7. Geometry and finesse

The 17^th century mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal made a distinction (in his Pensées) between the ‘spirit of geometry’ and the ‘spirit of finesse’. Geometry (mathematics) is hard, in the first approach, because there, as Pascal formulates it, in the twist of abstraction one must turn one’s head away from the world before us in all its complexity and variability. But then it becomes easy because in rigorous deduction one can march straight to clear and indubitable conclusions. Finesse, by contrast, is easy, at first, because one can hold one’s gaze on the world as it lies before to us. But then it becomes difficult to argue without error while maintaining full complexity and variability. According to Pascal both have their value but they cannot be mixed, like water and oil. We must shuttle to and fro between them. There often is division of labour: some are better in the one and others in the other. We find it in the difference between exact science and humanities. The English author C.P. Snow talked about ‘the two cultures’. 

Pascal himself was at home in both: he was a mathematical genius but also a philosopher. While philosophy was usually conducted with finesse, Spinoza tried, in his Ethics, to arrest it in the spirit of geometry, with his use of axioms and deduction of theorems ‘in geometrical fashion’. The spirit of geometry is connected to the bent towards immutable, universal ideas. It is Platonic, while the finesse is more Aristotelian. The distinction is related to the distinction that Aristotle made between certain, provable and deductive knowledge (episteme) and practical wisdom or prudence (phronesis). The second concerns ethics and human conduct, and cannot be caught in the regimentation of rigorous deduction and universal laws.

While geometry and finesse cannot be mixed, they can be combined, in the return, again and again, from the abstract and general to the concrete and the individual. Finesse need not be obscure. In the finesse of philosophy one can try to select each word judiciously and exactly and fit it into the right place. And if I had the opportunity of finding a new math that does justice to finesse I would not hesitate a minute and grab it. But it would not be math as we know it. 

History, law and the humanities generally require finesse and dodge geometry. Aristotle recognized that one cannot in all fields demand the same degree of precision, and one should in every case that arises take into account the matter and purpose at hand, and the degree of precision that fits the conditions. Economists have become hooked on geometry and have in large numbers become blind to finesse, removing themselves from practical wisdom. Bankers, by contrast, had the finesse to circumvent the economic order.

6. Love

The ancient Greeks distinguished between three types of love: eros, philia, and agape.

Eros is passionate and romantic love. It is exhilarating, exuberant, ecstatic, and propels one into unconditional commitment, to the point of blindness to imperfection. In one form, there is a myth of perfect unity, visualized as a perfect, egg-shaped, polished stone, which has broken into two jagged parts. The lover is one part and is on a quest to find his/her unique counterpart, to restore the perfect unity of seamless fit. That ideal is somewhat difficult to reconcile with a different, modern urge to be autonomous and free to engage in careers and ‘a life of one’s own’. Yet this impossible combination is what glossy magazines lead people to expect if not demand: romantic, passionate love as well as autonomy.

Another form of eros is that the lover (typically a male) installs the loved one on a pedestal, pure and unattainable, and then goes out to slay dragons, conduct a crusade or work for a bank. The loved one is supposed to quietly worship her hero, sit still and demure, pining for his glorious return, and to gratefully receive whatever spoils he brings home. That also is difficult to combine with a woman’s own identity, perspective and career. This love is possessive, domineering and is more about the self than about the loved one, more appropriation than giving or sharing.

Philia is usually translated as ‘friendship’ but it goes far beyond what is usually meant by that. It includes relations between parent and child, and even passionate love, but not in its romantic form, indicated above, of wanting to possess or merge. Characteristics of philia are reciprocal affection, mutual interest (in both senses), a sincere wish for the best for the other, empathy, a high degree of altruism (though that can never be expected to be unlimited), and mutual acceptance of independence. To help a true friend should be felt not as a duty but as an honour.

Agape is a more general benevolence towards others, not specific to unique persons. I may discuss that in a later item of this blog.

I would grant everyone the experience of eros at least once in life, but it is hardly sustainable in an ongoing relationship, and the best road to a happy life is eros that evolves into philia.  But then, why not skip the turbulence and vicissitudes of eros and go straight to philia? That happens, but eros at the outset lends an enviable gloss of tenderness and depth of philia, if one manages the transition well, which is an art of life.

And we need eros, evolution needed it, to be blind to the risks and efforts of building commitmment and to the imperfections of the partner until the commitment of give and take, the steps towards philia, have been made that make them acceptable.

5. Free will?

The first four items on this blog were for introduction. The next items will be connected with the main themes of God/religion, truth/knowledge and ethics/morality. To keep the flow varied and lively I will not exhaust one theme before I proceed to the next, but I will alternate between them. Here, to start, the issue of free will on which there currently is a lively debate. It concerns the themes of both knowledge and ethics.

There is no free will, says brain science. ‘We are our brain’. Our brains behind our backs concoct our choices. Afterwards we contrive reasons to rationalize our conduct and we believe in them because we are not conscious of the processes that in fact determine our choices. The philosopher Nietzsche, and before him Schopenhauer, and before him Spinoza, already said that free will is an illusion. Nietzsche said: the ship follows the stream, not the steering by the captain. If this is true, what remains of responsibility for our actions? What sense remains of reward and punishment?

In the debate there is confusion that can easily be cleared up, as follows. Next to unconscious impulse, conscious thought does have an effect on our actions even if we do not have full free will. One can have influence without being in control. The famous experiment in brain research that triggered the present debate showed that actions preceded awareness of them, and this was taken as the proof of the absence of free will. However, the experiment does not prove that conscious thought has no causal effect. An unconscious impulse to action may previously have been fed by conscious thought, and conscious thought may after the impulse affect its execution. We can consciously execute unconscious motives.

There is extensive experimental evidence in social psychology. While actions may be triggered unconsciously they are often preceded by conscious preparation, in mental simulation of the actions and possible repercussions, including reward and punishment, in anticipation of possible regret, and in reflection on outcomes from past conduct. We consciously analyze the pro’s and cons of an option, explore scenario’s of what might happen if …., discuss it with others, and then leave it up to ‘intuition’ to form a decision. In buying a house we do engage in rational pro’s and cons of location, state of repair, price, sewage, parking, etc., and then ‘after a good night’s sleep’ leave it up to ‘how it feels’. Though conscious deliberation does not clinch the choice, it does affect it. Reward and punishment also affect the development of unconscious impulses for future actions.

It has also been argued that the prime importance of conscious thought is of a social and cultural nature, in the use of language in communication. Unconscious thought can hardly be expressed, and conscious thought is needed for handling series of words in sentences, a chain of logical argument, and a chain of causes and effects.

In sum: We are not in control but we do have influence on the will

4. My credentials

For readers who already know some philosophy I would like to indicate my movements on the map of philosophy.  I promise not to assume much knowledge of philosophy in this blog, but here I must refer to some names and streams in philosophy without immediately explaining all the philosophy involved. However, when the reader simply disregards those names for now, what I describe as some of the main themes in my philosophy is understandable, I hope.

Philosophers who meant most to me are Aristotle (rather than Plato), David Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, the pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey, G.H Mead), Merleau-Ponty and later ‘embodied cognition’ philosophers and scientists (Damasio, Lakoff and Johnson, Edelman, and others), the ‘genetic epistemologist’ Jean Piaget, and Emmanuel Levinas, the ‘philosopher of the other’. Among contemporary philosophers I have greatly benefited from the work of especially Charles Taylor, on the history of ideas, and of Martha Nussbaum, in becoming Aristotelian in my ethics. Overall, my philosophy is more ‘continental’ than ‘English’.

I deeply distrust the human urge, so evident in platonic philosophy, towards unworldly absolute, universal, immutable ideas and ideals. While I admit that we need universals I am more interested in individuals and I am suspicious of the tendency of universalistic thought to erase or subjugate the individual. That happened in much religion, but also in political ideologies, in both communism and capitalism.

I am particularly interested in change of ideas. That gives one of the reasons for calling this blog ‘Philosophy on the move’.  That theme of change is closely related to my professional work over many years on innovation and entrepreneurship. I think that a number of perennial philosophical conundrums can be resolved if we take a dynamic approach, looking how ideas form and are changed as a result of experience and debate.

While I endorse enlightenment and humanist striving for reasonableness and critical debate, for human rights, and for freedom and self-realization of the individual, I think that the power of reason is limited, that reason and feelings are intertwined and rooted in the body, and that the individual is not autonomous, needing others to develop and realize itself.

Here, I am trying to sail a course between on the one hand the dynamic flourishing of life that Nietzsche sought and on the other hand feeling for others, empathy and altruism, which, counter to Nietzsche, I argue is needed for self-realization. This project was developed in my recent book ‘Beyond humanism: The flourishing of life, self and other’ (Palgrave-MacMillan 2012). A number of items in this blog will be derived from that book.  

             

           

3. My background

For anyone interested in my background, here it is. I started reading philosophy as a hobby when I was 13, but it did not seem like a profession. After Latin school I read mathematics at Leyden University, with as a field of applied mathematics econometrics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. After my studies I did military service, constructing an automated war game for the army staff college in The Hague. My first job was with Shell International, first in The Hague and then in London.

Soon, when Shell tried to push me into a management career, I decided that I would rather do research. At that time I had a wife and two daughters, and my wife could not make headway with her work as a ballet teacher in England, so we returned to the Netherlands, where I joined an institute for applied policy research on small business. From there I obtained a PhD in econometrics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Soon after I was appointed scientific director of the institute, and there I was: manager after all.

So I accepted when I was asked for a full professorship at the business faculty at Groningen University, where I stayed for 13 years. It was a professorship of marketing but soon I managed to change my chair into one on ‘industrial economics’: the economics of industries. I was appointed director of a research institute cum PhD school, with the task to bring together economics, business studies and regional science. I thought the time was right to achieve that integration but it was blocked by fundamental differences in scientific outlook between economics and business. This led to much conflict and while we managed to put up a facade in fact we failed.

So I left for a chair in ‘organizational dynamics’ at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. From there I took early retirement and shifted to a part time job as professor in ‘innovation policy’ at Tilburg University, which I held until I turned 70 in 2012.

Over the years my research was on entrepreneurship, innovation, collaboration between firms, networks of firms, and trust. Over the years I kept reading philosophy and in the past few years I finally turned to writing books on it.

My wife died recently, in 2012, and as a diversion I started this blog.

2. Philosophical questions

Let me roughly indicate the programme of this blog. What philosophical issues will I discuss? Central issues in philosophy have been God, the true, the good and the beautiful. I will consider all of these except beauty (because I have studied that less).

Is there a soul apart from the body? Is there a hereafter? Does God exist, and what or who is God? What concepts of God are there? Why do we seek God? Can we do without religion? Does religion require a God, or can it be directed at something else that is somehow ‘higher’ or ‘greater’ than the self? What is humanism? Can there be a humanist religion?

Can we have certain knowledge? Do we know the world as it is? Can we be objective? Does knowledge come from inside, within the mind, or from outside, from perception, or perhaps from both, somehow? What is truth? Do general concepts, such as ‘humanity’, ‘horses’ refer to something that exists, somehow, apart from individual humans and horses? What is the relation between the general and the specific?

What is the good life? What drives the human being? Is the good life a matter of pleasure, self-sufficiency and autonomy, self-manifestation, survival, being virtuous, following moral rules? Can altruism exist, next to egoism? Do we have free will? What is justice? What is the relation between self and other, individual and collective? Is the individual autonomous? What is love? 

Perhaps the most fundamental ongoing issue is the opposition between on the one hand the drive towards absolute, universal and immutable concepts and truths, above and beyond earthly life, which goes back to Plato, and on the other hand acceptance and appreciation of imperfection, complexity, confusion, vagaries and variability of earthly life, which goes back to Aristotle? Loss of belief in old absolutes of God, truth and morality, under the influence, especially, of Nietzsche, is called ‘nihilism’. Can we live beyond nihilism, even see it as liberation, and accept that the human being will never achieve perfection while nevertheless trying to improve on it? I will argue for ‘imperfection on the move’.  That is one reason for calling this blog ‘Philosophy on the move’

As currents in philosophy I will discuss the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Existentialism and some more recent thought. I aim to show how fascinating and intellectually adventurous the history of ideas is, with themes that appear, shift and re-appear in new forms. That is another reason for calling this blog ‘Philosophy on the move’.  

1. What philosophy?

Literally (in ancient Greek) philosophy means ‘love of wisdom’. That suggests that philosophy is about how to live, and indeed that was so with the ancient Greeks, but later branches of philosophy turned to abstractions and formal analysis of concepts that drifted away from life. There was opposition to that, and recently there has been a revival of the philosophy of life, and that is where my blog belongs. I will not ignore the more formal analytical philosophy but will use it where useful, but without getting too technical. I appreciate clarity and I think that philosophers should be as clear as it is possible. But it is not always possible. Ambiguity is not only unavoidable but also salutary. Without ambiguity no change of meaning could take place, no shift or novelty of concepts, and that is what interests me most of all. 

This blog is aimed at a reasonably intellectual but wide audience. I will connect philosophical issues with phenomena in life and society. In the view of some philosophers it is not the task of philosophy to solve problems or even answer questions, and is only a matter of rephrasing questions. And indeed, a number of questions return again and again without receiving a final, conclusive answer. Yet in my view one should try to connect philosophy with experience. For example, when discussing the relation between self and other, between individual and collective conduct, I will look at the banking crisis. When discussing justice I will look at debates on immigration. When discussing the possibility of altruism next to egoism I will consider its viability in the economy, in markets.

In the view of some philosophers philosophy and science are of different orders and should be kept apart. I disagree. As science moves along, it tends to take over issues from philosophy, but old philosophical questions remain and many of them have not been resolved. Philosophy starts where science ends, trying to tackle questions that science cannot answer yet and perhaps never will. Foundations of science are often philosophical, and scientists do well to consider them. Philosophers should build on science where they can, and when what they say is in contradiction with science they should reconsider. In issues of knowledge, for example, and the question whether free will exists, one can make use of recent insights from brain science and social psychology. Philosophy and science are still of different orders but that does not mean that there are no connections.