A Dualistic Integrity
PHILOSOPHER
(Addressing himself to his young interviewer): So you have familiarized
yourself with my latest philosophical contentions, and now you wish to ask me
some questions concerning
them?
STUDENT:
That is correct!
PHILOSOPHER:
Well then, what can I do for you?
STUDENT (Consulting
his notes): You have contended that a man cannot be good without also being
intermittently evil - in short, that goodness cannot exist without the aid of
its opposite. How, then, do you
differentiate between good and evil in relation to people?
PHILOSOPHER:
Very simply! Whatever proceeds from
positive feelings is good and, conversely, whatever proceeds from negative
feelings is evil. Thus when you transmit
the former you are doing good to someone, you are making a person feel happier,
as well as making yourself feel happier, whereas when you transmit the latter
you are making both yourself and someone else feel less happy or possibly even
sad, and are therefore doing evil.
STUDENT: So
every action committed in anger is evil?
PHILOSOPHER:
Yes, because anger invariably engenders negative feelings and thereby makes
people feel wretched.
STUDENT:
Hence we can always know whether we are doing good or evil simply by taking
account of the nature of the feelings that we are transmitting at the time?
PHILOSOPHER:
Precisely! For example, if you were a
thief engaged in cracking open a safe somewhere, you would know yourself to be
doing evil simply by taking account of the way you felt. You would probably feel very tense, very 'on edge', very nervous in case anything went wrong. And if, by ill-luck, anything did go
wrong, like you were caught, say, in the act of opening the safe, you would
probably either lose your nerve altogether and give yourself up or panic and,
assuming it was within your powers, attempt to escape. But the negative feelings would give you away
all the time.
STUDENT:
Yet none of us can avoid doing both good and evil, even though the evil needn't
entail cracking safes?
PHILOSOPHER:
No, we are made for both and, as such, we are compelled to accept both. Try to imagine a life without any negativity,
a life without any worries, pains, angers, frustrations, doubts, aggressions,
tensions, regrets, hatreds, prejudices, disparities, etc. I rather doubt that you would be able to live
such a life under normal circumstances.
STUDENT:
Yet Christ taught men to 'resist not evil', which, broadly speaking, means to
'turn the other cheek', to ignore the evils of others, to live and let live, to
resign oneself to the ways of the world and not offer any opposition to one's
enemies or potential enemies, so that one can remain calm and continue to
experience 'eternal peace', or the 'Kingdom of God' within the self. That was what he taught and also what he
demonstrated during the final days of his earthly life, when he showed an
apparent indifference to his fate and allowed himself to be pushed around from
hand to hand without making any attempt to defend or justify himself.
PHILOSOPHER:
Yes, that is perfectly true. But
comparatively few men are permitted to lead a Christ-like existence, especially
when, not being itinerant philosophers or religious preachers, they are obliged
to earn a living in such a highly competitive and potentially hostile world as
this one! Unfortunately, there is often
a marked lacuna between a philosopher's teachings and their actual
applicability to daily life. It is all
very well for Christ to preach particular doctrines, for he slots into the
world as a preacher, he earns a living by preaching, whereas the vast majority
of those to whom he preaches aren't really in a position to follow suit, to
abandon their respective tasks and lead a similar life. So they are inevitably compelled to ignore
or, more accurately, fail to live-up to certain of his teachings. The only true way to lead a Christ-like
existence would be to become a wandering, self-employed, self-responsible,
self-styled preacher. But what do you
think would happen if everybody 'down-tooled', as it were, and followed
Christ's example?
STUDENT: There
would be far too many preachers in the world, leading, ultimately, to chaos.
PHILOSOPHER:
Yes, chaos is indeed an apt description!
If everybody led a Christ-like existence, there wouldn't be anyone left
to preach to and the human kind would quickly die out. Without butchers, bakers, farmers, fishermen,
builders, shop assistants, clerks, doctors, etc., everybody would be dead
within a few weeks or, at most, months.
So without intending any disrespect towards the messianic vocation, one
can see how absolutely imperative it is that a majority of people always refrain from
following in Christ's footsteps too literally.
And if they must refrain from doing so on the grounds that a few billion
preachers would ultimately lead to chaos, they must also refrain from taking
some of Christ's teachings too seriously - a thing which, as history adequately
attests, has never proved too difficult for them anyway, Ghandi-like exceptions
notwithstanding. Therefore, in returning
to this problem of good and evil, it is not wise, in my opinion, to resist too
much evil. For unless one is someone who
has purposely gone out of his way, like Christ, to preach that kind of thing,
or is part of a vast crowd of people who can bank on the strength of the finite
number of club-wielders eventually running out, one could easily become a
living corpse pushed hither and thither by all who have more strength,
audacity, willpower, or authority than oneself.
Yet for a time, as you well remarked, Christ virtually made a living out
of being pushed backwards and forwards from hand to hand. But it seems quite obvious to me that a
majority of us certainly couldn't make a living out of it, so one must learn to
stand-up for oneself and be natural too, you know! People often resign themselves to a kind of
death-in-life after they have been seriously disappointed in some way.
STUDENT:
How do you mean?
PHILOSOPHER:
Well, when one lives fully, vigorously, naturally, impulsively, and
adventurously, there are always a correlative number of dues to be paid. Usually, the more one lives, as opposed to
just exists, the wider becomes one's spectrum of emotional involvement on both
the negative and the
positive sides of life, and it is this latter fact in particular which
generally proves an immense stumbling-block to such people as I am
alluding. When one settles down, as the
saying goes, one is usually curtailing one's spectrum of activity to a level or
degree that won't unduly disturb one, won't cause one to suffer too much but,
on the contrary, permit one a sort of Buddhist imperturbability. In short, the more one lives, i.e. the more
vigorous and adventurous one is, the more suffering will have to be accepted as
the inevitable price one pays for one's pleasures. Now if, because of various personal problems,
you don't wish to suffer beyond a certain point, you must endeavour not to live
beyond a certain point, though the point in question will depend upon the
nature of your personal circumstances. I
mean if, for example, you are used to a hectic life and then suddenly switch to
a slower one, it will probably bore you to tears because of the contrast. You will probably suffer more from the slower
one, to begin with, than ever you did from the hectic one previously!
STUDENT:
Yes, I seem to recall a similar experience myself, and I was terribly
bored. But, tell me, is there really no
way of avoiding boredom? People are
always complaining about it, no matter where you go.
PHILOSOPHER:
It is virtually impossible to entirely escape from the intermittent prevalence
of boredom, and altogether futile to attempt such an escape, in any case. Boredom has a very legitimate place in life
as the opposite of excitement. Now
perpetual excitement, assuming it were possible, would be an insufferable
hardship for even the most excitable of people.
It would either wear them out or wear thin eventually. But, fortunately, there is always boredom to
fall back on, to act as a reprieve from excitement and, conversely, from which
to create excitement afresh after one has grown tired of
it. So if you value excitement, I am
afraid that you must learn to accept boredom.
For the one is as important as the other, and they are
inextricably linked together throughout the course of your life. There is no defeating boredom by a determined
attempt to escape into excitement when the latter isn't justified, hasn't been
paid for, as it were, by a sufficient preliminary degree of boredom, whether
that boredom takes the form of manual work or intellectual work or, indeed, no
work at all. People who attempt to cheat
themselves out of boredom very often become bored with what they foolishly
imagine will excite them, thereby defeating their objectives. They may be excited for a time with whatever
they happen to be doing, but such excitement soon pales to insignificance, and
even though they carry on with their respective pursuits they will really be
bored to tears.
STUDENT:
You sound very wise.
PHILOSOPHER:
Don't believe it! Perhaps I seem a
little wiser than others because I have more time in which to think. I spend the greater part of my day thinking,
teaching, and writing, whereas a majority of people have to do an office job, a
factory job, a shop job, or a service job.
But they aren't necessarily less wise than me! If a man doesn't want to write and speak
these kind of thoughts, what would be the point of his doing so? He would be a fool, wouldn't he? Oh no, everybody has his own tasks to attend
to and, as such, everybody is as wise as he needs to be! If I have any wisdom at all, it should
prevent me from imagining a philosopher's task to be the highest, the one and
only task to which a man should aspire if he wishes to regard himself as an
intellectual success. But, naturally,
there are philosophers who pride themselves on such an arrogant
attitude; men who fatuously consider most other people to be either superfluous
types or failures, which, if my wisdom counts for anything at all, they are
very unwise to do! Indeed, one may be
excused for assuming that an element of envy enters into their attitude, that
it may be a form of unconscious compensation for the fact that they find their
philosophical tasks so difficult, and therefore aren't altogether convinced of
their own personal or professional superiority.
But God forbid the establishment of a world exclusively geared to the
production and aggrandizement of philosophers!
Truly, there is much to be said for an attitude of mind which knows how
to be ruthlessly selective in its choice of reading matter! For not everything that goes between the
covers of a book passes for wisdom or truth.
There are many so-called serious writers, thinkers, poets, prophets,
etc., who imagine that they are writing wisdom or truth when, in reality,
nothing could be further from the case!
And one is sometimes fooled by these pernicious influences, is one not?
STUDENT:
Yes, I'm afraid so! Thus you are
cautious as to the extent and authenticity of your own wisdom as well?
PHILOSOPHER:
Up to a point. For what I would
particularly like to impress upon you is a knowledge of the fact that no-one
can be wholly wise, and hence a 'wise man', least of all those who generally
purport to being such. One becomes wiser
on various issues primarily on account of one's folly, so, fundamentally, it is
the folly that guarantees one's wisdom.
In other words, without being intermittently unwise one could never hope
to be wise at all. Consequently one can
never be really wise except in the sense of also knowing oneself to be a
fool. Yes, that is a true wisdom - knowing
oneself to be both wise and foolish without ever standing a chance of
becoming exclusively either. Therefore I
shall permit you to refer to me as a 'wise man', though only on the condition
that you also privately take me for a fool.
Is that acceptable to you?
STUDENT:
You embarrass me slightly.
PHILOSOPHER:
My dear friend, there is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about! Learn to see me as a person rather than as a
repository of ultimate wisdom or truth.
I do not wish to be regarded as an infallible philosopher, still less a
guru. Don't put me on a pedestal, even
if it brings you a certain amount of pleasure.
It is better that we converse as man to man rather than as god to man,
isn't it?
STUDENT:
Yes, you are doubtless right there! Although it is
pleasurable to have someone to admire.
It seems to be a natural tendency in man.
PHILOSOPHER:
Then disregard my foolishness and continue to admire me, if that is what you
want. I shall do my best to bear with it
and not disappoint you. I shall allow
you a degree of pleasure at my expense, just as you allow me a degree of
pleasure by being both my interlocutor and student. For all tutors require students if they are
to remain relatively sane. So I respect
you as my student.
STUDENT:
And I respect you as my tutor.
PHILOSOPHER:
Well then, is there anything else you wish to ask me?
STUDENT (Consulting
his notes again): Yes, as a matter of fact, I am deeply intrigued by your
theory of insanity, which I would like to explore in greater detail. Why is it that, according to you, we can
never go entirely insane? Surely life
provides ample proof to the contrary, as any lunatic asylum would demonstrate.
PHILOSOPHER:
I must have been partly insane to have contended such a thing in the first
place! But, curiously, that is really
the fact of the matter. You see, we are
all partly insane from the time of our birth to the time of our death. If we weren't insane as well as sane,
life would prove more insufferable than it generally does. As beings of polarity, we contain elements of
sanity and insanity within us throughout our lives. Thus if one is already partly insane, it is
quite impossible to actually go insane.
All one can do is cultivate the normal polarity to a point of
incompatibility with majority standards.
Take the case, for example, of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. An average person would surely be tempted to
consider Joyce insane on account of the obscure style and eccentric nature of
much of its content. It is extremely
difficult for even the most literate of people to understand, and proves
virtually unintelligible to anyone not well-acquainted with a variety of
European languages. Yet Joyce is
generally regarded as sane and, in my opinion, rightly so. Notwithstanding the extraordinary fact that
the novel took him some eighteen years to complete, due in part to his failing
eyesight and numerous eye operations, he kept to the task and consequently
remained intelligible to people within the context of writer.
STUDENT:
But if you contend that we are both sane and insane, why do you now
contradict yourself by considering Joyce sane?
PHILOSOPHER:
Ah, but I was speaking on the world's terms rather than on my own, in order to
remain intelligible within the framework of a wider context! The world treats sanity and insanity as
entirely separate phenomena which, under the prevailing circumstances, it is
perfectly entitled to do, since one must be able to communicate generally as
well as particularly, in terms intelligible to the non-philosophical generality
as well as in terms engineered by the philosophical individual. The 'sanity' to which I was alluding has its
analogue in the 'wisdom' of the foregoing conversation. It is a sanity of one's being more or less
compatible with majority standards, rather than a sanity which wholly excludes
the possibility of a concomitant degree of insanity being involved in one's
life. Thus Joyce's 'sanity' can be
established on the basis of the fact that he remained a writer and eventually
had Finnegans Wake published.
Had he destroyed the typescript instead
of having it published, there would of course be a real case for considering
him insane, though, once again, only on the world's terms.
STUDENT:
This is all rather confusing! However, I
think I'm just beginning to understand you, even though I am by no means
convinced that you are right. I mean,
isn't the eccentricity of Finnegans Wake,
coupled to the fact that, even with serious eye trouble, it took Joyce so long
to complete, sufficient indication of insanity - at least in the world's
eyes? Surely no-one would have spent so
much time on the creation of a work which, if memory serves me well, is not
even 600 pages long.
PHILOSOPHER:
Not unless he was both highly individualistic and virtually blind. But, even so, is it really any stranger or
'madder' to dedicate oneself to writing a certain book for eighteen years than
to work in a peanut factory for as many years, to teach simple arithmetic to
junior-school children for several
years, to give a few thousand performances of a particular play in a
variety of theatres, to give as many performances of a given piece of music in
a variety of concert halls, or to drive a bus around on the same route for
several years on-end? When one begins to
consider the vast number of human activities, their apparent eccentricities,
and the number of times or years people carry on doing them, there would seem
to be sufficient grounds for considering everyone partly insane, not just the
comparatively small number of eccentric writers, musicians, or artists one
happens to know about. Indeed, why
should we not regard a mathematician, an acrobat, a clown, a comedian, a
priest, a politician, a racing-car driver, a footballer, a soldier, a pilot, or
an actor to be just as crazy or eccentric as Joyce - assuming we were disposed
to regarding Joyce in such a light anyway?
For instance, can you imagine Joyce preaching about Biblical miracles
all his life?
STUDENT:
No, I don't think the mumbo-jumbo or occult side of religion would have greatly
appealed to him, if books like Ulysses are anything to judge
by!
PHILOSOPHER:
Indeed not! And he would have been as
justified in assuming the preaching of miracles to be a waste of his time as,
say, a priest would be in assuming the writing of a novel that took eighteen
years to be a waste of his time, considering that, to some
extent, everyone seems foolish to everyone else. But one must stick by one's habits if doing
so makes life more tolerable, if not enjoyable.
Most people are incapable, in any case, of being highly individualistic,
of being a writer or an artist, because too much of their own company, too much
solitude, and too great a demand on their personal initiative would sooner or
later lead them to worry about their sanity, about the possibility of their
slowly going insane without anyone being there to help them. For a time even I worried about this, when I
first started out on a writing career.
But it gradually dawned on me that, provided one kept at it and didn't
become too lazy or careless, writing fairly intelligible information all day
wasn't really any weirder than doing particular clerical duties all day, or
teaching infant-school children to read, or working on a newspaper team, or
playing professional cricket every day.
What really matters is how one feels about
doing it! Yet it is truly amazing how a
majority of people will cope with just about any task so long as they have
colleagues, co-workers, mates, or whatever who do similar things and thus keep
them company. Then it appears that they
feel protected against themselves, against the responsibilities of creative
individualism.
STUDENT: So
it no longer worries you, as a writer and teacher, that
you are now going your own way?
PHILOSOPHER:
Occasionally it still worries me, though not as much as before. When I feel self-doubts as to the validity of
my work or the nature of my calling, I generally console myself in the
knowledge that it takes more courage to 'do your own thing' than to 'run with
the herd', and that I must be mentally brave to be doing what I do, rather than
something which can only be done in the company of others and, as often as not,
under their command. Then I consider the
nature of the many things which various other people either have to do or
choose to do. Yet they don't normally
consider themselves going mad on account of the nature of their respective
occupations. Far from it! It is the occupations which prevent them from
imagining that they are on the verge of insanity, even though what they do may
well be less sane, or rational, than what I am doing
... judged from an individualistic point-of-view. However, the important thing is to remain
preoccupied.
STUDENT: So
Joyce was evidently preoccupied with the creation of Finnegans Wake for some considerable
period of time?
PHILOSOPHER:
As a matter of fact, he became increasingly fastidious in his approach to
writing. For as Ulysses will confirm, fastidiousness had long been
a major concern of his. So it
doesn't particularly surprise me that he brought this concern to a veritable
head in Finnegans Wake. Someone who had arduously read-up on Joyce
once informed me that on average he was writing a line a day, but a line replete
with subtle puns, symbolic innovations, hybrid words, and complex intellectual
connotations - in short, a very pregnant line!
So his creative fastidiousness had brought him to that peak of
perfectionism or professionalism or eccentricity or extremity or foolishness or
brilliance, or whatever else the voice of your personal judgement would like to
call it, to the utter astonishment of the many less-individualistic
natures. Had he lasted beyond his
fifty-ninth year, and thus started work on another book, we may be forgiven for
doubting whether he would have lived long enough to complete it, so deeply
engrained would his fastidiousness have become by then! One can imagine an 83-year-old Joyce half-way
through a potentially 300-page tome, a tome of such arcane complexity as to
appear utterly unintelligible.
STUDENT:
Have you ever felt yourself slipping into a tendency towards such
fastidiousness in your own work?
PHILOSOPHER:
Nothing comparable to Joyce, I can assure you!
Though I have found reason to criticize myself on
occasion. The only remedy for
such a tendency would, I suppose, be to give oneself over to something
comparatively slapdash, that is to say slapdash according to one's own
exaggerated standards rather than by general or, so to say, journalistic
standards. Such fastidiousness is
probably one of the main reasons why certain authors are always so dissatisfied
with their writings. For instead of
cultivating a fairly readable and spontaneous style of prose, they become
bogged down in a swamp of self-criticism which, in any case, is probably
irrelevant to their requirements.
STUDENT:
You mean a writer may coerce himself into becoming so self-critical, with
regard to his work, that the habit gradually overrides his natural pride in and
enjoyment of it until, in becoming a sort of obsession, it causes him to lose
faith in himself. Instead of being there
to serve his work, the critical sense becomes so over-developed as to become a
hindrance to it, and a kind of madness is the illogical result.
PHILOSOPHER:
Yes, that may well be the case. For
nothing will satisfy him so long as the critical sense
remains intrusively paramount. But if
one doesn't at least enjoy one's work to some extent, how can one possibly
expect other people to enjoy it at all?
A writer in that situation ought either to give-up writing altogether or
learn to cultivate a less self-critical approach to it until, eventually, he
can strike a balance between the two fatal extremes - that of the
over-fastidious and the slapdash. If he
loses a little pride over the reformed nature of his style, he may gain some
additional pride on the strength of his subject-matter, which should be
meaningful to him. No-one requires an
over-refined style of writing these days, though it has to be said that very
few people would care to wade through something so perversely slapdash as to be
totally devoid of either artistic professionalism or meaningful content. The greatest and most accessible works are
usually found somewhere in between the two objective/subjective extremes. However, if memory serves me well, I believe
we were discussing the paradoxical relationship between sanity and insanity, weren't we?
STUDENT:
Yes, and I was somewhat puzzled by it actually.
If I have understood you correctly, it would appear that one can go
insane in the world's eyes but not, apparently, in yours, seeing that one is
already partly insane in consequence of the intrinsic dualism of life. Yet despite this, you are prepared to accept
both attitudes, depending on the context, as equally applicable.
PHILOSOPHER:
You have understood perfectly mon ami and, as such, I must congratulate
you! For what one has to do, in this
regard, is to forget the world's classification of insanity and concentrate
upon the dual concepts of sanity and insanity within the individual, which is
more or less tantamount to concentrating upon the theory of the regulative
relationship between the conscious and unconscious parts of the psyche as
defined by Carl Jung in various of his writings, as well as perceiving in the
distinction between, for example, traditional theology and modern science a
cleavage in the psyche between irrational and rational predilections, the
latter somewhat more evolved than the former.
Naturally enough, this will also lead one to forget the world's
classification of sanity ... centred, as it usually is, on the relationship of
the individual to society and the degree of his integration within it. For a being composed of both tendencies can
hardly be described in terms of one or the other, can he?
STUDENT:
Not unless you remain consistent with your teachings and call a man 'sane' in
view of the fact that sanity is the positive, and hence principal, attribute of
his dual integrity. In other words,
there is more sanity than insanity to life simply because the latter attribute,
being comparatively negative, is eternally destined to play the secondary role,
like the Father vis-à-vis the Son, or, for that matter, illusion vis-à-vis
truth, evil vis-à-vis good, and sadness vis-à-vis happiness?
PHILOSOPHER:
Excellent! So now you are getting closer
to the truth of why, for instance, it is impossible for a man to be wholly
sane, rational, good, happy, etc., on account of the necessary interplay of
their contrary polarities, and therefore why the world is what it is - i.e.
apparently without sanity, reason, goodness, happiness, etc., when you happen
to be in an insane, unreasonable, bad, or sad mood and, often enough, when
someone else is, too! Quite apart from
the fact that without insanity there would be no sanity, one must give insanity
its due as a means to making life tolerable, since without it one would
virtually be unable to do anything.
STUDENT:
You mean insanity makes it possible for us to take so many things for granted,
to go about our daily lives without all the time wondering what in God's name
they're all about?
PHILOSOPHER:
Yes, to a certain extent. I mean, just
look at yourself, at some of the things you do, at many of the activities that
you take for granted without particularly questioning them or waking-up to the
realization of their inherent absurdity.
I needn't run off a whole list of them, but there are certainly enough
things in this category to keep us talking for some time to come! For example, take those musicians who play an
avant-garde style of jazz on their saxophone.
Now some of the sounds they make with that instrument are so disagreeable and disjunctive as to cause one to doubt
their sanity or integrity as musicians.
In fact, if a state-registered lunatic was actually released from an
asylum one day specifically to play sax or piano or guitar in one of the more
avant-garde jazz bands, do you imagine that he would sound any weirder or
madder than most of his officially sane colleagues? No, a wholly sane creature would be unable to
live as a normal man. One needs a
certain degree of insanity in order to live at all. But in order to live wisely, shrewdly, and
'sanely', one must keep the essential duality of the psyche in line with
society's demands at large, not condition oneself to becoming a public nuisance
by allowing one's irrational tendencies to become too concentrated around a
single theme or context at the expense of one's overall psychic economy. Needless to say, there are many such
public nuisances who, despite their strange behaviour and even stranger
opinions, are regarded as relatively sane in the world's eyes or, at any rate,
in particular sections of it. But that
is quite another story, and one which we can safely postpone for another
time. I trust, now, that you will have
something else to ask me? Or perhaps I
should ask you? For instance, are you by
any chance interested in getting rid of your fears?
STUDENT:
Yes, I am actually! But I don't honestly
see how that can be done.
PHILOSOPHER:
Neither do I.
For a man who deliberately strives to get rid of his fears is as stupid
as one who strives to rid himself of his hopes.
You will never succeed in doing so, even if you occasionally kid
yourself, during a spell of apparent good fortune, that
you did. However, you have doubtless
succeeded in outgrowing certain fears and replacing them with others?
STUDENT:
Yes, I have to admit to that fact. Though these other fears
seem every bit as bad as the earlier ones.
PHILOSOPHER:
That is only to be expected. For in
order to become fears at all, they have to attain to a certain intensity of
emotional effect. So, in the long run,
one fear is going to be pretty much like another. But fears have their use, all the same, since
they help keep us in line.
STUDENT:
What, exactly, do you mean by that?
PHILOSOPHER:
Simply that they generally prevent us from doing something extremely rash,
like, for example, throwing oneself under a car, jumping out of a tenth-floor
window, swearing at strangers in the street, breaking shop windows, throwing
all of one's money away, or murdering one's neighbours. If you weren't secretly afraid of what could
happen to you, were you audacious enough to follow one or more of these regrettable
courses, it is highly doubtful that you would be here today. You would almost certainly be dead or, at the
very least, in gaol. Fortunately,
however, you fear various things and situations as much as anyone else, and thereby safeguard yourself against the possibility
of experiencing them. One might contend
that, except in exceptional cases or circumstances, fear keeps us fairly
orderly and ensures that we do our best to keep others fairly orderly as
well. As a singer in a rock band, for
instance, you would endeavour to sing as well as possible, in order to win the
audience over and keep it on your side.
Fear of ridicule, in the event of a poor performance, would be an
important consideration in that context.
So you would behave in an orderly fashion, in accordance with the high standards
of the better rock bands, and sing well.
STUDENT:
Supposing I am afraid of not fully satisfying a particular young woman's sexual
desires.
PHILOSOPHER:
Fear of not satisfying her will motivate you to make sure you do satisfy her,
as well as satisfy yourself. Without
this fear regarding a particular female, you might become over-complacent or
sexually lazy, and lose her to somebody else.
STUDENT:
Then I won't strive to eradicate my fears - at any rate, not those kinds of
fears which we have been discussing!
PHILOSOPHER:
You will never succeed in doing so anyway, especially with regard to that kind
of fear which arises from an unforeseen situation and has absolutely nothing to
do with any rational preconceptions one might have. Like boredom, fear is one of those things
which, in all its manifold guises, we have to live with for our own good, since
without it there would be no hope.
STUDENT:
And without sadness?
PHILOSOPHER:
How could one ever expect to be happy?
In reality, there is no more any such thing as a 'happy man' per se
than a 'sad man' per se.
Throughout life man is inevitably both happy and sad, for
he would never know what happiness was unless he also had regular experience of
sadness. Admittedly, some people may
seem happier than others and, conversely, some people sadder than others, since
such distinctions often depend upon the individual's temperament, intelligence,
beliefs, circumstances, profession, and facial characteristics. But to pursue happiness by attempting to
eradicate all sadness as a matter of policy, the way certain philosophers would
have us do, is sheer folly, and only results in self-deception. We must accept them both, which, in any case,
is what most people do, considering that they have
little or no choice in the matter.
Circumstances are continuously changing, and so, too, are our respective
moods and opinions. When one is angry,
depressed, frustrated, bored, tired, or frightened, i.e. in the grip of an evil
condition the negative vibrations of which are all too apparent, one cannot
very well be happy, can one?
STUDENT: Of
course not! But then the evil condition
passes after awhile and one generally feels better about life, particularly in
the evening.
PHILOSOPHER:
True, and from knowledge of this fact I have often found it expedient to push oneself into doing something, even though one's mood doesn't
really ordain or encourage it at the time, so that, with a little luck, one
will be fully committed to this activity by the time one's mood changes for the
better.
STUDENT:
Give me an example.
PHILOSOPHER:
Well, I may force myself to take a walk somewhere. I leave home feeling somewhat dejected at the
prospect of having to catch a bus to another part of town in order simply to
walk around the streets there for an hour or two. In this glum mood it occurs to me that I
haven't really got anything else to do;
that the bus ride is relatively expensive and takes me through a
dilapidated part of town; that I haven't got anyone to meet when I get to my
destination; and that I know the streets there too thoroughly to be greatly
thrilled by the prospect of traversing them once again. It may even be overcast or drizzling as
well. Thus I leave home without feeling
any real enthusiasm for this excursion.
STUDENT:
What time is this?
PHILOSOPHER:
About
STUDENT: So
you enjoy your walk.
PHILOSOPHER:
Precisely! If the weather isn't
particularly disagreeable, and I have acquired a fairly complacent conscience
from a good day's work, I find that the new mood made the trip worthwhile. So I begin to enjoy life again. Now if, by contrast, I had set out in a good
mood, there would have been a fair probability of things turning out the other
way, that I would have reached my destination only to experience a negative
mood. But such is life, and what I have
just been saying may in itself be transmuted into yet
other possibilities, some of which would entirely contradict it. As the old adage goes:
'What one gains on the roundabout, one loses on the swings.'
STUDENT:
Yes, all this sounds very much like my experience too, since the moods keep on
changing. Yet the irony of it all is
that one can sometimes be quite happy walking around in the rain, provided that
one was due for a positive mood change.
PHILOSOPHER:
To be sure, which only goes to show that weather and
environment aren't always the principal reasons for determining the nature of
one's mood. One can be as sad in
the best of environments as happy in the worst, depending on the circumstances.
STUDENT:
Personally, I'm not sure that I wouldn't be happier in a medium-sized town
blessed with clean streets, pleasant gardens, and easy access to the country,
than in a gigantic city cursed with excessive traffic pollution, overcrowded
pavements, and graffiti-ridden walls!
Surely there is something about the influence of environment which
transcends the transient prevalence of our various moods?
PHILOSOPHER:
Of course there is! But it largely
depends upon what one has been accustomed to, what one views as the golden mean
or ideal, and the subsequent psychology established in consequence of the
tension - or lack of it - between this ideal and the reality confronting
one. For example if, as a provincial,
you are thoroughly convinced that the big city isn't for you, then you would be
quite foolish to remain in it. Yet this
problem depends so much on the individual, as on individual circumstances, that
it is really a matter for him to decide for himself. Let no-one trick you into believing that what
is good for one person is necessarily just as good for another! If you seriously believe that moving to a
smaller town will make you happier overall, I can see no reasons - apart from
the obvious material ones - why you shouldn't do so. But living in a big city can be as much fun,
if not more so, than living in the most picturesque town or village, and, once
one has grown accustomed to living in the city, it is unlikely that one would
ever want to move down to some less artificial environment which, by contrast,
could well appear extremely boring.
However, now that we have dealt with another subject, is there anything
else I can do for you?
STUDENT (Consulting
his notes afresh): In point of fact, I had intended to ask you this earlier
but we or, rather, you jumped the gun, as it were. Do you believe in sexual equality or, put
more bluntly, in the notion that men and women are equal, or, in light of your
dualistic philosophy, is it simply a delusion which has been taken too
seriously in recent decades?
PHILOSOPHER:
I suppose if you were an old-fashioned misogynistic male, it could seem
such. But I can't, in all honesty,
believe that to be the case since, in attempting to answer your question
obliquely, I assume that a majority of young women usually refrain from being
unduly competitive with men in the interests of their intrinsic
femininity. When women are pretty, they
have a natural predilection for the decorative and supportive role which, in
accordance with the fundamental nature of their sex, is only proper to their
psychology and interests as women.
For the world is always geared to men on account of the positivity of the male in relation to the negativity of the
female, a fact which will still remain the same whether you endeavour to turn
the world upside down in theory or not, since it is ruled by practice. So, with few exceptions, it is usually the
male who plays the leading role and the female the secondary one. Now if attractive young women ran the risk of
becoming less attractive as women from taking too much power and
responsibility upon themselves, I am quite convinced that, in nine cases out of
ten, they would reject it and revert to charming or seducing males
instead. As a rule, it appears to be the
older or less attractive women who are more willing to compete with men in the
world of professional responsibility, whether in business, law, the arts,
medicine, or whatever. Though there are
always exceptions to every rule.
STUDENT:
Therefore, according to that theory, which didn't fully answer my question, a
majority of the really influential women in literature, art, music, business,
politics, the civil service, the armed forces, the police, the teaching
profession, etc., are likely to be less attractive as women than their
less ambitious counterparts?
PHILOSOPHER:
In general. Though perhaps the really
powerful women are closer to being female hermaphrodites than might at first
meet the eye! I mean, just as some men
are effeminate and rather subservient, so there are women who are manly and
domineering to a degree which makes them more powerful than the weaker
men. The modern world is amply stocked
with such paradoxically androgynous cases, and it is a well-known fact of
Jungian psychology that, after they have passed their middle years, people
become increasingly like the opposite sex to which they literally belong, both
physically and mentally. However, to answer
your question more fully, the evidence of the senses would indicate that men
and women aren't literally equal, or the same.
But I don't see why that fact should necessarily preclude women from
being granted equal employment opportunities to men and paid a similar wage,
relative to age and experience, for a similar day's work. Discrimination in such matters is largely
obsolete these days, though there are still some employers who, for one reason
or another, openly discriminate against women in slavish deference to male
traditions. Naturally, there are some
things which women can't do as well men on account, primarily, of their
slighter builds - like playing football, rugby, and cricket, or boxing and
wrestling, or throwing the hammer and putting the shot, or playing drums,
electric guitar, electric bass, and certain other instruments in a hard rock or
modern jazz context, or manipulating heavy weapons, lifting heavy weights,
driving heavy vehicles, and doing various other kinds of heavy or dangerous
manual work. But even so, there are probably
very few heterosexual men in the world who would prefer women to be capable of
doing all or most of these sorts of things at the expense of such natural
endowments as beauty, elegance, and charm.
So a supportive role would still appear to be the prerogative of all
those naturally attractive young women who, even in an age of rampant
materialism, are more interested in becoming wives and mothers than in
advancing their careers.
STUDENT:
Therefore, though men and women are physically unequal, they should be treated
as socially and professionally equal?
PHILOSOPHER:
Providing the circumstances warrant it, I don't see why not. For, although men and women are made of
different stuff and have predilections relevant to their respective sexes - men
being the positive and hence impregnating pole of a dual integrity, while women
are the negative pole which is imposed upon with due regard to its wishes -
they are equally important to the survival of mankind and shouldn't be regarded
as existing in an inferior/superior relationship. When you fall in love with a woman you aren't
thinking in terms of inferiority then.
Quite the contrary, you absolutely adore her, and would be more inclined
to regard her as a sort of superior creature to yourself than vice versa. Admittedly, you may, as an individual, have
cogent reasons for being a misogynist or even a homosexual, but it is
altogether doubtful that you will ever have cogent reasons for considering
women biologically inferior - other, that is, than in the strictly philosophical
sense whereby they form the negative pole in a duality where the positive one
will usually dominate. Strength,
however, isn't everything, and neither is beauty! If we are superior to them in certain
respects, we are quite inferior to them in certain others. And if they have any talent for charm, it is
obviously in their best interests to dedicate themselves primarily to the art
of being a woman, which, for a majority of them, has never proved too difficult
anyway. In all probability, the really
attractive women will stand to gain more from being relatively unambitious, both commercially and professionally, than
they would otherwise gain by competing with men. For arduous competition can quickly detract
from a woman's natural charms, you know, turning her into someone who is
anything but attractive, and thus preventing her from properly fulfilling
herself as a woman. However, we
have discussed sexual equality long enough and must not allow the fact of
social equality between the sexes in terms of employment, housing, democratic
rights, etc., to blind us to the personal inequality which exists between men
and women - and, indeed, men and men as well as women and women - in both
physical and psychological terms. But
perhaps we can talk some more tomorrow?
* * *
PHILOSOPHER: So what can I do for you today?
STUDENT (Consulting
his notes): I would like to know what you consider to be the main evils of
the philosophical life?
PHILOSOPHER:
Well now, there are undoubtedly quite a few!
Though I suppose one of the most common 'evils', as you somewhat harshly
put it, involves one's committing thoughts to paper without really paying that
much attention to their essential nature.
STUDENT:
Can you be more specific?
PHILOSOPHER:
Oh, endeavouring to escape from boredom, unhappiness, the outside world,
self-doubts, emotional conflicts, etc., through a relatively superficial
because over-spontaneous employment of words.
This is a grave and common danger to all who wield the pen, especially
in philosophical terms, since, as we both know, the pen can be mightier than
the sword in its long-term effects on society.
STUDENT: I
wish I could believe that!
PHILOSOPHER:
Well, mistaken thoughts have still been the ruination of many an earnest
intellectual, politician, soldier, teacher, priest, and artist, to name some of
the more prominent categories of human endeavour.
STUDENT: Do
you sometimes commit words to paper without having thought very carefully about
them and weighed the possibility of their being misleading, simply because you,
too, are anxious to set the pen in motion and thereby escape from the tedium of
a physically inactive existence through the medium of a degree of practical
philosophical preoccupation?
PHILOSOPHER:
To be honest, I sometimes do. Though I
am also shrewd and knowing enough to revise my writings fairly extensively, in
the interests of a more credible not to say professional presentation. If, during the course of your intellectual
travels, you have heard the teaching profession described as a necessary evil,
it may not surprise you to learn that philosophers sometimes think of
themselves in such terms as well; though, between ourselves, there is little
reason for us to suppose that other types of writer are necessarily any better. As beings of good and evil, truth and
illusion, reasonableness and unreasonableness, cleverness and stupidity,
profundity and superficiality, wisdom and foolishness, strength and weakness,
etc., we are all prone, in varying degrees, to similar failings. The philosopher, with his love of wisdom, is
simply more intellectually conspicuous than most other men. He sticks his neck out in the honourable
names of truth, knowledge, wisdom, and reason, but if these qualities also
involve him in a recognition and, within limits, an acceptance of man's
intermittent capacity for illusion, ignorance, folly, and irrationality - then
so be it! One will see that his 'truth'
is more comprehensive, and even compassionate, than the lopsided truths of a
majority of his philosophical precursors.
STUDENT:
Ah, this sounds remarkably similar to what you were arguing yesterday, about
the wise life incorporating an acceptance of both wisdom and folly, and
therefore not being a futile exercise in one's vainly striving to eradicate the
latter.
PHILOSOPHER:
Yes, my 'truth' is also double-barrelled, so to speak. It incorporates an acceptance of illusion,
i.e. the necessity of one's having illusions for the sake of one's truths. Now although I am essentially geared to
truth, on account of the positivity of its
relationship within the illusion/truth dichotomy, I have as many illusions as
truths, of that you can rest assured.
STUDENT:
Such as?
PHILOSOPHER:
Oh, but a man can't really know all his illusions, since he would then become
disillusioned with them and not disposed, in consequence, to maintaining them
as illusions any longer!
STUDENT:
Then what kind of illusions do you suppose you are
likely to have, if that is not too hypothetical a question?
PHILOSOPHER:
Well, I may have a false opinion of myself on various issues. I may think more of my intellectual abilities
than I really should, in view of a variety of intellectual shortcomings which I
am either loathe or unable to recognize.
I may imagine a particular talent in myself which, in reality, isn't
really there. I may consider myself to
be a better philosopher than various people who are really better philosophers
than me. I may be entirely wrong to consider
myself a serious philosopher in the first place. I may make statements which seem perfectly
true to me but which, in reality, are really quite false. I may have a false opinion of someone
else. I may be inclined to overrate the
talents of certain artists, musicians, actors, or writers, and, conversely, to
underrate those of certain other artists, musicians, actors, or writers. I may be inclined to denounce the theories of
various other thinkers simply because one of my 'favourite' philosophers did,
without fully realizing that that is really all I am doing. I may be inclined to imagine myself a
worthwhile artist when, in reality, I lack the necessary ability, and,
conversely, I may be wrong to imagine that I lack the necessary ability to be a
worthwhile artist. I may think that I am
better-looking than I really am or, by contrast, that I am worse looking than
is really the case. I may think a
certain woman doesn't like me when, in reality, she does and, conversely, I may
think a certain woman likes me who, in reality, holds rather an unflattering
opinion of me. I may consider myself to
be less intelligent than I really am or, by contrast, to be more intelligent
than is really the case. I may imagine
myself to be a victim of someone's malevolence when there is no clear evidence
of it and, conversely, I may imagine myself to be the recipient of someone's
benevolence when benevolence was the last thing on his/her mind. I may have a mistaken notion as to how a
certain foreign word should be pronounced and, conversely, I may think I am
wrong to pronounce a certain foreign word the way I do when, in reality, I am
pronouncing it correctly. I may
accentuate a word one way which should really be accentuated another way and,
by contrast, I may find myself criticizing someone for accentuating a word
differently from how I believe it should be accentuated when, in point of fact,
he is accentuating it correctly and I am simply deluded. I may think it is easier to get published in
this country than in fact it is and, conversely, I may imagine publishers to be
more unwilling to publish certain types of books than in fact they are. I may think I am spelling a certain word
correctly when, in reality, I have spelt it incorrectly, and so on.... I
suppose the list could continue to flourish for some time, were
I seriously to set about confessing to all of my potential or possible
illusions! Yet these tendencies are
often dependent upon the nature of the mood one is in at any given time, the
particular context in which one lives, that is to say whether alone or in
company, the psychic changes one undergoes, the state of one's health, the
nature of one's daily pursuits, and one's powers of analysis and introspection,
so it is quite impossible to ever entirely master them, to know them for
illusions and then foolishly strive to eradicate them ... doubtless under
pressure of another illusion. But we all
suffer throughout life from our illusions, just as we likewise suffer from our
truths, and whether our 'truths' are sometimes illusions or our 'illusions'
sometimes truths, there is no altering that fact. If you could get rid of all your illusions,
you would quickly lose all or most of your truths. So consider yourself fortunate that you
can't!
STUDENT:
Therefore people are wrong to consider themselves imperfect because of their
faults or hypothetical faults, such as illusions, stupidities, fears, doubts,
and superficialities?
PHILOSOPHER:
They are philosophically wrong to consider themselves spiritually imperfect on
account of the intermittent prevalence of such negative attributes, because these
attributes aren't isolated obstacles to human perfection but the very things
which guarantee the intermittent prevalence of one's positive
attributes - namely truth, cleverness, hope, certainty, profundity, etc. - and
thus constitute an overall part of one's psychic integrity. Whenever you hear a so-called well-educated
or enlightened person bemoaning the apparent fact that none of us is perfect,
you should dismiss him as a deluded ignoramus, since he is undoubtedly ignorant
of our spiritual integrity. In general,
a man is spiritually perfect and, to varying extents, physically
imperfect. If you have faults, in the
proper sense of that term, they are fundamentally physical. But they are not superfluous, since, by their
existence, they guarantee our spiritual perfection.
STUDENT:
Because body and spirit are antithetical, the one is imperfect and the other
perfect! To be sure, you are no sham
teacher, but a great enlightener!
PHILOSOPHER:
Personally, I don't think too highly of the sycophantic arts, since I have my
own negative attributes to live with, including stupidity, superficiality,
illusion, etc. When a man comes to
realize his dualistic perfection, he also comes to accept his darker side, or
shadow-self, and this side duly informs him that his perfection will lead him
to make mistakes, tell unconscious lies, mislead people, and commit much folly
over the years. So be on your guard
against me, my young friend! I have taught
you to be cautious of philosophers, to regard them as men rather than gods. Perfect but not infallible - a paradox if
ever there was one!
STUDENT:
You remind me of Nietzsche when you speak like that.
PHILOSOPHER:
To be sure, Nietzsche was a great teacher, a tremendous intellect, a courageous
spirit, and a philosophical revolutionary.
But he was no more infallible than you or I or anyone else. There are many mistaken assumptions and
contentions in Nietzsche's works, and you would certainly be led astray if you
allowed yourself to be fooled by them.
In a sense, he was as perfect a spirit, prior to his collapse, as ever
lived, but a great spirit and, like all such spirits, capable of propagating
worse mistakes than lesser men. Do you
disbelieve me, you who are still a prey to the lure of great philosophers and
not yet your own philosopher?
STUDENT:
No, I don't disbelieve you. Though I find it rather difficult, in view of my admiration for
Nietzsche's immense philosophical achievements, to be overly strict with myself
here. But you are doubtless
correct to advocate a certain amount of caution, since Nietzsche's writings
have been shamefully exploited and corrupted, to the ultimate detriment of
European man. One need only think of the
Nazis.
PHILOSOPHER:
To be sure, Nietzsche may have been of some use to them in terms of stirring-up
a glorification of war and struggle. But
as for such concomitant factors as the 'Master Race' ethos, anti-Semitism,
imperialism, occultism, state worship, and the systematic undermining of
advanced culture, it is altogether doubtful that the Nazis could have derived
much encouragement from him at all!
Didn't Nietzsche declare himself to be an enemy of the Germans
time-and-time again? Certainly, he was
an enemy of the German imperialism of his own day, the gradual ascendancy of
the Prussian-dominated Bismarckian state, with its
mounting preoccupation with industrialism, militarism, nationalism, politicism, etc., to the detriment of higher culture. It would indeed be a grave mistake to assume
that Nietzsche had a profound influence on the policies of Nazi
STUDENT:
And weren't such writers as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, John Cowper Powys, Knut Hamsun, Henry Miller,
Hermann Hesse, and W.B. Yeats also deeply influenced
by him?
PHILOSOPHER:
So I believe, though I would hesitate to regard them as socialists. For the most part, they were much too
preoccupied with individual, spiritual, moral, and literary values to justify
any such political description. However,
it often happens that an author receives a label for a particular work or
stance which he subsequently grows out of, only to discover that he is still
popularly associated with it in later years.
STUDENT: An
unpleasant discovery, I shouldn't wonder.
PHILOSOPHER:
Indeed! Although every
occupation has its drawbacks, including the literary one. An author acquires a reputation, let us say,
for a given philosophical contention, like the interdependence of opposites,
and then a fair proportion of the reading public continue to identify him with
it even after he has modified or outgrown it some years later. You write something which seems quite
credible to you at the time, only to look back on it with horror or regret, at
a later date, that you could have committed such a flawed idea to paper in the
first place.
STUDENT:
Presumably because you have evolved in the interim and acquired a deeper or
truer perspective in consequence?
PHILOSOPHER:
Precisely! Because you have 'woken up'
to the fact that you were previously asleep to something you blandly took for
granted, and have accordingly become disillusioned with it. We are probably asleep together now, because
we allow ourselves free play in this discussion and aren't unduly concerned by
the likelihood that such an event may cause us a degree of mutual embarrassment
or even bewilderment in the future.
Perhaps, by then, you will be through with the whole idea of
interviewing philosophers and I shall be through with the idea of allowing
myself to be imposed upon in such a way.
Maybe you will have stopped reading philosophy and I shall have stopped
writing or speaking it. We will both
have 'woken up' to new possibilities and, having changed, we shall then be in a
position to return to sleep again.
STUDENT:
You amuse me.
PHILOSOPHER:
I am glad to hear it, since philosophy has too often been an extremely glum
affair, like the philosophers themselves.
There have been too many weeping philosophers, too many stoics,
ascetics, cynics, and pessimists of one kind or another since the dawn of
philosophy. But we don't need another Heraclitus now, nor another Marcus Aurelius, Epictitus, Pascal, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Spengler, Sartre, or what have you! God knows, Nietzsche was right, for all his
faults, to be exuberant! At least he
doesn't bore one. Philosophy requires a
certain amount of humour and ironic self-detachment now more than ever. In fact, I think Plutarch, Montaigne, Emerson, Carlyle, Nietzsche, John Cowper Powys,
Bertrand Russell, and Albert Camus are the kinds of
philosophers the intellectual world has greater need of, if it isn't to sink
further under the insupportable burden of depressing philosophy!
STUDENT:
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why philosophy is generally so little read
these days?
PHILOSOPHER:
You may be right, though I rather think that the complexity, obscurity,
obfuscation, compartmentalization, and esotericism of so much of it is really
more to blame for this lamentable state-of-affairs than the absence of
humour. Like poetry, philosophy has
tended to be a minority and even an elitist pursuit, which, in a way, is rather
a regrettable situation. But if society
requires people to stand over machines in a factory all day, to dig trenches in
the road, punch holes in tickets, sweep the streets, deliver milk, file
letters, or put peas into cans, then you can't reasonably expect them to show
much interest in the works of Locke, Kant, Hume, Berkeley, Heidegger, Bergson, or Jaspers in the evening. What is good for one man, remember, isn't
necessarily good for another! We may
live in the age of 'the herd', the great democratic collectivity,
but, without it, there would be no higher culture at all. Noble and plebeian - an indispensable
antithesis! To be sure, anyone who
condemns 'the herd' unwittingly condemns himself as one who has transcended it,
been fostered on its shoulders, and thereby exists, in his relatively noble
integrity, because of it, like a flower growing from the earth. There are no superfluous men because,
irrespective of what Nietzsche may have had to say on the subject, all men have
a task relative to their capabilities and, as such, they slot into the
framework of society as a whole.
Nietzsche probably knew this as well as anybody, deep down, but that didn't
prevent an irrational prejudice from obscuring the light of truth from time to
time. For man, remember, is not
a reasonable creature; he is only capable of reason!
STUDENT: So
if you are into the notion of superfluous men in consequence of having read
books like Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
there is every chance that you have been led astray by one of Nietzsche's
fallacies concerning 'the many-too-many'.
PHILOSOPHER:
Yes, but don't forget, my good friend, that fallacies of whatever sort
contribute, fundamentally, to our overall perfection as human beings. We may disagree with Nietzsche on a variety
of issues, we may even be able to prove him wrong, but that doesn't give us the
right to condemn him out-of-hand, since to do so would be to turn our backs on the
metaphysical legitimacy of fallacious reasoning and to seek the impossible -
namely, the faultlessly lopsided. This
is what I have to teach you, this is what I want you to understand. No longer imagine that a philosopher has
failed for not having sufficiently adhered to reason, truth, goodness,
etc. He has not failed! No longer imagine that a philosopher is
imperfect for having committed a given number of unintentional fallacies or
sophistries to paper. He is not
imperfect! If the fallacy lies anywhere,
it lies with you for expecting the impossible - an illusionless
truth, all truth, and nothing but the truth, when you are just as incapable of
achieving that as anyone else.
Naturally, your mistaken viewpoint is just as legitimate, in the final
analysis, as the fallacious contentions of the philosopher under scrutiny. For how can I not expect you to be as
spiritually perfect as him, and thus entitled to your
fallacies? But perhaps, in assimilating
all this information, you will allow your foolishness, ignorance, malice,
superficiality, etc., free play elsewhere, becoming wiser on this issue and
simultaneously less wise or even more foolish on certain other issues? That, however, is something about which I
cannot be absolutely certain. But if you
have really understood what I have just said, then it isn't altogether
impossible. After all, you have all the
makings of a 'perfect' philosopher!
