Philosophy and the Loaded Gun

Gabriela de Mendonça Gomes 

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury writes, “Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”

Well, the final passage of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Scottish empiricist David Hume makes his targets abundantly clear.   He argues: 

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning containing quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. (E 12.34)

Hume, as any good modern philosopher must be when making her or his treatise, is the “well-read man” in the sense that his set of arguments on what we should see as true derives from and argues against those of his philosophical forefathers and contemporaries.  

Hume sets up two necessary and sufficient conditions for not committing a text to the flames: (1) whether the text holds abstract reasoning containing quantity or number; or  (2) whether it contains any experimental, or empirical, reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence.

Regarding that first criterion, it is simple to discern what would or would not constitute a valuable text—one that we ought not to let be engulfed in flames; that is, is it a text of mathematics or logic? Is it a text of pure demonstration?

Regarding the second, it appears rather straightforward as well.  Does the theory that a text discussing matters of fact and existence evolve from empirical principles? Is it a text of empirical demonstration?

Beyond these two categories lie speculative metaphysics and dogmatic theology––that is, Hume’s targets.  So, if a wandering reader roaming the stacks with her finger tips lovingly brushing against chalky spines finds, per chance, Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, Hume suggests she unnestle it from its snug shelf-spot and find the nearest fireplace.  Not to sit by, imagining herself as Descartes watching his wax melting and contemplating the nature of its extension, changability, and movability, but to commit to the blaring warmth of the flames and watch it decompose into violent ash.  The same goes for the Bible, or any other theological text.  Because those works espouse “nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

Perhaps Hume hoped that, in watching the licking flames, the watcher feels the “special pleasure [of seeing] things eaten, [of seeing] things blackened and changed,” that Fahrenheit’s protagonist feels in his job––at least until he realizes that, as Milton puts it in Areopagitica, “books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them as to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are.”  The change here, in our primary passage’s case, is paradigmatical, where what Hume sees as “sophistry and illusion” are literally and figuratively extinguished from the philosophical tradition and practice.  

The simultaneous dread of and desire for fiery destruction of books precedes Bradbury and Hume, however.  Indeed, when Virgil and Dante stumble upon the sixth circle of hell in the Inferno, Dante’s guide declares: “Here you will find heretics and followers of every cult and pagan sect, all buried together, burning in eternal fire.”  In this circle, the heretics, or mere preachers of non-catholic theology, are encased within flaming tombs or nailed to inverted burning crosses, where both punishments allude to the Catholic Church’s traditional sentence for these dissenters: burning at the stake.  

Hume and Dante do the same thing serving different Gods.  Dante, a stalwart Catholic, and Hume, a radical empiricist and skeptic, condemn each other to the flames as a sophist for the former and a heretic for the latter.  A humorous New Yorker comic might show them burning side by side, each surprised at his own plight.  All philosophical and religious writers––perhaps, in fact, all writers ever––attempt to reach Truth, or at least some kind of truth about existence, in their writing.  Neither Dante nor Hume leave much wiggle room when it comes to what can be accepted as truth.  

So where, if at all, does literary philosophy, like the work we do here at Book XI, fit into these schematics?  Is our endeavor here worthwhile?  Can it even be called philosophy?

Let’s leave Dante behind for a bit, as he ties us to Catholic doctrine, which, in its postulated theories, is severely dogmatic.  Hume’s empiricism, however, remains in question and argumentatively interesting because it ties us, when it comes to understanding truths and realities about matters of fact and existence, to direct observation.  Knowledge of something, says Hume, comes from direct sensory observation.  If I hold a book in my hand, I know it exists because I see with my eyes, feel it in my palms, cut my finger’s thin skin on its sharp pages.  The self that holds that book is subject to that same rule: I know it exists because I observe thoughts and ideas come and go; I watch the self’s mechanisms working and only thereby know it exists.  

Observation, however, strictly—crucially—hinges on the proper functionality of three things: our eyes, our mind, and our language.  And each of those necessary filters through which all understanding must be strained are notably slippery.

Our eyes are incredibly fallible–they are susceptible to  tricks of light and image.  Optical illusions, mirages, and even the adage “there’s more than meets the eye,” highlight the fact that direct empirical experience has inherent distortion.  To seek the ontological or metaphysical truth, however, is to avoid distortion.  That’s why our expressions for truthful or evident––straightforward, clear, clearcut, crystal clear––suggest conformity and unity rather than deformity and distortion.  

Looking in a mirror, for example, we can see a reflection of ourselves and truthfully assess ourselves.  Yet mirrors have all kinds of distortions, based on their dimensions or the type of alloy used in their creation.  If philosophy is the mirror to reality, the tool that reflects the actual states of matter of fact and existence, it is then subject to distortion.  

Moreover, the transmission of philosophy relies on the exchange between minds by means of language.  For language, we can turn to good old Wittgenstein, who challenges us to clearly (there’s that truth metaphor again) define what a game is.  While most of us think we know what a game is, we may find the passageways between mental processing and verbal reasoning muddy.  We also abundantly use metaphors, idiomatic expressions, and other oblique ways of expressing an idea in order to make ourselves understood.  

For mind, there are a billion and one articles arguing for different theories of mind we can read and still come up inconclusive.  Or, we can just introspect for a moment and think how many mornings we have awoken and wondered, ‘what the hell was that dream about?  What is my mind trying to tell me?’ automatically treating our mind and our self as two disparate entities in—not always successful—communication with each other.

So, perhaps, in making the case for literary philosophy, could we not see the obliqueness of the way we receive and experience truth as a case for the reason why we ought not to shy away from the distortion––why we perhaps, as when we read a literary text, ought to wade in the ambiguities, float in the mossy web of a novel, poem, or essay to feel the truth of human experience. 

It’s likely an overreach to say that no reader ever has had a deep emotional reaction to modern philosophical treatises.  It is most definitely not an overreach to say that most readers of novels have at least come close to shedding a tear, have shared laughter, and have been brought to other deep emotional reactions in interacting with the text.  

‘But why mix the two?’ is perhaps the follow-up question.  ‘Why not keep literature as literature and philosophy as philosophy?’  I think because, returning  to Bradbury once more, “We need not to be let alone.  We need to be really bothered once in a while.  How long is it since you were really bothered?”

Because “a book is a loaded gun” that we ought to let go off, explode our ideas, tear through us, and leave us wondering what just happened—leave us with wonder, the starting point of philosophy and humanity, ready to try again or for more.