PYTHAGORAS, MEAT-AVOIDANCE, DEATH, TRUTH

Pythagoras, all high schoolers know, was a mathematician.  He was also, they might not know, the leader of a religious cult, and a vegetarian. Math/religion/vegetarianism--what’s the link?

Most of what we know of Pythagoras comes from later lore.  One strand in those stories: a clear line is drawn between mind and body.  Math, religion, avoidance of meat, fall on the side of mind.

A life purified of bodily entanglements would,  so fans of Pythagoras claim, take up the math/ religion/ vegetarian package. In general, the combination emphasized life over death.  Mathematics dealt with the unchanging and everlasting. Religion promised eternal life (reincarnation for Pythagoreans). Vegetarianism avoided the killing associated with carnivorism.

The last point is well-disguised for those of us who are meat-eating urban dwellers.  In one of her cookbooks

Maya Angelou describes a different, rural, setting. There “after the first frost,” “men killed the hogs and cows selected for slaughter.” It was impossible, in that setting, to avoid the key preliminary to meat eating: kill something.  Avoidance of what is actually the case is to falsify. To falsify, in turn, means setting truth aside.

The connection between truth and inclusive attentiveness was highlighted by the ancient Greek word for truth, aletheia.  It meant, as Martin Heidegger has reminded us, “un-forgetting.”  Lethe was the river of forgetfulness, the river through which humans passed in their post-death return to another life. Extending the meaning of un-forgetting, philosophers stressed that “truth” meant paying attention to what is fully the case. Leaving out details, “forgetting” was what identified falsehood.  Un-forgetting, truthfulness, as the fulness of what is actual, meant inclusive attentiveness.

This is not as easy as it sounds.  Attention can’t help but be selective and partial.  In addition, selective attentiveness (“willful blindness” it is often called) can serve to help humans avoid responsibility.

With regard to food, one basic occlusion for urban dwellers is the meat-death connection. The grocery store is a grand celebration of lethe, forgetfulness.  As is often

remarked, all that grocery store customers get to see are neatly wrapped packages. This fosters the creation of "good," i.e. unthinking, consumers. It does not make for a good grasp of truth as aletheia. Much of what is real continues to be ignored and forgotten.

Occluding the meat-death link does not just take place in grocery stores. On the more expensive side of things, there’s another venue for occlusion: restaurants in which food on the plate has little or no resemblance to the original source.  Often this is accomplished in the guise of bringing “artistry” to food preparation. Within the Pythagorean framework, one which succumbs to the tug of elevating oneself above physiology, “art” becomes the province of a refined, creative realm. Wassily Kandinsky explicitly made the connection in his

defense of the “spiritual” in art.  His canvases, waves of colors, are removed from the push and pull, physical and material world of ordinary experience.  

Food presents a problem for  whoever would identify “art” with those higher things in life. Take a turkey on the Thanksgiving table.  There is plenty there to remind (aletheia) eaters of the living bird that once was. It is in

fancy restaurants, especially those aspiring to aesthetic creativity that the “lethic” temptation remains strong. A piece of meat or fish may be so combined with other ingredients that the plate resembles a modern art canvas.  One old-fashioned critic complained about a famous Spanish chef this way: “This isn’t food.  It’s got nothing to do with food, with the earth, with Spain, with what his grandmothers cooked.”

To be “food,” this critic is arguing, the “lethic” temptation must be avoided.  Aletheia, truth, must be allowed to manifest itself.  When it does, forgetfulness will be diminished, forgetfulness about the the earth, its plants and animals, along with the traditions of one’s ancestors, traditions, yes, that include awareness of death-dealing.

The “lethic’ temptation  encourages separation, veiling, opposition. Exclusion and occlusion dominate.   The “a-lethic’ dimension, on the other hand, encourages integrationist awareness. For the latter, there is even room for a proper kind of meat eating.  

Eat/Die2

Robert Indiana’s Diptych highlights two words Eat and Die.  “Eat,” as we saw in the previous blog, is complicated. Yes, we eat in order to stay alive, but human eating tells us something about what it means to be fully human.

Something similar occurs with “die.”  Martin Heidegger, once again, leads the way.  He suggests that animals “perish” whereas humans “die.” Conscious awareness marks the difference.  Heidegger gets all worked up about this, referring to human life as Sein-zum-tode “being unto death.” On one level the phrase is a truism: we live in the awareness of our mortality.  As a result, prioritization about how to spend our limited span is forced upon us. At its best, it encourages  a more “authentic” existence.

So far so good, but there are limitations.

First, the “being-unto-death” focus is too individualistic.  Fastening on concern about my individual death ignores an important aspect of existence: sorrow and

grief. Grief at the death of others is often the earliest confrontation with mortality.  The experience of grief moves us away from the isolated subject facing his (this is the pronoun Heidegger would have preferred) own death. Grief means we have loved. The love/grief awareness, in turn, reveals something important about our cares, concerns and patterns of significance. Death experienced as grief diverts attention from the atomized subject and its authenticity. It emphasizes, rather, worthiness of a life lived in relation with others.

Second, we are not just “beings-unto-death.”  Our physiologies signal a pattern. Fully articulated, it’s a pattern of birth, puberty (because we do not live forever),

birth of others, then death.  Even if we do not have children of our own, we are attuned to the birth/puberty/birth/death/ cycle.This is where eating, and the mother imagery from the previous blog, come again to the fore.  The gestating mother, the one who is food for the fetus, is about to do something very important, something inseparable from mortality, give birth to a new human being.

Isolating mortality from natality encourages insulated, self-directed, reflection on how to shape our life trajectories.  Admitting we are both “beings-unto-death” and “beings-unto-birth” encourages a more social set of concerns. It encourages us to reflect on the  kind of world we will leave behind for the offspring who will follow (whether we actually produced some or not).

Third, life-time should not be thought of as an unending sequence of instants. When time is envisioned as a line, it makes sense to envision life as possibly going on forever. This is what the 16th century philosopher Spinoza, did when he

asserted  that any finite entity strives to “persevere in its being.” Experience teaches a different lesson. Finite beings realize they are part of a finite cycle.

 

Time is every bit as much a cycle as it is a line. Perhaps, for lived experience, time is actually more periodic than linear. Even philosophers fascinated by an unending line recognize nature’s cycles of seasons and years. They realize how  the sun itself will, at some point, come to an end. Life-time is periodic, punctuated by  beginnings and an endings. For biological creatures, periodicity is marked by overlapping spans, with  newer generations always in the making.

Death may be untimely and thus appear as a dark-garbed, scythe-wielding assassin. But death itself is not opposed to life. It is a necessary constituent of any life-trajectory. Our path as organisms is to live a limited span, make a kind of mark, leave offspring and die.  Emphasizing only the impulse to live on, or thinking of death as a kind of enemy is, in an important sense, to deny our humanity. Contrary to Spinoza we should encourage finite beings to accept their finitude.

When we think mortality, grieving, and natality together, we can recognize how thoughtful reflection can move in a direction different from the existentialist emphasis on an”authentic” life. That

emphasis includes a few important elements: (a) Thinking mortality/grief/natality together encourages us to think in terms of “we” rather than “I.” (b) A fundamental concern moves from  “how shall I live authentically,” to “how shall we make a world for the next generation?” (c) Finally the mortality/grief/natality awareness encourages a shift in time-consciousness. We recognize ourselves as periodic beings, part of a particular span which will impact overlapping, subsequent spans. The emphasis is thus on generosity in terms of what we bequeath. Worthiness replaces authenticity.

Eat/Die. Both unavoidable. Both complicated. Both sources of philosophical reflection. The best reflection will hold them together. We are beings unto life and death. Isolating one from the other falsifies our condition and leads to faulty thinking.

FRANKENSTEIN: ABSTRACTION IS EVIL

One of the great scenes in Young Frankenstein is when the creature wanders into the home of a blind man (Gene Hackman at his best).  Blind man and Creature have lots in common: they

are different (blind in one case, large and ugly in the other); because they are different, they are lonely; because they are lonely, they need companionship.

“Companionship” literally means “bread with” another. As a story, Young Frankenstein emphasizes something earlier films missed. The creature is

unloved.  He has no one to break bread with, no companions. What he longs for is a stable, loving family life.

Such domestic felicity is, sadly, closed to the creature because he is so different.  What he most longs for is a companion, someone to share home and hearth, someone who, based on such sharing, will get to know him beyond the physical impressions at which others recoil.  Victor Frankenstein promises that he will put together another creature, this time a female, the much needed, much desired companion. Alas, Victor reneges on his promise.  The creature, betrayed and hurt, turns vengeful and a violent.

It all goes back to “bread together,” and to the awareness that comes from time spent in loving companionship.  The book of Genesis famously has Adam

“knowing” Eve, a kind of knowing that leads to pregnancy. This use of the term also indicates a kind of knowing that emerges from companionship, from spending a life together. It’s a term that suggests awareness of what another is like based on familiarity, on relationality. When we make a claim like "I know her/him really well," it's quite different from knowing that 3 plus 2 equals 5 or that water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius.

The sad aspect of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that no one takes the time to “know” the creature along the model of companionship.  The people with whom the creature interacts cannot get past his “otherness.” Instead of thinking and being thoughtful, they remain on the level of abstract, immediate sense perception.  What results is a truncated kind of awareness. The concrete, whole self is ignored. One aspect alone, ugliness, is highlighted

There is an important lesson here for philosophy. Abstraction, often touted by philosophers, is actually an ally of evil. Those who judge the creature based on  his looks are reacting abstractly, just as those who would judge by skin color alone, or gender, or religion.

The surprising lesson for philosophy is one that has been articulated by Alfred North Whitehead.  Philosophy is not the arena for abstractions. Rather, philosophy

should be the critic of abstractions.  Humans feel a strong tug in the the direction of abstracting, of simplifying, of separating, isolating, disconnecting.  Philosophy, tied to wisdom and to thoughtfulness, has a special role to play: it must provide a counterbalance.

The hard corollary: thinking and abstraction do not go together.   Logic and abstraction go together. Calculative rationality (planning in terms of fixed goals and the most efficient means to arrive at them) depends on abstraction.  “Thinking,” or being “thoughtful” is quite different. Indeed, abstraction is a hindrance to thinking and thoughtfulness. The latter’s mode of reflection results in a particular sort of claim, the “I know" that results from companionship.

Martin Heidegger made much of the link between “thinking” and “thanking.” Thinking (and its partner thoughtfulness) is a grateful response to our being in the world. It is not separated from affectivity. Its aim is full awareness about what is, an awareness not accessible to those who remain detached from what they are seeking to understand.

Thinking thus gives rise to a kind of concrete knowing, the one Latin calls cognoscere, French connaître, and German kennen. (As opposed to the more abstract scire, savoir, and wissen.)  This awareness, this companionship-based-getting-to-know, cannot happen when thinking and abstracting are confused.  Abstraction, specifically undertaken for specific purposes, plays an important role, especially in laboratory sciences.  In everyday life, though, the allure of abstraction must be resisted.

In Mary Shelley’s novel, only the blind man is thoughtful in regard to the creature. Everyone else succumbs to abstract perception.  Ugliness, size, and skin texture are all they pay attention to. Abstraction is plentiful. Thoughtfulness is rare.

Young Frankenstein may be a comedy, but its take on the creature’s story is revealing. The characters in Young Frankenstein live out the knowledge of

companionship in relation to the creature. Shelley’s novel depicts the sad state that results when abstract knowledge rather than companionship knowledge dominates.