I caught onto The Elegance of the Hedgehog a little late, after all the hype and hullabaloo had died down. Apparently, it was a best-seller in France having sold over a million copies there. But, I guess there's always some good in coming to something after all the popularity and noise has faded. For the uninitiated, there are really huge clumps of philosophical, musical, manga and literary references in this novel so if you're unfamiliar with her references, it may get a little tiring at times. At some points, the novel also reads more like an extended collection of essays than a story with a unified plot. But, the end was heartbreakingly bittersweet that will move you to a little bit of tears :) All in all, it was a wonderful read.
Still, I think one of the funniest parts was her observation on the uses and purposes of philosophy. Sometimes during LTP, I also felt like that haha. The following is an extract from the book on the philosophies of Kant and Husserl:
"Which brings us to the second question: what do we know of the world?
I dealists like Kant have an answer to this question. What do they answer? They answer: not a great deal. Transcendental idealism holds that we can know only that which appears to our consciousness can say about it because of what it has perceived - and nothing else.
Let us take an example, at random: a sweet cat, by the name of Leo. Why? Because I find it easier with a cat. And let me ask you: how can you be certain that it really is a cat and, likewise how can you even know what a cat is? A healthy reply would consist in emphasising the fact that your perception of the animal, complemented by a few conceptual and linguistic mechanisms, has enabled you to constitute your knowledge.
But the response of the transcendental idealist would be to illustrate how impossible it is to know whether what we perceive and conceive of as a cat […] It may well be that my cat - at present I perceive him as an obese quadrupled with quivering whiskers and I have filed him away in my mind in a drawer labelled "cat" - is in actual fact, and in his very essence, a blob of green sticky stuff that does not meow.
[…] But there is an even more depressing theory than that one, a theory that offers a prospect even more depressing than that of innocently caressing a lump of green drool of dropping our toast every morning into a pustular abyss we had mistaken for a toaster.
[…] This is the idealism of Edward Husserl… According to Husserl's theory, all that exists is the perception of the cat. And the cat itself? Well, we can just do without it. Bye-bye kitty. Who needs a cat? What cat? Henceforth, philosophy will claim the right to wallow exclusively in the wickedness of pure mind. The world in an inaccessible reality and any effort to know it is futile. What do we know of the world? Nothing. As all knowledge is merely reflective consciousness exploring its own self, the world, therefore, can merrily go to the devil.
This is phenomenology: the “science of that which appears to our consciousness.” How does a phenomenologist spend his day? He gets up, fully conscious as he takes his shower that he is merely soaping a body whose existence has no foundation, then he wolfs down a few slices of toast and jam that have been nihilized, slips on some clothes that are the equivalent of an empty set of parentheses, heads for his office, and then snatches up a cat.
[…]
But enough of phenomenology: it is nothing more than the solitary, endless monologue of consciousness, a hardcore autism that no real cat would ever importune."
Haha, at first read, I thought this brought out some of my gripes with philosophy pretty well. I like it, it's a matter of analysing who we are, but sometimes it goes too far, and it loses any real connection to what happens in real life.
But then I was led to a blog post discussing the relevance of this novel to the religious experience which kinda linked to a conversation I had with a friend about another book, Justice for Hedgehogs by Dworkin. Some background is necessary: If you look at the title, it is derived from an Isaiah Berlin essay which discusses the difference between foxes and hedgehogs. Basically, it is about two ways of seeing or knowing the world. Either you are a fox who draws on a wide variety of experiences or you a hedgehog who sees it through one defining idea.
How this relates to the religious experience is in the difference between God and humans and I thought he described the analogy really poetically. According to him:
Berlin took the name of his book from the Greek poet Archilochus’ statement, “The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” [...]
My intention is not to go into Berlin’s text, but Archilochus’ phrase brings to mind two slightly different ways of knowing than Berlin discusses: simple apprehension and discursive knowledge. According to Aquinas, spirits (that is, angels) as well as God, know by simple apprehension. When they know an object, they grasp its essence of the object, its quiddity or “whatness” along with all of its accidents in one single act of knowing. Human beings, a hylomorphic unity of body and soul, do not have the power of simple apprehension. Humans know by discursive reasoning. When a human apprehends an object, it is only partial, and perfect knowledge is gained only by synthesis or syllogizing.Accordingly, spirits are the hedgehog who “know only one thing”; humans are the foxes who “know many little things.”
The reason this is important as relates to the book is that both Renee and Poloma are illustrations of discursive reasoning at work. Both proceed from what is known to what is not known. What is known is the stirring of the heart at the story of Levin and Kitty, the fall of a rosebud on the table, the shiver of delight at the sound of Mozart, the repugnance of phenomenology and nominalism, and the allure of Japan. What is unknown is love, truth, and beauty.
Both Renee and Paloma reason discursively to arrive at the knowledge of love, the knowledge of beauty. Human beings cannot grasp the essence of love or beauty in an instant; we must arrive at such knowledge by experience, by piecing together bits of what we know over time, imperfectly and slowly, but nevertheless, humanly. Human beings are foxes. But we are foxes capable of becoming hedgehogs.The Elegance of the Hedgehog unintentionally provides an excellent theological anthropology. Human beings are somewhere between earth and heaven, body and spirit. They are trapped in time and yet desire eternity. They are limited and yet desire transcendence. They know imperfectly and yet long for perfect knowledge."
[Emphasis mine]
I guess the whole point of this was two-fold. One, the novel wasn't perfect but it was amazing at certain parts and I think it's worth a read. Two, I think I was trying to get at why people I speak to can be in a dilemma like the one described above. To understand why we sometimes get the feeling that there needs to be a reason to life. Of course, everyone reaches their own conclusion but I like how we hold out hope for there to be an ending point, a point where we can reach a perfect understanding that persists for eternity. A gift of understanding that does not require analytical judgement or reasoning that proceeds from either cause or effect.
Practically speaking, for the two atheist characters in the novel, the pursuit of beauty in nature was the closest they could come to an understanding of God. For you then, what is your understanding of God?
I caught onto The Elegance of the Hedgehog a little late, after all the hype and hullabaloo had died down. Apparently, it was a best-seller in France having sold over a million copies there. But, I guess there's always some good in coming to something after all the popularity and noise has faded. For the uninitiated, there are really huge clumps of philosophical, musical, manga and literary references in this novel so if you're unfamiliar with her references, it may get a little tiring at times. At some points, the novel also reads more like an extended collection of essays than a story with a unified plot. But, the end was heartbreakingly bittersweet that will move you to a little bit of tears :) All in all, it was a wonderful read.
Still, I think one of the funniest parts was her observation on the uses and purposes of philosophy. Sometimes during LTP, I also felt like that haha. The following is an extract from the book on the philosophies of Kant and Husserl:
"Which brings us to the second question: what do we know of the world?
I dealists like Kant have an answer to this question. What do they answer? They answer: not a great deal. Transcendental idealism holds that we can know only that which appears to our consciousness can say about it because of what it has perceived - and nothing else.
Let us take an example, at random: a sweet cat, by the name of Leo. Why? Because I find it easier with a cat. And let me ask you: how can you be certain that it really is a cat and, likewise how can you even know what a cat is? A healthy reply would consist in emphasising the fact that your perception of the animal, complemented by a few conceptual and linguistic mechanisms, has enabled you to constitute your knowledge.
But the response of the transcendental idealist would be to illustrate how impossible it is to know whether what we perceive and conceive of as a cat […] It may well be that my cat - at present I perceive him as an obese quadrupled with quivering whiskers and I have filed him away in my mind in a drawer labelled "cat" - is in actual fact, and in his very essence, a blob of green sticky stuff that does not meow.
[…] But there is an even more depressing theory than that one, a theory that offers a prospect even more depressing than that of innocently caressing a lump of green drool of dropping our toast every morning into a pustular abyss we had mistaken for a toaster.
[…] This is the idealism of Edward Husserl… According to Husserl's theory, all that exists is the perception of the cat. And the cat itself? Well, we can just do without it. Bye-bye kitty. Who needs a cat? What cat? Henceforth, philosophy will claim the right to wallow exclusively in the wickedness of pure mind. The world in an inaccessible reality and any effort to know it is futile. What do we know of the world? Nothing. As all knowledge is merely reflective consciousness exploring its own self, the world, therefore, can merrily go to the devil.
This is phenomenology: the “science of that which appears to our consciousness.” How does a phenomenologist spend his day? He gets up, fully conscious as he takes his shower that he is merely soaping a body whose existence has no foundation, then he wolfs down a few slices of toast and jam that have been nihilized, slips on some clothes that are the equivalent of an empty set of parentheses, heads for his office, and then snatches up a cat.
[…]
But enough of phenomenology: it is nothing more than the solitary, endless monologue of consciousness, a hardcore autism that no real cat would ever importune."
Haha, at first read, I thought this brought out some of my gripes with philosophy pretty well. I like it, it's a matter of analysing who we are, but sometimes it goes too far, and it loses any real connection to what happens in real life.
But then I was led to a blog post discussing the relevance of this novel to the religious experience which kinda linked to a conversation I had with a friend about another book, Justice for Hedgehogs by Dworkin. Some background is necessary: If you look at the title, it is derived from an Isaiah Berlin essay which discusses the difference between foxes and hedgehogs. Basically, it is about two ways of seeing or knowing the world. Either you are a fox who draws on a wide variety of experiences or you a hedgehog who sees it through one defining idea.
How this relates to the religious experience is in the difference between God and humans and I thought he described the analogy really poetically. According to him:
Berlin took the name of his book from the Greek poet Archilochus’ statement, “The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” [...]
My intention is not to go into Berlin’s text, but Archilochus’ phrase brings to mind two slightly different ways of knowing than Berlin discusses: simple apprehension and discursive knowledge. According to Aquinas, spirits (that is, angels) as well as God, know by simple apprehension. When they know an object, they grasp its essence of the object, its quiddity or “whatness” along with all of its accidents in one single act of knowing. Human beings, a hylomorphic unity of body and soul, do not have the power of simple apprehension. Humans know by discursive reasoning. When a human apprehends an object, it is only partial, and perfect knowledge is gained only by synthesis or syllogizing.Accordingly, spirits are the hedgehog who “know only one thing”; humans are the foxes who “know many little things.”
The reason this is important as relates to the book is that both Renee and Poloma are illustrations of discursive reasoning at work. Both proceed from what is known to what is not known. What is known is the stirring of the heart at the story of Levin and Kitty, the fall of a rosebud on the table, the shiver of delight at the sound of Mozart, the repugnance of phenomenology and nominalism, and the allure of Japan. What is unknown is love, truth, and beauty.
Both Renee and Paloma reason discursively to arrive at the knowledge of love, the knowledge of beauty. Human beings cannot grasp the essence of love or beauty in an instant; we must arrive at such knowledge by experience, by piecing together bits of what we know over time, imperfectly and slowly, but nevertheless, humanly. Human beings are foxes. But we are foxes capable of becoming hedgehogs.The Elegance of the Hedgehog unintentionally provides an excellent theological anthropology. Human beings are somewhere between earth and heaven, body and spirit. They are trapped in time and yet desire eternity. They are limited and yet desire transcendence. They know imperfectly and yet long for perfect knowledge."
[Emphasis mine]
I guess the whole point of this was two-fold. One, the novel wasn't perfect but it was amazing at certain parts and I think it's worth a read. Two, I think I was trying to get at why people I speak to can be in a dilemma like the one described above. To understand why we sometimes get the feeling that there needs to be a reason to life. Of course, everyone reaches their own conclusion but I like how we hold out hope for there to be an ending point, a point where we can reach a perfect understanding that persists for eternity. A gift of understanding that does not require analytical judgement or reasoning that proceeds from either cause or effect.
Practically speaking, for the two atheist characters in the novel, the pursuit of beauty in nature was the closest they could come to an understanding of God. For you then, what is your understanding of God?
