Philosophy - Pt I. What's it all about, then? With references to Sartre, Hume, Bishop Berkeley, Bertrand Russell and a certain London cabbie.

I notice someone else has visited my blog after finding it by googling ‘philosophy’, and they, too, I should imagine, will have trudged off rather disappointed by the lack of intellectual sparkle exhibited here. So just in case someone else does the same — and I am always keen to avoid disappointing the punter, whatever his or her reasons for dropping by — I shall write a few words and try to clarify exactly what my interest in philosophy is and is not.

First off, I should point out that what one man or woman means by philosophy (in the narrow, academic sense) is something of a movable feast. I took a philosophy degree course at Dundee University in the late Sixties/early Seventies and the department there was definitely signed up to what was then known (and, for all I know, might still be today) as the Oxford school of philosophy, which took a — for want of a better word — ‘scientific’ approach to philosophy, in as far as it was strict on what might be regarded as ‘known’ and, in spirit, firmly adhered to an almost mathematical approach to knowledge. The Oxford school regarded — regards? — itself as the orthodoxy and rather looked down on what, I think, it referred to the Continental school of philosophy, which it thought of as ‘sentimental’ in a literal sense. The Continental school, of course, regarded the Oxford school — if it was in the slightest bit bothered, which is probably was not — as being stuck up and elitist. Now I might here and now throw a few names into the pot and attempt to give the impression that I am au fait with their work, but the truth is that I am not.

I arrived at Dundee a very young 18-year-old, and I don’t think I was sufficiently intellectually mature enough to benefit from a degree course of the kind then provided. (These days, I gather rather to my horror, a gradgrindian emphasis on regarding a degree course as a preparation for life in ‘the workplace’ is the vogue, whereas when I went to college, the philosophy of tertiary education was still that its purpose was to train a mind. Thus a history graduate might well, later in life, find himself in building a career in sales, or marketing, or advertising, or in the Civil Service. Undergraduates studying medicine or engineering, of course, were more likely, although no necessarily, to end up working as doctors or engineers, but even then this was not such a given. More on the changing nature of student life in another entry. Why, for example, are students no longer out on the streets protesting?

The strict Oxford school approach did not necessarily preclude us studying philosophy beyond the pale, such as existentialism, but I should imagine doing so was seen as a kind of charitable ecumenical interest. So what Sartre, Heidigger, Kierkegaard and Jaspers had to say was studied, as were Bishop Berkeley (‘we exist because God is thinking about us’), Hume, Locke, Descartes and various other bods. Studying their work was an exercise in seeing what had lead up to the Oxford school.

I was something of an intellectual scavenger and would pick up a snippet here and a titbit there, which, judiciously and strategically thrown into conversation might well give the impression that I knew what I was talking about. Unfortunately I didn’t. In my fourth year, we all attended a seminar on ‘the Vienna Circle’, many of whom had arrived at philosophy from mathematics and treated the subject in much the same manner. This would explain their doctrine (too strong a word, but what the hell) of logical positivism. To this day, I'm not too sure what it is, except that it is grounded in empiricism. (My French cousin, a professor of aesthetics, who must remain nameless after I named him in a previous, now deleted entry, is firmly in the rationalist school, whereas I rather think all that ‘we can work it all out as long as we think it through and have enough red wine’ is err, on the wrong track.)

In my fourth year at Dundee, we students were all expected to write and read ‘a paper’ and in hindsight I hate to think just how jejune mine must have been. I do, however remember, answering, in response to the observation that there was an ultimate truth out there ‘in reality’ to a statement such as ‘the cat sat on the mat’, that such thinking did not and could never account for outright sarcasm. My comment came towards, although not at, the end of the seminar, and I remember it broke up early. At the time I prided myself on having thrown an intellectual spanner into the works, though I now suspect the assembled philosophy staff simply thought ‘life’s too short. Let’s go off an have a cup of tea’.

There is an apocryphal story told my a London cabbie which might illuminate the varying approaches to philosophy and what different people who profess and interest in philosophy think it is. The cabbie stopped in The Strand and immediately recognised that his new passenger was none other than Bertrand Russell.
‘You’re Lord Russell, aren’t you,’ the cabbie said to the passenger.
‘Yes, I am,’ Bertrand Russell replied.
‘All right,’ said the cabbie, ‘what’s it all about then?’
‘And do you know,’ the cabbie later told his friend, ‘he couldn’t tell me!’

Part II to come when I am a little less tired. Good night.

Where are they now? A meditation on how pointless being famous is. With references to Fred Kite and Joe Stalin

When I read about or hear talk of Martin Amis, I am always reminded of Hugh Walpole. Who he? you might ask. Exactly. Who he? But that is the point I am making. Walpole (you can find a potted biography of the chap here) was, for many years in the Twenties and Thirties, the popular novelist, celebrated by everyone who mattered, made wealthy through his work and generally l’homme du jour. But: who he? Amis fulfils rather the same role. Years ago, when he was all the rage, the Eighties’ l’homme du jour and one of the young Turks of Anglo-Saxon literature, I tried to read a novel by Amis, but couldn’t. Not only did it not grab me — one reason for that might be that I was the wrong demographic, being, in the mid-Eighties, already in my mid-30s, but I didn’t think it was particularly well-written. (Will Self another: keeps using obscure words and I can’t but suspect that all he wants to do is make us sit back in admiration.)
Since then, of course, Amis (see here if you are in the slightest bit interested. I’m not but there’s no harm in being charitable) has remained, for those who take these things seriously, in the literary spotlight, although he is by no means any more a young Turk, but has followed in his father Kingsley’s footsteps to become a voice of modern reaction. I suspect that he us still rather prosperous because when the going was good and he still was a name, he cracked the U.S. market and still has sufficient readers there to pay for the Highgate flat and weekend cottage. The U.S. market is so vast that even an also-ran with comparatively poor sales seems to be able, to a certain extent, to cream it. Amis must be in his 60s (er, like me), and I doubt he will be quoted or remembered 30 years from now.
I thought of Hugh Walpole (‘who he?’) and then Amis because I was looking up a quotation. It is something a character said in the film I’m All Right, Jack, a character called Fred Kite, a Communist shop steward (played by the incomparable and highly neurotic Peter Sellers) who is the foil to Ian Carmichael’s young toff working on the shop floor and who falls for Kite’s very pretty daughter. During a conversation when Carmichael is asked for supper at the Kite household, Kite waxes lyrical about Soviet Russia and his lines highlight the fatuous nature of those benighted folk who continued — and continue — to support Joe Stalin despite knowledge of his murderous ways becoming widespread. “Ah, Russia,” says Kite, “all them corn fields and ballet in the evening.” Or not, as we now know.
Looking up that quote, I came across the name Alan Hackney (which sounds as though it is made up, like my fictitious shop steward Ken Vauxhall, but isn’t). Hackney, according to his obituary in the Daily Telegraph, ‘wrote some 30 screenplays, countless television scripts, half a dozen novels – including an international best-seller – and contributed comic pieces to Punch for several decades’. The film I’m All Right, Jack, was based on his novel Private Life, and he also wrote the screenplay.
And the point of it all? Alan Hackney: who he? Barbara Pym, who she? There was a time, believe it or not, when people were asking ‘Johann Sebastian Bach: who he? Despite his widespread reputation during his lifetime both as a an outstanding musician, improviser and composer, Bach was forgotten and almost entirely obscure until he was ‘re-discovered’ 100 years after his death.
Walpole, Pym, Hackney to which we might add Sillitoe, Lawrence, the Flemings (Peter and Ian) and any number over nameless Victorian writers. Who in his or her right mind would be intent on making their name in literature. A fool perhaps. Someone like me. The only definite outcome is bitter, bitter disappointment.

A quick note - and something of an apology - to those who arrive here after using the search term 'philosophy'. (But don't despair)

A year or so ago, I signed up with some website which ‘monitors the traffic to your blog’. The point of the website, I think, is to get you interested in other — paid for — services it offers which, as far as I can tell, involved ‘directing more traffic to your site’. Well, as I don’t give a tinker’s cuss for ‘directing more traffic to my site’ and as I am loath to part with money for that kind of thing, I have forgotten about the site. However, I am still signed in and I still get an email from it every time this blog is viewed after it is tracked down using one of the ‘buzzwords’ in my profile (I think. As I have said, it is all in the realms of unimportant gobbledegook to me).
Now one of those ‘buzzwords’ is ‘philosophy’ but I should imagine that punters viewing this will be somewhat disappointed to discover that the closest it gets to ‘discussing philosophy’ is pretty damn far from what they might be interested in.
As it happens, I studied philosophy at Dundee University in the days when attending university didn’t cost you an arm and a leg and there are various questions which still interest me (of which more in a future entry). But experience has taught me that all-to-often punters who profess ‘an interest in philosophy’ are simply interested in discovering ‘what it’s all about’, which is not the point of philosophy (or rather is not the point of philosophy in which I was schooled at Dundee — schooled being an acceptable euphemism for attending the occasional lecture, although I was conscientious about attending seminars and tutorials because, well, it interested me).
In fact, I rather doubt you could get any kind of agreement on what philosophy ‘is’.
So: my apologies to all those who look up my blog seeking some kind of enlightenment, but who are rapidly reduced to asking themselves ‘who is this pillock?’ But there is the promise of future entries to come, including one on the stranglehold relativism has acquired on thought, how on earth people can insist on the absolute nature of ‘human right’ but, in the same breath write of any talk of ‘God’ as complete bollocks, why, essentially, almost all philosophical ‘problems’ can be boiled down to an aspect of what, in the area of moral philosophy, can be described as ‘the is/ought gap’, and whether First Great Western provides by far the words inter-city train service in Great Britain. But don’t hold your breath.

On another topic entirely, Manchester United will, I think, be pipped at the post for the Premier League title this season. They keep trailing by one point, then two points, then one point etc, but if they carry on dropping points in silly ways, they don’t deserve the title.

My kind of blog: a drawback. Followed by a short joke to show just how cheerful we Brits are in adversity. Cue cheerful whistling.

There are blogs by BBC journalists, blogs by whacky wannabe backwoodsmen, highly artificial blogs by companies who just want to sell you financial ‘products’ and this kind of semi-personal blog. I know I have four readers, although how often they tune in I don’t know. The trouble is that knowing one is read and having a vague acquaintance with one’s readers is rather inhibiting. I find I have painted myself into a corner and have now somehow restricted myself in these entries to listing the cars I have owned and various middlebrow pseudo-intellectual musings, but I no longer feel I can write anything more personal.
That was the problem earlier on today. I had a row with my wife (who drives me up the wall — here I’ll restrict myself to the unchivalrous comment that she is not the sharpest blade in the box and possesses more half-understood, undigested knowledge about this, that and t’other than is, I think, entirely legal) and felt tempted to record one or two choice comments on marriage, mine in particular and the institution in general. But I couldn’t. And that inhibition is beginning to piss me off a little. The one solution is to start a second, more anonymous blog but — well, even that seems rather pointless. And that, unfortunately, is all I can say on the matter.

Q. What do the donkeys get for lunch on Blackpool beach?

A. Half-an-hour, same as everyone else.

The end of empires (and even the United States - utterly inconceivable only to those poor souls who don't listen to Radio Four)

There is a very good, not to say quite fascinating, series running on Radio Four at the moment called A History Of The World In 100 Objects. The presenter, who, I think also wrote the series, chooses one of the many artefacts in the British museum and expands on it and thereby brings the history of the world to life. And it is series such as this which can demonstrate, as it is demonstrating to me, how essentially ignorant one is.

For example, I had previously heard mention of the Indus civilisation but knew little else. And although, tantalisingly, we know remarkably little to this day, I now know a lot more. Most fascinating was that the Indus cities were exceptionally well-built with a sanitation system and that to this day archaelogists have found no evidence that the people of that civilisation went to war or even had a standing army.

Another equally fascinating programme detailed (and this I did already know) that people throughout the Middle East had a flood legend and that they predate the mention of Noah in the Old Testament by many years.

Today the chap chose something or other from the Assyrian empire (I don’t now what as I missed the first five minutes but I think it was an account, or rather two accounts, one from each side, of the conquest of the Assyrians of Judea). 

After hearing it, I looked up the Assyrian empire on the net and was astounded to learn that it lasted almost 1,500 years (from the 2,000BC until around 600BC, although its existence straddled two distinct phases with at one point the Assyrians being vassals of the Babylonians.

Those 1,500 years rather knock into a cocked hat our own British empire, which at its peak was effective for a mere 120 or thereabouts - if you agree with me that the empire’s slow decline began after the end of the Great War - but also rather put in context what might be referred to as the American empire. Granted that the U.S. doesn’t behave as empires of the past have done, but I think a good argument could be made to suggest that there is a de facto American empire. That has lasted - what? - 60 years.

At present it seems inconceivable that the United States could ever ‘break up’ and even less conceivable that it might be ‘broken up’, but then an end to the Assyrian, Roman and Byzantine empires would also have seemed inconceivable to those who lived in them when each was at the height of its powers.

Ashes to ashes . . .

Joke of the day, an occasional series - 3

At the risk of sounding tactless, if not out and out callous, the old chap who was apparently at death’s door a week or two ago has rallied. So there is nothing to report along those lines, whether ironical or not. I shall be seeing him this coming Wednesday night on my way back from London, and I shall do my best to cheer him up. It’s not that he is ill, simply that he is 83 and that his body is slowly packing up. I managed to cheer him up and get him to laugh again the last time I saw him, but it is so crass to chat along the lines of: ‘Look, I don't know what you’re worrying about, it might never happen’, when, in fact, it will happen and unless I end up in a horrible motorway crash tomorrow on my way to work, it will happen to him rather sooner than it will happen to me. The only thing I can do, or one of the only things I can do, is to remind him of his Anglican faith and to ensure he becomes less anxious.

Having said all that, here’s another joke to be getting one with.

The wedding reception was held at a lovely hotel and everyone agreed that it was one of the nicest occasions they had ever attended. Finally, at about two in the morning, the last few guests drifted off and the newly-wed couple retired to the honeymoon suite where they decided to have a last glass of champagne. They were discussing out the day had gone and who had been there, when the bride noticed that her new husband had grown a little silent.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Oh, nothing, darling, nothing at all, nothing my dear,’ he said.
‘Come on, something’s bothering you, what is is?’
‘Really, it’s nothing,’ said her husband, ‘nothing at all it’s just . . . it’ll keep, really.’
‘Look,’ said the bride, ‘tell me now. Let’s start as we mean to go on and be completely open with each other.’
‘Well . . . ah, no, it’s nothing, seriously, nothing at all, it’s just, y’know, something I’ve been wondering about, but, y’know, another time, really.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake out with it.’
‘I don’t, y’know, I don’t want to upset you.’
‘You’ll upset me if you don’t stop beating about the bush,’ said the bride, ‘now come on, out with it.’
‘Well . . . it’s just y’know, I’ve often wondered . . .’ The newly-wed man fell silent.
‘Wondered what?’
‘Well, y’know, I’ve often wondered whether, er, y’know . . .’ Again he drifted off into silence.
‘Whether what?’ the bride asked, now sounding a little impatient.
‘Well . . . OK, I’ve often wondered, y’know . . . I’ve often wondered whether, er, whether I was your first.’
The bride was silent for a moment, and then she sighed. ‘Oh God, if I had a pound for every man who’s asked me that!’

Joke of the day, an occasional series - 2

I had intended publishing my next blog entry along the lines of the imminent death of an elderly friend, how sad I was blah, blah, blah and meditations on how profoundly the demise of someone very, very close can impact on the ego, especially the sensitive, ineffably well-developed ego of the remorselessly self-centred blogger. Reflections on irony were to play a large part in that entry. However, I usually draft these entries on before publishing them and the draft to that particular entry is on another laptop (officially I have two, in fact, for reasons it would be far to tedious to go into here, I have four), so that shall have to wait until another day to be published. In the meantime I shall tell you another joke, one which has gained a certain status on the Daily Mail feature subs’ desk as ‘Pat’s Polish farmer joke’.
Here it is:

At the end of World War II when Poland gained a large chunk of the east of Germany and Soviet Russia gained a large chunk of east of Poland, the Soviet and Polish authorities set about deciding where the frontier should be between Poland and Soviet Russia. They finally agreed on a suitable frontier whose only drawback was that it went right through a Polish farmer’s property. So they called him in, sat him down and explained the situation to him. They asked him where he would rather have his farm: in Poland or Soviet Russia.
‘Oh Poland,’ he told them, ‘without a doubt, without a doubt, it has to be Poland. Those Russian winters are terrible.’

Joke of the day, an occasional series - 1

David and Maurice were two Jewish friends who had known grown up together, worked together and known each other all their lives. Now that they were both retired, they met up two or three times a week at a French cafe in North London to gossip and read their newspapers. David was always a Daily Telegraph man and Maurice preferred The Times, but one day, David is amazed to see that Maurice is reading The Flame, the newspaper of the National Front.
‘For God’s sake, Maurice, why are you reading that bloody awful rag?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, David,’ says Maurice, ‘I like The Times, but it was beginning to depress me. It was all so negative and downbeat, nothing but inflation, misery, scandal, horror, crime and disaster . But The Flame is so different, it’s much, much more positive and upbeat. Did you know that, apparently, we own all the world's banks, run Hollywood and have complete control of the White House?’

Smell of cow shit brings a promise with it

This will sound daft, but I know spring is one its way, not because January is slowly drawing to a close, but because I can smell the cow shit in the air.
I arrived back her at Higher Lank about ten minutes to midnight, and getting out of the car, the first thing I noticed was the smell of cow shit. I am not trying to be funny - for once - when I say I like the smell a great deal. (The waste from vegetarian animals simply doesn't smell offensive.)
The thing is that you can never smell the cow shit in the winter. Why, I don't know. Perhaps it is too cold, but then that can't really be the answer because last week when we had a mild smell, I still couldn't smell it. But now I can, and now I know spring is on its way.
BTW Another smell I like a lot is that of silage.

Saved from a fate worse than death — apparently

So much for winter hell on Earth. After spending more than a week away from home and seriously concerned that I would miss out on important episodes in my children’s childhood (such as discovering it is quite possible to watch TV 24 hours a day if there is no one there to curb such excess), I was determined to get back to Cornwall from work last Wednesday. Being of late rather more mature and responsible (I’m afraid it happens to us all, dammit, despite all those grass-induced late-night pledges that ‘I’m not going to grow up, man, I mean like, you know, who needs it, I mean like growing up, I mean why lay that trip on yourself, man, when there are people dying everywhere, you know, dying, just dying, and all the fatcats, you know, man, all the breadheads, are just sitting there and they don’t give a fuck man’ etc ad nauseam) I checked and double-checked the forecasts — in London, Exeter (where I would travel to by train and pick up my car), Okehampton in the middle of Dartmoor and here at home in St Breward — and did so several days running to ensure I had the very latest information. I even rang up the BP service station at Belstone, just outside Okehampton for an up-to-the-minute eyewitness account of the situation, and a guy there confirmed that the A30 was not only passable but completely free of snow. So I took off.
The first thing I noticed on my journey, or rather the first thing I didn’t notice, was snow. According to the TV news, everywhere apparently, except the small corner of West London where I live and work between Sunday and Wednesday, was several feet deep in snow. So, I asked myself looking out of the train window, where the bloody hell was it all? Where had it gone? For most certainly the TV pictures had not been faked (we have strict laws against that kind of thing — only radio phone ins and TV quizzes can be faked these days), but where was the snow?
The mystery deepened when I got to the station at Exeter St Davids. There the streets were, I must admit, a little damp — it was foggy — but incontrovertibly snow-free. The road out of Exeter to the A30 and the A30 itself were also resolutely snow-free. I did eventually get to see a little snow when I got as far as Belstone, but it was an embarrassment, nothing but small patches in the grass which couldn’t make up its mind whether it was still snow, whether it had become ice or whether it was by now something in between. Snow should be majestic. There is undoubtedly something wildly impressive when you come across a six-foot bank of freshly fallen snow, however inconvenient or even dangerous it might be. You cannot but respect it. It is there and it is beautiful. It might even move some, although not me, to try their hand at verse. But this kind of snow, the kind of whatever it was masquerading as snow on Dartmoor? It was as embarrassing as a fat man man in late middle-age reeking of nicotine and with hair which is beyond thinning who still comes on as though he were some virile he-man in his mid-20s. And for this I endured an additional three days in London? Give me a break.
Thursday and Friday the temperatures climbed and today
was as mild as any day one might enjoy in late winter or early spring. Today it is also pissing with rain which is very re-assuring. The weathermen, who completely cocked up over the ‘cold snap’ are informing us that we should not be fooled by the ‘mild spell’ and that the cold temperatures could last until well into April. Yeah, right. Sounds like a bad case of over-compensation to me. And his from the guys who promised us a ‘barbecue summer’ last year. Did we get one? Answers on a postcard, please, addressed to your nearest municipal dump.
The two pictures were taken just a few minutes ago. They show the remains of a snowman my children built. One is a general shot, the second is a — very necessary — close-up. Take especial note of the rain.
End of rant.