Paradox, Meno, Perspective, Poetry

[apolliana]

This post is about the phenomenology of inquiry. In a previous post, I discussed the thought, to be found from Plato to Wittgenstein, that what the philosopher seeks is something so close to her she cannot see it. Consider also a line from my 3rd favorite poet: "things seen up close enlarge, then disappear" (Gjertrud Schnackenburg, "Snow Melting").

These thoughts fit well with the idea of knowledge-as-recollection of something one already knew, from the Meno, and with Meno's paradox: how can we seek what we do not already know? Socrates's answer to this question is, per recollection, that we seek what we did already know, but didn't know that we knew.

One way this might be the case is that what we seek is a feature of the way the world is represented to us (Kant), rather than the world itself--so it does not seem to us like an object. Another is for what we seek to be the natures of our concepts, however we think those are marked out (actual, complex patterns of word usage--Wittgenstein, or more abstract mental representations). That's why Kant compared his approach to explaining to experience to the Copernican revolution: it changed the focus of the investigation from external to internal, from what presents itself to us in experience to the way it is so presented.

A corollary to the idea that what the philosopher seeks is somehow too near to present itself to her as an object or an answer normally would is that when one does find whatever it is one was searching for, it may not seem like an answer to the question; the perspective of the inquirer shifts radically between question and answer, and the two do not meet each other. This is more evident in life than in philosophy; but it's present in philosophy too--throughout, in small quantities.

(One way to divide up philosophers is according to what attitude they take towards the paradoxical question that is only partly met with some answer or other:. Possible deflationary viewpoints are: hold that it's meaningless, the result of what Kant calls transcendental illusion, or simply ill-informed. And of course according to how successfully they think these questions can be addressed.)

Some lovely expressions of the thought that by the time you reach the answer, it's not clear that it's the kind of answer one expected, or that it fits the initial question appear in Eliot's Four Quartets--themselves extended meditations on paradox, that of 'reconciling time with timelessness.' (Also the most perfect work of any art-form in existence, to me; I keep them in my nightstand always.) Here are some passages.

"And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfillment" ("Little Gidding," 31-6).

Or,

"The moments of happiness--not the sense of well-being,
Fruition, fulfillment, security or affection,
Or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination--
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach to the meaning restores the experience
In a different form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness" ("The Dry Salvages" 89-96).

Or,

"Time is no healer: the patient is no longer here....
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus" ("" 131-140).

In my freshman year of high school, shortly before I read these, I came to the conclusion that most paradoxes were only paradoxical because the element of time--through which one thing can change into its opposite--is removed. Restore it, and the paradox vanishes. This is really only a statement of the law of noncontradiction: nothing is both A and not-A at the same time and in the same respect. But at different times, or in different respects, it might have the property of being A and then that of being not-A. This is not true of the most famous philosophical paradoxes, however; nothing so obvious explains how something comes from nothing, or how free will is compatible with determinism. But the failure-of-fit between question and solution often does have an intervening process. In life, this is a change in oneself of some kind (one's beliefs? presuppositions? desires?). In philosophical inquiry, one follows along some path of analysis, but then finds that the original question has vanished, or changed, or not been done justice to; or perhaps one thinks it was no longer a good question to have asked. Both involve changes in things that are not the inquirer's focus, so she does not notice them; they're in her mindset, or her method of inquiry. It's important to be aware of this subtle sleight-of-hand when doing philosophy. In its own way, I think it's the most important thing philosophy has to teach.

Lest I seem unphilosophical by quoting a poem, the Four Quartets also contain a description of poetic practice which could equally apply to philosophy:

"and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.
And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate--but there is no competition--
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps nether gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business"
("East Coker" 172-189).

I think Socrates, the Socrates of the Meno, would agree.