Depoliticising the English Language, One App at a Time

 Discurso Funebre Pericles (Pericles' Funeral Oration) by Philipp Foltz (1877) Public Domain via Wikimedia

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To say that this book is equally applicable today is naive. Orwell's work is applicable to all of history, whether in the sense that politicians rarely say what they mean, or hide atrocities through vague language, or whether all of history has been re-written in such a way as to hide the truth. The word "democracy" as we use it today, and especially when we mean the phrase "liberal democracy", is the opposite of what Orwell writes. For example, why use a phrase when a single word will do? In the case of liberal democracy, why use a single word when we really mean a phrase? Any undergraduate student of politics should know that "liberal democracy" is an "essentially contested concept". But why is this so? Orwell explains:

In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.

What does this mean? It means that attempting to "depoliticise" (Orwell criticises the use of un- and de- and -ise words) language is a political act. Indeed, to be conservative is to prevent another's exercise of power by exercising a legacy power while claiming that no such power exists. It is interesting that this work includes Orwell's review of Hitler's Mein Kampf, where he claims that in Hitler's Brownshirt days, he was regarded by both the left and the right as a conservative. And whenever I think of Hitler I cannot help but think of the movie Tea with Mussolini, for the same reason. To conclude, this work is relevant to all time, just as the political dramas unfolding today have been unfolding forever, and will continue to do so. But what can we do? If my other reading is anything to go by, we can take a "bird's-eye view" like the Stoics, and see history for what it is. Or, one might adopt an Epicurean approach and withdraw from politics altogether. Nonetheless, if one combines the two approaches, one can see it for what it is, and withdraw, knowing it will make no difference either way, and then focus on using plain and simple English to convey the truth. The major difference today, however, is that there is an app that will help one do just that. Aren't we lucky.

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On First Principles and Happiness

Dice players. Roman fresco from the Osteria della Via di Mercurio (VI 10,1.19, room b) in Pompeii.
Public Domain via Wikimedia

The Art of Happiness by Epicurus

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this book quite perplexing. I expected a hedonistic discussion of the life of reading, conversation, and communal living. Instead, I was learning about atomic theory and the atomic "swerve" (a way to explain randomness in the universe and the subsequent collision of atoms), the logic of the sun, moon,stars, and weather, and the need to be ever-vigilant to ignore the popular gods and to rely on empirical evidence rather than determinism (fate) and mythology to comprehend the otherwise unknown. The letters to Herodotus and Pythocles were all about such concepts, with only the letter to Menoeceus even touching upon the concept of happiness. I was surprised by the depth of the logos of Epicurean thought, and the loftiness of its ideals when compared with Stoic philosophy. Physics was originally known as natural philosophy, and Epicurus' understanding of the universe (based on the ideas of others and not just his own, of course), led to an anti-religious philosophy. Yet God is not absent in Epicurean thought. In the "Leading Doctrines" (pp. 174-5), Epicurus explains:

10. If the things that produce the debauchee's pleasures dissolved the mind's fears regarding the heavenly bodies, death, and pain and also told us how to limit our desires, we would never have any reason to find fault with such people, because they would be glutting themselves with every sort of pleasure and never suffer any physical or mental pain, which is the real evil.

11. We would have no need for natural science unless we were worried by apprehensiveness regarding the heavenly bodies, by anxiety about the meaning of death, and also by our failure to understand the limitations of pain and desire.

12. It is impossible to get rid of our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe and are apprehensive about some of the theological accounts. Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without natural science.

Moral acts involve deliberate "choices" of possible concrete pleasures and "aversions", i.e., the "deliberate avoidance of prospective pain. An act is moral if in the long run, all things considered, it produces in the agent a surplus of pleasure over pain; otherwise it is immoral". Our choices, desires, and aversions play a prominent role in Stoic philosophy, too. So too, are our impressions, and Epicurus outlines his theology thus:

The gods do indeed exist, since our knowledge of them is a matter of clear and distinct perception.

However, Epicurus warned against anthropomorphising the gods (or God), and that the gods did not control nature. Rather, their role was ethical, and the gods were abstract (p. 41):

psychological projections of what every good Epicurean wanted himself to be... Thus a relapse into "the old-time religion" of a god-controlled universe has very serious consequences: It cuts the worshipper off from the gods' images - that is, alienates him from the divine communion - and it plunges the naive believer once more into the ancient fears that Epicurus seeks to allay: namely, that the gods will avenge themselves on wicked men by causing natural disasters, political upheavals, and finally the torments of death and hell.

For the Roman poet, Lucretius:

True religion is rather the power to contemplate nature with a mind set at peace.

Nevertheless, Epicurus was keen to attack other philosophies and religions, so it is not surprising that he got some of his own back! When I was schooled in snippets of Greek philosophy, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were the godhead "gang of three" (see De Bono), and the Presocratics and others were treated as the great pretenders. Yet Epicurus, too, was asking those two great questions: How to live and what to believe (see Murray in my previous article), and his atomic theory addressed the second question in order to address the first. God exists, but, like the atomic swerve, free will exists otherwise there would be no need for ethics, for our behaviour would be pre-determined. According to Strodach's Introduction, the Epicurean materialism (which was morphed or "garbled" into "eat, drink, and be merry") was "so unpalatable" to the ancient and medieval worlds that Epicurus' atomic theory was lost until the 17th Century (uncovered by "the Jesuit priest Pierre Gassendi, a contemporary of Descartes", see p. 76). And so I find myself in agreement with Daniel Klein (see Foreword):

For a moment, the twenty-first-century mind might recoil at the idea of a self-anointed pundit proclaiming to his students - and to us - exactly how to live. But I, for one, read on for the simple reason that I suspect Epicurus may, in fact, have gotten it right.

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On First Principles and Stoicism

Radcliffe Camera, a part of Oxford University's Bodleian Library, and All Souls College to the right, in Radcliffe Square, looking north from the tower of St Mary's Church, the University Church, in central Oxford, England.
Photo by Tejvan Pettinger via Wikimedia CC BY 2.0

The Stoic Philosophy; Conway Memorial Lecture Delivered at South Place Institute on March 16, 1915 by Gilbert Murray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I discovered this lecture in George Strodach's notes to Epicurus' The Art of Happiness. I have been thinking about the format of Ancient Greek philosophies, specifically the outlining of the ethos, pathos, and logos of each philosophy. Put simply, these are modes of persuasion, where ethos refers to "character" and the guiding beliefs; pathos refers to emotional appeal, and logos refers to the appeal to logic. From what I can gather, a good deal of the logos of Stoicism is lost to antiquity, whereas Epicurus' logos is contained in his letters to Herodotus and Pythocles. Murray outlines the two major questions Zeno of Citium (the founder of Stoicism) grappled with:

How to live and what to believe.

While the first question was the focus, Murray points out that one cannot address the former without first addressing the latter. First principles, if you will. The Sceptics (and Platonists) had developed ideas about ontology (the nature of being, reality, or existence) and epistemology (theories of knowledge and how we can know something), but Zeno was "a fighter" and "wanted to get to business". This explains in large part the practical nature of Stoicism. But here, like Heraclitus and Epicurus, the idea of God or the gods is an important first principle. Murray uses examples of the Duke of Wellington in asserting the positivist nature of Stoicism - this is a table, here it is, one can see it and touch it - an "uncompromising materialism". But how do we know?

By the evidence of our senses; for the sense-impression (here Stoics and Epicureans both followed the fifth-century physicists) is simply the imprint of the real thing upon our mindstuff. As such it must be true.

The idea of managing one's "impressions" is a cornerstone of Stoic philosophy, and here Murray points out that our "sense-impression [is] all right; it is we who have interpreted it wrongly, or received it in some incomplete way". So our impressions are true - we can believe what we see - but how we react to these external events is the focus; the world is "real" and "knowable". So when we ask, What is it to live the good life? - Zeno meant it in "an ultimate Day-of-Judgment sense". Goodness is "performing your function well". This reminds me of Bentham's idea of utility - not being drunk all the time as a source of happiness, but utility as in a hammer to a carpenter. And acting well in accordance with one's "nature" is the point - Phusis here is translated as "Nature", but in the context of evolution, growth, or the process of growth - continuous improvement comes to mind - moving ever closer to perfection:

It means living according to the spirit which makes the world grow and progress, [where] Phusis is not a sort of arbitrary personal goddess, upsetting the natural order; Phusis is the natural order, and nothing happens without a cause.

Such ideas about "natural law" were not unusual to the Ancient Greek philosophers, "indistinguishable from a purpose, the purpose of the great world-process". Phusis is regarded by the Stoics as a form of intellectual fire, which forms:

a principle of providence or forethought [that] comes to be regarded as God, the nearest approach to a definite personal God which is admitted by the austere logic of Stoicism... Thus Goodness is acting, according to Phusis, in harmony with the will of God.

It is worth quoting Murray at length here to explain the idea of "good" and "nature":

The answer is clear and uncompromising. A good bootmaker is one who makes good boots; a good shepherd is one who keeps his sheep well; and even though good boots are, in the Day-of-Judgment sense, entirely worthless, and fat sheep no whit better than starved sheep, yet the good bootmaker or good shepherd must do his work well or he will cease to be good. To be good he must perform his function; and in performing that function there are certain things that he must prefer; to others, even though they are not really "good"; He must prefer a healthy sheep or a well-made boot to their opposites. It is thus that Nature, or Phusis, herself works when she shapes the seed into the tree, or the blind puppy into the good hound. The perfection of the tree or hound is in itself indifferent, a thing of no ultimate value. Yet the goodness of Nature lies in working for that perfection.

Murray ties his discussion together by looking at two problems of government - a government that is good during the bad times is not necessarily good during the good times, and vice versa. Stoicisms' dual character, however, provides armour when the world is evil, and encouragement when the world is good. In summing up, Murray states that we all, like herd animals, look for a friend, and we ineradicably and instinctively look for a Friend-God so we are not alone in the universe. This is not about reason but a "craving of the whole nature". Two other interesting features of this work are worth recalling. First, the chairman's introduction. He indicates what a good chair should do by outlining what a poor chair had done to Murray on a previous occasion. Second, the purpose of the lecture series was in honour of Dr Moncure Conway, whose:

untiring zeal for the emancipation of the human mind from the thraldom of obsolete or waning beliefs, his pleadings for sympathy with the oppressed and for a wider and profounder conception of human fraternity than the world has yet reached.

What I find most interesting about this work (and the purpose of the lecture series) is its congruence with my reading of Epicurus. Epicurus warned against believing in the popular gods and insisted instead upon an empirical understanding of the world. Maybe not as practical as Zeno's positivism, but certainly not a case of blind faith. Yet Epicurus was not an atheist, and his conception of God may well have been a precursor to monotheism, as much of Stoicism was a precursor to large elements of Christianity and Islam. Indeed, Murray provides a glimpse of this comparison - Ryan Holiday in "A Star is Born" on the Christmas edition of the Daily Stoic newsletter draws out comparisons between the words of Seneca and Jesus - and Strodach reads something similar. Add to this my present reading of Teddy Roosevelt's Autobiography, where he is discussing the power of the herd instinct when rounding-up cattle, and the coincidences are strongly correlating around a common theme! I began by discussing the lack of logos in Stoic philosophy, but Murray's work goes a long way to bringing this to light. It may not be obvious in the practical "enchiridion" sense of the three main books of the Roman Stoics, but when combined with a reading of Epicurus, this lecture says much in very few words.

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