Archives and Reflections.

#1. Anon on Mortensen on Wittgenstein.
#2. Anon on Kaesler on Freud.
#3. Anon on Balthussen on Plotinus.
#4. Anon on Maddock on Adorno.
#5 Anon on Vicariu on Tarkovsky.
#6 Anon on Cristaudo on Hegel.
#7 Anon on Hainge on Céline.
#8 Anon on Poiana on Proust.
#9 Anon on Nerlich on Russell.
#10 Maddock on Hainge on Deleuze and Guattari and Maddock on Maddock on D&G
#11 Maddock on Weigl on Blumenberg

#1. Anon on Mortensen on Wittgenstein.

    The people behind the Philosophy Jammm are trying something risky. We are going to try and include a summary of each month’s jammm on our web page. This is a risky venture because it relies on volunteer labour, but it is worth it if, even for a while, it provides a record of what have been a very worthwhile series of well-attended public discussions on philosophical topics this year.
    Let us begin with a summary of Chris Mortensen’s talk on Wittgenstein, on October 8. Ludwig Wittgenstein was a rather idiosyncratic Austrian philosopher who lived in the first half of the Twentieth Century. He has the rare distinction of having some of his ideas taken up and incorporated into the edifice of Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy.
    The main focus of Chris’s talk was on two books by Wittgenstein and in particular the latter volume. The books are _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ and _Philosophical Investigations_. The _Tractatus_ was an interwar work, the _Investigations_ a post-war and posthumous work. The discussion after Chris’s talk in particular focused on ideas from the Investigations.
    In the parts of the _Tractatus_ that influence analytic philosophers the relationship between the meaning of propositions and their form is considered. In the said sections, Wittgenstein takes particular exception to propositions of the form ‘if p then p’. Seen within the framework of the _Tractatus_ as a whole, this kind of concern with the relation between meaning and form is something to be gotten over, to be advanced beyond, to be left behind. This left Wittgenstein with a problem: if science and philosophy are left behind and we can only really say things scientifically then we must remain silent.
    The Investigations are an attempt to keep talking in the face of this problem. The idea of philosophy in this book seems to be much the same as in the _Tractatus_ – use it to get clear about your problems and the get rid of it – but he also introduces some new ideas that have been especially well-received, and not just in analytic circles. One idea that was particularly influential is that of games, in terms of which Wittgenstein conceptualises language.
    The idea of games is essentially this: whether or not some activity is a game depends not on whether it meets certain necessary and sufficient conditions but on something much less specific, on whether it in some way resembles other activities called ‘games’. Whether or not something is a game depends on its family resemblances.
    Much of the discussion focused on whether science was a game in this sense and what the consequences were for science. Chris maintained that the game of science was privileged in that produced knowledge about reality, truth if you like. Others disagreed. It is interesting to think of this debate from the perspective of Hans Blumenberg, who was the topic of the September meeting of the Philosophy Jammm. For Blumenberg, in a largely myth-free world one last great constitutive myth remained: the myth that we know the world as it conforms to our idea.

#2. Anon on Kaesler on Freud.

The Philosophy Jammm on November 12 comprised a talk by Nicola Kaesler on Sigmund Freud. Nicola Kaesler is a practising psychologist and psychoanalyst, and brought her unique perspective and experiences to the topic.
    She gave a brief biography of Freud’s life. He was born in Moravia in 1856 and died in London in 1939. He lived most of his life in Vienna, where he completed his medical degree, with its compulsory first degree in the arts area. Freud completed honours in philosophy, focusing particularly on Aristotle’s logic. After studying with Charcot in Paris, his interests turned to psychology and led to his collaboration with Joseph Breuer over Studies in Hysteria, which laid the groundwork for psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis was for Freud not so much an established body of fixed ideas as a conceptual and problematic area of interest on which his attention was continually set.
    The discussion after the talk focused almost immediately on the question of the scientific status of Freud’s ideas and became quite animated, involving several of those present, but Kaesler payed attention more to the practical details of analysis. After being told by a patient to keep quiet and let him speak, Freud came to play an increasingly passive role in individual analyses, becoming the silent listener, rather than the active practitioner who imposed his theories and techniques on his unhappy client. As was emphasised during the discussion, this model is starkly at odds with standard interventionist medical practice. Perhaps it was this model that was Freud’s greatest contribution, one person commented, suggesting that the debate over the reality or operational applicability of his ideas was really beside the point. Others present stressed the value of ideas in encouraging new ways of seeing, independently of the question of their status as knowledge. Kaesler talked of how her own practice had changed since she became interested in psychoanalysis, maintaining that she did not slavishly follow Freud’s ideas so much as conduct herself differently in relation to those with whom she dealt, as a result of her studies. As distinct from theory, in practice the only rule is to do whatever works.

#3 Anon on Balthussen on Plotinus.
The Philosophy Jammm on My 13 comprised a talk by Han Balthussen of Adelaide University on the philosopher, Plotinus.
Plotinus was born in 205 AD and died in 270. His writings were published thirty-five years after his death by his pupil Porphyry. His system aimed to transform the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. It described a hierarchy of modes or levels of being, from the One, the Good, through the intellect, the world soul and the physical world, moving from unity to multiplicity. Causation flowed from the One to the many. To perceive the faculties of the soul, Plotinus argued, we ‘must direct the faculty of sensation inwards.’ Plotinus has been a major influence on Western thought. Among those influenced by him were Proclus, Philoponus, Simplicius, Augustine, Boethius, Dante, Coleridge, Bergson and T.S. Eliot.
A lively discussion followed Han’s talk in which the elements of a system that oscillated between mysticism and rationalism were drawn out.

#4 Anon on Maddock on Adorno.
German philosopher, musicologist and social theorist Theodor W. Adorno was born in 1903 and died in 1969. He considered himself a materialist philosopher and meant by materialism a position based on a critique of the fundamental ideas of Kantian and particularly Hegelian idealism. The only perspective for this philosophy was to conceive of everything from the standpoint of redemption. Adorno's mistrust of systems led him to see the essay as the appropriate form for philosophical writing. The talk looked at Adorno's views on modern literature, in particular his interpretation of Kafka, arguing that this literature recognised a new voice for the lumpenproletariat, a great déclassé grouping so characteristic of advanced industrialised societies. The essay as creative form was considered in light of this finding.

#5 Anon on Vicariu on Tarkovsky.
At the Philosophy Jammm on July 8th Mihai Vacariu spoke on Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky, 1932-1986, illustrating his talk with a Powerpoint presentation containing excerpts from a number of Tarkovsky’s films. Tarkovsky made seven films during his short life, all of which are noted for their strange pace and curious juxtaposition of images. Ingmar Bergman said of Tarkovsky, ‘Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream.’ Influenced by Kurosawa and by Japanese poetry in general, Mihai emphasized that Tarkovsky created a new poetic language for cinema. Although he was not a philosopher and so his philosophical remarks are unsystematic and sometimes appear to be contradictory, Tarkovsky’s cinema demonstrates an underlying philosophy in which love is the central redemptive category.

#6 Anon on Cristaudo on Hegel.
Wayne Cristaudo gave a talk on Hegel emphasising the role of system in his work and concentrating mainly on the Encyclopaedia. A discussion ensued afterwards in which it was proposed that a closer examination of the phenomenology of Hegel either in relationship to his other works or in relation to the left-Hegelian tradition might provide a future forum in the future.

#7Anon on Hainge on Céline.
At the September meeting, Greg Hainge talked about Louis-Ferdinand Destouches, infamously known by the pen name of Céline. Greg’s talk was essentially biographical and he showed the links between events in the author’s life and the often grotesquely fictionalised accounts in his books – a feature even of his doctoral dissertation in medicine. Céline’s literature is characterised by an increasing concern with the literary and poetic elements of the language, and moves from an adoption of the dialect of the lumpen-proletariat, of the street, to a profusion of slang, neo-logisms, antiquated, archaic and esoteric terms, and onomatopoeia. The books are typified by a dialectic of hate and love, and frequently proceed on a tide of invective, a practice that was to land Céline in trouble on more than one occasion. Crossing the boundary between poetry and prose, Céline’s literature also inhabits that contemporary wasteland he helped to establish between fiction and autobiography.

#8 Anon on Poiana on Proust.
Peter Poiana spoke at the October Philosophy Jammm, held on Tuesday 14th at Jahz Café. Peter’s topic was Marcel Proust. He focused on Proust’s great work In Search Of Lost Time, describing how it expanded from a single volume that was initially rejected by publishers. Because of this, the beginning and the end of the book were established in advance but they were steadily and relentlessly pushed further apart as he author added huge masses of material to the text in between. It became his life’s work.
The book has an autobiographical theme even though it is fictionalised, this being the explanation of how the writer came to be, a decidedly twentieth-century preoccupation. The social milieu of the author is idle and pretentious higher bourgeoisie at the end of an era. This social group appears ridiculous because it pretends to something it can never possess: the cultural superiority of the by then defunct and impotent aristocracy. Pursuing phantoms this group loses time, which is something like authentic experience, and so the narrator’s task is to redeem the situation, to regain time.
Much of the discussion following the talk focused on the purported ‘greatness’ of In Search Of Lost Time and in what this might consist. Someone suggested that certain ideological assumptions underlie the concept of ‘greatness’. At one point the significance of the work in relation to the western literary tradition was raised, and it was suggested that it marked a formal innovation transmogrifying established genres. Joyce, Céline, Musil, Bukowski, and others were suggested as furthering or contributing to this development. One participant compared Proust’s book to the ‘great Australian novel’, which is always an attempt to say something not previously said. Perhaps Proust’s conscious drive as a writer could be seen in this context.
 

#9 Anon on Nerlich on Russell.
On March 9, Emeritus Professor Graham Nerlich presented a talk nominally on the topic of Bertrand Russell’s book, An Inquiry Into Meaning And Truth. Apart from Principia Mathematica, penned with Alfred North Whitehead, which has left an indelible mark on all subsequent work in logic, Russell’s professional life is filled with a large number of texts of a somewhat ephemeral character. For this reason, the speaker chose to concentrate on Russell’s life and the nature of the philosophy it embodied, rather than drawing on any one text. A rich comparison was made with Socrates, who described himself as the ‘gadfly of society’, a thorn in the side of the state. His was a philosophy of questioning that Russell also embraced, a philosophy that at its very core was conversational, rather than written and discursive. The idea of a professional philosopher was an anathema to Socrates. He died rather than stop practising philosophy, and in a similar way, Russell often sacrificed employment and endured two terms of imprisonment in pursuit of his philosophical practice. One reason advanced for the ephemeral nature of much of his writing was that his principal concern was to communicate with the general population.
 

#10 Maddock on Hainge on Deleuze and Guattari and Maddock on Maddock on D&G
On April 13, Greg Hainge of Adelaide University talked on Capitalism And Schizophrenia, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. My initial response in introducing this talk was to treat Capitalism And Schizophrenia as two books with the one subtitle, because Deleuze and Guattari published Anti-Oedipus and then A Thousand Plateaus with about ten years between them, but Greg treated them as two parts of the one book. If this is the case, it is a very large and baffling book yet it precisely in this aspect that Greg found much of its richness. It was explained how, particularly in the second volume, the chapters are conceived of as plateaus more than chapters, and that they do not bear a hierarchical relationship to each other so each can be read independently of the others and in whatever order the reader wishes. Greg spoke of the approach as concerned with partial truths, and certainly they are not seeking a complete rendering of any idea or concept. Instead, the authors are happy if they can encourage people to think differently, to see things in a new way. Greg particularly concentrated on the notions of schizophrenia, which these books understand as a dissolving of the boundary between the inside and the outside, between where I ends and the not-I starts, and capitalism, the two terms that give the entire work its name. Schizophrenia, whilst nominally a pathological condition, is invested with a new, positive aspect in D&G’s thought as they try to conceive of it in a non-pathological way. Nonetheless, it remains a paradoxical phenomenon, desirable yet always risking the production of dangerous pathologies. There are a variety of ways for interpreters to respond to this dilemma, although it was not clear to me exactly how Deleuze and Guattari responded.
Personally and quite independently of Greg’s talk, I have got two things in the main from Deleuze and Guattari’s books. In the first book I very much liked the notion that capitalism, which is the end-product of history for D&G, maintains itself by continually changing the rules that maintain the social territory. From my perspective, this seems to obviate the need for ideology to play the role it has in many previous explanations of capitalist hegemony in favour of a more strictly materialist analysis. The chapters on the face and becoming animal in the second book seem to me not simply to reiterate thoughts of Bataille and his circle on the constitution and overcoming of subjectivity, but actually add something on the process by which the making of subjects is achieved. In particular, D&G associate the formation of the modern self, through the formation of the face, with the advent of the Christian era. The face is also paradoxical, apparently standing midway between submission and sovereignty.
 

#11 Maddock on Weigl on Blumenberg
On May 10, Engelhard Weigl of Adelaide University spoke on The Genesis Of The Copernican World, by Hans Blumenberg. For Blumenberg, the unseating of humans from the centre of the universe brought about by Copernicus had unforeseen consequences in terms of human self-consciousness. As the cosmos is increasingly explored by science the reluctant conclusion to which this research inevitably leads is that the earth is unique, an astronomical exception in a lifeless universe. The apparently insurmountable difficulties in space travel beyond the solar system mean that even if there is life on other planets there is no possibility of travelling to them or usefully communicating with them. This means that we are alone in the universe and this planet, earth, is the only realistic source of continued human existence. When the earth is no longer able to support life, there will be nowhere else to go.