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?
"Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcomes of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house -- the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture -- must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story".
//Arundhati Roy; The God of Small Things
things can change in a very short period of time. in the space of a few days, a four year relationship can be given up and made into nothing. the chain of a thought broken, the fragment of a love story shattered. it's hard to believe that just one term ago, they were practically glued together at the hip, hanging out in meetings together and collecting tickets to help complete each other's projects.
love is such a strange, slippery thing.
why didn't they teach us that in school? how can we have so many divergent answers to a question as simple as happiness? shouldn't the measure of a good man be like a precedent fact, where there is space for discretion and subjective discernment but in the end, in the end, open to objective ascertainment of that fact? shouldn't we be taught how to open our eyes to hold on to what we have been blessed with and not give it up for those who pass us by? shouldn't the people who have been the most faithful spared the brunt of the hurt and the pain?
perhaps, perhaps Jo is right. who are we to say anything when we're not in the situation? afterall, things can change in a day and anything can happen to anyone, it's best to be prepared.
"Love is not a fight, but it is worth fighting for." //gotwisdom
the weather lately has been so darn hot, it's unbelievable lah. even while I was packing my room, I was perspring like crazy haha, I had to switch on all the fans in every room so that it was cool enough when I went in. haha, but so far haven't used the aircon yet, I'm like used to life without the aircon already.
went to causeway point for the first time yesterday while waiting for chris to get off work. and ohmytian, its like so different from what I've heard can. haha, I've been tricked la! yensun keeps telling me that woodlands is a very ulu place and nobody goes there blah blah that's why it's called woodlands etc. so i was expecting the mrt station to be very deserted and quiet. but when I got off, it was SUPER CROWDED! there were like so many people! and the mall was pretty happening, lots of students hanging out there haha.
ya so I should hang out more in the north, it looks more happening than the east haha.
had a simple dinner because he was rushing home to watch american idol haha, personally I can't wait for harper's island on sunday! anyway, watched backstreet boys live in orlando afterwards haha. backstreet boys reminds me of when Huili and I were young and we did all sorts of crazy stuff together like bathing in ice water on hot days haha.
and managed to have a good talk about lots of stuff that was on my mind actually.
it's like when you play a computer game. unless you miss a shot or you shoot some innocent passerby, you're in control of your lives. so what other people say, think or do won't kill you, but you take a hit anyway. but it's okay, we crash, we burn, we hurt some then we get up again.
"If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to the question. If you don’t know anyone, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people don’t know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first."
//No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
i know all the things that people tell me.
i know that God has a plan for everyone. i know that pain and suffering is part of the reason why this world is fallen. i know that if we pray persistently, He has the power to heal.
i know that if we pray and believe, our actions and our words should reflect that faith.
yet, when i see her suffer, there is a twisting in my heart that i cannot explain. and it hurts, because i can't do anything to help. and i cannot explain to myself, why sometimes it is people who are faithful that suffer this way. i suppose,it's part of growing up. the people who grew me up are getting on in years and they are no longer the healthy people i remember. it's just, i know we shouldn't be discouraged, but it's so hard sometimes when i see the pills she has to take before meals (7 x 3 times a day!), the injections to test the sugar-level in the blood (2!) and the painful process of changing bandages and cleaning the wounds.
my pastor once asked, what do you have to do before you become a man of faith? he said, faith is not seen by one great act of faith. it is accumulated in the times when the going gets tough and the tough get praying. little by little, before you know it, you become a man of faith.
i'm not even anywhere near being a person of faith. but, i'm not giving up now.
i lift my eyes unto the hills, where does my help come from?
my help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
though my heart is torn, i'll praise you in this storm.
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?
"Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcomes of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house -- the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture -- must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story".
//Arundhati Roy; The God of Small Things
things can change in a very short period of time. in the space of a few days, a four year relationship can be given up and made into nothing. the chain of a thought broken, the fragment of a love story shattered. it's hard to believe that just one term ago, they were practically glued together at the hip, hanging out in meetings together and collecting tickets to help complete each other's projects.
love is such a strange, slippery thing.
why didn't they teach us that in school? how can we have so many divergent answers to a question as simple as happiness? shouldn't the measure of a good man be like a precedent fact, where there is space for discretion and subjective discernment but in the end, in the end, open to objective ascertainment of that fact? shouldn't we be taught how to open our eyes to hold on to what we have been blessed with and not give it up for those who pass us by? shouldn't the people who have been the most faithful spared the brunt of the hurt and the pain?
perhaps, perhaps Jo is right. who are we to say anything when we're not in the situation? afterall, things can change in a day and anything can happen to anyone, it's best to be prepared.
"Love is not a fight, but it is worth fighting for." //gotwisdom
the weather lately has been so darn hot, it's unbelievable lah. even while I was packing my room, I was perspring like crazy haha, I had to switch on all the fans in every room so that it was cool enough when I went in. haha, but so far haven't used the aircon yet, I'm like used to life without the aircon already.
went to causeway point for the first time yesterday while waiting for chris to get off work. and ohmytian, its like so different from what I've heard can. haha, I've been tricked la! yensun keeps telling me that woodlands is a very ulu place and nobody goes there blah blah that's why it's called woodlands etc. so i was expecting the mrt station to be very deserted and quiet. but when I got off, it was SUPER CROWDED! there were like so many people! and the mall was pretty happening, lots of students hanging out there haha.
ya so I should hang out more in the north, it looks more happening than the east haha.
had a simple dinner because he was rushing home to watch american idol haha, personally I can't wait for harper's island on sunday! anyway, watched backstreet boys live in orlando afterwards haha. backstreet boys reminds me of when Huili and I were young and we did all sorts of crazy stuff together like bathing in ice water on hot days haha.
and managed to have a good talk about lots of stuff that was on my mind actually.
it's like when you play a computer game. unless you miss a shot or you shoot some innocent passerby, you're in control of your lives. so what other people say, think or do won't kill you, but you take a hit anyway. but it's okay, we crash, we burn, we hurt some then we get up again.
"If you are sad, ask yourself why you are sad. Then pick up the phone and call someone and tell him or her the answer to the question. If you don’t know anyone, call the operator and tell him or her. Most people don’t know that the operator has to listen, it is a law. Also, the postman is not allowed to go inside your house, but you can talk to him on public property for up to four minutes or until he wants to go, whichever comes first."
//No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
i know all the things that people tell me.
i know that God has a plan for everyone. i know that pain and suffering is part of the reason why this world is fallen. i know that if we pray persistently, He has the power to heal.
i know that if we pray and believe, our actions and our words should reflect that faith.
yet, when i see her suffer, there is a twisting in my heart that i cannot explain. and it hurts, because i can't do anything to help. and i cannot explain to myself, why sometimes it is people who are faithful that suffer this way. i suppose,it's part of growing up. the people who grew me up are getting on in years and they are no longer the healthy people i remember. it's just, i know we shouldn't be discouraged, but it's so hard sometimes when i see the pills she has to take before meals (7 x 3 times a day!), the injections to test the sugar-level in the blood (2!) and the painful process of changing bandages and cleaning the wounds.
my pastor once asked, what do you have to do before you become a man of faith? he said, faith is not seen by one great act of faith. it is accumulated in the times when the going gets tough and the tough get praying. little by little, before you know it, you become a man of faith.
i'm not even anywhere near being a person of faith. but, i'm not giving up now.
i lift my eyes unto the hills, where does my help come from?
my help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
though my heart is torn, i'll praise you in this storm.
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