Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Truth in Aphorism

Flash: art, at least since the industrial revolution, is of course a con. It tries to pack reality into itself, which it fails to do miserably. But then so does history, politics and science. Art’s salvation is that it knows its own temporariness. According to Shields, “Art is not truth; art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth.”

Or perhaps more accurately, art is created to be immediately and forever misinterpreted. A sort of cultural sacrificial lamb, the function of which is to keep the gods of certainty at bay. As one of Shield’s aphorisms has it:

“It is out of the madness of God, in the Old Testament, that there emerges what we, now, would recognize as the ‘real’; his perceived insanity is its very precondition.”

The real is indeed insane. Whether art intends to portray this insanity or ameliorate it as a comforting fetish is up to the artist. Art is not an exception to the general insanity. The only thing it ultimately can do is contest itself, assembling and disassembling images to form new images, claiming originality for the collage it produces. Great artists establish their images as models for future misinterpretation.

This of course progressively has eliminated the distinctions between fiction, essay, memoir, autobiography and factual reporting. All are equally interpretive and equally misinterpretive in their selectivity, authorial interests, and simple error. All are effectively novels. Or perhaps not even that: “My medium is prose, not the novel.” This is not too concerning since “Some of the best fiction is now being written as nonfiction.”

Science is the model for the future of art. For Shields, “Science is on a long-term campaign to bring all knowledge in the world into one vast, interconnected, footnoted, peer-reviewed web of facts.” Scientific ideas are copied and distributed to inform, inspire, change perception, and claim originality. The uniqueness of these ideas lies not in their physical singularity (including the singularity of copyright) but in their effect on the scientific community. Copying in fact makes this impact possible.

So Shields makes a rather bold claim regarding works of art:

“What counts are the ways in which these common copies of a creative work can be linked, manipulated, tagged, highlighted, bookmarked, translated, enlivened by other media, and sewn together in the universal library.”

And he certainly has a point. This is a new, perhaps technologically inevitable, way in which to value art; not through the prices set at auction or the royalties collected, but by the effect it has on world culture through direct mass distribution.
Shield’s model is that of cinema distribution rather than book publishing.

If so, we can count on an acceleration of “The process of aggrandizement: relatively ordinary problems are overblown into larger-than-life “literature.” the lie, the con, the hoax will become dominant. Oprah will be their promoter. The truth is you can’t have reality and drama. And we all want drama. Something has to happen not just be. The problem is that there are only so many dramatic stories. So they get repeated endlessly. Titillation is ultimately boring. Hence the craving reality without the “banality of non-fiction.”

Reality has to be appreciated for what it is. “The last Christian died on the cross.” Most people feel bad/sad/disappointed/disappointing most of the time. The rest are probably mentally ill and have checked out altogether. Comedy is probably the only way of dealing with this situation effectively. But the lyrical essay about consciousness confronting the world isn’t a bad alternative. Or maybe the future belongs to aphorism. It depends on what you mean by artistic truth; and Shields’s version is the tiniest bit vague.


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On the Way to Language by Martin Heidegger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Naming the Unknown

The first part of On the Way to Language is a discursive fictional dialogue between Heidegger and an unnamed Japanese professor. The ostensible subject of the dialogue is the meaning of the Japanese word Iki and the possibility of its translation into German. The word refers to an aesthetic embodied in things like minimalist Japanese gardens and the extremely arcane symbolism of No theatre. If I read the piece correctly the conclusion is that such translation is almost ( but not quite) impossible.

In the first instance the word Iki is defined by and in the context of all other Japanese words. Therefore the entire Japanese vocabulary would have to be incorporated into the German language. But, even more fundamentally, those wishing to understand the meaning of the word would also have to participate in the mundane details of Japanese social life. Essentially they would have to become Japanese.

But I think there is also further significance to this short piece. Heidegger was a contemporary of the tremendously influential Swiss theologian, Karl Barth. Heidegger was a philosopher with an acute but largely silent engagement with Christian theology. Barth had started publishing his massive 13 volume treatise, Church Dogmatics, in the early 1930’s just after Heidegger’s seminal Being and Time, his initial work on thinking about thinking. The content of A Dialogue on Language appears to me not only a clarification of Being and Time but also an implicit refutation of Barth.

Barth’s work is in fact more anti-philosophical than it is theological. He says comparatively little about the historical doctrine of Christianity and concentrates mainly on the inadequacy of reason when confronting the certainty of faith. In this sense, Barth is an irrationalist who condemns the impertinence as well as the impiety of philosophers who have tried to reconcile faith and reason. He cites numerous paradoxes and contradictions in Christianity - original sin, divine justice, the Incarnation, and divine omnipotence, among others - as impenetrable to human thought. He sees these not as flaws to be defended but as marks of true revelation. For him, reason is untrustworthy and knowledge is incoherent.

Heidegger’s dialogue confronts Barth’s fideistic defence of Christianity head on in a highly creative way. He starts by undermining Barth’s concept of rationality. Rationality is a commitment to dialogue not a process of logic for Heidegger. In fact, the flaws of reason are even more profound than they are for Barth. According to Heidegger, we never know what we are talking about at all. Words take on meaning from other words. And therefore meaning is in a constant state of flux. Pushed far enough to defend any position or opinion, we will eventually be forced to recognise entirely circular reasoning which is likely contrary to any historical reasoning using similar words.

Heidegger even goes beyond Barth in insisting that we never are able to acquire knowledge - not just of God but of anything at all - by seeking it. Heidegger’s dramatic claim (contrary to all pragmatism) is that our own selfish interests get in the way of learning:

“Thirst for knowledge and greed for explanations never lead to a thinking inquiry. Curiosity is always the concealed arrogance of a self-consciousness that banks on a self invented ratio and its rationality. The will to know does not will to abide in hope before what is worthy of thought.”

This apparent concession to Barth is, however, followed by a strategic attack. Heidegger claims that we talk in order to find out what we mean by the words we are using. Heidegger’s Japanese interlocutor in the dialogue points out that language conceals as much as it reveals, thus hiding reality. As he says “We recognize that the danger lies in the concealed nature of language.” Heidegger agrees and replies:

“I believe, of every dialogue that has turned out well between thinking beings… as if of its own accord, it can take care that that undefinable something not only does not slip away, but displays its gathering force ever more luminously in the course of the dialogue.”

In short, we can only avoid the dangerous trap of taking language literally by talking about things interminably in order to discover what we’re taking about (much like pragmatism). To arbitrarily cut this process of discovery off results in a form of idolatry - the divinisation of language itself (and of course the rationalisation of our own interests). The dialogue explains this rather un-European point of view: “We Japanese do not think it strange if a dialogue leaves undefined what is really intended, or even restores it back to the keeping of the undefinable.” That which is not language is thereby respected, including, of course, Barth’s “wholly other” God.

For Barth, however, the term ‘God’ is not part of language at all. It is “a denotation without connotation.” That is to say, it has no connections with any other words. It is something that really cannot be talked about at all (although he spends more than 1000 pages talking about it). But if it can’t be talked about (and Barth recognises the inadequacy of even biblical narratives; see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), then it is an empty cipher with no content. This is the ultimate heresy, not only because it makes God (or Jesus Christ) a meaningless symbol, but also because revelation itself is rendered suspect by its own revelation.

Thus Heidegger’s little Socratic dialogue has a theological as well as philosophical significance. It attacks Barthian fideism on its own terms and shows how it contains a fatal impiety. Naming the unknown is what we do everyday. It is when we stop thinking we need to reconsider what we have named - for example by establishing fixed dogmatic formulas - that we become the most blasphemous.

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In Search of Zarathustra: Across Iran and Central Asia to Find the World's First Prophet by Paul Kriwaczek
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Ideology of the Future

The talented amateur lives! Paul Kriwaczek has been an international car smuggler, a dental surgeon, a BBC radio producer, and a television film-maker before he wrote this book about the obscure but powerfully influential Persian religious figure, Zarathustra. Because Kriwaczek is not caught up in established disciplinary puzzles, he can make interesting connections that the professional historians of religion largely ignore or overlook. That he is often wrong in his judgment doesn’t diminish the importance of his creativity. Kriwaczek thinks that Zoroastrianism (the Greek version of Zarathustra’s religion) is the “ideology of the future.” He may well be right. But it is also the ideology of the past, one that has caused immense harm to humanity and the planet. It is therefore not an ideology to be seriously recommended.

There’s a good argument to be made that the Persian prophet Zarathustra, like the Sanskrit in which his thoughts are written down, is a primary source of Western culture. He invented monotheism (the one, invisible, entirely spiritual, God, Ahura Mazda), established the metaphysical and ethical dualism which is the foundation of Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious sentiment (Ahriman, the Power of Evil, as Mazda’s opponent who tempts and traps us), and created much of the spiritual symbolism and ritual which permeate Western culture (the halo representing the light of Mazda, angels as divine messengers, heaven, the virgin birth, the advent of a spiritual saviour, resurrection of the dead, final judgment, baptism, the mystical meal among worshippers, among others)

Zarathustra’s ideas were carried out of Central Asia by the Greeks of Alexander’s army, whence they were eventually incorporated into Greek philosophy (Pythagoras) and even the devotions of the subsequent Roman military (Mithraism). These same ideas leaked into the existing religions of Judaism (Satan) and emerging Christianity (the Magi), and eventually into the culture of Islam (the Divs or demons). Their message is that the battle between good and evil is “the essential wheel in the working of things.”

And despite its frequent suppression as contrary to official religious teaching, the Zoroastrian idea of a cosmic battle between good and evil has re-asserted itself continuously in the modern world in various forms. The Gnostics, the Manacheans, the Bogomils, the Cathars, strict Calvinists and Jansenists, the Mormons, and ultimately fundamentalisms of every type are direct descendants of Zoroastrian religious cults.

Yet the dominant official metaphysical ideology of the last two thousand or so years has been that the world is essentially good despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Scriptures claim the goodness of the world explicitly (Genesis 1:31; Surah An-Nisa, 4:40).* Zoroastrianism acts as a hidden but pervasive bedrock for much of Western culture. As Kriwaczek says,

“We have only to look around us at the prevailing myths of the twentieth century—in books and films—to see how strongly Zarathustra’s ethical dualism, the eternal battle between good and evil, continues as a constant theme in the human imagination.”

Western religions have always had a problem reconciling their doctrine of essential goodness with the obvious and ever-present existence of great evil. In order to maintain their metaphysical presumptions they have chosen to employ a sort of metaphysical hack and define evil theoretically as an ‘absence of God’ rather than a force in itself.

We know through experience that this is merely a theological rationalisation, a spiritual dream world. Our optimism about spiritual progress, the importance of reason and rationality, faith that faith will prevail has been shown to be obvious nonsense. The official explanation just doesn’t hold water. Perhaps this is a reason for the decline in participation among main stream sects.

In any case, in practice all Western religions support the cosmic Zoroastrian battle between good and evil. This is presented by them as the central drama of human life and is the clear residue of Zoroastrian ethical dualism. John Milton’s Paradise Lost is perhaps the most compelling example of the cultural penetration of the Zoroastrian metaphysic. Technically heretical, the ideological violence depicted in the poem is the source of not just Christian attitudes but also of general Western sentiment.

And the metaphysical background radiation of Zoroastrianism has very real consequences. For example, the American conception of its national existence as ‘a house on the hill’ confronting the Evil Empire of the day is a typical Zoroastrian political trope. As is Vladimir Putin’s crusade to re-instate the Russian empire, with the help of the Orthodox Church, as a bulwark against cultural degradation. For these folk, the good must not be compromised whether one is discussing abortion or armed invasion.

Like all metaphysics, the presumption of permanent conflict between good and evil itself, taken as a matter of implicit belief, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It demands arbitrarily defining the good to be defended, taking sides, and purposely eliminating the possibility of negotiation and compromise. Zoroastrian ideology is therefore inherently divisive, the cause of secular war as well as religious strife. The growing cost of this metaphysic to democracy is becoming clear.

This is what Kriwaczek misses in his bouncing historical/travelogue narrative which shifts quickly from the splendour of the desert ruins of Central Asia to the musical genius of Mozart and the 18th century decipherment of Zoroastrian texts. His lack of systematic argument is evocative, enjoyable and informative but it carries no punch when it comes to reaching a credible conclusion.

So when Kriwaczek claims, for example, that Nietzsche, the philosopher who dedicated himself to overthrowing Zoroastrian dualism in his Beyond Good and Evil “was actually preaching a form of Zarathustra’s philosophy after all,” I begin to have my doubts about his perspicacity. And when he goes on to suggest that…

“… Zarathustra had such a clear vision of humanity’s moral choices that his counsel—good words, good thoughts, good deeds—is as applicable to our times as it was to his own...”

… I hit an intellectual wall. It seems as if Kriwaczek has become so enamoured of his subject that he is incapable of good judgment about it. Like the diehard Communist who thinks that the Soviet State just wasn’t given enough time to complete its mission of liberating the proletariat, Kriwaczek wants us to try harder with Zoroastrian dualism.

I agree with Kriwaczek that Zoroastrian Gnosticism is intellectually superior to any religious commitment to cosmic benignity. It is a coherent (and poetic) metaphysics which fits with the facts of existence as we know them. But this doesn’t make it truer or more beneficial for humanity or other living things. It is just another ideology which has shown itself to be as vulnerable to corruption as all others through the rationalising talents of human beings. Substituting one ideology for another is not an advance but a temporisation. See here for an alternative account: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

*The obvious contradiction between the sentiment of Genesis and that of the Book of Revelation is perhaps evidence of the substantial Gnostic impact on the emerging Jewish sect of Christianity.

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Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History by Mark A. Wrathall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Deception Is Good For the Soul

Conspiracy theorists have the right instinct: they are being deceived. Their mistake is not in taking what they’ve been told by Fox News and Q as more authoritative than the so-called mainstream media but that they attenuate their suspicions. They then fall into the trap of belief and become suckers.

According to Martin Heidegger, the world is continuously hiding from us. Essentially there is a conspiracy at large, not just among governments or big corporations but by the universe, to prevent us from knowing about what we casually call reality. It was Nietzsche who first insisted that “a perspectival, deceptive character belongs to existence,” thus suggesting that whatever it is we mean by the term reality isn’t even stable.

Heidegger has taken that insight and turned into a methodological principle. For him, the best we are able to achieve either philosophically or scientifically is a progressive ‘unconcealment’ of the world. Such unconcealment is prompted by the deception which confronts us continuously, not only in the lies of other people but also in the distortions of our senses and our lack of judgment about what we perceive.

But there’s a catch. The process of unconcealment doesn’t have a termination point in anything resembling what we call the truth, that is, a correspondence between a proposition and the way the world is. The reason for this indeterminateness is obvious - the way the world is, its ontology, is in a constant state of flux. What is ‘there’ depends on a complex of interests, history, cultural presumptions, and arbitrary designations of language among other things. As the author explains:

“The reason for this [indeterminacy] lies in the nature of unconcealment itself. There is no right way to be human, no uniquely right way to be an entity, no right way for the world to be organized, no single way that world disclosure works. As a result, all we can hope for in philosophy is an ever renewed and refined insight into the workings of unconcealment.”

So deception feeds our impulse to intellectual search, to scientific understanding, and indeed to conspiracy theories. But what our endeavours to unconceal must lead us to is… well, yet further layers of concealment. Progress cannot me measured in terms of some closer approximation to the truth, but only in terms of the increasingly scrupulous techniques we use to pursue the search for what is concealed. Advancement in addressing deception“consists in seeing and describing the phenomena of unconcealment more perspicuously, and communicating these insights more successfully.”

What we are doing constantly is “lifting things to salience,” that is, establishing, modifying, and changing, what is considered of importance. In a sense, therefore, we are thus discovering ourselves in our apparently infinite variability. The problem the conspiracy theorists have, therefore, is not their gullibility, or the zaniness of their speculations but what can be called their suspension of disbelief. They simply stop thinking at all. And this is fatal because

”[T]he task is to keep his or her thought constantly under way, trying out new ways to explore productively the philosophical domain, remaining on them as long as profitable, but also abandoning them and setting off in a different way when the former way is exhausted. The aim is to participate in unconcealment, bringing it to our awareness, heightening our sensitivity and responsiveness to it.”

Heidegger calls this continuous search for unconcealment a “way of being in the world.” He proposes this as one we are well-advised to adopt:

“It is precisely in the unstable seeing of the ‘world,’ a seeing that flickers with our moods, that the available shows itself in its specific wordliness, which is never the same from day to day.”

The alternative is some form of ideology that claims that it has overcome the inherent deception in the world. But a claim cannot be sustained because “were experience always clear and the world of perception populated with determinate objects, we would not be taken in by deceptive appearances.”

So more power to you who think the world is out to get you through paedophile politicians, poisonous contrails, rigged election machines, and invading aliens. You may be deceived but then so are we all. But please, please, do not let your quest get bogged down. Take it that the rest of us will remain deluded, and move on in your crusade to unconceal the hidden secrets of the universe. We are depending on you for inspiration. Don’t let us down. After all, as the Canadian psychologist Robert Hare has said, “If we believe in the fundamental goodness of man we’re doomed.”

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Just Ignore Him by Alan Davies
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Crying Is Something You Do Alone


Ever since (but not before) the establishment of Roman Law, the institution of the family has been considered an exception. First in the Empire, then in the Church and its successor governments, what went on in the family stayed in the family. The paterfamilias was its absolute emperor, its members were his possessions, and he was insulated from external scrutiny and judgment. If anything is, this principle of family is the foundation of Western civilisation.

Although the edges of this tradition have been worn down over the centuries, its residue is still visible in presumptions of male dominance, inhibitions against state interference in domestic life, the widespread exemption of parents from charges of assault against each other and their children, and in the oft quoted ‘sanctity’ of the nuclear family unit among conservative politicians. The family is special.

It’s difficult to disagree with the claim that the family is indeed special. It is the oven in which we all are cooked. But the presumption of privacy we give to the family neglects the fact that it is the de facto locus of almost all evil in the world. What goes on behind the closed doors in modern cities and suburbs is, far more frequently than we’d like to admit, a primary cause of short-term suffering and longer term criminality.

Alan Davies memoir is an example of the hidden misery which we all know exists but can’t bear to admit occurs as a matter of course. It has become obvious in recent years that every other important institution, from the Church to the Boy Scouts, to corporate business, to democratic politics at every level is corrupt. Not corrupt as an exception but as a rule. None has withstood scrutiny. The family is likely no different.

Davies father was a paedophile. His extended family maintained a façade of middle class respectability which prevented even the death of his mother much less the possibility of his father’s perversion to be revealed. Davies was effectively isolated and tortured for years as a consequence. Even into middle age it wasn’t possible to discuss his father’s ‘eccentricities’ with his siblings or other relatives. His family was a hothouse of malignant secrets. Who’s to say most aren’t?

To survive such familial horror is not a victory. As Davies notes so plaintively about the legacy of families, “This is the true inheritance tax of life. Behaviours and habits, ingrained, your own but not your own, a duty on your existence, a tariff to be levied on those who try to love you.” Everyone continues to pay the price, likely for generations to come. This is the empirical residue of family life: “You are dead but the secrets can continue. As if it is the secrets that sustain these fucking people.” Families are where you do you’re crying alone.

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