seen around town -a bunch of fur

the other day i was out walking and came across a big wad of fur. this picture hardly does it justice -it was a lot of fur!

give me that old time a-religion

in my last post, i tried to say something in favor of the kind of worries that gripped tolstoy's character levin (and tolstoy himself). there are a number of issues here, and my thoughts came out a bit jumbled, so i want to try again.

part of what interests me about levin's predicament is that it raises the question of nihilism. levin becomes preoccupied with the possibility that there is no meaning to life, no reason why he exists. or rather, he is troubled by the fact that his answer to the question of why he is alive -a scientific, materialistic answer- provides no guidance for how he should go about living his life. in fact, it undercuts other forms of guidance he has relied on, most importantly the orthodox christian faith of his youth.

from our vantage point, levin's encounter with nihilism may seem especially typical of the nineteenth-century (and perhaps especially in russia). we can think of ivan karamazov's quip that without god everything is permissible, or of lermontov's hero pechorin. we can also think of nietzsche's efforts to avoid a collapse into nihilism. in all of these cases, nihilism appears as a problem -perhaps the problem- for humanity, especially in the wake of the demise of religious belief.

now, what strikes me about many contemporary people -even very thoughtful people- is that nihilism no longer appears as a problem. it is not that we have solved levin's worries, but we have seen that these are not legitimate worries after all. either the 'death of god' does not lead to nihilism, or nihilism turns out to be not so bad after all. there is something quaint about getting all worked up about the (non)meaning of everything. nihilism, when it appears on the radar of many, does so mostly as a joke:




as christians, what ought our response be to this posture? i mean this as an intellectual question, but also as an interpersonal one. with regard to the former: do we think that belief in god -in the christian god?- is really necessary to keep one from failing into nihilism? or that if people just reflected more, they would be troubled the way levin was troubled? with regard to the latter: what does one say to a friend or neighbor who believes that there is no 'grand meaning' to life, but who is also untroubled by this?

i confess, i have a soft spot for old-school nihilism. but not everyone does. dietrich bonhoeffer, for one, seemed quite skeptical about the idea that as christians we should try to first provoke a crisis in people, and then use that as a way of leading them to faith. in his letters and papers from prison, he spoke of the 'world come of age.' part of his thought seems to be that christians should simply accept that humanity has 'grown up', so to speak, and no longer needs religion. i'm not sure, however, how to relate what bonhoeffer means by 'religion' to the kind of belief that levin arrives at as the solution to his personal crisis. for bonhoeffer, 'religion' is something private. it is also a kind of deus ex machina brought in to fill some gap in one's life. on at least one reading of bonhoeffer, his point is that modern people can now say of god in their personal lives what laplace said of god in his model of the solar system -'i have no need of that hypothesis.'

on the surface, it sounds as if bonhoeffer is rejecting precisely the kind of faith that levin arrived at, where religion comes in as the solution to a personal crisis. but maybe bonhoeffer's point is that religion ought not to fill any particular 'gap' in one's life, in the sense that it ought not be 'brought out' at weddings and funerals and then tucked away. that sort of religion is like the god of newton's solar system -it accounts for minor corrections to system. and that sort of religion is the kind that the world is better without. but levin's religious faith is not like that. rather, it is something that reshapes his whole way of understanding himself, the world, and how he should live.

"that bubble is -me", or, levin's worries

i recently finished reading anna karenina. it is no secret that, with respect to a number of features of his life and outlook, the co-protagonist of the book, konstantin levin, mirrors his author, leo tolstoy:




in book eight, in we find levin in a troubled state:

" 'without knowing what i am and why i'm here, it is impossible for me to live. and i cannot know that, therefore i cannot live,' levin would say to himself.
'in infinite time, in the infinity of the matter, in infinite space, a bubble-organism separates itself, and that bubble holds out for a while and then bursts, and that bubble is- me....'
and, happy in his family life, a healthy man, levin was several times so close to suicide that he hid a rope lest he hang himself with it, and was afraid to go about with a rifle lest he shoot himself.
but levin did not shoot himself or hang himself and went on living."

what should we make of levin's position? i suspect that many contemporary readers may think that someone like levin is suffering from some sort of mental illness -perhaps he is depressed? but tolstoy tells us levin is happy and healthy. moreover, his life is rooted in caring relationships and honest work. for levin, this crisis in his thought and life was born from his encounter with death:

"from that moment when, at the sight of his beloved brother dying, levin had looked at the questions of life and death for the first time through those new convictions, as he called them, which imperceptibly, during the period from twenty to thirty-four years of age, had come to replace his childhood and adolescent beliefs, he had been horrified, not so much at death as at life without the slightest knowledge of whence it came, wherefore, why, and what it was."

i'm not certain why levin's experience of death leads him to ask such questions about life, and to be troubled by his lack of ability to answer them. perhaps the point is that in encountering death, and the prospect of one's own death, one comes to see one's own life as a whole, as something bounded, and thereby one comes to ask questions about the whole of life. that is, one asks not only what? and why? about things within one's life, but what? and why? about one's whole life.

levin's questions are those that have traditionally been answered by religion and philosophy. indeed, in his search for answers levin reads plato, kant, hegel and schopenhauer. in contemporary academic philosophy, however, there is something decidedly unfashionable about levin's predicament. one way to see this is to note that, in spite of the volumes and volumes that is written about what is right or good, there is little said about the meaning of life. and the unspoken assumption seems to be that we can adequately address questions about acting well without facing the questions that so troubled levin.

i would guess that many contemporary philosophers might think that levin has made some sort of mistake in his thinking. it turns out, after all, that it is possible for him to live; in fact he does so. doesn't that suggest that levin was wrong to think he couldn't live without an answer to the question of why he exists? and even if there answer were just 'you are a bubble that will burst', one could still live perfectly well; there is no need for the different or deeper answer about life for which levin is searching.

i'm not sure what to say about this, except that i am skeptical about the too-easy manner in which levin's predicament seems to be brushed aside by otherwise thoughtful people. its as if 'we' have all somehow come to see that there is something adolescent about levin's concerns, something that one outgrows -that it is enough to simply enjoy the things within one's life, to find them worthwhile, and that asking for more is a sophomore's mistake.

but i want to resist this attitude. i want to say that there is something artificial and unsatisfying about attempts to do moral philosophy without addressing the very questions that preoccupy levin. and, moreover, it seems natural to expect that whatever answers one gives to those questions will have a direct impact on how one understands living well. if there is something adolescent about levin's worry, i think most of us would, in the words of a friend, do well to 'mind our adolescence a bit more.'

new digs

good-bye north paulina




hello north wolcott




well, i moved. a big thanks to all the fine folks who helped me, some of whom are pictured below.




the new place is alright, though i miss the old place. i especially miss the better views and outside space. but i'm sure i'll like the new place the more i get used to it and make it my own. in spite of its many hassles, at least moving is a good reminder (=warning) of how much stuff you've accumulated, and its a good incentive to cull one's material possessions.