I didn’t plan on this, really, like at all. Then again, this is something that has bothered me for a long time, so I knew that I’d bring it up at some point. Anyway, so, landscape is a visual concept. It may not have been that way, like way back, as I’ve discussed in the past in reference to Kenneth Olwig’s work, but these days it’s a visual concept. Of course, it doesn’t have to be a visual concept either, but, at the moment, it is.
What is vision? What does it mean to see? What does it mean to perceive? What does it mean to apperceive? What is the difference between the two? Why does W. J. T. Mitchell (viii) mention it in his ‘Preface to the Second Edition of Landscape and Power: Space, Place, and Landscape’, stating that landscape asks us “to engage in a kind of conscious apperception of space as it unfolds itself in a particular place”? Don’t we just see the world, as it is? Don’t we just perceive things, as they are, this and not that? These are all question I’ll be focusing on in this essay, so let’s find out.
I’ll start with vision. Looking at the relevant definition, the Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the vision (OED, s.v. “vision”, n.) pertains to seeing, that is to say using one’s “faculty of sight”, or to that faculty itself. This leads us to sight (OED, s.v. “sight”, n.1), which has many definitions, of which the most relevant is the one that explains that it has to do with the “faculty of vision”, in the sense that one possesses it or can exercise it, really concretely by using one’s eyes and in the related senses that it is extended to anything that functions this way, like having something that’s one can see through sights of a firearm. Seeing (OED, s.v. “seeing”, n.1) overlaps with these two in the sense that it can be understood as pertaining to the act of seeing, sighting something, and to the “faculty of sight”, having “the ability to see”, what we may also refer to as “vision”.
What about perception? Well, according to dictionary definitions, it (OED, s.v. “perception”, n.) has to do with the action of perceiving something, in the sense that it involves “[t]he process of becoming aware or conscious of a thing or things in general” or “of physical objects, phenomena, etc., through the senses”, or with “[t]he faculty of perceiving”, so that one is capable of perceiving. While this does not apply to all of the definitions, some of the other definitions also hint at perception (OED, s.v. “perception”, n.) being more than just what our senses provide us, for example what we see, and involves some sort of processing of what they provide us, be it “intuition, insight, perspicacity” or “understanding”. If we look at the verb (OED, s.v. “perceive”, v.), perceiving has to do with “tak[ing] in or apprehend[ing] with the mind or senses”, in the sense that one “become[s] aware or conscious of” or “interpret[s] or looks on … in a particular ways”, so that one “regard[s]” it as something or “consider[s]” it to be something in a certain way.
The difficulty with apperception (OED, s.v. “apperception”, n.) is that it overlaps with perception to a certain degree, in the sense that it goes beyond the sense and thus has to do with “[m]ental perception” or “recognition.” It is, nonetheless, different from perception in the sense that it seeks to explain perception (OED, s.v. “apperception”, n.):
“The action or fact of becoming conscious by subsequent reflection of a perception already experienced[.]”
In other words, we may distinguish apperception from perception in the sense that the former has to with the awareness of how perception works. That’s, however, only part of the definition and we’d do well to take the rest of it (OED, s.v. “apperception”, n.) into account:
“[A]ny act or process by which the mind unites and assimilates a particular idea (esp[ecially] one newly presented) to a larger set or mass of ideas (already possessed), so as to comprehend it as part of the whole[.]”
What matters here is the emphasis on how we experience something new through our previous experiences, largely at the expense of that particular experience. Anyway, the reader is given two quotes, of which the first is from James Sully’s ‘Physiological Psychology in Germany’. In this article, Sully (36) states that:
“The entrance of a presentation into the internal field of view is termed a Perception; its entrance into the point of view, an Apperception.”
To make more sense of the two, make note of how he refers to the perception as having to do with a field of view and apperception with a point of view. To expand on this a bit, he (36) is actually explaining these two terms through the terms used by Wilhelm Wundt. He (37) also elaborates how this works for Wundt, step by step. Firstly, there’s what we’d probably refer to as sight, vision or seeing:
“(1) the transition from the organ of sense to the brain[.]”
Secondly, there’s the movement from the unconscious to the conscious, that is say becoming aware of having sight, vision or seeing and the action of it:
“(2) the entrance into the field of view of consciousness or perception[.]”
Thirdly, there’s the movement from perception to apperception:
“(3) the entrance into the point of view of attention or apperception[.]”
What matters here is that we attend to what we perceive in our field of view from a certain point of view, that is to say in a certain way. Fourthly, there’s how this then affects our nervous systems:
“(4) the action of the will in giving the necessary impetus to the motor nerves[.]”
Fifthly, there’s how that gets carried through our nervous system to the muscles that are responsible for the movements of our eyes:
“(5) the transmission of this motor excitation to the muscles.”
As you can see, these five steps listed by Sully (38) deal with the physiological aspects, the first and the last being listed as purely physiological, and the psychological aspects, the second, third and fourth being listed as psycho-physical. What’s interesting here is also how that’s a feedback loop that’s both unconscious and conscious to certain degrees at each stage.
This reminds me of what Jacques Lacan has to say about perception in ‘What is a Picture?’, as included in ‘The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis’ edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. According to Lacan (107), our attention is already guided at the perceptual level. Here we might object, as that actually appears to happen at the apperceptual level. Then again, that really depends on whether we make the distinction between perception and apperception and where we situate attention. I’d actually follow Lacan on this and argue that it’s a matter of perception, as opposed to apperception, considering that perception has to do with how what’s seen is parsed into what’s perceived, that is to say how we make sense of that visual input, whereas apperception has to do with what we make of it, from a certain point of view, what I’d call having a certain perspective. Anyway, be that as it may, Lacan’s (107-108) point is that there’s reality, what can be seen, whereas what we pay or don’t pay attention to is conditioned by us, by what it is that is desirable to us, which we may or may not be aware of when we come to assess it. This is why he (108) states that:
“At the perceptual level, this is the phenomenon of a relation that is to be taken in a more essential function, namely, that in its relation to desire, reality appears only as marginal.”
He (108) exemplifies this with two concentric rings, the smaller being the center of our attention, if you will, and the large being the reality. If we subtract the area within the smaller ring from the larger ring, we get why reality is marginal. As a side note, we might also hedge on what’s conscious and unconscious about this, and whether we distinguish the unconscious from subconscious, as I would, marking perception as subconscious, rather than unconscious, as we certainly can make sense of that process, how it is that we come to pay attention to what’s in our field of view, in addition to assessing what we think of it, which would be about apperception. Then again, if we think of all of this as a process, involving a feedback loop, I guess the terms are not that important, inasmuch we understand that it’s probably a mixture of sorts, so that we are aware of it, yet we aren’t.
It’s actually rather fitting that the other example for apperception mentioned in the dictionary (OED, s.v. “apperception”, n.) is from Carl Gustav Jung’s (524) ‘Psychological Types: Or The Psychology of Individuation’:
“Apperception is a psychic process by which a new content is articulated to similar already-existing contents in such a way as to be understood, apprehended, or clear.”
This can be found in that book, in chapter XI that deals with various definitions. Jung (524) actually has more to say about this and reckons that there are two kinds of apperception. Firstly, there’s active apperception, which he (524) defines as:
“[It is] a process by which the subject of [one]self, from [one’s] own motives, consciously and attentively apprehends a new content and assimilates it to another it to another content standing in readiness[.]”
Then there’s passive apperception, which he (524) defines as:
“[It] is a process in which a new content from without (through the senses) or from within (from the unconscious) presses through into consciousness and, to a certain extent, compels attention and apprehension upon itself.”
In other words, active apperception is conscious, whereas passive apperception is unconscious. He (524) summarizes this distinction by stating that active apperception has to do with the ego, i.e., the subject, the self, the ‘I’, what comes from within, whereas passive apperception has to do with what is not attributable to our own thoughts, to what comes from without.
It’s also worth noting that Jung attributes his concise definition, the initial passage that’s included in the dictionary, to Wilhelm Wundt.
Related to this definition, he (567-568) defines intuition as a “psychological function which transmits perceptions in an unconscious way.” Moreover, it can be a thought or something that we encounter, i.e., it can come from within or from without, subjectively or objectively, and appear in many forms, as a sensation, a feeling or a thought, without being any of these, as he (568) points out. While elusive like this, there’s this certainty to it as well, like you just know, even though you can’t put it to words, as he (568) goes on to explain it. An intuition can also be concrete, by which he (568) means that they pertain to perceptions that deal with reactive, immediate physical sensations, or abstract, by which he (568-569) means that they pertain to perceptions that deal with active association of ideas.
As a sidenote, he (568-569) isn’t fond of intuition. He (568) mentions Baruch Spinoza and Henri Bergson as being fond of it. I won’t get tangled up on that, as otherwise this essay gets properly sidetracked already at this point. It’s certain something worth commenting, but, perhaps, at a later date.
Let’s see what other Germans have actually said about apperception. I’ll start with Leibniz. In his ‘Monadology’, he (224) distinguishes apperception from perception. He isn’t too clear about perception, but it is added in the notes, on the same page, that it’s how we make sense of what’s what, in a rather rudimentary sense, that this is this body and then that’s that body. He (224) expresses his great dislike of what he calls the Cartesian view of perception, because it’s not inclusive of what happens without us being aware of it, that it is to say subconsciously and unconsciously. This will make more sense once one understands his (259) take on apperception, which specified in the notes as having to do with being aware of perception, how one moves from one perception to another, that is to say being consciously aware of this. That movement is then what he (226) calls appetition, which can understood as appetite or desire.
To bridge the two, perception and apperception, he (230-232) brings up memory, without which we’d still have perception, of sorts, but it would all be indistinct for us, like in “a swoon”, in “a profound dreamless sleep” or in a vertigo. He (232) exemplifies how memory works by noting that even animals respond things on the basis of their previous experiences, so that, a dog may run away if you a grab a stick, inasmuch that dog has previously been beating with a stick. He doesn’t mention this, but, of course, its experience could be different, so that the stick would create an expectation of, for example, you throwing the stick and the dog fetching it for you, inasmuch that’s what you and/or others have been doing with the dog. The dog could also have different experiences, some of which are stronger, some of which are weaker, and some of which a more recurring whereas others are not, as he (232) points out, which then helps us to understand why the dog behaves the way it does. When it comes to humans, he (232-233) reckons that some three quarters of our behavior can be explained solely by our previous perceptions, what we could also call our habits. He (233) exemplifies this with how we take for granted that the sun will come up in the morning, because we’ve experiences that in the past, many, many times before.
So far, he’s been concerned with memory and habit. That’s not enough for him though. He (234) reckons that we still need consciousness, in the sense that we reflect on existence. For him (234), this is reason, which then distinguishes us from animals. To be fair to animals (and other forms of life in general) though, we don’t really know what they think, because we don’t have access to their semiotic system.
He mentions apperception again in his ‘New Essays on the Human Understanding’. He (364) deals with much of the same, covering much of the same, noting for example, that animals are easy to capture, inasmuch one knows their habits, how they act in certain kinds of situations. While I agree with him (364-365) that one shouldn’t blindly trust one’s previous experiences, as the world around us does change, I think he is not giving animals (and other forms of life) enough credit here. To my understanding, some animals are really good at avoiding hunters, exactly because they can outwit their hunters, because they avoid acting in highly predictable ways. Anyway, he gets to the point when he (366) notes that there are things that pertain to the way we make sense of the world and states that we aren’t always able to consciously perceive them, that is to say apperceive them, “because of our distractions and wants”, by which I believe he means our appetites or desires. He (367-368) reiterates this point by explaining how much we are creatures of habit, no matter how much we like to think of ourselves as being apperceptive, that is to say conscious of our perceptions, as we may, for example, simply have forgotten something. He (368) also notes that everything that we are aware of, that it is to say conscious of, has been apperceived by us. That makes sense. I mean you can’t think of anything that’s not thinkable.
Then there’s Immanuel Kant, a man you have to deal with, more often than not, like it or not, because he’s just that influential. In his ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, he (A107) mentions apperception, in the form of transcendental apperception (or pure/original apperception) and as empirical apperception. For him (A107, A114, A117), the latter is a matter of self-consciousness, being aware of the flux of experiences we come to perceive, and the former is the a priori unity of what can be experienced. The latter also deals with mere empirical consciousness, whereas the latter is transcendental consciousness (or pure/original consciousness) that operates as a faculty.
To explain that another way, without getting lost in his jargon (which, I’d say, is difficult to comprehend if you are not familiar with his work), perception is for him (A115) a matter of sense (not to be confused with sense/meaning, as I usually use it, but rather as a matter of sensing). It operates alongside our imagination, which then deals with associations and (re)productions in his (A115) conceptualization of this. Apperception then deals with our consciousness of what our imagination has provided us, all those sense perceptions and their associations, as well as what we’ve imagined on their basis, as he (A115) points out. When we combine all these, what we get are syntheses of what our imagination can (re)produce for us, on the basis of that sense data, or, better yet, transcendental syntheses, leading to understanding and, finally, to transcendental understanding, as he (A118-A119) goes on to elaborate. The important bit here, for him (A119), is that once we get to that transcendental understanding, that transcendental apperception, we come to realize “the necessary unity of the pure synthesis of the imagination in regard to all possible appearances.” Why is it important? Well, because, for him (A119) it explains how we make sense of the world, how we understand it, according to categories, which he also refers to as our “pure concepts of understanding”. Here the emphasis is on our as he (A119) goes on to state that:
“[T]he empirical power of cognition of human beings necessarily contains an understanding, which is related to all objects of the senses, though only by means of intuition, and to their synthesis by means of imagination, under which, therefore, all appearances as data for a possible experience stand.”
In other words, here we are dealing with perception, that sense data, but what matters to him (A119) is that to make sense of that, to understand it, we need that faculty of apperception and those categories. To be clear, he isn’t negating the world around us. He (A119) is, in fact, rather adamant about that:
“[T]his relation of appearances to possible experience is likewise necessary (since without it we could not obtain any cognition at all through them, and they would thus not concern us at all)[.]”
Simply put, you need both, the empirical and the transcendental. It is, nonetheless, the latter that he wants to emphasize. He (A119) is keen on there being “a formal and synthetic principle of all experiences” and that there needs to be something, that transcendental apperception, that tells us not what we perceive, but how we understand what we perceive.
The thing with Kant is, however, that you need to understand his system and then buy into it. It’s clearly well thought out. I’ll give him that. The problem with it is that it’s all tied to the subject, that is to say us. It’s like, we make sense of the world, the way we do, because that’s just how it is, because that’s just how we are. While they are dealing with space, in particular, I like how John David Dewsbury and Nigel Thrift summarize this issue in their book chapter ‘‘Genesis Eternal’: After Paul Klee’, which can be found in ‘Deleuze and Space’. They (89) note that, for Kant, it’s all explainable through his “filing system for observation.” Anyway, it’s like he gets us to this point where we have to deal with not just perception, but also apperception. That’s great, because this already helps us to understand how it is that we are dealing with phenomena and not with noumena. This is super important, even if you otherwise don’t like his work. Why? Why is it that important? Well, because we turn our focus on the phenomena. We don’t think that what we see is what we get. Absolutely not. In his (A249) words:
“Appearances, to the extent that as objects they are thought in accordance with the unity of the categories, are called phaenomena. If, however, I suppose there to be things that are merely objects of the understanding and that, nevertheless, can be given to an intuition, although not to sensible intuition (as coram intuiti intellectuali), then such things would be called noumena (intelligibilia).
So, again, this is all good, fine by me, but the way we make sense of the noumena, as phenomena, is not. It’s the categories and the subject that I take issue with. This is not, however, the essay in which I want to deal with that (I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this in the past, so I don’t want to get sidetracked here for that).
To summarize all this, at this stage it’s already clear that the defintions of apperception are not that clear cut. It’s like perception, yet it isn’t. I’d say that the two get lumped into the latter in everyday parlance, hence the confusion when you bring up the former. So, the short answer is that perception is limited to what you see, as perceived by you as such and such, whereas apperception has to do with what you think of it as you perceive it as such and such. For the (even) long(er) answer, I’m going to rely on William James’ definition of apperception, as covered by him in ‘Apperception’, a lecture turned into a book section.
For James (156), apperception is an unnecessarily mystified concept because it’s simply “nothing more than the manner in which we receive a thing into our minds”. The problem for him (156) is not that it’s a mere buzzword, but that it’s so simple that it makes you doubt whether you understood it. To make it more useful, think of it as the “association of ideas” that get lumped with perception, as he (157) points out. It’s therefore a matter of associating something with something else, whatever that may be, as experienced by us in the past.
It’s simply really, as he (156) goes on to point out with the example of saying “A, B, C” out loud as it’s only likely going to be followed by someone else continuing it by saying “D, E, F”, either out loud or keeping it to oneself. The point here is that simply by uttering the initial letters of the alphabet, prior experiences related to the alphabet kick in, so that it’s difficult not to continue listing the letters of the alphabet, as noted by him (157-158).
What’s notable about apperception is that it doesn’t take much to trigger a whole lot. In his (158) words:
“The apperceived impression is engulfed in this, and the result is a new field of consciousness, of which one part (and often a very small part) comes from the outer world, and another part (sometimes by far the largest) comes from the previous contents of the mind.”
In other words, there’s often something small, a tiny part of what’s out there for us to experience. To understand that as a whole, the rest of that whole is filled with parts from one’s previous experiences. For him (158), this should not be difficult to comprehend:
“The product is a sort of fusion of the new with the old[.]”
I agree. What’s difficult to grasp, however, is what’s new and what’s old, as he (158-159) goes on to add:
“[I]t is often impossible to distinguish the share of the two factors.”
What’s interesting and, perhaps, troubling about this is how much of what we fill in from memory alone, as noted by him (158-159). If you ask me, it’s not really troubling, if you accept that it is what it is, and become aware of it, how much of all that happens without us really paying any attention to it, but it is if you imagine that you are this autonomous individual who can think and do whatever, at any given time. He (159) exemplifies this with hearing and reading, how we happily overlook all kinds of things like sloppy articulation or typos. If we hear or see it well enough, it’s good enough for us. It’s all about being economical, as summarized by him (159):
“In admitting a new body of experience, we instinctively seek to disturb as little as possible our pre-existing stock of ideas. We always try to name a new experience in some way which will assimilate it to what we already know.”
That’s min-maxing for you. It’s about efficiency. It’s the easy of way of doing things, which he (159) contrasts with having to do things the hard way:
“We hate anything absolutely new, anything without any name, and for which a new name must be forged. So we take the nearest name, even though it be inappropriate.”
Why? Because that takes effort, because we are lazy. We’d just rather not. He (159-160) goes on to exemplify that with how children do this and then to contrast it with how adults do this. The former simply call this, whatever it is, that, just because this is similar in appearance to that. The latter, in contrast, act the same way, because they are fogies, because they like to cling to the past.
He (159-160) basically gives the children a free pass, because they don’t know any better. They act this way because their conceptual understanding of the world is, understandably, rather limited, having not yet encountered that much in their life. The adults don’t fare as well, as he (160) goes on to quip:
“A new idea or a fact which would entail extensive rearrangement of the previous system of beliefs is always ignored or extruded from the mind in case it cannot be sophistically reinterpreted so as to tally harmoniously with the system.”
Why? Well, I’ll let Friedrich Nietzsche explain that through one of his numerous aphorisms. In ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, he (66) states that:
“When we are forced to change our minds about somebody, we count against [that person] the trouble [that person] has put us to.”
In other words, we don’t like to realize that we are wrong and happily hold it against others when that happens, even though we should thank them for helping us realize that.
Anyway, James has more to say about this, but, before doing that, he (160) states that we’ve all run into such people. In his (160) view, they are typically middle-aged and quick to forget anything of value that others have provided them. Okay, maybe he is a bit too absolute about that. Then again, I think he is just hyperbolic about that. I’ve certainly run into such people. I’ve spent like the whole evening explaining something, why something is problematic, only for the other person to forget it by tomorrow morning. It’s like a wait what moment.
Anyway, James isn’t done roasting people. At first, it appears that he (160) is talking about old fogies, but he is, in fact, also talking about young fogies. Anyone can be a fogie, which is what really troubles him (160-161):
“We call them old fogies; but there are young fogies, too. Old fogyism begins at a younger age than we think. I am almost afraid to say, but I believe that in the majority of human beings it begins at about twenty-five.”
Haha! I don’t think he does it intentionally, but he’s got some moxie alright. When you combine it with his way of expressing himself, which may, of course, be just sign of the times, it’s just hilarious roasting to me
Okay, to be serious again, why are people like that? Why do they become fogies already at an early age? Well, it’s just easier for people that way. It’s why would you do anything new if you don’t have to. That’s conservatism for you. If you ask me, there’s no shortage of these kinds of people in the academics. I guess it’s only fitting that it’s only likely that you are 25 or more if you’ve got a PhD.
We can also take more cues from a James’ contemporary, Nietzsche. In ‘Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality’, he (153) states that:
“The surest way of ruining … youth is to teach [them] to respect those who think as [they do] more highly than those who think differently from [them].”
In other words, it’s unsurprising that people end up conservative, if not fogie, considering that people are taught to think alike. Oh, and you can totally see this at universities, not only among students, who’ve been, more or less, ruined by that stage, as Nietzsche would put it, thanks to the education systems, but also among the staff. How so? Well, to make it to the top, you need that degree and you are unlikely to get that degree if you think unlike the people with those degrees.
To be clear, I don’t think that all academics acts that way. No, no. It’s just the vast majority who do. Plus, it’s worth noting that not all of them do it because they believe in such. I’d say it’s more like they think that it’s for the good of the newcomers, so they end up telling them that it’s for their own good to think alike. That’s also not entirely misguided. I mean, it does make sense to tell them to act alike, because acting alike, doing what others have done, the way they’ve done it, is flattering to those who’ve already done it, the way they’ve done it. The problem with that is that by teaching them to act that way, to respect the powers that be, is that they become docile, appeasers who don’t even dare to think otherwise.
This is why I tell my students to write on whatever they like, to approach it the way the feel like it. I can give them some tips, some conceptual tools, and the like, but that’s about it. It’s their work, not mine. Oh, and I’m not talking about this in the sense that they have to put in the hours, not me. No. I mean, sure, they do have to do the work, but that’s not the point here. What I mean is that they get to do what they like because, after all, it’s their work, not mine. That’s their prerogative.
To me, that also applies to assessing their work, as well as the work of others, in other contexts. I don’t think I have any right to impose on anyone’s work, because it’s not my work. If they write on a topic that I’m not interested, let’s say at all, I don’t think I should be using that against them. I can’t criticize them for writing on something I don’t want them to write on. I mean, come on, it’s their writing, not mine. It’s like criticizing someone for liking apples and not oranges, just because you happen to like oranges and dislike apples. It’s the same if they write on something that I like, but approach it from a different perspective or use a different conceptual framework. I can’t be like, oh no, woe is me, why are you doing this to me, make me read this, because it’s not about me. It’s their work and they get to do whatever they like with it.
Oh, and if they think alike, like I do, okay, then they do. If they don’t, then they don’t. It’s not up to me to tell who they must subscribe to and to whom they mustn’t subscribe to. Again, I can give tips and what not, recommend certain conceptual tools or even frameworks, but it’s then up to them to figure out whether they are a good fit, whether they work for their purposes. If they don’t work for them, then they don’t. They are free to choose something else and I can’t use that against them.
It’s the same with other work as well. If someone wants to study landscapes, approaching it through, let’s say, phenomenology or Marxism, then they do. Let them. It’s not up to you, in this case me. Plus, even if were up to you, in this case me, I don’t think I could prevent them. If someone is already locked on to something, like doing it, the way they do it, it’s because they desire to do it, the way they do it. At that point, it’s pointless to try to steer their course. You’re just postponing the inevitable. You’re just blocking their path. It’s best to just let them get through it and see what happens then. It’s their path, a path they desire to follow, so don’t go insisting that they are on the wrong path. Don’t go blocking that open ended desire of theirs. Don’t go channeling it to match your desires
This is also a more general thing. Sometimes you run into people who hesitate. What’s the fancy word for that? Oh, yes, they vacillate. They don’t know what to do, to do this, or to do that. The best advice I can give such people is to just do what they want to do. In my view, they already know what they want. They just have to go with it. It’s pointless to try to rationalize it, not to mention to rationalize it to other people, in hopes of that they can give you the supposedly right answer (which then allows you to blame the person if you think that they picked the supposedly wrong answer). When you are torn, you’ll remain torn until you aren’t. You desire two things at the same time, and you get through it once you desire one thing more than the other thing. It’s like going with the flow, letting things happen, rather than insisting on making the right decision (as if there was one, because there isn’t).
Nietzsche has a fitting one liner for this as well. In ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, he (68) reckons that it’s simply better to know when to let go of things, even when you don’t feel like it:
“It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right—especially when one is right. Only one must be rich enough for that.”
Yeah. It takes a lot to do that. I’ve for sure done this. I’ve just let go of so many things. I’ve even apologized when it was unnecessary to do so, when I was not at fault, just because I was rich enough to do that, whereas others weren’t. I mean, I could see my flaws. I could see myself from their perspective. There was that. I wasn’t flawless. Then again, they could not see their flaws. They could not see themselves from my perspective. They were not flawless either, yet they couldn’t see that. There’s no happy ending to that for everyone, no parley that could resolve that. It’s an either-or situation. I knew that I was right and they were wrong (or, at least more right, and more wrong, let’s put it that way), but it was just not worth the hassle to insist on that. It’s not nice to have to do that, to pronounce oneself wrong, but if you can afford that, it’s the pragmatic option that I recommend. They get to have their victory, while you smile, having paid for that victory.
But isn’t that … smug? Ah, well, yes, but it doesn’t matter if you keep it to yourself. No one will know. If you tell others that you acted that way, then it matters, as he (68) points out:
“[I]f you have an enemy, do not requite [your enemy’s] evil with good, for that would shame [your enemy].”
That’s how you’d most likely come across as smug, because you’d be telling them that it’s okay that you’ve been wronged. That’s a high horse alright. So, yeah, don’t do that. Instead, do what he (68) suggests:
“Rather prove that [your enemy] did you some good.”
Just take the hit and move on, as if nothing ever happened. That’s probably the best or, rather, the most pragmatic thing to do. To be clear, he doesn’t mean that you should become a human punching bag either. He (68) does point out that it’s beneficial to get angry when things piss you off, curse when others also curse and tit for tat. Why? Well, because if you bottle it up, you’ll end up harboring a grudge and that’s way, way worse than responding to a wrong with wrong, because that way you first wrong yourself on top of being wronged, followed by inevitably wronging whoever wronged you. That’s what he means by ressentiment, as I’ve discussed in previous essays. As he (68) puts it in this context, “a gruesome sight is a person single-mindedly obsessed by a wrong.”
It is, of course, very, very hard to let go of things like that, to just take the hit and move on. I can’t say that I always managed to just take the hit and move on. I still struggle with it, and I can’t say that I’m a saint. Although nothing major, I’ve wronged a wrongdoer, and I think that he (68) is right about this: “if punishment is not also a right and an honor for the transgressor, then I do not like your punishments either.” You reap what you sow, or so to speak. In Finnish, this is the proverb ‘joka leikkiin ryhtyy, se leikin kestäköön’, which translates to something like ‘if you take part in a game, you are deemed to be willing to endure what that game entails’. Simply put, if you treat people poorly, don’t expect people to treat you any better. It’s swings and roundabouts at point. Anyway, that has helped me to move on. I’ve also indulged in petty grievances, unable to let go. That has not helped me to move on, because instead of responding to it, there and then, tit for tat, like when you respond to someone calling you something (you are …) with calling them that (no, you are …), I’ve harbored that, letting it sink in, which then starts growing like cancer, getting out of proportion, like way out of proportion.
This is not, however, an excuse to go all out, tit for tat. Oh, no, no. In ‘Human, All Too Human’, he (138) argues that you shouldn’t engage with others, in disputes, if you can’t even handle yourself:
“[The one] who does not know how to put [one’s] thoughts on ice ought not to enter into the heat of battle.”
In other words, if you insist that you are, in fact, right, regardless of whether you are or aren’t, it’s unlikely to end well for you. If you ask me, the chances are that you’ll end up overdoing it.
So, yeah, the best thing you can do is to take the hit, embrace it, and then let go of it. He (68-69) further elaborates what he means by that in ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’ by noting that what we call justice is always a matter of judgment, followed by a punishment, only to contrast with love, in which one willingly takes the hit, taking one for the team, if you will, for everyone, for everyone except the judges, those who cling on to that notion of justice.
He (140) mentions this again in ‘Human, All Too Human’, when he recommends letting things slide, inasmuch objecting to them would just make the other person double down on you for doing that, not to mention doing it successfully. The problem with that is that if no one ever puts up a fight, the people who are wrong, yet think they are right (because no one objects to them), get a free pass and keep wronging others, as he (140) points out. This emphasizes the cost of that hit. If you can afford it, take it. If you can’t afford it, you, or someone else has to hit back.
But what if you are wrong? Well, he has a one liner for that as well. In ‘Daybreak’, he (228) acknowledges that it is imperative that we learn from our mistakes:
“The snake that cannot slough its skin, perishes. Likewise [minds] which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be [minds].”
If you insist that you are right (or more right) about something, when you’ve been proven wrong (or more wrong) about that something, then you can hardly consider yourself a thinking being, because you aren’t thinking at all. This is exactly what James is talking about when he reckons that people become old fogies at an early age. They no longer think.
How do we know that we are right or wrong? Well, my answer is that we don’t, at least not for sure anyway. In ‘Human, All Too Human’, Nietzsche (140) agrees with that, noting that what we consider right or wrong is a matter of what we become accustomed to. But, be that as it may, if you think you are right and have to endure the wrongs of other people, you also need to let go of yourself, that is to say be willing accept that you might be wrong. This is something that he (47) mentions in ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’:
“You must want to burn yourself up in your own flame: how could you become new if you did first become ashes!”
Now, this is, perhaps, a bit cheesy for my taste, as this is about the phoenix rising from its ashes, again and again, but it works. It has that emphasis on how one must give up insisting on what is, in favor becoming something new. He (128) mentions this also in ‘Ecce Homo: How to Become What you Are’, when he states that:
“You pay a high price for being immortal: you have to die several times during your life.”
That’s, of course, exactly what the phoenix is. As paradoxical as it may seem, the secret to it stays alive by dying. He (73) expands on that a bit, to explain how that works. In summary, you can’t do just one great thing and think that people will then remember you for it forever. Nah. That won’t grant you immortality. In fact, he (73) reckons that it’s the exact opposite. It’s your undoing. If you are happy with that work, that deed of yours, you’ve already failed, no matter how great you or others think it is. You have to keep going, if only to fail each time.
James returns to this issue, daring to call young adults fogies, later on (as this is, indeed a lecture, hence some of the metatext you’ll encounter while reading it). He (166-168) acknowledges that it may have come as a shock to his audience, which I believe were educators (as this is listed as ‘Talks to Teachers’), only to roast his audience for facilitating the conservatism or fogyism. In summary, while he is aware of what we’d these days call lifelong learning, he is highly pessimistic about its potential. He doesn’t really seem to have the right words for it, so now it’s up to me to riff on it. My take on what that once you hit that 25 or so (he mentions 30 here, but whatever), you simply don’t have the time to change your mind on something, to learn more, not to mention change the way you think. I mean there is time, that downtime he mentions, but, as he points out, there isn’t a whole lot of it. Plus, that time rarely gets spent on learning, as he points out.
To parse that, he (167) acknowledges the potential in all of us:
“There is a sense of infinite potentiality in us all, when young[.]”
But let’s say, statistically speaking, most of it goes to waste, as noted by him (168):
“The conceptions acquired before thirty remain usually the only ones we ever gain.”
In other words, while he realizes that it’s not like people learn until they are a certain age and then that’s it, much of what matters, their way of thinking is shaped prior to that, I’d say probably well before their adulthood. I don’t think he (166-168) is forceful enough here, as he is wrapping up his lecture, as I think he could have been more explicit on how this has to do with facilitating creative thinking, but at least he (166-167) does point out that the problem is narrow mindedness, in the sense that whatever we are expected to learn has to do with what we are expected to do, with our “profession or business life.”
To expand on that a bit, while I’m sure he’d be amazed by how much people know these days, like how good (some of) the educations systems have become, I think he’d be appalled by the universities. He (166-167) is clearly aware of segmented they are or, rather, were already way back then in his time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d chastise those responsible for letting education become a thrall to “business life”. I mean, to have his background in … a bit of this … and a bit of that … in this and/or that field or discipline is even more exceptional than it was back then. A trained doctor who ends up doing philosophy and psychology, kind of like … who knows why … and then to do that side thing as a professor, yeah, you don’t see that too often these days.
Oh, and just when you think he (161) is done roasting people, he has this to say about parceling human experience:
“The flowing life of the mind is sorted into parcels, suitable for presentation in the recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed ‘processes’ with long Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence.”
Oh, wow! Burn! That’s what you get if you give primacy to identity over difference. Anyway, by that he (161-162) wants to emphasize that it’s pointless to elaborate on apperception. I’d say it’s a function that colors your experience. If you get how it works, it applies to anything. Labeling an experience as such and such isn’t very useful.
I don’t think he specifies the difference between perception and apperception that well, but I think he (162-163) manages to get the point across with one of his examples: a fire. In summary, a child may look at a fire, in this case a burning house, and find it thrilling, only to be scared by sounds made by the fire-engine. This is contrasted with the parents who, most likely, lament the fire and are relieved by the sound of the fire-engine. That’s apperception for you. If we think of the fire, it being just that, fire, like, okay, right, that’s a fire alright, or the sound of the fire-engine, it being just that, a sound that it makes, what we can hear, that’s perception.
He returns the problem that comes with apperception: conservatism. He (163) doesn’t use the word fogie or fogyism here, but that’s what he is dealing with as he explains how disputes typically boil down to neither side willing to give in, to think differently, from a different perspective, not to mention to come up with a novel solution to their problem. Yeah, I’d say that’s about right. That’s typically how it is.
To make more sense of that, how important it is to come up with something new, he (163-164) provides some more examples. For a long time, biologists were at loggerheads about whether what we these days refer to as protists are plants or animals, until Ernst Haeckel suggested that they are neither. The courts of law aren’t as imaginative when it comes to judging whether someone is sane or insane. Either you are, or you aren’t, even though there are plenty of people who may have certain issues in their everyday life, without having any effect on other areas of their lives.
To be positive, it’s worth noting that, for him (165), it is what it is. While the old does tend to overwhelm the new, as we build on our past experiences, the new always has the capacity to change the old, no matter how tiny part of the whole it is, as he (165) points out. The issue is therefore not apperception itself, but conservatism, as explained by him (165-166):
“If an educated [person] is … a group of organized tendencies to conduct, what prompts the conduct is in every case [that person’s] conception of the way in which to name and classify the actual emergency.”
Pay attention to the last word: emergency. It is here something that sudden and alarming. It is what needs to be addressed. If you are conservative, if not a fogie, you’ll eventually run into issues, because you are unwilling to come up with new ideas to address these new situations, and vice versa, as he (166) goes on to add:
“The more adequate the stock of ideas, the more ‘able’ is the [person], the more uniformly appropriate [the person’s] behavior [is] likely to be.”
In other words, the more you are willing to let go of your old ideas, the better suited you’ll be to adapt to world changing around you. He (166) summarizes this:
“[T]he essential preliminary to every decision is the finding of the right names under which to class the proposed alternatives of conduct.”
Here it’s worth noting that by names or, rather, naming, he means concepts and conceptualization, as he (166) on to specify. What’s particularly important here is that the concepts, those names, are tools that help us make sense of the world, “our instruments for handling our problems and solving our dilemmas.” That may seem counterintuitive, but he isn’t the only person to have stated this or something like this, as I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’ve read my essays.
To weave more Nietzsche to this, he actually expresses something fairly similar in ‘Truth and Falsity in an Extra-Moral Sense’. The translation I’m looking at is from the early 1990s and has an interesting note by a J. K., which appears to be a former editor, Jeremy Klein. He (58) points out that Nietzsche was ahead of his time, anticipating what others came up in linguistics way after him.
So, what’s so ahead of its time about what Nietzsche has to offer? The short answer to that is that he views language as performative, as opposed to constative, to explain that in the terms used by J. L. Austin decades later in ‘How to Do Things with Words’. In other words, language does not reflect what we see or, more broadly speaking, sense. Instead, it is responsible for creating what it is that we say, resulting what we might call an order of things, partly in homage to Michel Foucault’s book ‘The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences’ (I know it’s a fairly common phrase, but it still makes me think of him and that book).
The long answer is, of course, more complex than that, but that’s still the gist of it. So, taking into account that performativity, that we do things with words, Nietzsche (59-60) reckons that language is, first and foremost, about deception. Why? Well, according to him (59) it’s because humans are otherwise no match to predators. It’s a matter of preservation, making sure that you survive and not only in a world where animals pose a threat to you, but also in a world where other humans pose a threat to you, as he (60) goes on to point out.
But if language is about deception, how come we are so obsessed with truth? To answer that question, he (60-61) believes that deception lends itself to keeping peace through truth. To be clear, he (60-61) isn’t saying that language conceals truth, masking it through deception, but rather that truth itself is thus invented through language. He (61) exemplifies this with a liar, someone who says one thing, while appearing to ne another thing, only to note that it’s not the deception that bothers people, but that it has consequences. That leads him (61) state that people don’t really care about truth as we know it, contemporarily, because all that really matters to us is that whatever is said is agreeable or life preserving to us.
This then leads him (61) question what’s language anyway? What is it? What does it do? Answering his own questions, he (61) is doubtful that language can adequately describe reality. He (61) exemplifies this doubt with asking us, his readers, to consider what’s a word anyway? Does it correspond to a thing? Well, no. He (62) stresses this point by asking us to consider how we know that something. What does stone mean? What does hard mean? Why are some languages gendered? What’s the difference between a snake and a worm? To summarize the arbitrariness of his examples, the ones I listed, he (62) has this to say:
“The different languages placed side by side show that with words, truth or adequate expressions matters little[.]”
Louis Hjelmslev discusses this in his book ‘Prolegomena to a Theory of Language’. To use his color example (33), the very same I’ve used before, English ‘green’ is either ‘gwyrdd’ or ‘glas’ in Welsh, what is ‘blue’ or ‘gray’ in English is ‘glas’ in Welsh, what is ‘gray’ in English is either ‘glas’ or ‘llwyd’ in Welsh, and what is ‘brown’ in English is ‘llwyd’ in Welsh, which, in turn, could also be ‘gray’ in English. Anyway, for Nietzsche (62) this tells us that language is not a tool for deciphering truth:
“[F]or otherwise there would not be so many languages.”
Indeed. What’s the point? To make sure that you get it, he (62) argues that what Kant refers to as the things-in-themselves, the noumena, make no sense in the context of language. What are ‘green’, ‘blue’, ‘gray’ or ‘brown’ anyway? Even if we agree on such, that there are these things-in-themselves, these noumena, we’d know them through language and that’s clearly unsatisfactory, as he (62) points out, as that color example should convince you. In his (62) words:
“When we talk about trees, colors, snow, and flowers, we believe we know something about the things themselves, and yet we only possess metaphors of the things, and these metaphors do not in the least correspond to the original essentials.”
It might not be necessary for me to explain this, considering that you probably already know that the thing with metaphors is that something is explained through something else that’s similar to it, as a dictionary will tell you (OED, s.v. “metaphor”, n.). So, in other words, assuming that there even are such things as things-in-themselves, we can only know them in a very roundabout way, through something else, and that’s not all helpful.
I don’t consider metaphors to be that important, as, for me, the thing with language is that it’s highly redundant, as there’s always more to it, as words can only be explained by other words, resulting in infinite deferral. An interpretation of what’s said, or written, that is to say expressed, is always already an interpretation, as Derrida (369-370) points out in ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’, as published in ‘Writing and Difference’.
That said, as Nietzsche explains this through metaphors, it’s worth bringing it up. It’s also worth bringing it up as there’s a fairly well known book on metaphor. You might not have read it, fair enough, but the title may still seem familiar to you: ‘Metaphors We Live By’ by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Already in the preface, they (ix) bring up why they care enough about metaphors to dedicate a book to them: “metaphor is pervasive in everyday language and thought[.]” In line with Nietzsche’s discussion of metaphors, they (x) state that, for them, “this mean[s] rejecting the possibility of any objective or absolute truth and a host of related assumptions” and replacing them with “an alternative account in which human experience and understanding … play[s] the central role.”
Following the initial remarks, Lakoff and Johnson (3) note that metaphors or, rather, the use of metaphors is often attributable not to ordinary, but to extra-ordinary language, to poets and rhetoricians. In other words, it’s thought to be something that only some talented speakers or writers do. As already noted, in the initial remarks, they (3) reject this view and, in line with Nietzsche, consider “[o]ur conceptual system” to be “fundamentally metaphorical in nature.”
What they (3-4) wish to emphasize is that language is not just words, explained by other words, although that’s part of it, but also about how those words impact not only what we think and experience, but how we think and experience, whatever it is that we are thinking or experiencing. They (4-5) exemplify this with how we may consider the concept of ‘argument’ as a matter of war or dance, as ‘argument is war’ or as ‘argument is dance’. In the former, argument is defined in terms of war, so that you attack, defend, and what not, feel free to include more war related terms to that, when you argue. In the latter, argument is defined in terms of dance, so that those arguing take part in a physical activity that is expected to be well balanced and aesthetically pleasing. Now, this makes little sense to us, because this is a made example, as they (4-5) point out. For us, the definition of arguing is tied to war, structured by it, so that we struggle to ever considering thinking it in other terms, for example in terms of dance, as they (5) go on to specify.
This leads us to their definition of metaphor, which is largely in line with common dictionary definitions. For them (5), a metaphor is a matter of “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.” What they add to those common dictionary definitions where this is the gist of it is that the thing explained is not subsidiary to what it is explained by, as they (5) want to emphasize. This does not, however, mean that, for them, we can explain just about anything through just about anything. No. It’s not whimsical. They (7-9) are adamant about this, how it’s all systematic. You can, of course, have other ways of comprehending and experiencing something, as you do in different languages, as illustrated already by Hjelmslev’s color example, but they all still systematic.
Back to Nietzsche (62) who goes on and on about metaphors, so I won’t cover it, instead of moving to his third point about language: abstraction. Okay, he doesn’t call it that, but that’s what it is, if you ask me.
What is abstraction? Well, I’d say that it’s about abstracting, which is about extracting something from something else. This matches his take (62) on how we have all these experiences, which are, of course, unique in their own right. None of them are, strictly speaking, the same experience that is simply repeated, even though, I guess, it may at times feel like it, that you are just doing more of the same, over and over again. But that’s the trick. The thing with language is that it allows us to think as if they were the same, even though they aren’t, as he (62) points out:
“Every idea originates through equating the unequal.”
This is really handy, which is why James (217) states in ‘A Pluralistic Universe’ that:
“Both theoretically and practically this power of framing abstract concepts is one of the sublimest of our human prerogatives.”
It is really handy, if not sublime, as he puts it here, because it allows us to make sense of things, to create that order of things, as already mentioned in reference to Foucault’s work. James (217) refers to this prerogative as having to do with “translating the crude flux of our merely feeling-experience into a conceptual order.” He (217) specifies this by noting that our experiences temps us to do this, to name this and that:
“When we name and class it, we say for the first time what it is, and all these whats are abstract names or concepts.”
But like Nietzsche (62), he (217) isn’t saying that we give names to individual experiences, but rather to kinds of experiences:
“Each concept means a particular kind of thing, and as things seem once for all to have been created in kinds, a far more efficient handling of a given bit of experience begins as soon as we have classed the various parts of it. Once classed, a thing can be treated by the law of its class, and the advantages are endless.”
Exactly. Abstraction has this great advantage. It’s, however, worth emphasizing that it is we who do that. It is we who create the concepts. It is we who invent those ideas. It is we who create all the laws, including the laws of nature. I know, I know, that may seem preposterous, but that’s how it is. After all, it is we who are doing all the thinking and naming of it all. Let’s go with gravity, because it’s such a classic, but I’ll start with looking at the word law (OED, s.v. “law”, n.) first:
“The body of rules, whether proceeding from formal enactment or from custom, which a particular state or community recognizes as binding on its members or subjects.”
As you can see, there’s two sides to this. Firstly, it has to do with rules that have been enacted, defined as such and such by some authority, a party that is deemed to have the right to do so, or that are taken to have acquired that kind of status through continuous usage. Secondly, be it enacted or customary, it is seen as applying to everyone involved.
Of course, that dictionary definition (OED, s.v. “law”, n.) is specifically indicated as having to do with “human law”, so, to be fair, I need to check the other definitions. If we consider the word (OED, s.v. “law”, n.) in a “generalized sense”, in many definitions the senses of authority and obedience are retained. If we take a look at its definitions (OED, s.v. “law”, n.) in some divine sense, this is largely also the case, God simply being the divine authority, although there’s some crossover with deeming divine law as the law of nature. If we ignore the authority as aspect of it, the definitions (OED, s.v. “law”, n.) defer to customs. Turning our attention to “[s]cientific and philosophical uses” of the word (OED, s.v. “law”, n.), we hit the jackpot:
“In the sciences of observation, a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present.”
This is the aforementioned laws of nature, as noted in this context. In this context, it is also noted that this has that crossover with the divine sense of it, as nature here is deemed to act like God, so that it is impossible to disobey it. What’s particularly noteworthy here is the claim that there’s an expression, a statement according to which something always occurs the same way under such and such conditions. However, to make sure you get this, note how it is an expression or a statement. Who is it that expresses something? Who is that states something? Again, it’s we who express something. It is we who state something.
I’m, of course, just some guy, saying some stuff, which probably comes across as trying to be edgy, to piss off those in the natural sciences. So, perhaps we should have someone else explain that. My pick is David Hume. He explains the problem with that commonly held understanding of laws of nature in his book ‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding’. He (29) explains this through an example:
“When I see, for instance, a Billiard-ball moving in a straight line towards another; even suppose motion in the second ball should by accident be suggested to me, as the result of their contact or impulse; may I not conceive, that a hundred different events might as well follow from that cause? May not both these balls remain at absolute rest? May not the first ball return in a straight line, or leap off from the second in any line or direction?”
Now, ask just about anyone who has played pool and they’ll tell you that the movement of the balls is predictable. That’s how you win. If you hit one ball at a time, you end up in situations where it’s difficult to hit the next ball, even if your hit was successful. In other words, you need to plan ahead. Hume would agree, because it is indeed predictable. That’s what you call experience.
The thing is, however, that there’s nothing about the billiard balls themselves that account for that. There’s nothing that guarantees that a ball will move in a certain way if you hit it in a certain way. It could move in some other way or not move at all, as he (29) points out, and goes on to emphasize:
“All these suppositions are consistent and conceivable. Why then should we give preference to one, which is no more consistent or conceivable than the rest? All our reasonings a prior will never be able to show us any foundation for this preference.”
Simply put, we believe that a certain thing will happen, even though it might as well not happen. He (24) provides us another example:
“That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, that it will rise.”
Again, we’ve come to take it for granted that the sun will rise tomorrow, but it might as well not rise. Just because something has happened before does not guarantee that it will happen again. You may counter that with doing more experiments, like letting go of something in order to prove that, ha, see, it does fall, each time you let go of it, but he (27-28) simply isn’t buying it. Why? Because we can always require more evidence for it, like are you sure? Could you do it once more? And once more? And once more? The only thing that you’ve proven is that something did happen, not that it will happen again.
This is why all laws are human inventions, including the laws of nature. This takes us back to Nietzsche (62-63), who argues that not a single thing is the same:
“As certainly as no leaf is exactly similar to any other, so certain it is that the idea ‘leaf’ has been formed through an arbitrary omission of these individual differences, through a forgetting of the differentiating qualities[.]”
In other words, we’ve encountered many similar things, appendages, and abstracted from them the idea of ‘leaf’. Again, they are not the same. They are merely similar. As we’ve come up with that idea, we’ve ignored the differences between what we’ve encountered. This is all fine and highly advantageous, as pointed by James (217). This is also how you excel in pool. You’ve accounted for the similarities, while ignoring what doesn’t matter for you. For example, you aren’t troubled by the flukes you’ve encountered. Anyway, Nietzsche (63) has more to say about this:
“[T]his idea now awakens the notion that in nature there is, beside the leaves, a something called the ‘leaf’, perhaps a primal form according to which all leaves were woven, drawn, accurately measured, colored, crinkled, painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no copy had turned out correct and trustworthy as a true copy of the primal form.”
This is where things start to go wrong. This is that point. Note how we’ve abstracted the notion of ‘leaf’ from what’s concrete, what we’ve come to call ‘leaves’, only to think that the abstraction, that idea of the ‘leaf’, now explains the concrete instances, those ‘leaves’. That’s bananas! He is not, however, the only one to point this out. James also makes note of that. He (217) first reiterates his approval of abstraction:
“We come back into the concrete from our journey into these abstractions, with an increase both of vision and of power.”
He (217-218) then makes note of how things go wrong after this:
“It is no wonder that earlier thinkers, forgetting that concepts are only [hu]man-made extracts from the temporal flux, should have ended by treating them as a superior type of being, bright, changeless, true, divine, and utterly opposed in nature to the turbid, restless lower world.”
He doesn’t provide any examples here, but luckily Nietzsche’s example works just fine. Anyway, James (218) summarizes what’s wrong about this then:
“The latter then appears as but their corruption and falsification.”
So, to go back to Nietzsche’s example, this is exactly what he means when he points out the concrete, the ‘leaves’, or any depiction of ‘leaves’, is thus understood as match to their idea, form, or essence, that superior ‘leaf’. Alfred North Whitehead also makes note of this issue in ‘Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology’, as I’ve mentioned at least a couple of times in the past. He (20) points out that:
“It is a complete mistake to ask how [a] concrete particular fact can be built up out of universals.”
In addition, similarly to James and Nietzsche, he (20) acknowledges the conundrum of it, how it turns on its head, all the sudden:
“How can [a] concrete fact exhibit entities abstract from itself and yet [have] participated in [them] by its own nature?”
What matters here is that we need to concentrate on that abstraction, how what’s abstract has been abstracted from the concrete, and not the other way around, as summarized by him (20). You can also find Deleuze elaborate this in ‘Preface to the English Language Edition’ of ‘Dialogues’, as I believe that I have also mentioned in the past. He (vii) has plenty to say about that, but, in short:
“[T]he abstract does not explain, but must itself be explained[.]”
To which he (vii) also adds that:
“Empiricism starts with … analysing the states of things, in such a way that non-pre-existing concepts can be extracted from them.”
This is all still in line with Nietzsche’s take on language, even his (vii) acknowledgement of where it goes all goes wrong:
“In so-called rationalist philosophies, the abstract is given the task of explaining, and it is the abstract that is realized in the concrete. One starts with abstractions such as the One, the Whole, the Subject, and one looks for the process by which they are embodied in a world which they make conform to their requirements[.]”
In other words, you start with something abstract, i.e., with some concept, without even explaining from what it was abstracted, and then use it to explain the concrete, from what it was actually abstracted from. Nietzsche (63) provides us another example: honesty. What is honesty? His (63) answer is that people tend to think that it’s what honest people do. See! See! It’s the abstract that is explaining the concrete, even though it’s the concrete instances of people acting in a certain way that we get the abstract, as he (63) points out. Bananas! This is exactly why Whitehead (20) thinks it’s “a complete mistake” to think this way.
After explain that conundrum, Nietzsche is finally willing to get to the point, to tell us what he think is truth or truths. He (63) gives us a short answer:
“[T]ruths are illusions which one has forgotten that they are illusions[.]”
Later on, he (65-66) provides a longer answer:
“[The] procedure is to apply [human] as the measure of all things, whereby [one] starts from the error of believing that [one] has these things immediately before [oneself] as pure objects. [One] therefore forgets that the original metaphors of perception are metaphors, and takes them for the things themselves.”
This is why I pointed out early on that his take on language is similar to that of J. L. Austin. It is we who create the ideas, the concepts, calling this and/or that by the names of whatever it is that we call them. The thing is that we’ve forgotten that, as he (63) points out, like long, long time ago, perhaps because it was convenient for some to forget that and to claim otherwise, as he (64) goes on to add:
“Everything which makes [hu]man[s] stand out in bold relief against the animal[s] depends on this faculty of … resolving a perception into an idea. … [S]omething becomes possible that never could succeed under the … perceptual impressions: to build up a pyramidal order with castes and grades, to create a new world of laws, privileges, suborders, delimitations, which now stands opposite the other perceptual world of first impressions and assumes the appearance of being the more fixed, general, known, human of the two and therefore the regulating and imperative one.”
This is also what James (216-220) thinks of it, how it is not only that folks have forgotten, but also that they’ve forgotten because it served the interests of people like Plato. To account for the effect this has only everyday life, Nietzsche (64-65) points out that once the order of things is presented as fixed, despite being totally made up, by some, because it is in their interest to present it as such, your job is then to just be acknowledge it as the truth. It’s not the truth, but rather a régime of truth, as Foucault (131) explains it in ‘Truth and Power’, as included in ‘Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977.
I think Nietzsche summarizes this the best when he (66) states that it takes “invincible faith” to think “this sun, this window, this table”, whatever this happens to be, “is a truth in itself”. In his (66, 68-69) view, this has two major consequences. Firstly, you erase creativity. Once you think that the abstract explains the concrete, you end up believing that you discover the abstract, those concepts. That erases all creativity. That means that nothing can be invented. For example, this keyboard that I type these essays is then thought to have a corresponding idea that it, supposedly, represents. Secondly, it makes it difficult to think otherwise. That fixity gives us a sense of security, because it is thought that we know what’s what. Combining the two then, that safety of what he (69) also refers to as a stronghold ends up imprisoning them. He (66) pokes holes in this way of thinking by noting how it pains people to concede that, for example, different animals perceive the world differently, because that entails that our perception is not necessarily the correct one. All such contradictions of what we’ve been taught, for generations, are problematic, to the point that we feel like it’s better not to bring them up, as noted by him (66-67).
He (66-68) goes back and forth, taking one side, then the other, switching between for or against this way of thinking. Even “laws of nature” get mentioned, and all that “mathematical rigor and inviolability of the conceptions of space and time”, you know, hard science, but, as he (68) points out, it is we who come up with all laws, including the laws of nature. We’ve simply forgotten that, as already noted, which is why he (68) states that it is not the world that impresses us but we who impress ourselves. So, as he (68-69) goes on to discuss, what we call science is actually nothing else but art, in the sense that both are about invention, coming up with something, as opposed to discovery, finding something, as what we, supposedly, discover is our own creation.
There’s an interesting Blaise Pascal quote, taken from his ‘Pensées’. In this passage included and discussed by Nietzsche (69), Pascal (116) reckons that if our dreams were as regular as the time we are awake, the dreams would have the same impact on us as our daily encounters. He (116) also reckons that it would have other effects as well:
“[I]f an artisan were sure of dreaming every night for twelve hours that [the artisan] was a king, I believe that [the artisan] would be almost as happy as a [monarch] who dreamed every night for twelve hours that [the monarch] was an artisan.”
The point here is that if dreams had that regularity, you wouldn’t know if you were awake or asleep. Now, of course, we don’t have such regularity in our dreams. They keep changing, even during the same dream, and you can barely even remember them in the morning, or whenever it is that you get up. Nietzsche (69-70), however, wants to point out that the time we spend awake is not as regular and orderly as we think or, at least, it doesn’t have to be that way. Again, it is we who insist that it is. This is why he (70) states that we can achieve so much more if we free our intellect from clinging on to seemingly fixed ideas and frameworks and rely on our intuitions instead. This doesn’t mean that ideas and frameworks are useless, but rather that they are put to good use, as what I’d call conceptual tools, in service of our intuitions. Plus, they are not seen as fixed, they can and most likely will be replaced by other ideas and frameworks that we come to invent. It may seem like he is all for our intuitions, but that’s not the case, which is why I pointed out that ideas and frameworks can be put to good use. He (71) reckons that, when taken to the extreme, “[b]oth desire to rule over life” in their own ways, only to cause us great misfortune, in their own ways. For him (71), the downside of letting intuition rule over life is that it’s so joyous that you are bound to repeat your own mistakes. To riff on his (71) example, which falling into a ditch, over and over again, that’s kind of the thing with being so drunk that you cannot even remember having made that mistake. So, what’s good is that you aren’t burdened by life, by what it throws at you, but what’s not so good is that it’s all a blur to you. The downside of letting ideas, by which he really means transcendent ideas, like those of Plato, rule over life us that it kills all the joy in life, as he (71) points out. That false sense of security comes with a high price.
Now, following that lengthy tangent on language and truth, it’s worth emphasizing that old habits die hard, because people want to cling on to the present, as it is in their interest to do so, it’s time to wrap things up. So, what is the difference between seeing, perceiving, and apperceiving. In summary, the seeing is about being able to see, having that as a faculty. Perceiving is then rather about how we make sense of it, distinguishing this from that, like there being this keyboard and this table, and not some indistinct … what would you even call such … mess. It is apperceiving that’s then what we think of it. That’s how I’d go about it anyway.
It’s also about time I assess why W. J. T. Mitchell (viii) states in his ‘Preface to the Second Edition of Landscape and Power: Space, Place, and Landscape’ that landscape asks us “to engage in a kind of conscious apperception of space as it unfolds itself in a particular place.” Well, in short, it’s because that’s how landscape works. We don’t simply see the world, like us being us, me being me, you being you, and it being out there. We don’t simply perceive the world either, like there being these distinct things, me and you included. To simplify things, we could, of course, combine these two, but it wouldn’t change things. While landscape does require sight, sure, and that we perceive the world around us, that we pay attention to it, sure, it’s not enough because neither seeing, nor perceiving can explain how it is that we come see the world the way we see it. That’s apperception for you.
What’s the problem then? Well, in summary, the problem is that we aren’t particularly perceptive because of the way we apperceive the world as a landscape. In short, apperception substitutes for perception, to such a high extent that we, no longer, really pay attention to anything particular, as noted by Mitchell (viii). This is why he (vii) states that we are constantly tempted to “‘look at the view’” and not some particular features, like “‘look at the mountain’”, “the ocean, the sky, the plains, the forest, the city, the river” or whatever it is that we could be focusing on. It’s indeed as he (vii) puts it, “[t]he vernacular expression suggests that the invitation to look at landscape is an invitation not to look at any specific thing”, that is to say to perceive it, as this or that feature, like those things he lists, “but to ignore all particulars in favor of an appreciation of a total gestalt, a vista or scene that may be dominated by some specific feature, but is not simply reducible to that feature.”
Is apperception the only way to go about this? Well, no. I’m sure you can explain the issue many landscape scholars take with the concept in other ways. For example, you can call it a way of seeing, as done by Denis Cosgrove in ‘Prospect, Perspective and the Evolution of the Landscape Idea’. It’s, perhaps, not as sophisticated way of dealing with that, but, hey, I’d say that it gets the job done. If it doesn’t get the job done, if you simply don’t get it, like what’s the deal, don’t we all just see the world, don’t we all just perceive it all as this and that, as these distinct objects, then, yeah, I think going through the terms is probably something that will help you to get it.
What else can I say? Hmmm. Sure, I ended on a tangent, or two, but, well, this was a total blast. There’s just something about James and Nietzsche that I appreciate. There’s that wit, that humor, even though they are dealing with difficult topics.
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