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What exactly does this mean? My answer will begin by distinguishing three grades of philosophical involvement that literary or musical works may manifest.
The first and shallowest grade is that of simply using some philosophical reference or allusion to enrich a literary text. In Hard Times, for example, Dickens might have introduced Mr. Gradgrind and the McChoakumchild school without his frequent (heavy-handed) allusions to utilitarianism and political economy—he did not need to call two of the younger Gradgrind children “Adam Smith” and “Malthus,” for example. His satires and caricatures are squibs with evanescent effects serving only to enliven the narrative.
The second grade, to which sensitive commentators on Mann assimilate the philosophical references of Death in Venice,49 is exemplified in Dante’s Inferno, where, as Virgil explicitly points out to the pilgrim, Hell is organized on Aristotelian principles. So, in canto 11, Dante is admonished to study the Ethics and the Physics to understand why incontinence is less distasteful to God and why usury is an offense.50 Here, substantive ideas from philosophy are taken over and applied to the literary account of divine justice.
The third grade consists in using a fictional work for the exploration of philosophical questions. Although the issues may descend from philosophical texts (and the writer may adopt the formulations of them that occur in those texts), the author develops answers of his or her own instead of accepting the proposals of others. This deeper grade of philosophical involvement is evident in many novels and plays, particularly when the author or one of his characters launches into a discussion of free will, or justice, or the nature of art (to cite three of the most popular topics). The most obvious examples are the least interesting (at least to my mind)—highlighted for the reader because they are so self-consciously “philosophical,” so disconnected from the world of the fiction.
In his review of Middlemarch, Henry James offered a mixed verdict on George Eliot’s “philosophical” chapters.51 On the one hand, he appreciated the intellect exhibited in her commentary on the predicaments of her characters: the presence of “brain” behind her observations accounts for the superiority of her achievement. James judges, however, that Eliot’s qualities bring “corresponding perils” in their train, that her “transcendental fights” are “too clever by half.” As I read his critique, the root trouble lies in the interruption of Eliot’s depiction of her fictional world by discursive passages more appropriate to a work of critical, intellectual nonfiction. Similarly, in Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, the chronicle of events in Kakania and the shifting ideas, moods, and intentions of the principal figures is broken by digressions—easily transformable into pages from a standard work of philosophy through eliminating a few references to situations and characters—in which some particular philosophical conundrum is taken up.52 At first glance, the excursions undertaken by Eliot and Musil do not seem to be organically integrated with the development of plot or character but simply serve as opportunities for the author’s expression of views about abstract issues: philosophy is done by saying, not by showing.53 Yet in these instances, both authors might be defended by demonstrating how the deliberate insertion of a gap between narrative and philosophical discourse serves novelistic and philosophical purposes: the detachment of the philosophical explorations from the lives of the characters may be important for our understanding of them and the value of what they think and do: Musil can be read as deploying the gap to effect the estrangement so central to his novel.54 Yet it is easy for works of fiction that oscillate between narrative and abstract exposition and argumentation, between showing and saying, to press too far, to earn the accusation James (wrongly, to my mind) leveled at Eliot, for the “philosophizing” to appear gratuitous and pretentious—as in the novels and plays of Sartre (a far greater philosopher than Musil but a much inferior writer of fiction).55 Fiction that argues is typically dead.
I want to focus on a different category of philosophical fiction, one that comprises works in which philosophical explorations are organically integrated with the narrative, with the evocation and development of character, and with the literary style. Works of this sort may take over questions descending from canonical philosophical texts—and the author may even adopt the formulations offered by those texts—but the answers proposed, elaborated, and even defended are the author’s own. Or the writer may be concerned with issues he or she takes to be unfocused, or even unposed, in any existing genre. Thus Hermann Broch begins his “commentary” on Die Schlafwandler with a provocative claim:
A presupposition of this novel is that literature must concern itself with those human problems, which, on the one hand, are banished from the sciences because they are completely untractable and only lead a shadow existence in a degenerating philosophical journalism [einem absterbenden philosophischen Feuilletonismus], and, on the other hand, with those problems that the sciences, in their slow and exact progress, are not yet ready to grasp.56
Broch aims to break down the barrier between philosophy—serious philosophy—and literature, and he focuses both on questions disdainfully discarded by thinkers who pride themselves on their scientific rigor and on new issues as yet unformulated. I shall be more concerned with the former category, with the recurring questions that seem to resist efforts to find convincing answers and are thereby vulnerable to dismissal by those impatient with philosophy’s apparent ability to keep talking forever.
Like Broch, I take the supposed barrier between literature and philosophy to be highly permeable. That barrier has been breached again and again in the recent cultural history of the West, perhaps most evidently in the French and German intellectual traditions. From one side, writers labeled “philosophers” produce literary works: Mann was right to view Nietzsche as important for the development of German prose and to celebrate Schopenhauer the great essayist. Examples of figures difficult to classify unambiguously are easy to find—Montaigne, Voltaire, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, and Coleridge are earlier models; Proust, Kafka, and Camus later instances. I suggest, however, that the class includes far more than these striking exemplars. The deepest grade of philosophical involvement is found in many of the most celebrated literary (and musical) works: in the dramas of Sophocles and Shakespeare, in the song cycles of Schubert and the songs and symphonies of Mahler,57 in Wagner’s Ring, in Joyce’s fiction (particularly in the two great final novels Ulysses and Finnegans Wake), and in the novels and novellas of Thomas Mann.58
Yet the very idea of philosophy by showing can easily appear dubious. It is easy to wonder how this alleged species can exist, especially if you are impressed with the vision of philosophy as exemplified in the precise specification of theses and the defense of theses by argument, a vision particularly prevalent in the Anglophone world. Our paradigms of linguistic precision are at a far remove from the idioms we value in literary works, and, as noted, works of fiction that argue a case usually succumb to rigor mortis.59 Is it really possible, then, for serious philosophy to be done by a novelist, dramatist, poet, or composer? To answer the skeptic who raises that question, we do best, I believe, to examine what occurs when someone ponders a philosophical issue, responding to a written text or a live interlocutor.
The plausible thought, presupposed by the skeptic, is that the reader or discussant undergoes a change in belief brought about through the presentation of theses and arguments, themselves formulated in more or less clear and precise prose. The more lucid the language and the more explicit and cogent the argument, the easier the apprehension and acceptance of new ideas—so emerges an ideal of philosophical discourse, one in which clarity and rigor are to be prized. Although this picture may seem persuasive—and indeed it is standard among most philosophers, especially in the English-speaking world—it rests on two assumptions. First, the psychological movement that occurs in someone who is thinking through a philosophical issue can be exhaustively characterized in terms of changes in belief (or knowledge): the philosophizing sub
ject passes through a sequence of cognitive states, and, if the philosophizing is well done, the relations among the contents of these states conform to canons of good evidence—that is, if the person comes to believe some new proposition on the basis of prior apprehension of other propositions, then the former (the new conclusion) must stand in appropriate logical relations (broadly construed) to the latter (the previously adopted premises). Second, the changes in belief are sparked by the straightforward presentation of new propositions ideally stated in precise declarative sentences and accompanied by the explicit presentation of cogent reasons: the newly believed conclusions are formulated in the work that is read (or by the interlocutor), and, if all goes well, they are backed by lines of reasoning the subject recognizes—the logical relations apprehended by the subject correspond to the logical structure of the text (or conversation). You come to believe that free will is impossible because I present this proposition to you and provide for it a valid argument all of whose premises you already accept.
Perhaps a very large number of changes of philosophical mind, from those produced by Socrates to those that occur in the philosophy classroom today, approximate or realize completely this picture. Even were we to take that for granted, is some such process the only way in which someone thinking about a philosophical question might be induced to accept an answer? Surely not. On many philosophical issues, people appear to change their minds because they appreciate new possibilities, or because they imagine vividly the consequences of holding a particular view, or because they come to recognize that something they were inclined to believe “just doesn’t ft.” Our thoughts are often entangled with our emotions, our hopes, our intentions, and our yearnings—perhaps the recruitment of imagination and emotion is essential to decision making, even when we deliberate at our best.60 If Plato’s dialogues are accurate, Socrates was not above telling stories to his conversational partners (victims?), nor above constructing extensive myths to help them see what he had in mind. Should we then assume that all philosophizing—or even any of it—involves passing through a sequence of purely (“cold”) cognitive states?61 Or that the only ways to bring about an appropriate sequence of states is to present the philosophizing subject with clearly stated propositions based on cogent arguments?
I propose a broader view of the activity of philosophizing, one in which what goes on in the mind of the subject can involve a range of different psychological processes—including experiments in imagination and emotional reactions to them—and in which the texts and sounds that generate philosophical changes of mind can be far more various than the luminous rows of precise declarative sentences beloved of the popular model. The proposal faces an obvious objection. The skeptic speaks: “To be sure, people’s thinking is often accompanied by all sorts of feelings, and they are moved to conclusions in a wide variety of ways, but we are speaking of philosophizing, of thinking at its best, of the activity of Reason. Although some are induced to accept conclusions by the pressure of their emotions, or through some fight of imagination, or a sense of ‘ft,’ it would be more apt to characterize this as seduction. If proper philosophy is to be done, the ancillary psychological processes and the media that spark them should be held in firm check. That is why philosophical prose must be sober—even dull.”62
My reply to the skeptic will start by offering a general point, after which a focus on a specific philosophical issue will lead us back to Mann and Death in Venice. The more general response aims to show that the skeptic’s demands cut far too deeply. Skeptics dislike the thought that a work of literature (or music) might expand our conceptual repertoire, leading us to approach our experiences with new categories and to react to experience in different ways: perspectives inspired by our imaginative identification with a character or with the significance of a particular emotional response would be wrongly acquired—we would have been seduced into new ways of seeing things, not enlarging our horizons through the sober assessment of reasons. Yet is there really a contrast between the status of our novel perspective and the one we brought to bear in our original state (prior to the successful “seduction”)? For it is not that we achieved our concepts and categories through some insight into their special worthiness—there was no Cartesian moment at which they were rigorously assessed and found to pass muster. We acquired them, piece by piece, from the culture(s) in which we were initially socialized, modifying and refining them along the way so that they formed a more or less coherent whole. Careful reasoning may have played some role in the genesis of the product, but it would be folly to pretend that it could support the entire corpus. The human predicament is always to start in the middle.63
The prejudice against philosophy by showing stems ultimately from the residues of a foundationalist epistemology, one that few people, including few philosophers, would accept if it were to be made explicit. The work of philosophy is confined when it is assumed that the philosopher’s task is to enunciate premises and draw conclusions. All such argumentative activity presupposes a language in which the premises are stated. It is entirely evident, however, that our languages evolve over time, that the concepts confidently deployed by our predecessors come to seem entirely inadequate to the questions with which we wrestle—Gibbon’s discussions of the chastity of empresses and Hume’s praise for the wit and suavity of eighteenth-century gentlemen now appear inappropriate to the moral terrain that they, and we, are attempting to map: their words are not ours. To hypothesize some process through which the correct philosophical idiom could be definitively established would be to undertake a fools’ errand: those foundations will always be lacking. In practice, then, focusing on philosophy as arguing from premises takes the language currently in vogue for granted without considering whether there might be a philosophical task—arguably a highly important task—of reflectively criticizing the concepts and idioms we have inherited. Once that task is recognized, it becomes easy to see that the stimulation of the imagination through literature or music might play an essential role in generating a new perspective on what has hitherto been taken for granted.
So far, an abstract possibility—one that can be made concrete through examples. This section began with Dickens and with the harsh judgment that Hard Times displays a low grade of philosophical involvement. Yet Dickens sometimes engages the imagination in powerful ways, moving his readers to change their minds about the justice of social institutions they have taken for granted. From 1853 to the present, a reading of Bleak House and, in particular, the descriptions of the plight of Jo, the crossing sweeper, has prompted many to revise their antecedent ideas about obligations to the poor. For the skeptic, the shift in ethical perspective can only be an exercise in Schwärmerei, the illicit tugging of receptive heartstrings. I propose an alternative account of what happens: rather than viewing the antecedent attitudes (acquiescence in the benign provisions made for the poor—or, at least, the deserving poor) as a well-grounded perspective from which Dickens’s eloquence seduces us, we can recognize the arousal of the imagination as essential to a process, one involving further reflection and discussion with others, that leads to a real advance in ethical judgment.64
Death in Venice is not focused on some particular question about moral obligation or social justice. Rather, it is concerned with the oldest and deepest question of philosophy, one that subsumes the complexes of themes distinguished in the preceding section: How to live?65 The search for understanding what would make a life worthwhile brought the privileged young men of the ancient world to the various philosophical schools, but, throughout more than a millennium, the question lapsed in the intellectual culture of the West—for the obvious reason that it seemed to have received a definitive answer. The rise of Christianity focused attention on human prospects in the hereafter: the valuable life is one directed toward God, centered on faith in Him and on efforts to live as He commanded us. How exactly one should spend the prelude to the long-awaited final union with the Almighty was something about which religious teachers co
uld disagree, but the fundamental commitment to seeing life on earth as a preparatory stage made many activities and projects irrelevant to their discussions. Only with the erosion of religious belief, in the Enlightenment and its aftermath, did the issue of what is to be done in the period between birth and death regain its old weight. Secular philosophy revived the ancient question—and some philosophers who interrogated the issue developed further some of the ancient approaches.66 And the two post-Enlightenment thinkers who did most to restore the centrality of the issue were the philosophers whose writings impressed themselves on Thomas Mann—Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
Those who ask how to live might proceed by trying to emulate the popular model of philosophy. They might try to identify those aspects of human lives that contribute to their value, probing and analyzing them and explaining, where they can, why these facets of existence are so significant. Aristotle proceeds in this fashion, drawing up, in the Nicomachean Ethics, a catalogue of the places one might look for sources of worth. He proposes that mere pleasure, the pursuit of the hedonist, is not enough, and he commends plausible rivals: activity (particularly social activity), the development of talents, the cultivation and exercise of virtue, the commitments of friendship, the search for disinterested knowledge. More than two millennia on, a secular thinker writing in standard discursive mode might expand Aristotle’s catalogue by adding ideas derived from later philosophers, conceptions of autonomy and of individuality advanced by Kant and Mill, for example. The project is, then, to take these abstract elements and to find ways of selecting from them and combining them, so as to articulate some range of conceptions of the worthwhile human life.
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche challenge that project, questioning the capacity of anything like the Aristotelian catalogue (at least as ordinarily understood) to undergird genuine value. For each of them, the problem of achieving a genuinely worthwhile life is far deeper than the ancients or their modern followers realize. To bring home the depth of the difficulty, each makes extensive use of literary resources whose effect, at least on the sensitive (possibly callow?) reader, is to foster an appraisal of the post-Aristotelian “solutions” as shallow and inadequate. The young Thomas Mann, his protagonist Thomas Buddenbrook, and large numbers of other readers were and are moved by the brilliant prose to search for a different answer—supposedly deeper—than any the sober Aristotelian tradition can supply. Without making any judgment about the legitimacy of their response, without deciding whether they have seen something the alternative philosophical approach has inevitably missed, one facet of the Schopenhauer-Nietzsche approach seems to me indisputable. The bare provision of abstract categories is at best only the beginning of an answer to the question. Perhaps it could serve as a useful anatomy, delineating form without revealing how functions are discharged, but it needs supplementing with a detailed physiology. To understand how to live, one must become vividly aware of what it would be like to live in various ways; one must enter into the substance of a potential life and reflectively evaluate its successes and failures. A well-judged answer to the ancient question would extend the catalogue of values of the austere philosopher with a range (preferably a wide range) of fully elaborated exemplars through which the potential contributions of the items in the catalogue can be assessed.
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