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Shirzad
Pahlevan
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 Posted - Nov 02 2003 : 9:15:12 PM
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http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/start.asp?P_Article=12310
Finding philosophy
November 2003
What made me a philosopher? Two great teachers, the promise of escape and a neat pencil case
Colin McGinn
I
have been an academic philosopher for the past 30 years. I came from an academically
disinclined background in the northeast of England, my relatives being mainly
coalminers and other manual workers. I was the first in my family to attend
university, and indeed had no thought of it until age 17, when a teacher
mentioned it at school.
My father had become
a successful builder, so we were not materially deprived, and it was expected
that I would become some sort of technical worker, possibly a quantity surveyor.
The idea that I might one day become a professional philosopher was inconceivable
in those days, to me and everyone else. I was simply not living in a place
where that kind of thing ever happened; it was far likelier - though still
not at all likely - that I would become a pop star (I played drums in a rock
band).
The paperback British edition of my memoir The Making of a
Philosopher has a photograph on the cover of a man sitting on a bench, placed
in a grey and listless landscape. He is overlooking the sea on a misty grim
day, and the atmosphere is bleak and melancholy. The man, hunched up, immobile,
coiled almost, has a pensive posture, as if frozen in thought. This picture
is based on a story I tell in the book about sitting on a bench in Blackpool,
aged 18, pondering the metaphysical question of how objects relate to their
properties. Is an object just the sum total of its properties, a mere coalescence
of general features, or does it somehow lie behind its properties, supporting
them, a solid peg on which they happen to hang? When I look at an object
do I really see the object itself, or just the appearance its properties
offer to me? I remember the feeling of fixation that came over me when I
thought about these questions - a kind of floating fascination, a still perplexity.
The photograph itself is an exercise in Cartesian dualism, presenting both
the outer world of substance and drizzle, and the weightless inner world
of thundering thought, so silent and so arresting. I had begun living in
those two worlds, suspended between them, as my intellectual interests took
root.
When I look back on this period in my late teens, I recall
the harnessing of undirected mental energy by intellectual pursuits. Up until
then, my mental energy had gone into things like reading Melody Maker, which
contained fairly serious articles about pop musicians; I always knew the
top 20 off by heart, and studied the articles about drummers intensely, hoping
to improve my own technique. I suspect that this kind of swashing mental
energy is fairly typical of boys that age. School doesn't seem to connect
with it, and it goes off in search of some object of interest, often trivial,
sometimes destructive. In my case, it was philosophy that seized that energy
and converted it into a passion - though one that took several years to form
fully. It is a delicate and fastidious energy that I am speaking of, despite
its power, and it will only be satisfied by certain employments, which of
course vary from person to person. I had had a similar passion for chemistry
when I was ten, and for butterflies and lizards before that. How to harness
such passions to formal education remains a great and unsolved problem: how
to convert a love of Harry Potter stories, say, into a taste for good literature.
The mental energy of young people is not to be underestimated, even when
it leads to nothing but an elaborate obsession with piercing.
It
was - of course - a teacher who tapped into my formless and fizzing mental
energy. Mr Marsh, teacher of divinity, brimmingly Christian, a man with very
active eyebrows and sharp enunciation, in love with scholarship (oh, how
he relished that word) - it was he who first brought out my inner philosopher.
From him I heard of Descartes, locked up in his room, wondering whether anything
could really be known beyond his own existence, contemplating the possibility
of an all-deceiving evil demon that delights in human error, finally saving
human knowledge (and dignity) by proving God's existence and goodwill. But
what I mainly got from the enthusiastic Mr Marsh was the desire to study.
His own passion for study shone through, and he managed to make it seem,
if not glamorous, then at least exhilarating - when done the right way and
in the right spirit. Pencils and stationery were made to seem like shiny
tools, and the pleasure of making one's mark on a blank sheet of paper hymned.
Choosing a good spot to study was emphasised. Above all, I learned a very
valuable lesson, one that had hitherto escaped me: make notes. When reading
a book, or listening to a lecture, or even just ruminating, put the salient
points down on paper: this will fix them in your mind, give them firm expression,
and provide a quick and easy way to recall what you earlier learned. Simple,
I know, but even today I notice legions of my students sitting through lectures
without pen in their hands. Thinking and writing should be indissoluble activities,
the hand ministering to the thought, the thought shaped by the hand. Today,
if I find myself without pen and paper and thoughts start to arrive, my fingers
begin to twitch and I long for those implements of cogitation. With such
rudimentary tools you can perform the miracle of turning an invisible thought
into a concrete mark, bringing the ethereal interior into the public external
world, refining it into something precious and permanent. The physical pleasure
of writing, which I find survives in the use of a computer, is something
worth dwelling on in matters of education.
Around this time I started
to write a diary, chiefly as a way to practice my writing skills. Since there
is no need to monitor the quality or interest of what is being written, the
diary is an ideal form for developing the technique of writing, and for taking
the anxiety out of it. No one will correct your grammar and spelling, or
make fun of your naive thoughts and banal phrases, so you are free to get
on to friendly terms with the language you speak. I would often try out new
words I had learned - the dictionary had become my friend, rather than a
standard I was failing to live up to - secure in the knowledge that solecism
would not lead to embarrassment. A few hundred words a day, complemented
by steady reading, will soon produce a passable prose style. The habit of
daily reflection also fosters a critical sense, and an articulacy about what
is going on; moral acuity can grow from this, as well as self-knowledge.
Yes, a diary can seem like self-indulgent wallowing in the trivial details
of day to day life, but it is the form, not the content, that counts. I have
never read any of my old diaries, and I haven't written one for over 20 years,
but I do think that composing them helped teach me how to write and even
how to think. Everyone should have one, starting young.
All this
was before I went up to Manchester university in 1968. Since Mr Marsh had
taught me how to study, I had done well enough to be admitted to university
to study for a degree in psychology, thinking I might become an educational
psychologist or some other useful and worthy thing. Philosophy was more of
a hobby then, and maybe its tangential relation to my main studies added
to its allure. In any case, philosophy wasn't something you did for a living.
I had two notable teachers at this time: Professor John Cohen, head of the
psychology department, and Dr Wolfe Mays, a senior member of the Manchester
philosophy department. I would describe both, intending no disrespect, as
short Jewish men with funny voices. Cohen had trouble with his "r's," producing
a slightly guttural sound, which is hard to put into phonetic form. He would
say things like, "Colin, have you chrread Pchrroust?" (I pronounced it Prowst).
Mays had that habit of saying his "th's" as "v's," as in, "Vis is the ve
difference." His accent seemed suspended somewhere between south London and
Cambridge.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I adored these two
men, despite the fact that they were many decades my senior. And, for some
reason, they both took a shine to me. John Cohen, who I always referred to
simply as "Prof," would invite me into his cluttered office and discuss some
psychological topic with me in a man to man kind of way, just as if he valued
my opinion. He would joke with me, smoke his pipe, make fun of some of his
more earnest young colleagues, and offer encouragement, all done in the lightest
and least condescending way possible. What seemed to me his vast erudition
would fill the room, and I felt that here was a man for whom learning and
life were one.
Mays was my link to philosophy. His style was more
pugnacious, though twinkly and guffawing. His lip would curl in humorous
disdain when skewering the follies of other philosophers, often mounting
to a giggling fit as he warmed to his demolition. In one class of his we
went painstakingly through Sartre's formidable Being and Nothingness, with
Mays operatically reciting the text and then revealing its mysteries with
a prefatory, "It's simply vis!" as he brought Sartre's impenetrable words
down to earth. One of the qualities I liked most about him was his open immodesty,
his sense of his own importance, as well as his love of showing off. Apart
from being extremely entertaining, this struck me as an admirable form of
candour, and it reflected the importance he attached to the views he held
(views which today I would largely reject). I suppose what I responded to
was the way he brought ego into the proceedings, an air of intellectual superiority,
an idea of excellence; it wasn't all remote and dry and disinterested. He
always called me simply "McGinn," and tried not to make fun of me when I
got things wrong; not always successfully. I remember the time, a couple
of years into our relationship, when we were walking back from a class, discussing
something or other, and he abruptly turned to me and said, "Cup o' tea?"
We went into the senior common room and chatted philosophically over our
tea and biscuits - a high point for me in my student career. It was that
unforced meeting of minds, combined with a fondness (in no way erotic) that
can blossom between teacher and pupil, which meant so much to me - and still
does to this day.
But, alas, I let both of them down. John Cohen
wanted me to become a psychologist and I defected to philosophy; Wolfe Mays
despised Oxford-style analytical philosophy, being more of a continentalist
and historian of science, while I was bent on a graduate education in analytical
philosophy. Their disappointment was, I think, quite deeply felt in both
cases, but they didn't try to drown me in it. Perhaps all good teachers must
expect, if not encourage, such disappointment, because it is a sign of intellectual
independence on the part of their students; instead of producing carbon copies
of themselves, endlessly repeating their words, teachers permit their students
to have minds of their own, however much those minds might offend them. Many
years later, I was invited back to Manchester to lecture. I came across Mays,
not having seen him once in the interim. His mixture of pride and disappointment
was evident: how could his prize student of years ago, now returning to give
a series of prestigious lectures, come out with such rotten stuff? He told
me, in his old tone of long-suffering amused disdain, that I was "azzumin'
vat ve concept of identity applies to the empi'cal world" - and his facial
expression indicated that he believed he had thereby refuted everything I
had just said. But by this time I knew enough to know that he was the one
getting it wrong, not me. So it inevitably goes between student and teacher.
In any case, it was these two singular men who were my formative models,
and a profound sense of gratitude suffuses my memories of them.
What
I liked most about philosophy was its extremely non-local character. Philosophy
is highly general, abstract, impersonal, and even non-factual. Not only is
it about everything that is; it is about everything that might be. Physics
takes in every physical object in the universe, but philosophy takes in every
object - physical or nonphysical - in every possible universe. The question
about objects and their properties that obsessed me at the age of 18 applies
to any conceivable object of any possible type: is an object, quite generally,
something made up of the collection of its properties, or is it an entity
distinct from them? Such questions belong to metaphysics, the study of "being
as such," as the dictionary unhelpfully says, but could just as well be called
logical or conceptual questions. Philosophy is about our most general ideas
and how they fit together - ideas of causality, time, space, object, property,
truth, meaning, necessity, identity, existence, knowledge, self, consciousness,
freedom, goodness, beauty and so on. It is not about some limited set of
things; still less local historical circumstances. Philosophy tries to get
to the bottom of our most basic and far-reaching categories.
This
abstractness is what so fascinated Plato, with his notion of the transcendent
realm of Forms that hovers over the world of sense-experience, loftily distinct
from all particulars, yet the source of everything real. Even a simple perceptible
property, such as the colour red, takes us from the realm of the particular
and local to the level of the abstract and universal, since that colour will
be possessed by many objects and could be possessed by many more; the colour
itself is something inherently general that is never exhausted by its particular
manifestations. The task of the philosopher, for Plato, is to discover the
nature of these abstract and eternal universals, and in so doing to develop
the human mind to its highest capacity. Bertrand Russell was captivated by
this Platonic vision as a precocious boy, especially in relation to mathematics,
and strove to escape his miserable surroundings by immersing himself in Plato's
Forms. I don't doubt that this promise of escape - of stripping the bonds
of local space and time, and of the tedious particulars of daily life - is
part of what motivated me to pursue philosophy. I may live here and now in
this particular body, but I can think of anywhere, anytime, in whatever degree
of abstraction suits me. I am not a being whose nature is to be tied down
to the contingent particularity of my context. At root, this is a yearning
for freedom, of the most inward and radical type. One wants one's mind to
take flight, to abolish all constraint.
But there is another aspect
to the philosophical impulse that is less remarked upon - the preoccupation
with technique. Read any piece of serious philosophy, or attend a philosophical
lecture, and you will notice a texture to the discourse that makes it stand
out: there is an expository and argumentative skill at work that takes considerable
development, and which is often difficult for the untrained person to connect
with. Philosophical writing, talking and thinking, deploy various kinds of
methods to achieve their ends, chief among them explicitness, logical organisation,
certain types of sentence formation, a specific vocabulary, scrupulous attention
to such particles as "thus," "therefore," "possible," "not." Writing philosophical
prose is a skill unto itself, and thinking rigorously in the philosophical
mode is what we strive to impart to our students. The ability to grasp and
analyse a long abstract argument is difficult to acquire and takes much practice.
And the ability to generate a novel philosophical idea is something one labours
to acquire over a lifetime. When I first started studying philosophy I was
attracted to this kind of verbal and mental agility. Russell had it in a
particularly pure and powerful form, and I devoured his works as much for
their style as their substance. I thought: I want to do that! What I wanted
was mastery of a certain type of skilled performance.
And here I
see a connection to another interest of mine, then and now, which may surprise
some readers - sport. What I have always appreciated about sports are the
skills involved, not the competition. The sports I worked hardest on as a
teenager were pole vaulting and gymnastics, although I played any number
of racket games, as well the standard cricket and soccer. To get anywhere
in sport requires practice and dedication, and a tolerance of failure; persistence
is the key. You will fall, get hurt, make a fool of yourself, swear and sweat,
feel like you will never be able to do it, and then one day it all comes
together - the pole plants firmly in the box, your body inverts, you twist,
pull, and you are clean over the bar, with a soft pit in which to land triumphantly.
And then you can do it nearly every time, ever higher - although there will
be those bad days of regression and failure. I learned how to windsurf when
I was 50 and, boy, do you fall off that board into the water a lot of times:
your back hurts, your hands hurt, you look stupid, you have neither style
nor grace. But if you persevere you eventually get the hang of it, and before
too long you are coasting along at a handsome clip, savouring your skills.
Philosophy is a little like that, as are other intellectual endeavours: it
takes persistence, patience, tolerance of failure, a stubborn desire for
mastery. Essentially, it is a matter of gradually acquiring a skill, one
component at a time. And, as with sports, some people are going to be better
at it than others.
The metaphor that best captures my experience
with both philosophy and sport is soaring: pole vaulting, gymnastics and
windsurfing clearly demonstrate it, but the intellectual highwire act involved
in full-throttle philosophical thinking gives me a similar sensation - as
if I have taken flight, leaving gravity behind. It is almost like sloughing
off mortality. (Plato indeed thought that acquiring abstract knowledge is
a return to the prenatal state of the immortal soul.) There is also an impressiveness
to these physical and mental skills that appeals to me - they evoke the "wow"
reflex. Showing off is an integral part of their exercise; but as I said
earlier, I don't have any objection to showing off. In any case, there is
not, for me, the discontinuity between sports and intellectual activities
that is often assumed. It is not that you must either be a nerd or a jock;
you can be both. It has never surprised me that the ancient Greeks combined
a reverence for the mind with a love of sports: both involve an appreciation
of the beauties of technique skilfully applied. And both place a high premium
on getting it right - exactly right.
None of this is to extol the
supposed virtues of competitiveness in sports or academia. I don't much care
for competition myself. Academic life can be highly, even disagreeably, competitive,
rife with the "top of the class" mentality. I find this limiting, as well
as vaguely contemptible. To measure oneself merely by how one stands in relation
to others is to be constrained by the talents of others, and it converts
achievement into a game of rivalry. No doubt it would be unrealistic to try
to expunge this from intellectual pursuits, but I think a focus on skill
for its own sake - and not for what it can do to elevate you above others
- is an antidote. Winning a point at tennis with an ugly slashing backhand
that bounces off the net cord is unsatisfying; winning an argument in philosophy
by browbeating and superficiality is even worse. One has to learn to appreciate
a good point for its own sake. This is a matter of the aesthetics of the
activity in question.
A reviewer of The Making of a Philosopher remarked
that philosophy has been, for me, the love of my life and the bane of my
existence. That is not too far off the mark. I would say, in fact, that philosophy
combines these two features inextricably; indeed, it is lovely because it
is baneful. Philosophy is difficult, taxing, and infuriating - and these
very characteristics are an essential part of its appeal. It is because it
is such a struggle that it can produce exultation. Philosophical work is
demanding, lonely, enervating and inhuman - but it is secretly sublime. There
is probably no time in my life when I am more certain of the meaningfulness
of my existence than when I am thinking about philosophy - and no time at
which I am more reminded of my own inadequacy.
Colin McGinn is professor
of philosophy at Rutgers University. His book "The Making of a Philosopher"
has just been published in paperback by Scribner.
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Ben2395220
Pool Shark
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 Posted - Nov 02 2003 : 9:19:41 PM
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You weren't granted Most Overanalyzer for nothing Shirzad.
-BNT-
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Posts: 769 |
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Arash.au
2 Monkeys
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Posted - Nov 03 2003 : 09:26:08 AM
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Thanks for posting the article shirzad. I'm going to try to get my hands on that book.
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AAghelan noghteye Pargaar e vojoodand vali,
ESHGH daanad ke dar een dayereh sargardaanand.
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