Why Is Virtue Ethics More Than A Normative Theory?

In the course of the paper, I would like to contemplate ethical theories regarding their commonalities and differences in order to search for the sake of goodness and I will claim that one among others, namely virtue ethics, is more favourable in my view. Since this is a great task to manage with the all aspects of the issue, I would like to state some crucial points I consider as the backbone of the virtue ethics even in its contemporary versions. I would want to pay attention the strong and weak points of ethical theories by examining a practical case of abortion, and I aim to devote virtue ethics by favouring its special emphasis about one’s character.

In order to pursue a more accurate study in this paper, starting with the general definitions and the differences of the ethical theories I will mention through the paper would be proper as an introduction. Here, I do not any harm to get the most out of the article of Rosalind Hursthouse who is also trying to compare utilitarianism and deontology with virtue ethics in order to show that virtue ethics is also a strong contemporary moral theory as much as others. According to utilitarianism, the right action is considered in terms of its consequences and if it maximizes happiness for all the parties included, then it is right. On the other hand, deontology it definitely not  interested in the consequences of your actions because the crucial thing in the right action is its accordance with the moral rules. These two are normative ethical theories which mean that they aim to answer the question “What ought I do?”, in other words they are rule based theories. Roughly, the virtue ethics is defined based on virtues not on mere rules contrary to formers. It emphasis the question “What ought I be like?” which is a character based moral question, thus it is not only centered around the right action, but also it is centered the virtuous actions what are the virtuous person would do in the same circumstances.

Could the difference between these theories I have mentioned above cause an underestimation for virtue ethics? According to Rosalind Hursthouse, falsely the virtue ethics is not taken into account as a normative theory as a rival to others but this is a misconception about virtue ethics’ inability to say us what to do. Thus, she tries to defend virtue theory against this objection. On the other hand, I dare to claim that maybe there is no need for virtue ethics to be taken as a normative ethical theory, because in my view this would be an underestimation; let me briefly explain why.

I think there is an obvious difficulty in the virtue ethics compared to the others, because the ethical theories which tell the guidance as saying “Do not lie” or “Do maximize happiness for overall” seem more direct, even though not easy all the time, but “Do act in accordance with the virtue that a virtuous person would have” is a complicated and thoughtful one for a person to count it in the decision process. With a broad brush approach, one can ask that “But being good or doing the right thing is really that easy to get by adopting the right prescription like taking the correct pill?”. I would have known easily what is the act to maximize overall happiness in a situation but I could not be able to decide doing the virtuous act that easily. Let’s argue about this question by practising upon the case of abortion.

Since there are many factors included in the case of abortion, it is always debatable in the fields of  philosophy, politics and sociology. Thus, what is the wrongness of abortion is totally the topic of a different paper, but it can be useful for my purpose which aims to see the richness of virtue ethics as a catch-all term rather than pointing a normative theory. Let’s say there is a successful woman in her profession, and she has a strict plan about her personal life and career. She thinks that in three years everything will be stabile in her life and that is a good time to have a baby. Then she gets pregnant and through the end of the ninth month the news pops up and she is informed that she gets promotion, now she is the boss. It is the chance of her life and she has always hoped that one day she will be in this position, and she thinks that ceasing the pregnancy is the best solution. Now, is there anything morally wrong with this decision? What could be the possible reactions coming from different views to this action?

From the viewpoint of a deontologist, the moral rules to adopt can be some of these “Do not kill/ Do not kill the innocent/ Do not override your rights for the unborn’s rights/ Do not sacrifice your rights for others”. One can think that one of these rights is the correct moral principle to adopt, here I want to draw your attention to the point that I am not in the position to decide which one is the correct moral rule, and then she goes for it. Regardless of the consequences, if she acts in accordance with the correct rule than it can be easily said that her action is right.

What about the issue comes to the consideration of the consequences of this action? Let’s interrogate few of them. It is obvious that she will be more happy if she will be the boss rather than giving up it for a baby, and if she is really good at her job it is better off for other workers at the company, but what about the unborn? It is easy to scream that out: “It is a nine-month unborn you try to kill!” A utilitarian may have trouble while justifying the situation, because if it is justifiable then it is possible to justify another case in which the woman is informed one day after giving birth to this baby. Would it be also justified for a newborn baby? Peter Singer who is one of the most well known utilitarians uses the word “person” in order to refer a being who is capable of anticipating the future and even for the newborns that is what he states: “I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.  That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do.  It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents.” As we can see here, a utilitarian can justify the situation of a newborn through its parents and again through overall happiness as a consequence of one’s action.

In order to go back my point to discuss this issue, I can say that sometimes where the utilitarians have trouble about an action like the later abortions or moral standing of a newborn and where a deontologist having trouble with some cases like claiming that even if your friend or spouse is at the stake you do not lie on the behalf of her, they still can come up with a sharper prescriptions rather than virtue ethics. This is the point exactly what I am interested in. Virtue ethics is even claimed as vague about some issues, especially when the practical things are concerned, but I think the reason is not because of its inability to say us what to do, but because of its deeper aspect which is penetrated in life by regarding the character trait as its ground to flourish moral goodness.

Now, there is a need to consider virtue ethics in the case of abortion and to decide the right action which would be done by virtuous person if he/she was in the shoes of this women in the example? Here, two possible problems/objections can arise and first of them is the simpler one which is questioning the position of the virtue ethics. If the right thing to do is based on the criterion that is a virtuous person’s behaviour in this kind of a situation shows that a virtuous person is the one who acts in accordance with the correct moral rules, then does not this bring us back the position of the deontology? Then virtue ethics is an empty concept, and fundamentally it is nothing more than deontology. However it is not choosing the correct rule for moral goodness, virtue ethics is completely differentiated from deontology by claiming that virtuous person is also the one who exercises the virtues as a character trait. And this is the way to lead a morally good life, since acting merely rational is not enough for one to pursue happiness which is the highest good according to Aristotle. The highest good, namely happiness is what we all seek because it is desired for its own sake. Later on, I will present my view about virtue ethics as a thing which is pursued for its own sake and I will put more emphasis on this idea to differentiate it from other ethical theories. But now, let’s continue with the second possible objection against virtue ethics while one is in the situation to decide what to do.

How realistic it is to act virtuously without knowing that whether I am a virtuous person or not?  Most probably I am not the best virtuous person in the world and how can I know what a virtuous person would do in my situation, because if I would know then I would be virtuous. So, this seems very puzzled for oneself . There is a sort of answer coming from virtue ethicists about asking for help or advice from a more virtuous person than you and it is a reasonable suggestion to follow. But imagine that you are by yourself, in a position pushing you to behave in a certain way, most probably the one of these which will manifest your morality according to your action, you have nobody and no time to ask, how do you act? Would you first consider the consequences before you act? Or would you rationally seek for the right thing to do based on its strong morality? Here, we are starting to close the heart of the issue. While deontologists and utilitarians treat like we are always and all the time rational beings who act in accordance with our thoughts, there is the actual essential thing reveals itself, I mean our character. Let’s imagine that you are somewhere along the line to make a moral decision, if you are aware of it, there is usually a pressure because of your responsibilities, your character, or consequences. If you act in accordance with your character which was constituted by practising a virtue, when it becomes a habit like a reflex and you would not have to think about it, it comes easily.

I would like to spend more time on this issue in order to be clear before I move on to state my own opinions about how would we know to act as a virtuous person if we are not one.  Aren’t you ever freaked out or panicked? Do you really admit that you decide rationally while you are acting in these cases?  Imagine that there is an ongoing crazy situation where you have to choose between two things, you would want to scream and say “I do not know what to do”. It is not the time to calculate to maximize overall happiness or to think the correct moral rule whatever it is. But, then do we choose randomly even if we have to take the responsibility of our decision after all the things are settled down? I do not think so, if it was that random, then how could we charge the people even if they were in an urgent situation. If you have experienced this kind of a situation you would have heard this advice from yourself or from others: Listen your heart, your intuition; it tells you the right thing to do. Now, I have to say that here I do not give credit to karma, or to personal development idioms. What I say is something much more serious, here I am talking about what makes you you, what is your character. Who can dare to say that character is just totality of your correct or wrong calculations, or your character is a programmed rational machine in order to select the right and wrong moral rule among many? I will step forward and claim that I believe character is way more than this. If it is who you are then at some point it is not just your rational thinking ability, but it is your feelings, your reactions, your actions.

Then “Listen your heart” is not a cliche in that sense, it reminds us the very nature of our rooted virtues; how you act, ipso facto, shows your character. Here one can rightly raise an objection about my claim and say that this assumption again takes a virtuous character as given and thus this advice about following our actions which stem from our character collapses back into an inferior step where we do not know how act morally if we do not have already a virtuous character. However, what I put emphasize here was not the character which has already become a certain state with full of virtues, rather I would want to take an immature character into account. It is even better for this kind of a person to act in a certain way in a certain situation to see whether she is virtuous or not, because as I said actions can show the character then you are able to realize your moral defects.

In order to continue my branched example of abortion, I would want to give a special place to guilt in advance, since as I have clarified before my aim with the example of abortion is not to state which ethical theory tells us what is the right thing to do, rather I would want to show how virtue ethics can provide a better consideration about our character and our lives to be flourished. Here I have quoted a little part from Crime and Punishment in order to remind the intermingling of guilt and one’s character, and how it might be the sign of our personal moral evaluation.

“Have you ever seen a moth near a candle? Well, so he’ll keep circling around me, circling around me, as around a candle; freedom will no longer be dear to him, he’ll fall to thinking, get entangled, he’ll tangle himself all up as in a net, he’ll worry himself to death!”

The critics say that Dostoyevsky uses these words, with the help of their rhythm and metaphor, in order to create an atmosphere in which Raskolnikov is inevitably caught in a trap and to specify that since Raskolnikov is a human, then it is impossible to evade his guilt. Guilt is a huge concept to examine every aspect of it and this is not our aim here, but it is a good start to ask that “Why do we feel guilt?” It is because we may think that we have done something morally wrong. Regret can follow it, or we may feel desperate, but these do not change the guilt we feel if we were the agent who has performed the action. Even if there was no other way around to act in a different way, if we feel guilt that means we think there was not enough moral goodness in that situation anyways.

According to virtue ethics, a woman with plans and desires and an unborn which is almost ready to be born can think of her situation and try to decide virtuously. In her decision making process, there could be several things to be included but being just towards unborn and woman herself is the most important ones among them. If there would be a moral wrongness in abortion, it does come from the unjust behavior towards the woman and unborn. The woman can decide at the end, and she performs the action. She could choose to cease the pregnancy and continue to her life with a sparkling career as she has ever wanted. But regardless of the consequences or the correct moral rule she took what if she comes up with the feeling of guilt after a while later? Or imagine that she has decided to give birth to the baby and even she has no problem with the baby, she feels guilt because she thinks that she has ruined her life. In either case, we are not in the place to say that the one decision is morally prior to other, but when she herself feels the guilt she would probably think that there was something wrong with her decision. Thus, the reason why I put an emphasis on the guilt is to show that there is something deeper in moral goodness. It is not mere rationality, or calculation, but when we try to reach morality, the road to it is paved with virtues we have. The guilt here is just one of the signs which shows that one’s character cannot be considered as separate from one’s actions. If character would not have anything to do with our moral life, then it would be possible to act according to a normative theory which tells us the answers of the question “What ought I do?”.

After, I have tried to show that something is missing in normative theories in terms of that their descriptions may not always meet the need for moral goodness, then there is an important question left. How can one have a morally good life? As it can be guessed, I would claim that if there is any advice to lead a well, moral life, it has to have some clues in the virtue ethics. However, it has appeared that acting right is not always enough to live a morally good life, because living a morally good life is a difficult and sophisticated task to achieve and this task cannot be directed by mere rules. According to Aristotle in order to reach the eudaimonia, people have to fulfill their functions and this could be possible with the activity of our rationality and its accordance with our virtues which need to be exercised to become a character trait.

Here I would like to assert my own opinion about Aristotle’s understanding of eudaimonia and his account of good life based on virtues and the telos as it is claimed by Alasdair MacIntyre. Obviously, eudaimonia is not mere happiness or acting rationally because virtue plays a significant role in it. As MacIntyre states that Aristotle emphasises telos in the virtues, so this quality also makes virtues and eudaimonia special and different than other normative ethical theories, because Aristotle treats the acquisition and exercise of the virtues as means to end as internal which refers to a given end when the end cannot be adequately characterized independently of a characterisation of the means. So it is with the virtues and the telos which is the good life for man on Aristotle’s account. The thing that virtue theory is in a special position, maybe a little bit vague, could be about its extended consideration and the importance given to the telos in human life.

In the framework of this interrogation about having an end itself, I like to think about the difference between having true belief and having knowledge about something, and if you admit that there is a difference between these two, then you may welcome my argument about virtue theory based on the same comparison. It would be good to say that this is originally the Meno Problem which is briefly about why is knowledge praised as more valuable than true belief, and if true belief can provide the same practicality what is the point of having knowledge about something? Based on John Greco’s views, I conclude that there could be something true belief lacks when we praise knowledge more than true belief and this is the value of knowledge which is for its own sake or something non practical in the value of knowledge which does not serve mere practicality. He elaborates being valuable for its own sake by extending it to the position of things having ends in themselves. When something has its final end in itself, this thing can be directly concerned as something valuable for its own sake.

With the parallel to this difference between true belief and the knowledge, even though being a non virtuous person who acts according to the right rules and moral principles and being a virtuous person who acts morally does have the same practicality in terms of doing the right act, there is a value in being a virtuous person because it is pursued for its own sake and in my view it is the most crucial part of the whole theory: one’s character that is enriched with virtues exercised in order to pursue a good life.  One can have the knowledge of a moral rule or the consequences of the action she attempts, but exercising it within a virtuous character requires much more effort. Virtue ethics is more penetrated to the life because it is centered around the character and it requires a deeper grasp.

In conclusion, I would like to assert that my aim to show that there is a more favourable aspect in virtue ethics compared to other ethical theories comes from the drive in virtue ethics’ itself. Because as I have mentioned, virtue ethics pursues a lifelong moral goodness on the basis of one’s character rather than evaluating actions by looking the reason behind it or the consequence it has caused. Since this is the case, I do not see any reason not to praise virtue ethics as a guidance which directs us to practice our virtues to make it as our character trait and enables us to penetrate to the life with a better grasp, even though it is so difficult to do and requires much more effort. But if we think that living a morally good life is the most important task for human being and also the way to realize ourselves, isn’t this effort and difficulty worth it?

 

REFERENCES

Hursthouse, R. (1996) “Normative Virtue Ethics”, in Roger Crisp (ed.), How Should One Live?, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Singer, Peter. “FAQ”. https://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/faq.html.

Dostoyevsky, F. (2008) “Crime and Punishment” , Radford: Wilder Publications.

MacIntyre, A. (2003) “The Nature of the Virtues”, in Louis P. Pojman(ed.), Moral Philosophy: A Reader, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company.

Greco, J. (2008) “The Value Problem” in A. Haddock, A. Millar, & D. H. Pritchard (eds.), The Value of Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Why Don’t We Rely On One’s Testimony?

In the course of this paper, I will try to approach the epistemic standing of testimonial knowledge by respectively presenting the opinions of Laurence BonJour and Jennifer Lackey as grounds in order to state my own opinions throughout the paper. At the core of the paper, I will focus the position of testimony in the case of miracles and interrogate the so-called reasons why we don’t rely on one’s testimony. If I will be reasonable enough, I aim to apply same arguments to other cases which are more casual. In order to support my argument on behalf of testimony, Thomas Reid’s views will be quite helpful and also challenging for Hume’s position. Considering the case of miracles, I will give place for Hume’s opinions and through the end of the paper I hope to suggest a naive breath of fresh air for the epistemic aspect of the miracles.

In his article, Laurence BonJour reasons about the reliability of testimony which is conveyed by others and he questions the situations which we have no direct relation to justify them. One of the most well known examples is about a place or an artificial manmade objects like  popular artworks, sculptures,etc. There are various things I have never seen and places I have never been, but it is possible for me to reach the knowledge of them via other sources existing independently from me. If I put the problem of other minds aside, either the agreements of other people on the same knowledge or communicational tools which I can access the information has to be enough for me to rely the truthness of the knowledge about this object or place. In other words, it is an inference to the best explanation, because there are so many widespread sources about these things. We are justified by previous testimonies which are reliable and checked many times by others. For the justification of these testimonies by others, even if Bonjour seems having an inclination to give more credit the truthness of beliefs, through the end of the part he says that:

“ Through there is obviously room for much more discussion, the indicated conclusion is that there is no way to construct a strong inductive argument for the conclusion that beliefs resulting from testimony are likely to be true on the basis of the cases where the reliability of such beliefs can be determined firsthand.”

Jennifer Lackey starts with emphasizing the generative aspect of testimony and the content which is the crucial point to argue on the favor of the testimony. But, If testimony is nothing rather than a transmission, and transmission of testimony entails a memory which preserves knowledge, then can we talk about a generation of a new knowledge from that transmission? Lackey claims that rather than a mere transmission of what one knows or believes, statements of people can generate knowledge if these statements meet some conditions, namely: statement’s reliability, person’s belief based on content of testimony, and no undefeated defeater found by person who is given the testimony. With these conditions Lackey saved the generative feature of the testimony on the basis of its content, but still she has to go for the justification of testimonial knowledge. She argues that belief we gain from testimony should be grounded in order to be qualified as a knowledge. But one can argue against this by saying that this ground is nothing more than other fundamental abilities of us. Here she mentions the reductionism and non-reductionism which are traditionally argue for the basic authority gives the justification for testimony. Even if the reductionists claim for the sake of other capacities of people and non-reductionists give priority for one’s testimony, it is not easy to put Lackey’s position in neither of them.

Considering these views, it is obvious that people can strongly argue for opposite views about testimony and our epistemic standing about relying on it or not. I would want to go further out of my curiosity and start with examining one of the extreme cases of testimony which is about miracles. Why don’t we rely on one’s testimony in the case of miracles? There are several reasons differing from case to case, but it would be better if I start with interrogating the most usual ones.

First and the most well known explanation coming from the encounterers of miracles, since miracle and its report are rare event in humans’ daily life, is that miracle is a violation of laws of nature, so it is not true that there are miracles. This explanation is open to debate, because it starts with defining miracles as violations of laws of nature which are identified by their regularity and permanence. Since in the case of nature there is no explanation coming from science or common sense for what is the reason for that law, then their regularity does not explain what makes them laws of nature, it just shows a strong property of these laws. Thus, there cannot be any sufficient argument coming from impossibility of miracles by defining them as violation of unbreakable laws of nature.

Second objection can be the lack of evidences in the case of miracles and this is a controversial one, because adequacy of evidences can change from case to case or person to person. Let me continue with an example of mine. There is a girl travelling a lot with her parents, once the family was in a cafe in Moscow, while she was looking throughout the window she saw a little horse with a horn on its head. It was a beautiful animal and she called it as “hornse”. After few years they went to another country and they were in a forest, she was looking around and she saw the “hornse” again. she told her parents and they said “ Yes my dear, but it is known as rhino.” Until the day she was taught that rhino is not the same what she saw and seeing a “hornse” is called as miracle, she has seen it for two more times. And when she has learned that seeing a real “hornse” is called as miracle because there is no such thing, she said that “I have already known that seeing a ‘hornse’ is less probable than not seeing it, but why don’t you believe that I saw couple of them? I believed in you when you told me there is such a thing as rhino, even though what I saw was a hornse”. In her case, when parents and girl assume that they both think the same animal, parents did not want evidence for her testimony, because they already have the knowledge of rhino but they do not have any “evidence” for hornse. The situation of parents is an understandable one, but if we argue about evidence for something it is obviously more difficult trying to show an evidence for a thing considered as non exist (hornse for parents) than for a thing which was experienced (hornse for girl).

Also, one can argue by pointing that it is more probable to see a rhino rather than a hornse, but she has already said that seeing it is less probable than not seeing it. Thus from this argumentation we cannot infer that she did not see it. Here we have to give place for Hume’s opinions, since he is an empiricist and also a naturalist he has strong views about miracles and he finds miracles as events which their probability to be true is less than the probability of one’s testimony being false. Thus according to him, there is no reason to believe in miracles. However, as I have tried to mention above, reasons why we don’t rely on one’s testimony are not sufficient in the case of miracles because probability objection takes laws of nature as granted like they are the primary and ultimate causes of things which occur in the world. Thus, it is begging the question in a sense when we conclude about miracles as being unlikely by starting from the violation of laws of nature as being unlikely.

We can think of the cases such as when people see a spaceship. It is not against the laws of nature, there is no evidence against their being both from science and commonsense, it is less probable to see it than not to see it. Still these cannot show the sufficient reason why we do not rely on one’s testimony about seeing an spaceship. Then my position in this kind of argumentation seems something like that: “I have to trust every testimony even if there is a little chance for it to happen, or few evidence on the behalf of it”. But, this is a very hard position to defend and from our experiences we know that this is not the case all the time. Then, when don’t we rely on one’s testimony?

Let’s think a simple example. I am at home in a hot summer day, my home mate comes from outside and says that it is snowing outside. There is small probability to be snow outside and I have said that small probability does not mean that it is impossible for something to happen. There is also my friend’s testimony and we have a kind of trustworthy friendship. So, do I have to rely on her testimony just because of these reasons? Probably not, because in this kind of a case I usually say that “No way, are you kidding me?!” which implies that I do not believe what you have said and I think it is a joke. This means I think what she has said is an unreliable testimony. So is it that easy not to believe one’s saying? If it is so, then how can I argue for the reliability of one’s testimony on miracles, or other less probable events? Here I have an important reason to reject her testimony, because the priority of my personal experience over her testimony makes me more than legitimate to trust my own experience, so I can say that I don’t believe in you (because it is extremely hot to snow outside).

Also something humorous appears here; jokes can be thought as testimonies we rely on falsely. When someone makes a joke he knows that his testimony is a reliable one for me and it must be like that otherwise there would be no fun, so the crucial element of jokes is its foundation of my false belief about what he testifies.

If I get back my point in order to draw an accurate picture of my claim, I have to interrogate one more situation when there is a testimony of someone and if there is no way to give priority to our own experience to think whether this testimony is an unreliable one or not. Let’s imagine, I am at the library and my best trustworthy friend comes with a rush and says that “When I was outside, there was a strange guy and he asked my biggest wish, I said it would be great if I fly for once. Then he made it real!” Now, what are the reasons for me not to rely on her testimony? To be coherent in my argumentation, I have to say that there is no reason not to rely on her testimony for me in that very specific case. However, here one can easily say that if you trust your friend’s testimony, then a stranger should trust; a stranger should not, so you should not trust your friend. I think there is something wrong with this claim because when I say I have no reasons not to trust my friend’s testimony, this does not mean that everybody is in the same conditions with me. A person can be with my friend while she is experiencing this miracle and this person might have reasons not to trust my friend, then I cannot say that I trust my friend’s testimony, so you should trust. Because this person can claim that he has reasons not to trust. Or I can tell this miracle to another person and when I say “I believe what she has said and she is so reliable, so you should believe”, here this person still can think what my friend has experienced is insane, because she has more things to interrogate such as my position testifying one’s testimony about a miracle.

Hume, on the other hand, clearly states that you should not believe people if they are not likely to be true. Since he is an empiricist he always portions one’s belief/testimony to the evidence in order to trust, if he does not have enough evidence to believe, he does not rely on one’s testimony. According to Hume, miracle is the violation of laws of nature and this means that there is a regularity in the nature and if there is a miracle, it means that this is very exceptional to be. When it is testified, Hume compares the probability of being an exception in the nature and probability of this person’s being false, and from other knowledge and evidences we have, he concludes that it is more probable for this man to be false rather than a violation in the laws of nature. In his argument, there is nothing wrong with claiming the regularity of laws of nature and the chance of a person to be false, however the other side of the coin is also reasonable, if you are not stuck with laws of nature and empiricism as only reference points. Thus, I try to claim on the behalf of testimony when there is no sufficient reason to reject it.

Until now, it seems that my position is a kind of “belief is default” position and in his article Thomas Reid has a different approach towards the very same position. He states that there is this principle of credulity in constitution of human beings, he also supports his argument by giving examples from children, which is used for our disposition to rely on what we have been said so. He argues that this principle is embedded in our nature and than it is not wrong to say that we are in a position where the belief is the default. In order to support my argumentation these words of Reid will be very helpful: “It is evident that, in the matter of testimony, the balance of human judgement is by nature inclined to the side of belief; and turns to that side of itself, when there is nothing put into the opposite scale.” Thus with the light of this decent explanation, I continue to claim that relying on one’s testimony is our very natural position when there is no reason to believe the other way around.

As being close to conclude my paper, I would like to go back the case of miracles and state my view about an aspect of the epistemic standing of miracles. Either it is our experience or someone else’s testimony, if I think that I can rely on what I have experienced or what I was told, then I would want to claim that miracle is knowledge generative. In order to support this, I prefer to use the word “event” as interchangeably with the word miracle rather than an impossible or less probable thing to happen, because these words build their ground in a more Humean way. The idea of miracles as knowledge generative comes from that “When an unusual, unexpected, rare and different event happens, it transforms your point of view”. Your point of view changes because what you have known about that thing does not include the information of this new event. If you would have had the knowledge of a miracle, it would not be the miracle for you. If tomorrow there will be no sunrise, then this will definitely generate a new knowledge about the laws of nature we know right now. Since what you have already known changes or renews, its generative power cannot be independent from your past knowledge about this thing. Hence, the power of generation here I try to emphasize is not coming from its effects projected towards the future, on the contrary its power comes from its effects on the past.

REFERENCES

BonJour, Laurence. “Some Further Epistemological Issues: Other Minds, Testimony, and Memory.” Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses, 149-71. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.

Lackey, Jennifer. “Testimonial Knowledge and Transmission.” The Philosophical Quarterly, 471-90. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999.

Hume, David. “Of Miracles.” An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 221-33. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902.

Reid, Thomas. “Inquiry into the Human Mind.” Inquiry and Essays, ed. R.E. Beanblossom and K. Lehrer, 234-38. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett, 1983.

Zizek, Slavoj. “Events and Encounters Explain Our Fear of Falling in Love.” Big Think, November, 2014. http://bigthink.com/videos/slavoj-zizek-on-falling-in-love.

The Death Of Dasein As A Poiesis

In order to investigate Heidegger’s philosophy about technology I have started with his article “The Question Concerning Technology” and I have contemplated about what kind of a relationship we are dealing with when the technology is at the stake. However, I have always found myself as being drifted toward the investigation of more rooted Heideggerian terms, namely Dasein and the death. It is good to clarify that my aim here is neither combining different works of Heidegger by mixing his early and later periods which are interpreted as philosophically differentiated nor revising his two dominant notions which are Dasein and the death in the light of his concerns about technology, but I have to admit that I end up with a paper arguing that my interpretation of Heidegger’s philosophy about the modern technology may show something which makes the death of Dasein very special.

Since, my research has followed a kind of reverse path from Heidegger’s technology to Dasein and the death, I would like to present my opinions in a more helpful and concrete way by starting to explain dominant notions at the first hand and then move on how technology is related to us in many aspects in order to defend my argument. In the course of the paper, I will try to constitute my opinions step by step even though sometimes it gives the feeling of being lost or irrelevance. However I believe that they all have a supportive quality in order to understand that how Dasein’s death can still reveal itself as a poesis regardless of the enframing essence of modern technology as it is claimed in Heidegger’s article “The Question Concerning Technology”.

First of all, I would want to present Dasein as a being in the world who is dealing with its everydayness which will be explained in details later on and I will try to move on the reason why the death has a significant role in its mode of being in the world. We can start to contemplate about Dasein by thinking of it in a simple and usual way such as imagining a person who is dealing with human or non-human entities in his daily life. Let’s assume that he thinks about his life and tries to decide his profession in the future. As every person in a society, he is allowed some possibilities. When he asks himself that question: “What do I do with my life?”, and when he runs over the options which are certain for his, he can show his awareness about the issue. There may be several possibilities for his future occupation such as being a lawyer, scientist, artist, or philosopher which can be chosen by him. According to Heidegger, these possibilities create a horizon, and the horizon is defined as “ the openness that surrounds us” by Heidegger. Although the meaning of the term “openness” may need to be discussed deeply, for the sake of this paper I will use the word horizon in a narrow sense as openness containing many possibilities for oneself. Horizon has a stretch but it surrounds us. Since the horizon has been produced by that man who tries to decide about his future occupation, the possibilities which occur in this horizon come from the world that he is already in and it would not be wrong to say that in one sense the horizon is he.

Among various professions, he has to choose one of them by projecting himself into one of these possibilities, then he can go for that possibility. He performs this horizon and chooses the possibility of being a lawyer, in other words he projects himself as a lawyer. Then he enrolls in a university to be a lawyer, takes some related courses, and he organizes his everyday life in accordance with his decision. At the end, he can become a successful lawyer and in that case what approaches for this man from the future is he, himself; because it was himself projected into this possibility before.

Regarding that point in the future, he stretches out his horizon. He has the capacity to be beyond himself, thus he looks upon himself from that point in the future. In this case, we can say that Dasein is ahead of oneself in terms of time. No matter which possibility we encounter or engage in, we always find this peculiar structure of being ahead of oneself. Here, I can claim that the notion of being ahead of oneself obviously refers to the notion of future. Due to this capacity of Dasein to be ahead of oneself, Dasein is not stuck in present and future has a certain role for one’s life, because the capacity of being ahead of oneself has its roots in future.

However, according to Heidegger, even if Dasein has the capacity to be beyond himself, it is not the case that oneself steps beyond his horizon. From my point of view, this claim seemed a little bit controversial at first, because I could not comprehend how it is impossible to step beyond the horizon. I tried to argue against that view by thinking about some possibilities which are out of horizon. For the above example I tried to find possibilities relatively above/out his horizon, I suggested a possibility like being a judge after his lawyer career. This could be a possibility which is out of his horizon in the example, since it needs a further education and also time, being a judge did not seem as possible as being a lawyer. At least I thought that they could be in different horizons. However, when I project the possibility of being judge, it has already contains being lawyer in its horizon. So, I realized that the only thing I did by trying to suggest out of horizon examples was stretching the first and the same horizon over and over again. At the end, I have found my answer which is not postulating the horizon but it allows a person to step beyond one’s horizon of possibilities. The answer is purely and simply death. I would want to specify that this conclusion is very fundamental for my argument and throughout the paper there will be places that I elaborate it more and I will make reference to this point afterwards.

I have tried to state how in our  daily life we live in a realm of possibilities and we engage in activities in terms of creating a horizon and projecting ourselves to the future. In that case we forward along the time, however, Heidegger claims that here we operate vulgar temporality not primordial temporality. And these notions are extremely related to Dasein’s two modes of existence of being in the world. If you have already taken being as if it is an already understood notion, then you presume and you do not question what is “exist”. But while we are questioning the existence of Dasein, here the authentic and inauthentic modes of it appear. I would try to explain these modes together within the explanation of primordial temporality and vulgar temporality as I have mentioned.

In the average everydayness you are in the inauthentic mode of being in the world. Inauthentic mode is everyday mode of our being in the world when we are lasting in a community of human beings. On the other hand, temporal structure of our everyday life looks different from the temporal structure of the horizon. We are thinking in the framework of vulgar time which present takes the priority, and vulgar time covers up primordial temporality. But, then how are we able to think of the horizon? What makes it possible to link a relation between Dasein who thinks in the framework of vulgar temporality in his/her daily life and the horizon which has a different temporal structure? Answer can be found in Simon Critchley’s interpretation in his article: “ Time should be grasped in and of itself as the unity of the three dimensions – what Heidegger calls “ecstases” – of future, past and present… Temporality is a process with three dimensions which form a unity.” Based on this opinion I would like to construe a possible answer to my question, in order to think of a horizon we do not have to do something different than we always do while thinking in our daily life, since Dasein is experiencing these ecstases together in a unity via the process of temporality. In addition to this explanation, we can add that within this certain temporality, future has a kind of certain primacy in terms of primordial temporality.

On the other hand, we have seen that the vulgar temporality covers up the primordial temporality and thus one can think that people who engage everyday activities and deal with vulgar temporality may never find out the primordial temporality in their life. There could be an explanation in William D. Blattner’s statement which is “… originary temporality is Dasein’s ability to track its development through sequential (mundane) time.” With this interpretation of the relation between primordial temporality and vulgar temporality, one can say that Dasein has a kind of intention to manage his/her daily life organization of time, namely in the framework of vulgar temporality, and at the same time he/she has the ability to possess primordial temporality.

I guess that the meaning of the authentic mode of being in the world starts to appear in the light of these explanations about two notions of time. As vulgar time covers up primordial temporality, inauthentic mode of Dasein covers the true character of authentic mode of being. Now, while I am accounting for the authentic being of Dasein, I will explicitly go deep into the issue of Dasein as being ahead of oneself and this will hopefully enable us to realize the relationship between Dasein’s fundamentally incomplete being and its death.

The authentic existence of Dasein comes with the recognition of the fact that we are beings towards the death, and  Dasein’s being ahead of itself is related to care. Here we are pointing the core of the relation between Dasein and its death. First of all, the recognition of Dasein about himself as being towards death and moreover as a being always already in death gets him into a tight corner where Dasein is in a terrible anxiety. Your disappearance does not merely causes a fear of death, it is called as anxiety because in the case of anxiety we do not have a direct object on the contrary to fear.

But there is an important question: How does Dasein recognize its own death? Before trying to answer this question there are more things to say about the very reality of Dasein’s death and they will probably make harder to answer this question. First of all, the death of Dasein is not a situation Dasein will be, on the contrary Dasein reveals itself in a clear, actual and complete form while not-being there. This nothingness is very unfamiliar to us, since we have a tendency to think nothingness as a space without objects. But this is not Heideggerian nothingness, furthermore how could it be nothingness in the way we understand while it is meaning a kind of nothingness in which being understands the being itself.

Secondly, when Dasein comes to its end, it is not a thing which is not yet anymore. Dasein might be conceived as a thing that reaches completeness. There is a funny sketch from website Being&Tim, there is a big pink ‘Being’ as the main character in drawings. One of these sketches we see that Heidegger is at the door and he knocks it. There is Tim, who is a child and friend of pink ‘Being’, in the house and says that “Hey Heidegger is at the door” and  big pink thing says “Tell him I’m Being-Not-At-home”. However, metaphorically when death knocks the door Dasein is no longer there to say that “I’m Being-Not-Here”.

Furthermore, these words of Heidegger from Being and Time point out another important thing about Dasein as a being toward death:

“However if Da-sein “exists” in such a way that there is absolutely nothing more outstanding for it, it has also already thus become no-longer-being-there. Eliminating what is outstanding in its being is equivalent to annihilating its being. As long as Da-sein is as a being, it has never attained its “wholeness”. But if it does, this gain becomes the absolute loss of being-in-the-world. It is then never again to be experienced as a being.”

Thus, since the wholeness of the Dasein depends on the eliminating of the outstanding possibilities and this also means its complete annihilation, the claim here we have encountered is such a radical one to grasp. It is very hard to contemplate about the relationship between being complete and becoming absolute loss of being in the world, I would make this more explicit with the help of a thought experiment.

Let’s imagine that there is a book in the process of writing. When you put the last dot at the last page, book will be complete, but at that very time it will disappear but the only way to make the book as complete you have to put the dot otherwise it is not a perfect book. Let’s say you are struggling with that idea about completing your book and losing it, so you want to record it. Now everything is ready, your hand is getting closer to the page where you will mark your dot, camera is on and it is ready to record that important moment for you. You make a move and put your dot and the book disappears immediately as you have expected. You are curious about the record whether you caught the moment or you didn’t. What I think here is you record the moment but the moment is not the one you would have expected. There is a moment when you put the dot but this very same moment is the one that your book has gone. So according to me it is not possible to remark that moment where it becomes complete and disappear at the same time. Actually, there is no way to specify these two moments separately, because they are the same not as actions but as meaning, they both mean completeness.

The death is our all most being. It is one and the only thing that is real which you cannot escape from and you are truly aware of this, since it is how and who we are. In the being of Dasein, death defines the ways of being. It is constitutive of human existence as a possibility in Dasein’s existence which eventually turns into actuality. Even though, Dasein’s death is not merely an event and Dasein will no longer be there when it becomes a complete being in its own death, it is considered as a kind of constitutive force in our being necessarily situated in. But still is it not clear how Dasein recognizes its death in these circumstances. One can claim that within the situation of being in the world and being in relation with others, Dasein can recognize its death via others’. However, a bigger problem shows up by adopting this claim as an answer, because we come up against the unbearable unrepresentability of death. The death is unbearably unrepresentable by itself, ipso facto other’s death cannot represent our’s. Even we cannot represent our own death. Since there is no Dasein to represent his/her own death, Dasein is impossible in his own death. So it can be said that it is fate, it is the end you cannot change whatever you do. But it is not the fate as the end of the road. It is not only the last sentence of the story, also it cannot be projected towards future in order to be accomplished. Because it can happen anytime. Maybe it is the only ubiquitous possibility to unity and connect all the possibilities you project.

To sum up, Dasein’s recognition of its very own death is actually a kind of existential encounter, it is a face-off. By saying recognition it has not been referred to a kind of reasoning or understanding based on a cognition. The recognition of the authenticity of Dasein is closely connected to its essential which is defined in death.

From now on, I would like to continue with the more specific features of the meaning of being of Dasein and its death. As I have mentioned Dasein’s recognition of being-towards-death, it is clear that there is a relation between Dasein’s incomplete being and the revealing of its death as an essential thing to make it a whole being, and also this causes an extreme anxiety in Dasein. Here, because of the reasons listed above, the death of Dasein maintains a kind of mystery in itself even when it reveals itself. In other words, what death hides in itself becomes a given when the being of Dasein has been completed, but still it is not wrong to say that Sein is associated with a kind of mystery. It can be said that generally within human capacity of grasping, being is not something we go and possess, and even though we can say something about Sein, when it comes to features and description, it fails. The novelty of Sein comes from nothingness of its reality but grasping the being as nothingness is one of the crucial parts of understanding Heidegger’s philosophy. On the other hand, Sein is not exactly being, being can only be found among beings. Sein is not the totality of beings, however it is not a being or an entity and it cannot be found outside of beings. We are already in/ with sein. we found ourselves in the world. It is “Dasein”, i.e. being out there in the world. It is a totally empty concept and it is not possible to grasp the essence of being. However, nothingness is different from a lack of beings. This means that nothingness is not a kind of negation of being, but rather it is what brings to view the Being of beings. All of these explanations have brought us in a kind of position to claim that people have a kind of openness without any ground or a kind of directedness like a capacity.  According to Heidegger, being does not represent anything and it does not say anything about object because it does not have any metaphysical and foundational ground.

But how a being cannot be its own ground? According to Heidegger, since Dasein is an entity lives in possibilities, makes up his mind, projects itself to one possibility, one does so as being always already in the world, and since being is thrown into those possibilities, Heidegger claims that one cannot be one’s own ground because one cannot produce these possibilities. In my view based on this opinion of Heidegger, Dasein recognizes that his being is not its own ground and the only reality which he can define itself is its own death. The possibilities in one’s horizon are not authentic ones. The way that you face one possibility, no one can evade namely death, enables you to step out of horizon.

After this elaboration, I think that the meaning of the death and the being of Dasein have been articulated enough in order to support my answer to the fundamental question of my investigation which is that: What makes Dasein’s death so unique to be still able to reveal itself as a poiesis? Through the end of the paper, you will be presented how modern technology has been evaluated by Heidegger in terms of its modern essence preventing things to bring themselves forth to reveal their truth and how Dasein is situated as an orderer who encounters only himself but nothing else in the world of the modern technology.

First of all we have to state that in order to understand the Heidegger’s critique of modern technology, we should go back the source of the traditional understanding of technology such as a way of aletheia and modes of causality. Especially with the terms of the times before modern technology, when one is active and one works upon something then one cannot avoid the four types of causes. Four causes have a crucial role in the revealing of the thing, because the being, the existence or presence of the object owes four different causes. The artist on the other hand just considers carefully and gathers all other three ways together. The causation we are talking here is a more fundamental thing rather than a mere effecting force. It has something to do with the bringing-forth of the things to presence. It is  of the truth by bringing something from non existence to the existence, which can also be called as aletheia. Aletheia in Greek is a revealing and it is also related to the truth, however in modern technology there is a difference between poiesis and the instrumentality as we take technology today like the difference between truth and correctness. There is a truth in the revealing, but the only thing we have based on the correctness in the modern technology cannot give us a free relation with technology, because taking technology into account as instrumental we are covering the possibility of relation to the truth.

For Heidegger, an organ/tool which is used by human in order to produce does not capture what we have in modern technology today. In this epoch modes of experience we relate to objects we posit are labeled as enframing. Essence of something can only come out at a development as long as you investigate processes, theories and moreover you unfortunately assume that they are related to each other. However, there is nothing as essence coming at present rather here we have a covering up. Enframing does cover up the revealing itself. According to Heidegger, human only encounters himself since revealing has been covered up and it is not as  bringing forth, thus human misses his own essence. There is also another difference in the experience of the people of modern era and it is that we do not relate to entities, actually we do not experience their true essence. There is strict separation between the epochs about the becoming of entities and if the becoming of entities was a kind of letting be in pre modern era, it is completely a subject of investigation which is depending on the capacity of mind in modern world.

What is our relation with technology? According to Heidegger technology is a revealing, but not as a bringing-forth. The world reveals itself in terms of technological settings upon. The river example can be applied to everything. Technology also enframes us as a kind of setting upon. We are the commanders and controllers usually in this new revealing of technology which is an ordering. What happens here? When revealing occurs in the mode of enframing, the destining becomes an unfree one. Destining is no more concealed, no more mysterious, no more free and no more the one which reveals itself as poesis. Heidegger says that “Enframing belongs within the destining of revealing.” And he says that the danger is the main issue in destining of revealing in modern technology, since the technology we have has its essence in enframing. So, when objects are not free anymore to reveal themselves in terms of destining and there is nothing concealed in their revealing, since technology cannot be thought separately from enframing, then we have the danger of destining of revealing. River is not a river in the sense that freely destining its revealing as poesis, and since it is ordered, and it has become a standing reserve, there is nothing concealed about it and it fails to reveal itself as bringing-forth. As long as the world is treated as a standing reserve, Dasein will only see himself but nothing more wherever he encounters an object.

I would like to state my own views which are concluded from this kind of relationship between us and modern technology. When enframing is in the essence of modern technology, and there is no freedom for things for destining as poiesis, what is seen now and when we form our horizon is only Dasein himself even when he looks at the world and the things in it. Here, I would like to mention that the relationships between Dasein and others, or between Dasein and objects are also included in this situation. In other words, not only the physical objects, but also the events and relationships cannot reveal themselves in a way other than a challenging forth into ordering.

The death is and has to be the only thing can destine itself freely and apart from enframing essence of modern technology, and hence it can maintain its mystery and concealment. Because it is not a thing to be set upon, or to be ordered. Even if it is a possibility in every moment of our lives, the unbearable unrepresentability of death saves it from the danger of modern technology. In the light of my argument, I dare to take my claim a step forward and say that the death of Dasein is the only thing which can reveal itself freely as a poiesis in our world which is intermingled with the modern technology.

REFERENCES

 

Blattner, W. D. (1989) “Existential Temporality in Being and Time” in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall (ed.), HEIDEGGER: A Critical Reader, Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell Publishers.

Critchley, S. (2009) “Heidegger’s Being and Time, part 8: Temporality” Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/27/heidegger-being-time-philosophy

Heidegger, M. (1966) “Conversation on a Country Path About Thinking”, Discourse on Thinking, New York: Harper and Row Publishers.

Heidegger, M. (1996) Being and Time, New York: State University of New York Press.

Heidegger, M. (1982) “The Question Concerning Technology”, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Harper and Row Publishers.

Mulhall, S. (2007) “Human Mortality: Heidegger on How to Portray the Impossible Possibility of Dasein” in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark A. Wrathall (ed.), A Companion to Heidegger, Blackwell Publishing.

Yazlık: Şehirlinin Yüzleşmesi

Salt Beyoğlu’ndaki “Yazlık: Şehirlinin Kolonisi” sergisi kapılarını açtığı şehirlisine sanatsal bir paylaşım sunmaktan çok sosyolojik bir yüzleşme sağlıyor. Genel olarak bakıldığında dokümantasyona dayalı bir belgesel sergi formunda olduğu için, ziyaretçi ve sergi arasında doğrudan bilgi akışı olduğu söylenebilir. Serginin bu üslubu içinde “yazlık” olgusunu ele alış biçimini incelerken, ağırlıklı olarak ön plana çıkarılan bazı tartışma noktaları hakkında kendi düşüncelerimi aktaracağım.

Her şeyden önce “yazlık” ya da “sayfiye” kavramı, bütün yönleri ele alındığı takdirde tek bir sergiyle sunulamayacak kadar geniş olduğu için, Salt Beyoğlu’ndaki serginin de bu ana çerçevenin içini doldurmasını beklemek hiç gerçekçi olmaz. Diğer yandan “Şehirlinin Kolonisi” alt başlığı bize hangi sularda yüzeceğimize dair daha çok ipucu veriyor. Bu anlamda, serginin giriş katında resimlerle, deniz eşyalarıyla, gazete haberleriyle, şezlonglarla canlanan genel yazlık havasını serginin diğer bölümlerinde bulamamamız da bir tesadüf değil, aksine ele alınan konuyu ifade etmek için seçilmiş bilinçli bir yol denilebilir.

Üst katlara çıkıldıkça “Şehirlinin Kolonisi” alt başlığının da giderek daralıp belirginleştiğini görüyoruz. Özellikle mimari konusunun yakinen incelenmesi serginin farklı birçok görsel ifade yolunu gayet başarılı bir şekilde kullanmasına olanak sağlarken,  birey-doğa-toplum ilişkisinin modern zamandaki kısa ama yoğun sürecini de ortaya koyuyor. Bu çerçevede sergiden iki örneğin farklı açılardan beni düşündürdüğünü söyleyebilirim.

Bunlardan ilki, arşivlerdeki çizimlerin üç boyutlu canlandırmalarının güçlü vurgusu yanında, mimarinin toplum ve doğa ile bağlantısına naif bir şekilde dikkat çekildiğini düşündüğüm kısım oldu. 90‘ların komedi dizisi Yazlıkçılar’ın açık hava sinemasını andıran bir şekilde perdeye yansıtılması o dönemin ruhunu yansıtması açısından hoş bir ayrıntı diye düşünüyorum. 90‘ların 2000‘lere göre daha az bireyci, mahalle/aile bağları yoğun yapısının sosyalleşme ve mimari ile olan etkileşiminin bu örnekle doğrudan verildiğini iddia etmesem de, şimdi neredeyse kalmamış olan yazlık açık hava sinemasının bende hiç bir çağrışım yapmadığını söyleyemem.

Diğer yandan asıl değinmek istediğim nokta serginin adında da açıkça geçen kolonileş(tir)me mevzusu. Bu konu sayfiyelerin yaratılması, şehirlilerce ele geçirilmesi, oradaki kültürün yeniden üretilmesi süreçlerini kapsayacak şekilde beyaz plastik yazlık sandalyesi üzerinden de konuşulabilir ancak sürece yapılan vurgunun bir noktayı gölgelediğini hissediyorum. Yan yana ve önlü arkalı biçimde kumsala sıralanmış gibi duran şezlonglar ve sandalyeler genel olarak sayfiye hakkında konuşulabilecek güzel kapılar açan bir resim olarak aklımda kaldı. Ancak bu görsel sadece üstte sıraladığım gibi kabaca şehirlinin kolonileştirme sürecini hatırlatıyorsa, o zaman cümlemizi eksik bırakıyor olabiliriz. Bu kısmı, doğanın bireysel sömürüsünün sınıf sınıf, zevk zevk ve renk renk birçok çeşidinin sere serpe sergisi olarak görebiliriz. Bir parçası olduğumuz doğa ile sürekli olarak tahakküm ilişkisi kurmamızın ve sınıfı ne olursa olsun ister yazlıkçı ister günübirlikçi, ister tahta şezlong ister beyaz plastik sandalye ile gelen herkesin konduğu o alanı işgal etmesi ve direk kendi kullanımına açması sorunun çıkış noktası değil mi? Doğada elimizi sürebildiğimiz her parçaya sahip olmayı kendimizde hak olarak görmenin, ulaşılabilir olanın bizde işgal ve aidiyet yanılsaması uyandırması bence asıl konuşulması gereken problemdir. Levent Şentürk’ün sözleri durumu kısaca özetliyor: “Sayfiyedeki insan kendini doğallık diye hayal etmeye yeltenirken ve doğaya kavuştuğunu varsayarken, kendisi başta olmak üzere, bütün yapaylıkları yanında getirmiştir.”[1] Şehirli doğaya kavuşmasını kuma sapladığı sandalyesi olarak hayal ediyorsa eğer, bunu bir doğallık hali olarak adlandırmak çok zor diye düşünüyorum.

 

Son olarak serginin “Topluluk Hali” başlığı altında verilen bölümü hakkında fikirlerimi paylaşmak istiyorum. İlk karşılaşmada çok geniş bir çerçeve çiziyor gibi görünse de Burhaniye Ar-tur ve Datça Ak-tur sitelerine ayrılmış ana bölümle konuyu büyük ölçüde daralttığı için bu başlığın altının tam olarak doldurulmadığını söyleyebiliriz. Oysaki edebiyattan parçalara yer verildiği kısımda bu ‘topluluk hali’nin daha ilgi çekici örneklerini görebilir, ya da site krokilerilerine ayrılmış büyük bölümün biraz azaltılıp çeşitlenmesiyle daha çok derinlik katılabilirdi. Öte yandan “Gündoğan, Bodrum 92-14” adlı çalışma tek bir cümleyle ‘topluluk hali’ni anlatmayı sade ve daha kolay bir şekilde başarıyor diye düşünüyorum.

 

Salt Beyoğlu sanatsal sunumu çok ön plana çıkarmasa da tam olarak göz ardı etmediği bu sergisinde, amaçladığı sosyolojik karşılaşmayı genel olarak iyi bir şekilde başarmış diyebiliriz. Odaklanılmaya çalışılan noktalar daha ilginç ve çok yönlü olarak kurgulansaydı serginin genel havası için daha olumlu bir durum olabilirdi. Yine de şehirlinin, şehrindeki en kalabalık caddelerden birinde kendiyle “sayfiye” üzerinden sosyolojik bir karşılaşma deneyimlemesinin oldukça anlamlı olduğunu düşünüyorum.

KAYNAKÇA

 

Şentürk, Levent. “ Kulüp Tropikal’den Sandıma’ya: Yalıkavak’ta otuz yıl”, Sayfiye: Hafiflik Hayali, der. Tanıl Bora (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2014), 77.

Life As An Intrinsic Good

In the course of this paper, I will try to argue about a case which opens a thoughtful debate in the field of bioethics. The case about Christian Scientist couple who were judged about their son’s death puts forward various arguments about the nexus of religious beliefs, legislation and bioethics. I will try to present my own views about the court’s decision with the help of some philosophical moral principles, and through the end of the paper I will claim my suggestion based on one of these principles.

The Christian Scientist couple who believed that their 2-year-old son can heal with the help of praying rather than medical treatment were absolved by court’s decision claiming that it would be a miscarriage of justice to find the couple guilty. In order to discuss court’s decision and claim about it, it would be helpful to examine the problem starting the conflict in the case. Here we see a couple who act in accordance with their religious beliefs and in case of an illness their beliefs say them what to do. On the other hand, when they are judged in terms of legal laws their behavior is examined as involuntary manslaughter, because legislation has to concern a human being’s right to live. When reasons of both side are strong enough to claim, how can an act be judged fairly? What is right or wrong to do? Is there any criteria to know the ultimate answer of these kind of questions? According to the couple, right act is what their religion says. This view coincides with Divine Command Theory which claims that actions are morally right because God commands them. On the contrary, it would not be true to compare legislation with the couple in terms of the moral principles they take into account, because legislation first of all is not a rational agent, it is just a system of regulations. Besides, there is not a commonly accepted ethical principle which legislation is based on. Hence, when the court is arguing about such a case it concerns some basic ethical principles but we cannot say that one principle is better than the other to apply.

In my opinion, court’s decision about the couple is not reasonable but how can I conclude that if one principle does not overcome the other one and when the couple have liberty to behave according to their beliefs? Also, the couple as being parents have a right for paternalism which defends overriding of a person’s actions or decision-making for her own good.[1]In order to say that I do not agree with court’s decision I have two reasons. One of them is about construal of Christian Science and the liberty of religious beliefs. As we can reach the information from the news, the basis of the doctrine that couple adhere puts forward alienation from God or fear as reasons of all human illnesses.[2]Because of their sinful attitude, when they get ill they have to return the way of God in order to be healed. A religious person in such a case can really believe that the only way for him to be good again is coming through praying and he can reject the medical treatment. The religious liberty of him cannot be restricted since it is his choice made by his autonomy. However, Robyn who was a 2-year-old boy had a fever and ended up with death. Can we say that there is an autonomy of Robyn to reject any treatment because of his religious liberty? It is not the case for him, but he has parents and parents have religious liberty and right for paternalism over their son. If the parents let him to be cured by medical treatment, they commit a sin in regard to their beliefs and it is the last thing they would want. But here they give preference to their own religious liberty instead of Robyn’s right to live. Hence, even if we accept that one’s right to advocate religious liberty, I think its priority to one’s right to live cannot be acceptable.

Second claim I would like to point out about my disagreement with court’s decision is the unsatisfactory assertion of the court to reverse conviction against the couple. In the view of the court, if couple would have any conduct which is “wanton or reckless”, then the judgment would be against the couple. However, it is beyond doubt that we call it as murder if the couple would have a wanton or reckless conduct . Here the whole debate takes place, because parents’ good will about their children is being taken for granted. Thus, defending an involuntary manslaughter case by saying that there was no voluntarily killing is just describing the situation again or begging the question in a sense.

Since I am so dissatisfied with the judgement of the court, I may be asked to suggest something on how court would argue about the case. First of all, there could be a misinterpretation when it is articulated as parents have right to do anything with their children. Since parents are not the owner of the child, they cannot do anything with their children as long as the actions are based on religious grounds or on something else. But, generally they are obliged to be sure about the well being of their children. There is also no conflict between legal law and religious law on the basis of giving priority to life, but some cases like this should have to have extra regulations. Maybe when a child’s life is at the stake and there is a risk to die, law can restrict anybody’s interference. There could be a regulation weakening parents’ right for paternalism about their children who have pointless suffer even if there is a cure and chance to be healed. Until the age that children can take their autonomy about their health, laws can interfere under certain conditions. It can be seen as a suggestion which destroys religious liberty, however there is no justification of parents when they let their kids to die.

As I have mentioned above, Divine Command Theory claims that moral things are not intrinsically valuable, they have their value by the virtue of God. On the other hand, I would prefer to assert that there are some things which are intrinsically valuable such as life. As opposed to Divine Command Theory, if we think that a thing can be valuable for its own sake, then we claim that an act which is morally right can be right because there is something intrinsically good in it. Thus, giving priority to life over every other thing can be seen as a valuable act. There is also Natural Law Theory which is related to that view and it can support my judgement because I claim that flourishing life is intrinsically good.[3]I think paternalism is also based on this idea basically, otherwise for instance how can a physician justify to override a patient’s rights about his/her good?

  REFERENCES

 

Vaughn, Lewis. Bioethics: Principles, Issues, and Cases. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Margolick, David. “In Child Deaths, a Test for Christian Science.” New York Times, August 6, 1990.

Shamanism as A Type of Mysticism

 

 

In the course of this paper, I will try to present the different aspects of mysticism in order to discuss whether or not Shamanism should be considered as a typewhich is under the umbrella term mysticism. Through the second half of the paper, my focus will be on the language and its usage in mysticism and as well as in Shamanism. While I am arguing about Shamanism, I will use some parts of Singing Story Healing Drum which is a book about Shamanic and oral culture. With the help of the theoretical background, I will try to show that Shamanism and its practices are entirely included in mysticism.

Before stating other aspects of mysticism, it would be a good start to mention the term experience at first. Since in mysticism the only way for the knowledge of Absolute is experience, other terms of mysticism can be presented by relating to experience. There is no other way to experience that knowledge of absolute except being initiated to it. This initiation of mystic is a direct, individual experience and this experience is unique to every mystic. The important thing is that mystic’s experience is not a kind of observation. Because, observation causes you to put distance between you and what you observe.

In the initiation of the mystic, it is very important to mention that the state of the mystic is not called as hallucinating, dreaming or going crazy. Even if it is hard to understand it from today’s perspective, it is an experience within a different kind of consciousness. While the mystic initiating into mysticism, he experiences the most inner reality. There is no question, no definition. It is directly an experience. Even he himself does not know how to define. He may ask “What is this? What am I?” However, he asks himself here. Even though he could go crazy, he does not. Like in the ocean, mystic is not standing on any ground. He cannot stay where he used to be before, he is moved from his normal consciousness to a mystic’s consciousness. Just like this, Shaman’s journey is taken within the consciousness. He reaches another kind of consciousness in the experience but it is also the ability to stay conscious during the journey.

Another aspect of the mystic’s experience is to grasp or to feel the unity. With the help of experience of God, Other or Absolute, mystic can reach the state that everything is a unity and he/she experiences the All. This word All really means all material and immaterial, visible and invisible, worldly and supernatural. In Shamanism, the idea of unity is also involved, because there is no difference between material and immaterial, visible and invisible for Shaman, once he initiates. In the rituals, Shaman uses his body as a channel to connect visible and invisible in order to make a contact with the spirits. Shaman himself takes a mental journey during the Shamanic ritual and this mental journey is not different from a physical journey. Because Shaman does not distinguish material from immaterial, and when you stop distinguishing them then there is no difference between a mental journey and a physical journey.

Like a rebirth, mystic’s life totally changes, his daily life is redefined, because when he is initiated, his way of sensing also changes. The senses of the mystic are not like as they were used to be. Because the mystic has changed, and he is not like as he was used to be. The mystic changes, moves after every experience. He cannot stay at the same point where he is initiated. In one sense, this new way of sensing is related to unity of consciousness, because there is no distinction between the objective and subjective reality in the way of his sensing, seeing. His subjective reality is the most objective reality, and it exists. During his experience there is a storytelling taking place, Shaman experiences and sees the reality during the storytelling.

In order to grasp the story and the reality, there are lots of props getting involved in this storytelling of Shaman. Shaman brings the characters of the story via his body which serves the sight of the audience. Also, costumes and fire are used for the visualization of the story. There are music and instruments which stand up for sense of hearing. Music, instruments, poems are really important to convey the story because in Shamanism landscape is a soundscape. There is a difference between sound and sight. Sight comes from one direction at a time, but as opposed to it, sound gathers event simultaneously from all directions. Since the storytelling is not just telling or showing, it is all of them. Shamanic storytelling is an involvement, it is not passive, it has a movement. Because audience involves in a kind of experience via Shaman, storytelling has to work with all senses in order to pull the audience in the story.

In Shamanism, it is important to see that space, sound, vision are not grasped as we understand them today. As I have said, the movement is important for Shaman and landscape as a soundscape serves this movement more or less. On the other hand, this different way of sensing the world is not just about space and sound, they have also a different understanding of sense of time. In the story which is titled as “The Igıl” in Singing Song Healing Drum, we can see easily the changing sense of time after the mystic initiates. Even if it takes many years, the mystic hasn’t aged. In the Shamanic context, Shaman can travel all cosmos and he comes back as it took one hour.

I would like to state Raymond Nelson’s definition of mysticism for a better understanding of Shamanism as a way of living. Nelson says that “In its largest sense, mysticism is a way of life, art, and worship based upon an intuitive knowledge of mystery- the ‘mystery’ of the nature of the universe, or God, or ‘Reality’” (Nelson 3). As it is presented above, the center of mysticism is the mystical experience to reach the Unity and experience is nothing but an act. How can one claim that mysticism is only a philosophy? Since its center is acting and experiencing, this can easily lead us to claim that mysticism is a way of living. In my opinion, Shamanism and its rituals fit in this general definition of Nelson. Hence, it would not be wrong if I claim that Shamanism and its rituals are the ways of art, life, and worship at the same time.

Since I am writing on Shamanism and claiming about it by comparing with mysticism in general, I have to consider that Shamanism is an oral culture and the main aspect to work on has to be the role of the language. First of all, we speak about mysticism and Shamanism based on the experience, then there has to be a transfer from mystic to people about his experience. Otherwise, we would not know about it, because the experience of the mystic is an individual experience. Since he speaks about it and redirects his experience from personal to the social, mystic’s individual experience becomes historically and culturally important events. Instead of one-to-one secret relationship with The Other, it turns into public. In other words, his joining with The Other will join with others. Experience is always defined as culturally, and in oral culture language is the most important way of it. Hence, there are ways of using the language for different functions. First of them is language as transformation, it is the kind that transcends the word itself. Language as transformation does not describe, it transforms words in act. Actually the point is what it does instead of what it says. We do not take word’s initial meaning into account and word is used as only a tool. This is actually where language is broken down, and also reality is. While the mystic is speaking about his experience by transcending the words, he also transcends the ordinary meaning of the words.

In mysticism, language has a kind of power which is really different than as we use it today. Steven Katz says in his book Mysticism and Language:
“Mantras, koans, mystical alphabets and lexicons, ascent texts, prayers, the repetition of scripture, the recitation of religious poetry, and still other linguistic acts embody a primal, radiant, metaphysical energy. They incorporate and encapsulate a dynamic power, the dynamic power, that enlivens the entire cosmic order. By deciphering their meaning, by utilizing their potential, the mystical personality is empowered to alter its own nature and fate. . . (24)”
In Shamanism, words are not things, but actions, occurrences, events. You can manipulate people with words. Words are powerful, it can unite people in a group. Also, in Shamanism people have the idea of soul as a center of cosmology, and everything is imbued with spirits: animal, rock, people,etc. Shamans have a general part in metaphysical nature of things, for example they know mountain spirit, river spirit, animal spirit, etc. Thus their existence depends on the ability to interact in nature. In the “Seventy Languages” story in Singing Story Healing Drum, he chooses to learn animal language rather than accepting gold as a reward. Nature is the very reality that they connect with and they have to find ways to interact with it. And language as a power functions like a weapon, or a tool.

Besides, naming is very important in Shamanic culture and it is a good example of using language as power. Because name has a sort of effect on the person to whom it belongs. In The Book of Dede Korkut, we frequently see this way of usage of language. After a special case, Dede Korkut names the person who deserves the name by showing his virtue. In Shamanism, we also have many examples of language used as an act. In the story “Algysh For A New Drum”, we see the Shaman who tries to get the drum. He is doing this by poetry and it is a good example to grasp why shamans need words.

Language as information is also the very common way to use language while the mystic is speaking about his experience. Basically, the reason that he speaks about his experience is to share that experience and the inner truth with others. Hence, the information which is transported via language can be the main aim of the public who cannot experience it directly. Otherwise there would not be a transformation from mystic to people and in that case how could we know and talk about mystic’s experience.

In my view, the aspects of mysticism and Shamanism overlap in many ways as far as I tried to present throughout the paper. In general I claim that Shamanism is a type of mysticism and also a way of living, because it is far away from being comprised of doctrines, it is based on experience. This main point makes it and acting, experiencing, living. On the other hand, Shamanism is nourished from language, because it is an oral culture. And this makes the role of language very important. Thus I have tried to give examples from language usage in Shamanism in order to see the similarities between mysticism and Shamanism clearly. Especially the language functions in Shamanic stories and rituals can be counted as the examples of the different ways of language usage in mysticism.

Works Cited

Katz, Steven T. “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning.” Mysticism and Language. Ed.
Steven T. Katz. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 3-41.

Nelson, Raymond. “ Mysticism and the Problems of Mystical Literature.” Rocky Mountain
Review of Language and Literature. 30/1 (1976): 1-26.

The Book of Dede Korkut: A Turkish Epic. Trans. Faruk Sümer, Ahmet E. Uysal [and]
Warren S. Walker. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1972.

Van Deusen, Kira. Singing Story Healing Drum: Shamans and Storytellers of Turkic Siberia.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004. Print.

Is It Plausible to View All Artworks as Physical Objects?

In the course of this paper, I will try to present my opinions about the physical being of artworks by using examples from the movies and exhibitions. In order to discuss about this topic, I will state Robin George Collingwood‘s opinions from his theory of art explaining art as an expression. Since the topic is about the very nature of artworks and it questions the physical conditions of artworks, it seems inevitable to end up with this question: What is a work of art? Without going into details of this broad question, I will aim to state Collingwood’s opinions and then to argue with the help of some examples of artworks.

The claim about artworks as imaginary objects is really a provocative one which is brought forward by Robin George Collingwood. I assume that it would not be wrong to say that there is a kind of common sense about artworks as physical objects. Furthermore, it seems a bit strange to say that artworks are not physical objects while you are looking at one of the Van Gogh’s paintings admirably. Then, what does Collingwood actually claim when he says that artworks are imaginary objects? According to Collingwood, art is in the head of the artist. The art is either an imaginary object or an activity in the artist’s mind. The genuine emotion which is something happens to you and your process to know yourself or this genuine emotion becomes an art. Other people or their emotions are not the aim of artistic creation, the aim only could be the expression of oneself. This person who expresses his/her emotions freely and simultaneously expresses these emotions for himself/herself. This also makes art unique and individual compared to other craft which has a general nature or aim for everybody. Then, if it is not a physical object which is composed of noises and sounds, what is this beautiful song that I listen now while writing this paper? With his own words, Collingwood says that:
“The music, the work of art, is not the collection of noises, it is the tune in the composer’s head. The noises made by the performers, and heard by the audience, are not the music at all; they are only means by which the audience, if they listen intelligently (not otherwise), can reconstruct for themselves the imaginary tune that existed in the composer’s head. (135)”
If the song that I am listening right now is just an imaginary tune, can we conclude that physical objects we called as artworks are just physical manifestations but nothing more?

The movie Fahrenheit 451 is about a dystopian world where the books are burned by firemen, because it is claimed that books make people unhappy with the stories/ideas that are not true and real. Books can cause suicides, asociality or inequality. But there are book people who live outside of the city. They choose one book, then they memorize it and keep it in their mind. They also burn the books after they know it. Here, we can interpret that, the physical manifestation of an artwork is useless and it is just an object like other physical things. The book is just paper and ink on it, it is not the artwork itself. On the other hand, the person who knows Pride and Prejudice is not a book. And, Jane Austen is not a book either. In that sense, we can say that the movie Fahrenheit 451 supports Collingwood’s idea of art as an imaginary objects, at least the movie tries to show that the meaning of a book does not come from its physical appearance and even a person can be a book, because what makes a book is not its physical reality.

While stating his opinions about artworks as imaginary objects, Collingwood does not separate one art form from another. For the artist, the aim is to discover the genuine emotion which he is experiencing and to express the feeling, so there is no importance which form he chooses. Otherwise he would be a craftsman, not an artist. There would be a difference on the side of audience. Because their relation with the artwork can be shaped by the form of the physical appearance of the artwork, but still this is not artist’s first concern. The form is also the part of the process which artist expresses his/her emotions. However, is it reasonable to express one emotion in a same way while it is affecting different people? If the form of the artwork is not the first thing which artist thinks about, then what happens when two artists work together? As I have mentioned above, this process which is taken by the artist is unique and individual one. Then, how can it be possible for two different people to create an artwork together?

In the case of Tim Noble and Sue Webster, we see two artists successfully create artworks within a cooperation. Since they invent their artworks as a team, there has to be an explanation for this, otherwise we may accept their artistic creations as a counter argument for Collingwood’s argument. I think the reason for the teamsdoing great jobs sometimes is about their synergy. The answer cannot be the sameness of the way that two different people think and feel, but the opposite may be the case. In order to make it clear, I would like to present Sue Webster’s own words about how she explains their being together both as couple and artists: “ His head is in the clouds. I am an earth person, my feet are on the ground, so I am very practical person and he is not practical at all. I am sort of order and he is chaos. He completely explodes the way that I am working,…so I have to work around that, yeah it is what makes it works, I think, if we were two people of the same philosophies, I think the work would be incredibly boring.” (02.21″ -03.47″ )

If it is acceptable when we say that the key point under their success is Webster and Noble’s opposite beings and this makes them one, then these two people can have a unique and individual artistic creation process for them, and this would not be against Collingwood. It is obviously an interpretation which is open to discuss, but on the other hand Collingwood’s opinion about artworks as physical objects is very strict. Is the work of Noble and Webster, Dirty White Trash with Gulls, an artwork? Most probably, the physical being of this pile of rubbish is not the artwork for Collingwood. However, in my opinion both this pile of rubbish and Füsun Onur’s work about her cat are artworks.

If there is a need to state my own views, I am not arguing against Collingwood in this case, I just claiman analogy for this debate. Let’s think about numbers. What is the physical being of a number? When I write 2 on the paper, or when I show my fingers, are they counted as physical manifestation of the number 2? Whatever the answer is, there is a bigger problem. Even if I accept one of the physical manifestation of the number 2, still I am in a struggle about its very nature. It is reasonable to think that the idea of the number 2 exists. The number 2 as an imaginary object exists in our minds independently from its different physical manifestations.

The analogy I mentioned above is just an idea that I would like to connect with Collingwood’s theory, but it can be helpful to treat artworks as imaginary objects in some senses. For the works of Noble&Webster and Onur, what is the artwork here? When the lights turn off, we cannot see the shadow of rubbish and it just becomes a pile of rubbish. Also if there is no light we cannot see the shadow of the Tekir, and the work loses its main aspect. In that sense, what is the artwork here? Is it light or shadow? Even if it seems so, my answer is no. Neither light nor shadow is the artwork here. The artwork is one in complete. With all its aspect, with light and shadow, and with the idea behind it, the artworks can be imagined in our mind.

Works Cited

Thomas E. Wartenberg. “Art as Expression: R.G. Collingwood.” The Nature of Art. Wadsworth Publishing, 2007. 125-136.

Noble and Webster: In Search of Imperfection http://channel.louisiana.dk/video/tim-noble-and-sue-webster-search-imperfection.

Some Thoughts on Art Through The Matrix

 

In the article which is called “Philosophy Screened: Experiencing The Matrix”, Thomas Wartenberg claims that films can contribute to discuss philosophical issues by using the mediums of this type of art. In order to do that, films can screen thought experiment which is a good way to concern philosophical discussions. During the first part of this paper, I will present Wartenberg’s argument basically and his hypothetical answer to No-Argument Argument of Carroll. Through the end of the paper, I will try to state my ownopinion about art in general by arguing whether art is educative or not.

Thomas Wartenberg asks an important question about the relationship between art and philosophy and he fundamentally wonders that: Is it possible to screen a philosophical argument as a movie? In order to argue this question, he uses the deception hypothesis of Descartes as a philosophical argument and The Matrix as a movie. His comparison between these two is based on Descartes’ deception hypothesis about a genius evil which deceives him about the reality of the world in which he lives. After a series of doubts, Descartes concludes that he cannot trust his senses and the reality based on his sensations. He assumes that there is a genius evil to deceive him about everything including his own body. The only reality which he can trust is his mind. This is a typical thought experiment in philosophy which concerns a possibility and then argues it with the help of opinions in a concrete system of thoughts. At this point, Wartenberg claims that the movie The Matrix has a kind of thought experiment and it is a similar version of Descartes’ deception hypothesis. In the movie, the protagonist whose name is Neo figures out that his reality is deceived by computers and his life is a kind of illusion which is created by the computers. As Descartes’ genius evil depicts him, the computers in The Matrix depicts people about their reality. According to Thomas Wartenberg, The Matrix screens the deception hypothesis and the movie does this by using the advantages of this art. Wartenberg gives some examples from the scenes of the movie such as the mirror scene that Neo touches the mirror, he becomes one with the mirror, both Neo’s and audience’s perception of reality is broken down. Once the movie succeeds this, then it becomes capable of arising the thought of the audience. Since, we see that Neo’s reality is depicted by the computers and he lives in the matrix, then what restrains us to think ourselves in a similar position? Can we really know that our reality is the very reality? By screening its own hypothetical thought experiment, movie can alter us to think a philosophical question. And it would not be wrong to say that this is a kind of contribution which riches philosophical discussions.

In my view, after this point it would not be difficult to guess Wartenberg’s answer to Carroll’s No-Argument Argument. Carroll’s argument states that: “Artworks offer no arguments or analysis to justify the beliefs which they convey. And if this is the case, then they don’t convey any knowledge. Therefore, artworks do not convey any knowledge. Hence, art is not educative.” As I have just mentioned above, Wartenberg’s paper aims to show that an artwork such as a movie can offer an argument like the thought experiment in The Matrix. Although there is not any necessity for a movie to do any justification for a thought experiment, we can easily see that it refers to Descartes’ hypothesis and makes an analogy with it. Wartenberg’s general position seems true, at least according to his paper we can see that a movie can screen a philosophical argument, at least a thought experiment. Hence, I agree with Wartenberg’s general position that movies can prompt philosophical reflection and enrich philosophical discussion of wide range of issues.

In order to argue about art and artworks and their features such as being educative, I would like to state my personal opinion about what art is. As The Matrix, which is a piece of artwork, succeeds to alter us in order to think a philosophical question, this does not have to be the case for every movie we see. However, they can still distribute our way of perceiving. In general, I would like to define art or an artwork something which extends you. An artwork can extend your ideas, emotions or aesthetic tastes. Since the word extend is a bit vague, in order to clarify it, I will continue with the examples of artworks from the exhibitions we visited with the class. While I was visiting the exhibitions, I was thinking, questioning and arguing about the artworks at the same time. In Salt, the video “Double Shooting” was impressed me a lot, I found the argument that the video offers very valuable to think upon it. The video is a combination of one real video from Syrian civil war and the artist’s thoughts about that video. Artist’s speech about this short real video states three interesting arguments. Without deepening in the details of these arguments, I can say that they made me think about them and the validity of these arguments. On the other hand, while I was walking and thinking about the artworks around me in the exhibition taking place in Arter, I wanted to take some notes for myself and I walked towards a table. I put my notebook on it then the security of the exhibition came and warned me. Because the thing which I assumed as a table was not a table actually, it was one of the artworks in the exhibition. I was so surprised and ashamed a bit, I took a step back and pretended like this table is an artwork. As can be seen, this artwork was just a table but nothing more for me. All I think about it was that I see a table here, not an artwork. In other words, it did not extend my thoughts, so I did not take it as an artwork. I claim that the real reason was that this artwork did not extend my thoughts, emotions or tastes in any way.

Even if I accept my argument as a kind of guide in order to define something as an artwork, still I have to think about whether art is educative or not. Is a thing which extends one’s opinions, emotions or tastes educative in some way? I agree with Wartenberg about that the movie has a thought experiment, thus does it mean that this movie is an educative artwork? If a thought experiment can be counted as an educative activity, or one’s own contemplation about her/his own opinions, then we can say that art is educative. In other words, we can say that movie extended my opinions about a philosophical issue, and this can be counted as an educative aspect of an artwork.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Mroue, Rabih. (2012). Image(s), Mon Amour. Curator: Aurora Fernandez Polanco. In Salt Beyoğlu, İstanbul, 2014.

Wartenberg, Thomas E. (2003). Philosophy Screened: Experiencing The Matrix. Wiley Online Library.

Derrida’s Notion Of Metaphysics

In the course of this paper, I will try to present Jacques Derrida’s philosophy with the help of some parts from his “ Of Grammatology”. In order to explain his notions of metaphysics and of postmetaphysical philosophizing, firstly I will mention some philosophers’ opinions as a background, then I will connect this background to Derrida’s philosophy as a critique of sign theory and linearization. In addition to these main parts of the paper, while I am conveying one philosopher’s opinions I will present Derrida’s views about the subject matter and compare them.

Derrida interrogates ingrained metaphysics and he searches for the ways to deconstruct this sort of metaphysics which he calls as “the metaphysics of presence and logocentrism”.[1] I will try to present the general structure of some figures’ metaphysics from the history of Western philosophy. In order to discuss Derrida’s extensive study, it would be better to start with explaining other philosophers’ thoughts about the signs and to see how these signs take place in their way of philosophizing.

If I start with Plato and his realism, it would be a proper beginning for the topic. In Plato’s famous cave example, there are people in the cave who can only see the shadows on the wall. The shadows are the reflections of the things outside of the cave, but people do not see them as they do not see the real forms which are in the world of “ideas”. The things outside of the cave are also reflections/shadows/copies of the real ideas, so people who are in the cave can only see the shadows of the shadows of the real ideas. In general, here we have universals as ideas, the things outside of the cave are the particulars which are in our world, and the shadows on the cave’s wall are just some images of things. Shadows on the wall are the signs of the things, the things which are outside of the cave are also signs of the ideas, and the ideas in another separate world are the primary reality. Therefore, ideas are not signs of something rather they are the reference point for other signs. As we can see, one needs to return the first point in this series of signs to find the first real one. In Plato’s philosophy, you can lead back to that ideas through thinking, then these first privileged ideas are immediately present for you. We will see in Aristotle, Derrida mentions that Plato’s philosophy has the same structure with spoken and written words. We can think that written words are signs of spoken words, and spoken words are signs of the things in the world. Here again, we have a series of signs and the privileged ones refer to others as a starting point.

For Aristotle, we have primary substances as particular things and secondary substances as universals. When I point at something, this is a primary substance, but if I want to point at a universal it is not possible to find it by itself. Since the universals are essential characteristics of the things, they do not move around by itself. For example when I want to point at red, it is always a property of something. We also have impressions in our minds and our spoken words are signs of these impressions. Written words are the signs of spoken words. The first one which is not a sign of something is wholly present. Until now, we have seen that there is a difference between signified and signifier and the one who is signified has a privileged position compared to the signifiers of it. Because of its position in this sign system, signified is usually seen as it has an independent existence like a universal or a substance.

Hegel reconstructs all these basic notions and categories that have occurred in the history of Western philosophy. Hegel claims that the basic foundational of the all levels such as substance in Aristotle is not something which can exist by itself. He says that there is no substance rather there are relations and activities. The basic level is the set of relations. For Hegel, the basic relation is the immediacy relation between things. Even God negates its immediacy by producing matter and informing the forms in his mind. At this point, I would like to state Derrida’s opinions about Hegel’s reconstruction of all basic categories. Derrida claims that this is an illusion and there is no immediacy relation between the signifier and the thing. Derrida would agree with Hegel’s opposition to the independent substance or universal, because Derrida thinks that there isn’t any independent signified. Derrida believes in that we cannot step out of our practices and refer to something outside of these practices. This idea contradicts with Aristotle and Plato’s opinions, because Derrida claims that it is not possible to step out of our framework in order to find the truth or the origin of everything. We cannot privilege a specific framework over the others. He also says that signification creates an infinitude, thus signs always refer to the other signs and it is not possible to refer a sign which is not a sign. He is opposed to the idea of series of signs. For Derrida, there is no sign which makes us able to step out of this system of signs, so the signified is not out of this sign system and it is not transcendental. However, if it is not possible to refer something outside of our framework and to point out a signified, how can we explain the position of universals?

One possible answer can be given from Kant, and he thinks that universals are operative in the mind of humans and they are basic aspects in which we relate to things. Some forms of representations are already at work in our everyday act of seeing. Whatever we experience, we experience properties or we can say that we experience a universal. And for Heidegger, ontology is concerned with the conditions of the possibility of experiences and with the existentials to be in a world. However, Derrida claims that these theories can no longer work. We can deconstruct the theories we see in history of Western philosophy, because conceptual frameworks have some cracks. For example, there is an important problem in the sign theory forDerrida. As I have mentioned above, Derrida says that this system always refers to one and another and there is no sign outside of this system, hence the so called signified one is also a sign. For Derrida, even if this question is posed by philosophers, the interrogation will be in the limits of their understanding of linguistic and semantics.

Derrida claims that metaphysical theories do not work as well. Covering up the meaning is a matter of differance, it is not a matter of theories. We shall liberate individual from the domination of universals, because without universals justice would be impossible. This liberation of individual from universals is called as justice to come. Derrida also claims that the idea of universals is also the part of desire of Western philosophy which is about to find universal truth. It can be said that it is just a further form of illusion of Western metaphysics. And after the end of this metaphysics, there is a state of human beings which there are no universals.

As I have mentioned above, while Derrida is arguing about metaphysical theories and their uselessness, he claims that they cover up the meaning and this is a matter of differance. Derrida defines his term differance with these words: “…differance, an economic concept designating the production of differing/deferring.”[2] Since it is the concept which designates the production of differing, it can be said that differance is related to difference. However, the main distinction between them can only appear in the new writing, because now even we try to explain differance we use the words of Western metaphysics. As Derrida says that the limits of history of philosophy opened the possibility of what it covers up, the old writing will be the end of this history of philosophy and it will be the first writing of the new writing. Derrida defines new writing as without having lines, since he associates old dominated writing to the linearization of writing. He terribly criticizes every way of linearization of history, but in particular the linearization of time and consequently the linearization of writing. In order to present his opinions about linearization of time, he uses Heidegger’s notion of vulgar time. According to Heidegger, in our daily life we live in a realm of possibilities and we engage in activities. While doing that, we draw a line from present to point in the future and we forward along the time. However, Heidegger claims that here we operate vulgar temporality not primordial temporality. We are thinking in the framework of vulgar time which present takes the priority, and vulgar time covers up primordial temporality. In that case, Derrida claims that vulgar time is also the determining time concept in our history of Western philosophy and it operates classical ontology. Thus, we encounter the linearization of time which affects the understanding of the sign theory as we discussed above. Also, linearization of time creates the linear writing. With these words of Derrida, it can be seen how vulgar time and the history of philosophy intertwine each other: “ If one allows that the linearity of language entails this vulgar and mundane concept of temporality (homogeneous, dominated by the form of the now and the ideal of continuous movement, straight or circular) which Heidegger shows to be intrinsic determining concept of all ontology from Aristotle and Hegel, the mediation upon writing and the deconstruction of the history of philosophy become inseparable.”[3]

In order to decenter the dominant way of philosophizing, Derrida advocates that we need to deconstruct the dominant understanding of metaphysics which is the metaphysics of presence walking together with linearization of time and writing. Derrida shows that the deconstruction is only possible with the writing. Since, the new writing is opening from the last writing’s limits, then it has to contemplate about the metaphysics of presence and logocentrism as the limits of it and also the fountain head of it.

 

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[1] Derrida (1991, p. 39).

[2] Ibid, p. 40.

[3] Ibid, p. 50.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Derrida, J. (1991). From Of Grammatology. In Peggy Kamuf ( Eds.), A Derrida Reader: Between The Blinds. New York: Columbia University Press.

Primordial Temporality vs. Vulgar Temporality

In this paper, I will try to understand Martin Heidegger’s notions of primordial temporality and vulgar temporality which he mentions many times in various ways in his book “Being and Time”. In order to put my thoughts and questions in words about these notions, it would be better to practice on an everyday example to show how these notions work.

We can think of a person who is dealing with human or non-human entities in her daily life, at the same time she has an existential that makes the relation possible in which she relates to herself. She thinks about her life and tries to decide her profession in the future. As every person – here we can use “Dasein” which is the notion of Heidegger- in a society, she is allowed some possibilities. Although the possibilities for people differ from society to society, we can say that one can be aware of that there are many possibilities for oneself. When she asks herself that question: “What do I do with my life?”, she can show her awareness about the possibilities which are certain for her. There are many possibilities for her future occupation such as being a lawyer, scientist, artist, or philosopher which can be chosen by her. According to Heidegger, these possibilities create a horizon, and the horizon is defined as “ the openness that surrounds us”[1] by Heidegger. Although the meaning of the term “openness” needs to be discussed, for this paper I do not prefer to argue about it in details and I will use horizon in a narrow sense as openness containing many possibilities for oneself which has a stretch but surrounds us. Since this horizon has been produced by that woman who tries to decide about her future occupation, the possibilities which occur in this horizon come from the world that she is already in and it would not be wrong to say that in one sense the horizon is she.

Among various professions, she has to choose one of them by projecting herself into one of these possibilities, then she can go for that possibility. She performs this horizon and chooses the possibility of being a lawyer, in other words she projects herself as a lawyer. Then she enrolls in a university to be a lawyer, takes some related courses, and she organizes her everyday life in accordance with her decision. At the end, she can become a successful lawyer and in that case what approaches for this woman from the future is she, herself; because it was herself projected into this possibility.

Regarding that point in the future, she stretches out her horizon. She has the capacity to be beyond herself, thus she looks upon herself from that point in the future. In this case, we can say that Dasein is ahead of oneself in terms of time. No matter which possibility we encounter or engage in, we always find this peculiar structure of being ahead of oneself. Here, I can claim that the notion of being ahead of oneself obviously refers to the notion of future. Due to this capacity of Dasein to be ahead of oneself, Dasein is not stuck in present and future has a certain role for one’s life, because the capacity of being ahead of oneself has its roots in future.

However, according to Heidegger, even if Dasein has the capacity to be beyond his/herself, it is not the case that oneself steps beyond her/his horizon. From my point of view, this claim seemed a little bit controversial at first, because I could not comprehend how it is impossible to step beyond the horizon. I tried to argue against that view by thinking about some possibilities which are out of horizon. For the above example I tried to find possibilities relatively above/out her horizon, I suggested a possibility like being a judge after her lawyer career. This could be a possibility which is out of her horizon in the example for my understanding of time, since it needs a further education and also time, being a judge did not seem as possible as being a lawyer. At least I thought that they could be in different horizons. However, then I realized that the only thing I did by trying to suggest out of horizon examples was stretching the first and the same horizon over and over again. Then, finally I found my answer to step beyond the horizon of possibilities and it is purely and simply death.

In our  daily life we live in a realm of possibilities and we engage in activities as the woman practices in above example. In that case we draw a line from present to point in the future and we forward along the time, however, Heidegger claims that here we operate vulgar temporality not primordial temporality. Temporal structure of our everyday life looks different from the temporal structure of the horizon. We are thinking in the framework of vulgar time which present takes the priority, and vulgar time covers up primordial temporality. But, how do we think of horizon then? What makes us able to imagine this horizon and link a relation between Dasein who thinks in the framework of vulgar temporality in his/her daily life and horizon which has a different temporal structure? Answer can be found in Simon Critchley’s interpretation in his article: “ Time should be grasped in and of itself as the unity of the three dimensions – what Heidegger calls “ecstases” – of future, past and present… Temporality is a process with three dimensions which form a unity.”[2] Based on this opinion I would like to construe a possible answer to my question, in order to think of a horizon we do not have to do something different than we always do while thinking in our daily life, since Dasein is experiencing these ecstases together in a unity via the process of temporality. In addition to this explanation, we can add that within this certain temporality, future has a kind of certain primacy in terms of primordial temporality.

On the other hand, we have seen that the vulgar temporality covers up the primordial temporality and thus one can think that people who engage everyday activities and deal with vulgar temporality may never find out the primordial temporality in their life. There could be an explanation in William D. Blattner’s statement which is “… originary temporality is Dasein’s ability to track its development through sequential (mundane) time.”[3] With this interpretation of the relation between primordial temporality and vulgar temporality, one can say that Dasein has a kind of intention to manage his/her daily life organization of time, namely in the framework of vulgar temporality, and at the same time he/she has the ability to possess primordial temporality.

In my view, the analysis of Heidegger about how people’s minds work in their everyday life is very convenient to what really happens and it is useful to understand the process while we are engaging in these kind of activities. Although there could be some troublesome points to figure out the relation between two kinds of temporality, this analysis seems very apprehensible and in accordance with daily life.

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[1] Heidegger (1966, p. 64).

[2] Critchley (2009).

[3] Blattner (1989, p. 110).

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blattner, W. D. (1989). Existential Temporality in Being and Time. In Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall ( Eds.), HEIDEGGER: A Critical Reader. Massachusetts, USA: Blackwell Publishers.

Critchley, S. (2009). Heidegger’s Being and Time, part 8: Temporality. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/jul/27/heidegger-being-time-philosophy

Heidegger, M. (1966). Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking. In: Martin Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking. Trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund. New York: Harper and Row.