Neoplatonism

Plotinus

St. Augustine (although he came much later, he is a very important and influential figure)

Medieval Philosophy

Scholasticism

St. Anselm

St. Thomas Aquinas

Peter Abelard

Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great)

John Duns Scotus

William of Ockham

Renaissance Philosophers

Roger Bacon (Okay, technically, Bacon was a Franciscan Friar in the 14th century, so he doesn't belong here. But he definitely doesn't belong with the Scholastics, so he goes here.)

Erasmus

Machiavelli

Thomas More

Francis Bacon

Islamic Philosophers (no SEP links :( )

Avicenna

Averröes

Jewish Philosopher(s)

Maimonides

Early Modern Philosophy (it isn't medieval, but it also isn't modern)

Two competing schools of thought, and those who did not strictly belong to either school.

Rationalism

René Descartes

Baruch Spinoza

Gottfried Leibniz

Nicolas Malebranche

Empiricism

John Locke

Bishop George Berkeley

David Hume

Non-Aligned (Not strictly empiricist or rationalist)

Thomas Hobbes

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Blaise Pascal

Voltaire

Adam Smith

Edmund Burke

Immanuel Kant (signaled the shift from early modern to 19th century philosophy)

19th Century Philosophy

German Idealism

Johann Fichte

Arthur Schopenhauer 

Georg Hegel

Marxism

Karl Marx (of course he gets his own category)

British Empiricism

Jeremy Bentham

John Stuart Mill

American Philosophy

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Henry David Thoreau

C.S Peirce

William James

John Dewey

European Philosophers

Auguste Comte

Søren Kierkegaard

Nietzsche

20th Century Philosophy

Characterized once again by two large and competing traditions.

Analytical Philosophers

Gottlob Frege

Bertrand Russell

Alfred North Whitehead

A.J Ayer

Ludwig Wittgenstein

W.V.O Quine

G.E. Moore

Continental Philosophers

Edmund Husserl

Martin Heidegger

Jean-Paul Sartre

Michel Foucault

Jacques Derrida

Simone de Beauvoir

[brshutt]

All Shall Be Well

Every sigh you half exhale Is to me a treaty with A thousand signatures And though a second pass for you A thousand lifetimes I reflect The very substance of your heart The Holy Spirit cries to me In words more dreadful than you know The Son beside me reaches out Because He knows aloneness too Oh! If you thought upon me once In the way I think of you And have me for your very friend Afflictions would like vapors fade Before the Earth or sky was made And darkness upon waters rest I knew in eons hence that you My son, would have such longings And unwellness as you do. You are a child, yet and so Your mind and heart cannot accept One iota of the knowledge Of the plans I have for you. But if you saw the end of this, Though such knowing would prevent The very end to which I lead You would fall upon your knees With boundless joy and praise At the epilogue of days Which is the prelude of my works And just a prologue to the start Of the richness you'll receive And the treasures I'll bestow Unto my beloved race Through the trials that you face Look up! Look up, and surely know All shall be well All shall be well All shall be well

[brshutt]

Memoria Malus

Another thought, unwanted comes to mind You dredge from depths some long abandoned time You are unwelcome, and I need you not I don't revisit what I have forgot

But little help is will when comes to sleep

You visit me in vulnerable hour I resist, but greater is your power Harder I deny, harder you press And faithlessly within me you address

Regrets, fears, sighs, doubts; untied ends

So, I cast you off, and say my peace The thing is done, and there's the end of that But you are wont to laugh, and shrug me off Feed me with the bile of your trough

I tear stain'd mourn, and plead that you depart

Spectre, joyless spirit, tell me how You were untethered from my sober brow And gained a life-force separate from me Orphaned as my certain enemy

You aren't the only one who misses home

See, my bed, a sterile shrine of rest Becomes my dread, and I am sorely pressed Ask not why the morning is half done Or why I scarcely doze before the sun

I did not choose to be my fugitive

Come quickly, now, and lend to me your breath I've almost lost my feelings to the depth Where smolders fire I cannot bear to douse This little flame is all that I have left

And if it goes, so goes the rest of me

[brshutt]

Specified and Composite Forms of Art

No, I do not endorse phrenology. I just think it’s an interesting and relevant image.

In my last post about art, I posed my Eidetic Definition of Art (EDA), on which art is considered to be any aesthetic reduction of entropy. I also promised that I would publish more posts detailing the implications of this definition, and what they mean for art as a whole. Well, I haven’t forgotten that promise, so today I am going to propose a system for the classification of art forms which starts from the ground up. And I will begin by talking about one of the most ubiquitous and beloved art forms known to mankind:

Music: A very strange art form

So, why do I call music a ‘strange’ art form? I don’t mean that there is anything particularly strange about listening to music, or making music, or liking music. Rather, music is ‘strange’ simply because of the scope of its definition.

First of all, let us consider what ‘music’ will mean under EDA. Since art is an aesthetic reduction of entropy, and since ‘music’ is a form of art which pertains to the sense of hearing, it follows that music can be defined as a phonic reduction of entropy. Now to me, this definition is elegant, and easy to understand. It describes music perfectly, and through it, music fits in very well with EDA.

Think of all the songs and compositions that you enjoy listening to. The average reader likely enjoys music from vastly different genres, ranging from classical pieces, to rock, to electronica, and possibly even ethnic music like Aboriginal Didgeridoo. As far as their means of production are concerned, nothing could be less alike than - say - electronica, and orchestral music.

And yet, we use one word into which they both fit: music. Why? Because music is any and every phonic reduction of entropy. This category is broad, and will inevitably contain things which are vastly different from one another.

Whatever instrument in the world which has ever been used in any place at any time in history is a ‘musical’ instrument. Whatever notation has been used, whether in the 21st century on multi-track synthesizers, written on a Treble cleff in the 17th century, or etched into Mammoth bone in the 20th century BC, all of this belongs to the category of ‘music’.

Ancient music notation from the second year AD

Music is therefore a special kind of art form, since it describes every form of art pertaining to the auditory sense. 

If you’re not sure why this is ‘special’, consider whether we have an equivalent for any of our other senses. Drawing is a visual art form. But so is painting, chalk, charcoal, digital paintings, sculptures, filmography, etc. And yet, is there a category to which all of these things clearly belong?

We have a word which is shared both by violin ensembles and rock bands, but we have no word that is shared by paintings and illustrations. We have no word which corresponds to the general category of ‘visual art form’. This asymmetry of our artistic categories disturbs me.

The Specified Art-forms

I therefore suggest that just as we have an English word which applies to all forms of art pertaining to one sense - hearing - so we should construct a category of art for the other four (classical) human senses.

Now, just as I have defined the art form which corresponds to hearing as a phonic reduction of entropy, I will in turn describe each of these specified art forms as a reduction of entropy pertaining to their respective sensory categories. This is all easy enough to do.

The more difficult part of this task, about which I am very reluctant, is coining a term like the equivalent of ‘music’ for each one. It seems incredibly pretentious for me to try my hand at this, especially when I am not a linguist, and have very little sense of how to construct a proper English word. However, I am forced to try, or else I will always be using words like taste-art, smell-art, or touch-art, and that’s even worse than making up a word for each one. The words will not be arbitrary, however. Just as ‘music’ is etymologically related to the Greek ‘muse’, I have used Greek words corresponding to the individual senses to construct these words. They are as follows:

Hearing

The word which corresponds with this specified form is ‘music’.

Music can be defined as a ‘phonic reduction of entropy’.

Sight

I will call the word corresponding to this specified form ‘vlesis’

‘Vlesis’ can be defined as a ‘visual reduction of entropy’.

Taste

I will call the word corresponding to this specified form ‘gefsis’

‘Gefsis’ can be described as a ‘gustatory reduction of entropy’.

Smell

I will call the word corresponding to this specified form ‘myrodis’

‘Myrodis’ can be described as an ‘olfactory reduction of entropy’.

Touch

I will call the word corresponding to this specified form ‘afsis’

Afsis can be described as a ‘haptic reduction of entropy’.

Leaving aside whatever impression you may have of the terms I have coined here, and which I will use for the remainder of my discussions on EDA (until better words are suggested), we have here pure categories to describe any art form which pertains to every one of the five traditional human senses.

So, for instance, paintings, drawings, graffiti, doodles, and cinematography will all fall under vlesis.

Culinary dishes, candies, chewing gums, and mixed drinks will all fall under the category of gefsis.

Perfumes, colognes, industrial scents, certain therapeutic oils and soaps will all fall under the category of myrodis.

It is harder to think of clear instances of art forms which primarily communicate through touch, but it is a very important factor in the design of many artistic products, including the food we eat, clothes we wear, cars we drive, and devices we use. The texture aspect of these things falls under afsis.

Composite art forms

An attentive reader will quickly notice, however, that there are few examples of a purely specified art form - that is to say, most of the art forms we are familiar with appeal to more than one of the senses. I call such forms of art composite art forms, because they are composed of multiple specified art forms.

So for instance, a photograph is an example of vlesis, pure and simple. Photographs appeal to the visual sense, and nothing else. Hence, one who is blind cannot appreciate a photograph.

On the other hand, a movie is a composite of both vlesis and music. Not only is a movie made from multiple photographs, but it is made with an audio track. The form involves visual sense and hearing sense, and so there would be no use at all to bring a blind/deaf friend to the next Avengers movie, unless of course they are ravenously fond of popcorn.

And popcorn brings me to the next senses: good food is always a composite of gefsis, myrodis, and afsis. That is to say, a well made dish appeals to one’s sense of taste, smell, and touch, since it will have an appealing texture. But indeed, a well made dish of food is often a lovely thing to look at, and so it often has an element of vlesis.

Considering how well-made food is an art form that can appeal to four of the human senses simultaneously, is it any wonder that humans become gluttons? How many other experiences engage so many of our senses at once, and immerse us in color, texture, smell, and taste?

Two Stages of Artistic Potency

I said in my last post that literature counts as an aesthetic reduction of entropy because literature works through descriptions of the physical world. In other words, through literature, I can evoke images, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures. As a steadfast admirer of literature and an avid reader (especially in my youth), I stand by this statement. I can still remember reading Jules Verne late at night, and seeing the glow of red, hot magma which almost burned my skin as I swayed with the motion of a subterranean raft, wincing from crackling and burning flecks of molten rock.

However, I must also introduce a caveat to all this. It is readily apparent that to ‘see’ something described in a book, and to ‘see’ something portrayed in a painting is a very distinct experience, even though both work by evoking an aesthetic experience. They are two different stages of aesthetic experience, which I find it here necessary to distinguish between.

Works of art like literature, which function by evoking mental experiences of aesthetic phenomena are indirect art.

The more conventional works of art which function by actually feeding sensory information into human consciousness through psychophysiological pathways are direct art.

Basically, if you can see it with your eyes, hear it with your ears, touch it with your hand, taste it with your tongue, or smell it with your nose, it is direct art.

But if you can see it with the minds eye, hear, touch, taste or smell it in the same way, it is indirect art.

I would therefore argue that literature, although an indirect art form, is the most powerful art form currently possessed by humanity, as it has the capability of indirectly stimulating all five of the human senses simultaneously. Hence, there is little wonder about literature’s enduring legacy, or why when Dante traveled into Hell in ‘Divine Comedy’, the first and most noble figure he met there was Virgil the poet, closely followed by Homer and Ovid, people who wrote thousands of years ago, but are still read today for pleasure and edification.

But note that I am not saying this as a way of pitting art forms against one another, or to elevate one art form above all the rest as ‘superior’. As someone who once wrote as a film critic, I think I enjoy a good movie above any other form of art except a well made meal, which I enjoy most of all.

I make this observation partly as a writer, satisfied that the oft-repeated advice I have heard all my life is well founded: good writing shows, and doesn’t tell. It renders a textual world full of color, shadows, sounds, textures, scents and flavors. Good writing is descriptive. Good writing immerses a reader in a world of sensory experience.

But secondly, I make this observation as a segue way into the future of art, and a powerful art form that may one day dominate all others by leaps and bounds.

The Most Powerful Art Form of All

There exists an art form which the human race is only just beginning to toy with, and working around the clock to realize  - it is a direct art form which would involve all five of the sensory categories. In other words, it would be the direct art analogue of literature.

The project goes by many names, but has generally been conceived of as virtual reality.

If you pay much attention to the work of our STEMlords, who always seem to be making some new gadget of untold powers, the image above will not be unfamiliar to you. The Oculus Rift is certainly not the first attempt at virtual reality, but it is one of the more successful.

Even so, at the moment, it is primitive. Really, it is a glorified cinematic composite art form, since it only combines vlesis and music. But it is not outside the limits of our current technological knowledge to bring all the rest of the specified art forms into the mix as well.

Within a decade or so, there may very well come to be a medium that can directly convey every classical aesthetic experience. I side with the many who view this possible development with a mixture of fascination and horror, knowing just how dangerous it could possibly be to our race, but also realizing the tremendous potential this puts into the hands of artists, and the limitless experiences it might one day make possible.

Even so, I expect I’ll always have a book close at hand. Indirect art forms may suffer the limitation of being, in fact, indirect. But they rarely put the one who consumes them at risk of replacing reality with a false one.

[brshutt]

A fallacy inherent to many ethical dilemmas

Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.  - Dylan Thomas

(If it is not clear why I have included these stanzas in my post, it should be by the end)

I was at a student conference three years ago, when a student posed the infamous trolley problem to me. His version went something like this:

You are beside a trolley track which splits into two directions. In one direction, three people are tied to the tracks. In another direction, six people are tied to the tracks. You cannot stop the trolley, which is on course to hit the six people, but you can pull a lever and divert the trolley so it hits three people instead. What should you do?

It’s a clever little dilemma, of course, and its meant to cause troubling thoughts in the one who hears it. When you first listen to the dilemma, you might think, “Well of course, I should not pull the lever, because if it hits the six people it is headed towards, their deaths will not be my fault. But if I divert the trolley so it hits three people instead, I will have willingly chosen to kill three people.”

But if you let the problem stew in your mind for awhile, you’ll inevitably start to see the other perspective: “If the trolley is about to hit six people, and I can stop it from doing so, then if I do not stop it, I will be directly responsible for choosing not to act on my ability to save them.”

Clever. Very clever. But I had been exposed to such dilemmas before this student posed it to me, and I knew what I thought about it.

“I will try to stop the trolley,” I said.

“You can’t,” he said in response. “That’s not an option. You have to either pull the lever, or not pull it.”

“Why?” I asked. “I can jump onto the trolley, and push all the buttons in the hope that one of them will stop or reverse it. I can jump in the way of the trolley, and hope that crushing me will stop it. I can try to unfasten the people tied to the tracks.”

“No,” he said with annoyance, “You can’t do any of those things. You have to either pull the lever, or leave it alone.”

“Why?” I asked a second time. “Why do I have to pull the lever or not pull the lever? Why can’t I try to stop the train?”

“Because...” he said slowly, “you have to,”

I stared at him. He stared back. 

There was no use going on like this, or asking a third time why I “had to” choose one evil or the other. In the world my interlocutor had created, only two choices were possible, so getting him to think about the subject more deeply was not possible.

The fallacy in ethical dilemmas 

In an ethical dilemma, one creates a hypothetical scenario in which no choice can prevent some evil from happening, so one is forced to choose an evil. Which evil do we choose?

But there is a problem inherent to dilemmas such as these, and it is this: there is no possible world in which a free creature lacks the ability to make a right choice.

There’s nothing wrong when an ethicist says, “In my hypothetical world, nothing you choose can stop the trolley.” But there is something very wrong with what the ethicist actually means: “In my hypothetical world, you cannot choose to stop the trolley.”

The first statement is fine. The second is a contradiction in terms. A human being is a free moral agent. Free moral agents can, at any time, try whatever they want to try, whether success is possible or not. If at any point they cannot make a right choice, they are no longer free moral agents, and they are therefore not human, and so the dilemma collapses, because non-human beings don’t have ethical natures in the first place, and so cannot have ethical dilemmas.

It should be clear that this explanation resolves the whole conundrum an ethical dilemma puts one into. The reason an ethical dilemma bothers us is because we have an intuition which says, “We must try to prevent evil”, but we have an ethicist telling us, “In this situation, you cannot make this choice which your sense of morality tells you to make. Indeed, you are obligated to make a choice your sense of morality tells you not to make.”

But the ethicist is uttering a falsehood. Your moral obligations are no different, no matter how impossible it may be to achieve their ends. Under absolutely no circumstance do you have to choose the evil.

Suppose your family was tied up, and at their feet, a time bomb ticked, making their destruction imminent. A button is located on the front of the bomb, and should you press it, the bomb will be diffused. However, you are also tied up with ropes you cannot break.

It seems clear that there is nothing you can do to stop the bomb. But would you not struggle against your bonds anyways? Would you not desperately think of some way to prevent the bomb from killing your family?

If someone in this situation did not try even once to break their bonds, what would you think of that person?

Let’s go back to the original dilemma. This is what I say: you are morally obligated to use every facet of your human strength and imagination to try and stop the trolley no matter how likely you are to fail.

You’ve missed the whole point you moron

At this point (if they haven’t already at many points before now), some readers will laugh and tell me I’ve missed the point. This is a hypothetical situation. Obviously in real life, you are rarely - if ever - confronted by a situation where an evil choice is the only possible choice. These hypothetical situations are simply extreme scenarios which force us to think about our ethical assumptions.

But if that’s what you’re thinking - or if you are thinking something similar to it - you have probably missed my point. My point is this (and now, I am saying nothing new, I am only repeating myself for emphasis to avoid misunderstanding): ethical dilemmas only challenge assumptions by smuggling in other assumptions. Namely this, that there are possible worlds in which one cannot choose anything other than evil.

I am saying this assumption is false. If one is a human being, and if one possesses free will, there is always some other choice to make than an evil one.

There are some things you cannot choose...

“You cannot choose to fly”, some might say in rebuttal. And informally speaking, that’s true. However hard I flap my arms, I will die if I jump off a cliff pursuing the misguided dream of soaring like a bird.

But using more accurate language, it is not the case that I cannot choose to fly, it is rather the case that I cannot fly. I can choose to flap my arms like a bird with every intention of flying. That choice is within my capacity, even if the ability to succeed at it is not.

If you are falling to your death, try to fly. It doesn’t matter whether you can stop yourself from actually hitting the ground. Do whatever it takes to prolong the inevitable, and only then can your conscience be free of blame.

...but choose them anyways.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’

[brshutt]

Icarus Falling

(art by rockgem)

That evil day, Icarus found That he was falling to the ground And now, the all expansive blue Before him grew, and grew, and grew

The wax dipp'd feathers on his arms Tore hair from skin, and did him harm And left him, skywards fading fast; Betrayed him as to earth he crashed

Daedalus, loyal father turned His face away as child burned In dreadful glory as he spun Beneath the stolid, midday sun

And thus cried out the cursed youth And nothing could his terror soothe And wished that prison never fled For better chained than free and dead

But hark! The Sun did stir, and sigh, And spake, "Oh man, why do you cry?" Icarus said, "Cannot you see, That I am falling to the sea?

These feathers bore me up in flight Until I, proud, basked in thy light For once was I in prison bound But woe! For now shall I be drowned."

“Be peace, oh man, although you fall For now a secret I will tell: One thing did not the jailer take, Nor I, though your devices bake.

We did not take your will to stay Alive, to see another day, And now you fall, and you will die But you are able, so must try

With all that heaven calls your own To keep these skies in which you’ve flown To grasp them with your mortal hand And mortal foot on clouds to stand.”

Icarus counselled thus resolved While he celestially revolved Though it were vanity to try To spread his wingless arms and fly

Daedalus looked upon his heir, Who with loud tremors clawed the air And hid again when son did break Upon the water’s cruel wake

Oh! Son of craftsman, though you left Your father of his son bereft And though you plunged a fatal mile While you sank, the gods did smile

For foolish man, in your last hour Did the bud of wisdom flower And did Thanatos’ staff defy For love of father, sun, and sky

-BRS

[brshutt]

Stargazer

He, friendless, that admires stars alone, And knows the joys of quiet solitude, Will vacant rooms like tabernacles roam, And search his books like scripture's sacred tome.

Beholden to this sight, a question's posed If he that finds fulfillment so aside Is freed of sorrow by its heavenness, Or dwells in purgatory's ignorance?

For we have heard from time's undying wit What lives in water knows not what is wet And worm that burrows knows no other home; So one who wanders does not feel alone

But if you dare, imagine such a myth: That one is lifted from his buried gloom To find when it is lifted, falls back down - The stars grow dim because of what he knows.

But ah, stargazer, standing on the hill, Find comfort yet, and turn eyes skywards still For veils cast shadows on your crimson scars But cannot touch the beauty of the stars.

[brshutt]

An Eidetic Definition of Art

Preface

I have, over many years, been working on a definition of art that is broad enough to include obvious works of art, and even works of art that aren’t so obvious. But the definition is also narrow enough to exclude things that seem decidedly unlike art. It may be said that my work is a reaction against some (but not all) post-modern ‘art-forms’, especially that of the ‘dada’ movement, which raised the question of whether art could be meaningfully quantified in any way at all.

Why the heck should I listen to you?

A lot of people complain about modern art, but not a lot of people can explain exactly what sets modern art apart from better art. Therefore, you should read my argument if you want a reason to say that this is good art:

Pietà by Michelangelo. A classical statue.

Starry Night by Van Gogh. A post-impressionist painting.

The Slave Ship by J.M.W Turner. A romantic painting.

Hugh Jackman by anna-lakisova. A modern digital painting.

But you want a reason to say that this isn’t art at all:

That’s a urinal turned on its side.

That’s the head of a test dummy with knick knacks plastered to it

That’s a bunch of paint spilled onto a canvas

That’s just an empty canvas

And yet, you feel there is at least a little artistic value to these works, though you’re sure they are worth less than the original batch:

Rencontre dans la porte tournante by Man Ray

Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn) by Andy Warhol

Factory Horta de Ebbo by Pablo Picasso

Tableau I by Piet Mondrian

I’ve used paintings and sculptures in all of my examples here, but as it will soon become clear, my definition goes not only for visual forms of art, but any other form of art as well (including music, literature, poetry, films, etc.)

What art is vs. What art does vs. What art is for

But before going on, I must explain that there is a difference between saying what art 'is', and what it 'does', or especially what it is 'for'. It is possible to define a screwdriver in terms of its purpose: "a tool for fastening or unfastening screws". It is also possible to speak of a screwdriver in terms of what it actually does: "a tool that rotates screws". But the most thorough explanation of a screwdriver will describes its attributes: "a hard cylindrical shaft fixed to a handle, and tapering into the inverse of a screw's head at its end". If anyone picked up a screwdriver, and therefore knew what it was, working out its purpose would not be difficult.

Similarly, I have been told by one friend that art is an imitation of the Divine act of creation (which was also the view of J.R.R Tolkien). I have been told by another friend that art is something made by humans which influences the emotions, as opposed to other things made by humans with purely utilitarian or abstract purposes. Aristotle believed that the aim of art was to represent the inward nature of things. I am actually inclined to think both my friends were right (I am not entirely decided about Aristotle). The first friend correctly described art's purpose, and the second described it's means.

But I am not here to argue about art's purpose, or it's result. As for these two things, I will remain agnostic. An unintelligent person might pick up a screwdriver, and decide that it is a weapon for murder. An even less intelligent person might examine a screwdriver and suppose that it is for roasting marshmallows. 

But if everyone can agree that they recognize a screwdriver when they see one, there is some hope that everyone will eventually agree what it's for. Therefore, my one and only goal is to identify a set of criteria by which art can objectively be distinguished from non-art, and perhaps more significantly, by which good art can be distinguished from poor art.

One more thing...

I want to preface this by saying that my definition stands or falls on the merit of my arguments for it, and its own consistency. I do not have great academic credentials. While we are all philosophers in practice, very few of us are professional philosophers, and that illustrious camp certainly does not include myself.

However, in Plato’s Meno, Socrates famously extracts the method for finding twice the area of a square from a peasant who initially does not know how. Socrates believed that inwardly, we are all aware of the answers to many questions (including mathematical ones), and that it only takes systematic reflection and thought to bring them out. So this is the humble culmination of a layman's attempt to codify what he knows about art. And if you read this post through to the end, I think you are bound to agree it is plausible, even if you ultimately disagree with it for some reason.

In the following, I will guide readers to a definition of art through a dialectical method called 'eidetic reduction'. The method is actually quite simple, and something people tend to do without knowing there is a word for it. I will admit that I have in some ways appropriated the method from its normal context, which is phenomology, but I think it works here, and anyways, it has a nice sound to it. I will contemplate 'art' in its entirety, and begin by trimming away what is not necessary to art, and establishing what is necessary to art.

I will begin by saying exactly what I think, and then explaining why I think it.

Any true work of art is:

Intentional

Aesthetic

A reduction of entropy (or, an increase in order)

Intentional

When I see a beautiful landscape, I often call it a work of art. But that is because I ascribe it to the hand of the Divine. An atheist resists calling a landscape 'art', because he does not see any hand behind it. He may agree that the landscape is beautiful. He may even, in an unguarded moment, say, 

"Even I would not look at this scene and say it reduces to a random and irrelevant collection of matter. I may be an atheist, but I am not a mereological nihilist (in which case, I would not call anything art to begin with). Although I think this entire world came about chaotically, and although I do not think it has a purpose, I confess there is something that distinguishes it from other collections of matter that aimlessly drift through the vast swaths of space which surround our planet - or indeed from any of the countless dead and lifeless planets which go around our sun, or other stars, but amount to little more than glorified rocks. However, in spite of this admission, I also object that calling this scene 'art' is an anthropomorphism: a projection of human behavior onto a phenomenon that is distinctly non-intelligent in its origin. Unless an alien species engineered this planet, it is an exquisite and happy coincidence that I can appreciate, but it is by no means a work of art."

So the theist and the atheist both look on the same scene, and appreciate its intricate beauty. But the first calls it 'art', and the second says, 'it is not art'. What is the only difference between them? An intention which brought the scene into existence. Therefore, both the atheist and theist must implicitly know that 'intention' is a necessary component of art.

This leads us to the first, and probably easiest term in a working definition of art: art is intentional.

Aesthetic

Music appeals to the ears. Paintings and drawings appeal to the eyes. There are some works of art like films that appeal to both the ears and the eyes (and I would call these 'composite' art forms, as I will explain in a completely different post). But while there are some things I appreciate that appeal to none of my human senses, I would not call any of those things 'art'. 

Because it seems that art must appeal to the senses, I therefore conclude...

Okay, okay, so it’s not that simple. I can, actually, think of some kinds of art that don't immediately seem to belong in this category. For instance, it can be objected that literature and poetry do not appeal to the senses.

Objection: What about poetry and literature?

Let’s have a closer look at this matter, and on further inspection, I think you will find that literature and poetry do actually appeal to the senses, and when they do not, they are not thought of as poetry or literature. Bear with me.

Literature and poetry are always composed of words. So in the simplest and most basic sense, both literature and poetry are fundamentally works of language, and language has an aesthetic appeal. First and most primitively, language stimulates the glottal region of the body. More significantly, however, it evokes the memory of sound, since all language involves the production of sound.

Hence, the pleasure we get in reading verse often comes of alliteration and rhyme, which is why poetry is so closely related to music.

Poetry goes beyond a musical, linguistic appeal to the senses, however, as poetry also has a visual form. Line breaks and formatting make shapes that are manifested in the body of the text itself, and this is not infrequently used to enhance the effect of the poem.

Because poetry has these various means of appealing to the senses,  purely nonsensical word soup can indeed be poetry, as in Lewis Carrol’s Jabberwocky:

''Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe."

But this does not go for other art-forms constructed out of language. Literature, for instance, is not actually literature unless it has meaning. Good literature always involves descriptions of the physical world. So while literature cannot directly be accessed through the senses, it does stimulate and appeal to them.

But try to imagine a kind of literature that does not appeal to any of the senses. Can an example be found in the human canons of literature which would fit this description? What would this literature be like? I imagine a monkey at a typewriter could produce something meeting the criteria.

I do, however, have to admit a second kind of literature that doesn’t appeal to the senses, isn’t poetry, but isn’t nonsense either: works of abstract thoughts, which include philosophy, technical scientific papers, or works of math like Russel’s ‘Principia Mathematica’.

An exquisite work of artistic genius?

This brings us to a second objection to the ‘aesthetic’ term in my definition which will have to be dealt with at length.

Objection: What about math?

Although on first glance few people really believe that math is a subset of ‘art’, on further reflection, people are often persuaded that it is. After all, there is a profound relationship between math and art. Mathematical equations can often produce artful results on a coordinate plane, and well known works of art can often be described in terms of mathematical patterns.

The Mandelbrot Set

However, those who do say math is art have a rather difficult problem to contend with, as I will demonstrate with two thought experiments.

Try to imagine a universe in your mind in which there is no math, but there is art. I think you will agree that the exercise is quite impossible. There cannot be any color in such a world, because there will be no definite wavelengths to light. There cannot be music because - besides the fact that sound waves will not have any definite frequency - there also cannot be any definite beat, or number of notes, or scales, or anything else which makes music possible. This is to say nothing about the lack of physical laws, and the impossibility of any stable arrangement of matter. Those things are all out of the question too. And art, definitely is one of them.

So, there cannot be art without math. This truth is immediately apparent. But now, let's try the converse exercise. Imagine a universe, empty and cold, devoid of any matter, shapes, sounds, or colors. There is nothing to see in this universe, and no person or creature to see the nothingness. But now suppose we introduce a solitary particle into this universe. And then suppose that after a few moments, we introduce another particle into the universe. Will there be two particles?

Unless some force other than rationality possessed you to answer, 'no, there are forty-two particles in such a universe!', you have just imagined a universe utterly empty of art, but still quite in touch with math. There is no art in this universe; but one plus one still make two.

And so, we have made an interesting discovery. Art cannot exist without math, but math can exist without art. The implication is clear: math is a superset of art, and art is a subset. But there's a corollary to all this: if art is a subset of math, math cannot simultaneously be a subset of art.

It turns out that the people who say 'math is a kind of art!' - the same people who I used to find very troubling - have been onto something from the very start, except they got it backwards. Math is not a kind of art, but art is a kind of math. When I tried to ponder the original proposition, I could not do it. But when I have thought this proposition over, it clicks into my mind easily, and without difficulty.

Is art much the same as math? Definitely. Is it exactly like math? Certainly not. It is more specific than math. It is math, and something else besides math. And I have written this entire post to suggest that the something else is an intentional and aesthetic aspect.

Conclusion: art is aesthetic.

But what, then, is the mathematical aspect of art? That, as you might say, is the special sauce. For a thing can easily be intentional and aesthetic without being art. All the original examples of bad art in this post were aesthetic, and (at least partially) intentional. But what did they lack? What mathematical reality common to true art could not be found within their essences?

I’m glad you asked. Because the third and final attribute of art is,

A reduction of entropy

Do you poop? Assuming the reader is human, the uncomfortable answer will be, ‘yes, I certainly poop.’ Humans poop every day. We often intend to poop, and as any frequent pooper is likely to confirm, poop is an intensely aesthetic experience both to the one producing it, and to anyone unlucky enough to be in its presence. But is poop art? That’s an interesting question. Very few people would honestly say 'yes'. But what if poop were fashioned into a detailed and skillful statue? As disagreeable as poop may be, a statue is a statue, whether it is made of stone, wood, poop, or even bubbles.

So it turns out, even the humble byproduct of our gastrointestinal systems can become art when the form of it is changed. But it clearly can’t be any change at all - that won’t suffice for art. Young offspring of the human race have been known to poop, and then to smear poop on surfaces where poop is not generally found or desired. As of yet, it has not occurred to anyone that this smearing of poop is a kind of art.

But why? What differentiates a toddler who smears poop on a wall from the one who sculpts poop into a statue? In the case of the artist, an arrangement of poop was made to be more orderly than it had been before. In the case of the toddler, the final arrangement of the poop was not more orderly than it had been in the toddler’s diaper; indeed, it was objectively less orderly than it had been before.

This gives us the final key. Art always involves an increase in the order of a system. And an increase of order is mathematically quantified as a reduction of entropy (entropy being a fancy word for ‘disorder’, or ‘chaos’).

This description of art is intuitive to me. I cannot conceive of any artistic venture which does not make order out of different parts, whether they be paint, stone, or the unruly sounds which emit from an untrained trumpet. And in every case of experimental art which seems to defy what art is supposed to be, there hasn’t been an increase in order, but a decrease.

I therefore conclude that art is a reduction of entropy, and therein lies its mathematical nature, and the explanation for why art is so often explicable in terms of mathematical concepts.

The final definition of art

We now have three qualifications for art, and over many years, I have come to believe they are good enough to encompass every work of art that I have encountered. My definition excites me, because it has implications that are far reaching.

But before we can go into those implications, I must do something small to amend the final definition which we are about to reach. 

Here we have inferred three qualifications for a work of art. But I believe that the qualifications can be reduced by one. Because I take it for granted that orderly systems never arise spontaneously, I simply remove 'intentional' from my definition of art, because the third term makes it redundant. If something constitutes a 'reduction of entropy', then it is also something that was intentional.

However, this notion is generally acceptable only to a theist. A theist will be content to call art 'an aesthetic reduction of entropy', because the theist is already convinced that nature was intended, and therefore qualifies as a work of art.

An atheist - who wishes to remain an atheist- will have to settle with the longer definition of art: 'an intentional, aesthetic reduction of entropy'. Because if he only uses the two term definition of art, he will have to affirm that nature is a 'work of art', which is a strange and unwarranted notion of the world on atheism. Therefore, I finally conclude,

Art is an [intentional,] aesthetic reduction of entropy

The beauty of this definition is that it is narrow enough to exclude artistic works which the world has longed to discard, but it is broad enough to include even the strangest of art forms, while confirming our intuitions that some of the stranger artistic works created in the 20th century are not quite as masterful as others, since some works invariably reduce less entropy than others.

Now as I said previously, my definition of art naturally gives rise to a few significant implications. I have selected five which I deem to be the most important, and describe them below.

Five corollaries of EDA

Good art is inevitably beautiful in some way

Some have taken it for granted that art must be beautiful, and the modern artists have made great sport of challenging that notion. But when we understand that art is a reduction of entropy, we see that good art will always be beautiful in some respect, because a system of low entropy is necessarily more beautiful than a system of high entropy.

For instance, a bedroom that is in chaos - with dirty socks and underwear hanging out of open drawers, dangling over a mess of documents scattered on top of bedsheets tossed haphazardly from one’s bed - is not as beautiful as a bedroom where the clothes have been cleaned and folded neatly into the drawers, the bed is made, and personal documents have been tidied up and arranged on a desk.

What is cleaner, and more beautiful is also a lower state of entropy, which explains why nature is beautiful.

Good art is hard to make

One never reduces entropy on accident. The laziest and most careless of human beings are always the sloppiest, and therefore constitute the most minimal reducers of entropy among us.

One cannot reduce entropy without deliberate, conscious effort. And so, it is not surprising that we do not tend to like thoughtless art produced by amateurs who have invested no effort in the perfection of their craft, nor is it surprising that we like even these efforts better than we like a modernist who simply throws paint onto a canvas allowing chance to decide the result.

There is such a thing as anti-art

If art is an aesthetic reduction of entropy, what might we call an aesthetic increase of entropy? There are many words in the world to describe this - war comes to mind. Violence, destruction, torture and genocide are all aesthetic increases of entropy.

But then, so are many modernist forms of art where the finished product is less orderly than it was in the beginning. A decently white canvas, and three cans of paint become a messy canvas, and messy paint.

There is good art, poor art, and then there art’s actual opposite: anti-art.

Realism is a very potent art genre

In an attempt to deal with the scourge of modern art, some have turned to extremely narrow definitions of art which exclude anything outside the genre of realism. Unless you are painting flowers, trees, skies, landscapes, the human figure, or else by any other means portraying the external world, your art is not thought to be good.

This definition is inadequate for two reasons:

It leaves no room for abstract or Impressionistic works of art, but many works in this genre seem to have genuine artistic merit.

It neglects non-visual art forms. What does ‘realistic’ music sound like, for instance? Are we always to imitate the sound of birds or rushing wind in our orchestrations? While this may be possible, and interesting, most music has a distinctly special sound to it which sets it /apart/ from the sounds of nature, even though it may sometimes imitate them.

However, while defining art in terms of realism is not adequate, and misses the bigger picture, it is right about one thing: realism is a solid path to walk down if you want to make good art.

There is a simple reason for this. If art is an aesthetic reduction of entropy, and if nature (as we have already established) is also an aesthetic reduction of entropy, imitating nature will inevitably result in aesthetic reductions of entropy, unless the artist is utterly incapable of translating his experience of nature into the medium he works with (in which case he probably cannot be expected to make any other kind of art).

Realism’s legacy is sound, and sure, and while it is not the only valid genre of art, it is probably the most reliable.

Art is in many unexpected places

Modern art forms arose in part as a reaction against the academic snobbery which had surrounded artistic ventures before that time. But EDA is far more liberating than modern art could ever be, because if you consider how many things you do which constitute an ‘aesthetic reduction of entropy’, you find that many mundane activities fit the bill.

Not only does a child’s crayon drawing gain legitimate status as an object of artistic value, but so does sweeping a room, trimming the hedge in front of one’s house, or even neatly stocking bread at the grocery store. Should we not suppose that these things are all genuinely artistic at their core, even a little?

But then, we also find an end to the rambling debates often had regarding whether video games, or movies, or even YouTube videos should be thought of as art. The answer: absolutely. All of these things constitute an aesthetic reduction of entropy, often to a very high degree.

Conclusion

I have laid out the basic summary of my Eidetic Definition of Art. If you have reached the end of this article, and if I have been lucid in its execution, you should have a complete and working understanding of its most fundamental components.

However, as with most summaries, this brief treatment has left out certain complexities which arise especially in collaborative works of art such as cinema, theater, or orchestral music. In the future, I will write more about the implications of EDA, and what it could say about art’s future. I will furthermore perform analyses on well known works of art using my definition to see how it holds up as a tool for criticism.

If you have made it to the bottom of this article, thanks very much for your time and patience. Be sure to reply, or message me if you have any thoughts or remarks!

Read a followup to this post which attempts to fit art into basic categories which give rise to all major categories when combined