Friday, June 13, 2014

Monkeys and the moon

Brian Clack quotes Chesterton:
the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart.
I don't know about monkeys, but wild animals and the moon are striking things. Seeing the moon or looking a deer in the eye, say, tends to make you (or me, anyway) stop and temporarily forget whatever else was on your mind. It's like the intrusion of another world into ours, and this sense of being in the presence of (a representative of) a whole world gives a feeling of infinity, and the sense of its being another world gives a feeling of something supernatural. Not in the sense of magical powers, but in the sense of another order, in roughly the way that a foreign culture or a different time might be said to be another world. There's something pleasantly jarring about it. It's the kind of experience that people say "puts things in perspective" or "makes you think," but I don't know what it is supposed to make you think or what the perspective is. My problems mean nothing to this deer, perhaps? I knew that already, and why should I care? But the effect is something like that. You forget yourself and replace, if only for a moment, egoism with an impression of the hugeness, the variety, and the beauty of the world. Although that isn't quite right. It's a kind of disorientation or suspension. I think the word, if it hasn't been overused, is wonder.

It has been argued that this wonder, or at least something like it, is the origin of Hinduism. Surendranath Dasgupta writes:
In the later mythological compositions of the Puranas the gods lost their character as hypostatic powers of nature, and thus became actual personalities and characters having their tales of joy and sorrow like the mortal here below. The Vedic gods may be contrasted with them in this, that they are of an impersonal nature, as the characters they display are mostly but expressions of the powers of nature. To take an example, the fire or Agni is described, as Kaegi has it, as one that "lies concealed in the softer wood, as in a chamber, until, called forth by the rubbing in the early morning hour, he suddenly springs forth in gleaming brightness. The sacrificer takes and lays him on the wood. When the priests pour melted butter upon him, he leaps up crackling and neighing like a horse—he whom men love to see increasing like their own prosperity. They wonder at him, when, decking himself with changing colors like a suitor, equally beautiful on all sides, he presents to all sides his front. All-searching is his beam, the gleaming of his light, His, the all-beautiful, of beauteous face and glance, The changing shimmer like that floats upon the stream, So Agni's rays gleam ever bright and never cease." They would describe the wind (Vata) and adore him and say "In what place was he born, and from whence comes he? The vital breath of gods, the world's great offspring, The God where'er he will moves at his pleasure: His rushing sound we hear—what his appearance, no one [knows?]." It was the forces of nature and her manifestations, on earth here, the atmosphere around and above us, or in the Heaven beyond the vault of the sky that excited the devotion and imagination of the Vedic poets. [my emphasis]
(Incidentally, Dasgupta also explains that literal sacrifices, e.g. of horses, came to be replaced by meditation on symbols:
As a further development of the Brahmanas however we get the Aranyakas or forest treatises. These works were probably composed for old men who had retired into the forest and were thus unable to perform elaborate sacrifices requiring a multitude of accessories and articles which could not be procured in forests. In these, meditations on certain symbols were supposed to be of great merit, and they gradually began to supplant the sacrifices as being of a superior order. It is here that we find that amongst a certain section of intelligent people the ritualistic ideas began to give way, and philosophic speculations about the nature of truth became gradually substituted in their place. To take an illustration from the beginning of the Brhadaranyaka we find that instead of the actual performance of the horse sacrifice (asvamedhd) there are directions for meditating upon the dawn (Usas) as the head of the horse, the sun as the eye of the horse, the air as its life, and so on. This is indeed a distinct advancement of the claims of speculation or meditation over the actual performance of the complicated ceremonials of sacrifice. 
I imagine that this goes some way towards explaining the bewildering mysticism discussed here. If you're going to change an ancient practice for something else it's understandable that you might claim that "clearly" you are simply bringing out and acting on the true meaning of the ancient text. But I'm digressing.)

Anyway, I think that Chesterton is right.

12 comments:

  1. "To take an illustration from the beginning of the Brhadaranyaka we find that instead of the actual performance of the horse sacrifice (asvamedhd) there are directions for meditating upon the dawn (Usas) as the head of the horse, the sun as the eye of the horse, the air as its life, and so on. This is indeed a distinct advancement of the claims of speculation or meditation over the actual performance of the complicated ceremonials of sacrifice."

    It certainly seems like a "distinct advancement" to those of us who find animal sacrifice appalling as, presumably, most in our culture who share our world view would. But what if we don't? On what basis could we claim it's an "advancement"? Could not an animal sacrificer make a comparable claim in the reverse direction?

    On the other hand, your point about the kind of feeling one gets by looking into a deer's eyes or even looking at, with perhaps momentary focus and regard, the moon is a very useful one I think. Here it seems to be in sync with Wittgenstein's comments in that lecture on ethics he gave to the Heretics Society in late 1929 or early 1930 where he likened the ethical perspective to a sort of transcendental feeling one gets under certain conditions. Personally, I think that is an incomplete account of what's required to make ethical claims but I think it's interesting and does have some validity. Your drawing this out with the allusion to Hindu mysticism is intriguing and helpful.

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    1. Could not an animal sacrificer make a comparable claim in the reverse direction?

      I expect they would, yes. But the change itself, from sacrifice to a more symbolic view, is an interesting development. (And I'm not a huge fan of animal sacrifice myself.)

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  2. I don't get a transcendental feeling at all just one of difference. Also chances are it was something more all-too-human like projecting our minds into figures like ghosts and or storm-gods that were at the beginnings of religion.
    As for these jarring/halting/etc moments can we really hold onto them, my sense of the phenomenology is that they are to the contrary quite fleeting as the habitual kicks back in.
    -dmf

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    1. Well, some people sometimes get a transcendental feeling. It certainly isn't inevitable. I agree that it is fleeting though. As for the beginnings of religion, I have no idea. The things that nudge me towards religion are these fleeting transcendental moments, but I don't speak for anyone else.

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  3. Yes, generally fleeting I would say. Maybe the issue is what "trancendental" means in this case. It's plainly a word that's going to be hard to pin down. Wittgenstein does use it in that lecture, as I recall, and his usage seems to refer to a feeling of inexpressible awe at the facts of the universe. Is that the same as Duncan describes one getting looking suddenly into a deer's eyes on some dark night as it walks out into a road in front of you? Coming face to face with another creature with a life and sort of mind of its own? Here we see another entity in an abruptly new way, however momentarily. Suddenly we are yanked out of our ordinary thoughts, the world as we ordinarily think about it and stare into the eyes of another being whose world is different, a being that is not just an object to us (though it is that, too) but has its own sort of subjectness. Subject to subject and it's not like us at all. An alien subject which the momentary encounter prompts us to recognize, however long the feeling and thoughts persist. I take Duncan to be saying that judgments like the moral ones we make are sometimes like that. With Wittgenstein he seems to be looking toward a certain kind of, perhaps indescribable, personal experience which sees the world or others in the world in a new way. I think that's actually a helpful way to think about moral claims though perhaps more needs to be said.

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    1. If we were just talking about aspect-dawnings/gestalt-switches along the lines of St. Muhall's book on Wittgenstein/Heidegger than I wouldn't have a problem with that as a kind of universal/anthropological claim (not imperative) but with Chesterton, Wittgenstein and others I often get a more overtly Religious (as in organized religions) sense of something akin to Natural Law or some neo-Kantian/Platonist beautiful-soul spin on that and this is what I object to.
      http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2014/06/13/scrutinizing-roger-scruton/
      -dmf

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    2. perhaps more needs to be said

      Certainly! Especially if this is to be connected with ethics.

      with Chesterton, Wittgenstein and others I often get a more overtly Religious (as in organized religions) sense of something akin to Natural Law or some neo-Kantian/Platonist beautiful-soul spin on that

      Yes, Chesterton takes it that way. I don't think Wittgenstein really does, though, and I certainly don't mean to.

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  4. The sudden moment we look into that deer's eyes, it's as if we're seeing another world to the extent we recognize it as a subject, too. Maybe it's fleeting, most times it probably is. But the sudden change in perspective (though "perspective" seems too weak a word for this) can not only be moving in a certain way, it can be life changing, especially if we manage to integrate that moment (or moments like it) into a wider world view. Suddenly we have a sense of awe before the universe, its seeming mystery because it contains, as it were, so many perspectives, so many dimensions. One can't describe the feeling, of course, but one can describe what brings it about and, in doing so, one can prompt it to some degree at least in others.

    I think (though I don't want to speak for him) that it's something like this that Duncan is getting at. And in this it resonates sharply with the approach Wittgenstein once took to ethics in the early days of his return to Cambridge.

    Is it a "universal/anthropological claim"? I don't think of it like that. It'd say it's not even a claim at all in fact. It may provide the raw material of some religious-spiritual-mystical claims about how things are though, as in the universe is a great Oneness or is Being as such and this is how you know it. But I don't know that that makes any kind of useful sense except maybe as fable or myth used to move others. More importantly, I think, is to ascertain how this sort of moment, this raw material of what is often called "spiritual" fits into the moral game because, while the religious spiritual narratives can be set aside, I don't think we do that so easily (and perhaps not at all) with ethical questions. It is always open to us to seek the right thing to do and quite often what we are looking for is not what serves our interests best or what is most in accord with some moral authority's rules in the matter.

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    1. "But the sudden change in perspective (though "perspective" seems too weak a word for this) can not only be moving in a certain way, it can be life changing", well there are certainly on the road to Damascus events but not for most folks and even than changing habits is hard at best, the work of consciously crafting something out of the memories/impressions of such experiences doesn't shift us into another world/frame and likely is less of a shift than falling in love.
      -dmf

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  5. Sometimes it's experienced as just seizing hold of you, something beyond conscious control, and sometimes as something you have to work for. In either case I find the connection with the ethical dimension of our lives interesting.

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  6. Interesting post. A lot to take in. But it seems to me that Chesterton makes clear what is meant at the end of the passage you mention and quote from. It also reminds me of the objections Winch had to Social Science in that what the social scientist is forgetting is philosophy, which again is reminiscent of Wittgenstein, e.g. in his remark to Bouwsma re Descartes that "one must do this oneself" i.e. take the damn hard way to understand how the fly got into the fly bottle, how the savage got to worship monkeys. That the answers are right before our eyes is obvious from the fact that we also are human. And as Wittgenstein shows, that when you think to explain, even the educated, such as Frazer, end up looking like primitive savages sometimes.

    Dasgupta reads like 1) Renan so what Wittgenstein say about him would apply here I think and 2) he reads like a sanitized (westernized?) version of Bhardaranyaka Upanishad (which probably is the point of the work anyway, but there you go).

    No, Chesterton, on the wonder in trees, in nature, in what is alive, en-souled, so to speak, is about recognition in the oddest of places. "This is" is more that just a statement of fact in the way that "I am" is more than a statement of fact. Or should that be other than a statement of fact? There is something and not nothing.

    I concur though. Chesterton is right. So was Wittgenstein. It seems however that this way of thinking bothers the auther of that bit of "bewildering mysticism" you mention. He says so himself with regard to the non-abstract and unpoetic (typically Jewish as Wittgenstein would say) nature of the KJV. Perfectly, to be fair, he writes:

    "It’s hard to be sure, but it seems to me that in these two books the Bible acknowledges the mystical while warning against sullying it by attempting to put it into words. It is spiritually ascetic and prefers to stand silent in the face of the ineffable."

    Sound like someone we know?

    Thank you anyway for sparking a train of thought.

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    1. You're welcome, and thanks. Yes, I think that Chesterton and Wittgenstein are right, and the connections you see are not just coincidental. I've been reading about the remarks on Frazer because I'm interested in Winch, and both Brian Clack and Frank Cioffi quote Chesterton in their books on Wittgenstein and Frazer.

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