Tonight I was walking home in the dark. The bag on my shoulder was might heavy with thought. And books.
I crossed paths with a grown man and a tiny girl. He carried her in the dark. As we passed Analog coffee he set her down and gently said "I'm going to chase you now." She was delighted. Giggling, they scampered about. She ran from him but wanted to be caught. They both laughed and smiled and enjoyed the moment.
I turned back several times, watching them, giggling along.
It brought me a lot of joy.
Love like that is inexplicable. It demands no logic, yet has a greater rational depth than most actions.
Love like that does not need to be explained. Love like that is profound and wise.
Morality, at its most profound, also rejects clear explanation while possessing a deep wisdom and a complete rationality.
I've been writing about Collingwood's concept of duty. My thinking on it is deepening.
It is moving me in a very serious way.
I feel a duty to love. I hope that some day I can love another person, and that we can love a tiny person together.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
History, Duty, and the Overlap of Classes
I'm finally beginning to answer the question: How is it that dutiful action emerges from historical thinking? Or, how does historical thinking produce a certain moral perspective?
Same question, guys.
I think the answer may belong in Collingwood's concept of 'the overlap of classes'.
Or something like that. He lays that all out in the Essay on Philosophical Method, which I haven't read. But I've read enough people talking about it to have a vague idea.
Basically, the idea is that classification in the human/philosophical world can't work in the same way it does in the natural world. Classes of things overlap with one another. So in distinguishing levels of consciousness, for example, we would never be making completely clean distinctions. Yet, all of us know from experience that there is a base level of consciousness in which we are simply aware of something, a higher level in which we are manipulating those rawer experiences, and an even higher level in which we are thinking conceptually. Those are legitimate ways of classifying consciousness, but they overlap and blend into one another.
History and duty are also overlapping classes, it seems.
Both of them perceive action as completely individual. That is, in no way reducible to a certain kind or type of action. A certain thing is exactly what it is in that particular time and place, not a type of thing.
I think Collingwood makes this clear when discussing his rejection of the comparative method in history and its relation to present observation. We cannot be content, he says, to view the French Revolution as just an example of revolutions, defined as generic type of event:
"The dandelion-head whose seeds I now watch a sparrow eating," he observes, "is as individual and unique a thing as the French Revolution. The sparrow is this sparrow, not any sparrow. Its appetite for the seed I now see it eating is, no doubt, an example of a kind of appetite common in sparrows; but if I cannot be content to say that the French Revolution happened because oppressed population rebel against rulers too weak to control them, I cannot be content to say that this sparrow eats this seed because sparrows like dandelion-seeds. In both cases, the ground of my discontent is the same: it is, that the general rule, just because it explains every case of the kind indifferently, does not explain this case in it concrete actuality, but only those features of it in which it resembles the rest. In short, if I am content with a scientific explanation of a natural fact the reason is that I am content to think of it not as the unique fact which it is, but merely as an example of a certain kind of fact." ('Reality as History," in Principles of History, 181).
There is no real difference between the past and the present. We use the same methods of thought to understand both.
To really think historically is to perceive in terms of uniqueness and not in terms of kinds.
Seems like duty and history, then, belong to this overlap of classes. Because in reality, as he admits in 'Goodness, Rightness, Utility', they are identical forms of consciousness.
Very satisfying to think clearly about this question of history and duty.
I intend to write more about it soon. For my future. And for fun.
Same question, guys.
I think the answer may belong in Collingwood's concept of 'the overlap of classes'.
Or something like that. He lays that all out in the Essay on Philosophical Method, which I haven't read. But I've read enough people talking about it to have a vague idea.
Basically, the idea is that classification in the human/philosophical world can't work in the same way it does in the natural world. Classes of things overlap with one another. So in distinguishing levels of consciousness, for example, we would never be making completely clean distinctions. Yet, all of us know from experience that there is a base level of consciousness in which we are simply aware of something, a higher level in which we are manipulating those rawer experiences, and an even higher level in which we are thinking conceptually. Those are legitimate ways of classifying consciousness, but they overlap and blend into one another.
History and duty are also overlapping classes, it seems.
Both of them perceive action as completely individual. That is, in no way reducible to a certain kind or type of action. A certain thing is exactly what it is in that particular time and place, not a type of thing.
I think Collingwood makes this clear when discussing his rejection of the comparative method in history and its relation to present observation. We cannot be content, he says, to view the French Revolution as just an example of revolutions, defined as generic type of event:
"The dandelion-head whose seeds I now watch a sparrow eating," he observes, "is as individual and unique a thing as the French Revolution. The sparrow is this sparrow, not any sparrow. Its appetite for the seed I now see it eating is, no doubt, an example of a kind of appetite common in sparrows; but if I cannot be content to say that the French Revolution happened because oppressed population rebel against rulers too weak to control them, I cannot be content to say that this sparrow eats this seed because sparrows like dandelion-seeds. In both cases, the ground of my discontent is the same: it is, that the general rule, just because it explains every case of the kind indifferently, does not explain this case in it concrete actuality, but only those features of it in which it resembles the rest. In short, if I am content with a scientific explanation of a natural fact the reason is that I am content to think of it not as the unique fact which it is, but merely as an example of a certain kind of fact." ('Reality as History," in Principles of History, 181).
There is no real difference between the past and the present. We use the same methods of thought to understand both.
To really think historically is to perceive in terms of uniqueness and not in terms of kinds.
Seems like duty and history, then, belong to this overlap of classes. Because in reality, as he admits in 'Goodness, Rightness, Utility', they are identical forms of consciousness.
Very satisfying to think clearly about this question of history and duty.
I intend to write more about it soon. For my future. And for fun.
Monday, June 3, 2013
From Epistemology to Morality
Collingwood's main thing is the rejection of methodological/epistemological unity. He doesn't believe that the natural world and the human world can be understood in the same way.
This is true primarily with the question of rules. Natural science can produce rules and doctrines. Historical study can not. That isn't what it wants to do and it shouldn't try.
It instead provides insight and mental training, both acquired through a process of simulating past thoughts that provide synthetic experience.
The real benefit of historical thinking is a unique moral perspective and attitude.
The core element of this moral outlook is identical to the core element of his epistemological outlook. That is to say that it center on the question of rules. In trying to understand the human world in terms of rules (like science), we also try to understand our moral actions in terms of rules. Historical thinking, on the other hand, views the human world not in terms of rules, but in terms of simulation, that is as particular and unique instead of general or theoretical.
This is the distinction Collingwood makes between theoretical and practical reason.
We explain other people's actions (theoretical) in the same way that we explain our own actions (practical). When we view our own choices not in terms of rules, but in terms of particularity, we also see other people in terms of particularity. We are not a kind of person, and other people are not kinds of people.
History and duty.
From an epistemological outlook (history) to a moral one (duty).
This is true primarily with the question of rules. Natural science can produce rules and doctrines. Historical study can not. That isn't what it wants to do and it shouldn't try.
It instead provides insight and mental training, both acquired through a process of simulating past thoughts that provide synthetic experience.
The real benefit of historical thinking is a unique moral perspective and attitude.
The core element of this moral outlook is identical to the core element of his epistemological outlook. That is to say that it center on the question of rules. In trying to understand the human world in terms of rules (like science), we also try to understand our moral actions in terms of rules. Historical thinking, on the other hand, views the human world not in terms of rules, but in terms of simulation, that is as particular and unique instead of general or theoretical.
This is the distinction Collingwood makes between theoretical and practical reason.
We explain other people's actions (theoretical) in the same way that we explain our own actions (practical). When we view our own choices not in terms of rules, but in terms of particularity, we also see other people in terms of particularity. We are not a kind of person, and other people are not kinds of people.
History and duty.
From an epistemological outlook (history) to a moral one (duty).
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