I have been struggling recently with Wittgenstein, which is about as fun as a struggle gets. Somehow I had missed him in my education, and when recently I came across his theories about language, I was, as we used to day in the counter-culture sixties, blown away. If I am understanding correctly what he thought, is it very similar to what I've been thinking for years.
Now before I get into the question of being and existence as I find it in his writings, I should mention what an absolutely fascinating person Wittgenstein was. A prodigy born into a very wealthy Viennese family, he had no patience for school, and he found his way into math, and then into philosophy by accident. He never finished college, never got a degree, yet when he began studying with Bertrand Russel at Cambridge, they gave him a PhD in recognition of how absolutely brilliant he was. He was a decorated soldier on the Russian Front in World War I, a high school teacher known for his harsh treatment of his pupils, and an early aeronautical engineer. Wittgenstein renounced his considerable inheritance and lived in a small wooden cabin which he built for himself in Norway. He quit academia to work as a volunteer nurse during World War II, considered becoming a psychiatrist, lived in isolation in Ireland, and designed and built his sister's house. It is clear that he was tormented by sexual misgivings; he apparently was homosexual, but abstained for fear of social disapprobation. He died of cancer in 1951, at the age of 62, having published only one small book in his lifetime, in which he claimed that, through a logical analysis of language, he had solved all the problems of philosophy.
It is Wittgenstein's writings about the relationship of language to existence that I find so absorbing. It is not too much to say that he believed that most of the problems of philosophy were caused by fundamental misunderstandings about the role of logic in language, and that once these are properly resolved, most philosophical propositions can be seen as linguistic nonsense. But it is the specific idea of the relation between being and existence which intrigues me. Wittgenstein argues that being and existence are not coextensive (as I had thought), not interchangeable terms, but that it is possible to posit being without existence. For example, it is possible for you to imagine a unicorn; even to describe it in detail, with its horn, its silky mane, and sparkling blue eyes. But unicorns do not exist in the world. However, Wittgenstein maintains, the fact that we can imagine unicorns in such detail means that they have some form of being -- being without existence. The same would be true of angels. Our culture has believed in the existence of angels from a very early date -- the Old Testament is full of them, and the history of Western art is ornamented with very precise images of their appearance. Yet, angels do not exist in the world; they are what Wittgenstein would label as being without existence. In other words, he argues that the fact that we can imagine a thing means that it has some form of being, even though it lacks existence.
As I said, I have been struggling with this idea recently, since the ultimate form of being without existence would be God. I do not believe that God has an objective existence any more than angels or unicorns. Yet volumes have been written about God, and Michelangelo imagined God quite clearly, and depicted Him with great power and detail on the Sistine ceiling. So Wittgenstein would say that this fact invests God with being, though not with existence. Yet in thinking about this proposition, it seems to me that Wittgenstein has it backwards; the question is not being without existence, but existence without being.
The key to this distinction, I think, lies in an element that forms part of every being-without-existence proposition; namely, imagination. When we imagine a unicorn, it does not acquire being thereby; it acquires existence in the imagination. Though it exists quite clearly in our imaginations, it lacks being in the world in an objective sense. The same would be true of angels: they can be and have been imagined many times in our culture, but their existence is confined to imagination and imaginative expressions. They thereby have existence in the mind, but not being in the world. This is also true of God. We can imagine God, depict God, write about and praise God and create religions to adore Him, but God remains a product of the mind (and perhaps also of the heart and soul), but God is without being in the world.
The question then becomes: how genuine, how meaningful is existence without being? Samuel Beckett said in Waiting for Godot that life has meaning with which we have the power to invest it. In the same way, concepts of existence without being have meaning to the extent that we invest them with meaning. No right-thinking person would claim meaning for the existence of unicorns, a few might claim it for the existence of angels, and most of the people of the world would claim meaning for the concept of God even in the absence of the being of God. This, of course, is the importance of the incarnation of God in Christ: it gave to the existence of God in the mind an objective being in the world. You might say that all of Christianity is founded on this single idea. That is the true brilliance of the Gospels: that they are accounts of the coming into being of the idea of the existence of God- the Word made flesh.
And yet, if we deny the divinity of Christ (which I think is essential to an understanding of his teachings), God remains, like the other examples, as existence without being. And so I am left to conclude that existence without being is possible, though being without existence is not, since that which has being exists even independent of the mind; it remains only for the mind to discover its existence. But what effect this has on the meaning of non-being existence I have not yet decided. It seems to me that, while you cannot invest existence in the mind with any form of being in the world (as Wittgenstein seems to suggest), it is possible to invest it with meaning. Or, to put it another way, a thing does not need to possess being in order to be meaningful. Thus the paradigm becomes, not existence to being with meaning; but existence to meaning without being. That which exists in the mind or imagination may have meaning even though it lacks being. Which is to say that if you imagine something, it need not be real, but it can be meaningful. As in the case of God.
What is the meaning of the imagined existence of God? Ethics; that is, the implications of that existence for our lives. This is as much as saying that if God did not exist, we would have to imagine Him, since we must have a system of ethical principles to guide our lives, and to distinguish right from wrong. The relationship, then, of the imagined existence of God and ethics is one of necessity. If we did not have a concept of God, it would not be possible to make moral decisions about behavior. This is the meaning of the existence of God as that term is generally understood. Thus ethics becomes a matter of necessity applied to life through the imaginative existence of a divine being, which, nonetheless, has no being. There is thus a dynamic interplay among existence, being, necessity, and ethics which, I think, is the basis for all civilized societies. When God is taken out of the equation, that is, when it is forbidden to imagine the existence of God, as in atheist societies, then something else must replace God in the dynamic chain. And that something is the state, or the idea of the collective welfare, or the cult of the leader, who becomes, in effect, divine.
Monday, November 20, 2017
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Living genius
I have long been fascinated by the idea of genius, and I often speak to my son about it. It is a term I apply sparingly. Of course, Beethoven and Bach were geniuses; Shakespeare and Tolstoy; Leonardo and Michelangelo. But the other day as we were driving home from school, my son asked me who I thought the living geniuses are. Now, I can't really speak about math or the sciences, but I had to say that offhand I could think of only two: Hillary Hahn and Yuja Wang. For those who may not know, Hillary Hahn is a violinist, and Yuja Wang is a pianist.
Whenever I hear them perform I am struck by several things: their depth, their emotive power, the poetry of their playing, their technical skill, and their extraordinary memories; both seem to have absorbed an enormous amount of repertoire, which they can produce on a moment's notice, elegantly and effortlessly, as if they had been preparing for weeks.
Their personalities are quite different. Hillary Hahn appears as quite the more serious artist of the two. Her playing is always precise and profound, invoking all the centuries of violin art which have preceded her. I have written here before that to hear her play solo Bach is among the finest artistic experiences one can have. And she is a great champion of modern music, often luring us in with promises of Bach in order to introduce us to music written in the past year or two. The last time I saw her perform, she played a dozen new pieces, among them one written for her just a month before. And she played them all faultlessly from memory.
Then came the Bach, and I just closed my eyes and relished, for it included my absolutely favorite piece of music, the great Chaconne from the D minor Partita. It is by far the longest and most complex of all the movements in the solo sonatas and partitas, and is, I think, the piece by which any violinist must ultimately be judged. Her performance was perfect, as her playing always is perfect, rich with insight and nuance, tasteful, intelligent, intricately precise and deep, and carried off with impeccable intonation and technique. In her hands, the Chaconne truly comes alive in all its variety, and expressiveness. She brings to it, I think, as much skill as anyone who has ever attempted it, and derives from it all the spiritual insight with which Bach infused it.
I have seen her perform the Sibelius Concerto, also one of my favorite pieces of music, and she does so with all the inspired attention to detail that she brings to Bach. Yet in its sprawling, icy virtuosity, the Sibelius allows her to expose aspects of her personality which the Bach does not. Sibelius is a romantic, of course, but his romanticism is always constrained by his Nordic heritage, and this suits her exquisitely, for her character and her technique, while capable of the great romantic gestures of the piece, are always grounded in a striving for perfection of expression. I had the good fortune to meet Hillary Hahn briefly, and I must say that she struck me as being every bit as serious, focused, and utterly unaffected as I had imagined her to be.
Yuja Wang, on the other hand, is all about the celebration of youth and the joy of being alive. She is so delightful, so effervescent, yet when she sits at the piano to play, she is transformed. The first time I saw her I had no idea who she was, but her program was rich and varied and I thought, how bad can she be? I was overwhelmed. She played a stunning variety of pieces with equal skill, virtuosity, and verve, and the culmination was the one I had really come to see, La Valse, by Ravel. This must be one of the most daunting tasks a pianist can undertake, and I almost literately held my breath as she started. She was magnificent: powerful, poetic, technically brilliant, and inspired. I had never heard the piece performed so well.
Last night, unable, as usual, to sleep, I watched a video of Yuja Wang playing the Liszt Sonata in B minor; a monster in one continuous movement, 30 minutes long, varied, intricate, yet with an overarching intellectual integrity that must be sustained through all its dramatic fireworks and lyrical interludes. And again, it was breathtaking. But I must admit that I enjoyed watching her face as much as listening to her playing. That she is completely immersed in the music, transcendentally concentrated, is clear from her expressions, which are not, like my other favorite pianist Mitsuko Uchida, vast and melodramatic, but, rather, they are contained, internal, and wonderfully subtle. And I realized as I watched and listened that the essence of her playing is not, as I had thought before, poetry and power, it is spirituality.
I have often remarked to my son, when Mozart comes on the radio in the car, that it is difficult to believe that such genius could have been incarnated in a single human being. Yet last night, I saw it incarnated in Yuja Wang. Her playing, and her experience of playing, are a spiritual exercise, every bit as much as those of the great mystics of our tradition, yet much more moving in that she makes them so gracefully and generously accessible.
Two women, both very young, both supremely talented, and both, in my understanding of the idea of genius, living examples of its rare and glistening incarnation.
Whenever I hear them perform I am struck by several things: their depth, their emotive power, the poetry of their playing, their technical skill, and their extraordinary memories; both seem to have absorbed an enormous amount of repertoire, which they can produce on a moment's notice, elegantly and effortlessly, as if they had been preparing for weeks.
Their personalities are quite different. Hillary Hahn appears as quite the more serious artist of the two. Her playing is always precise and profound, invoking all the centuries of violin art which have preceded her. I have written here before that to hear her play solo Bach is among the finest artistic experiences one can have. And she is a great champion of modern music, often luring us in with promises of Bach in order to introduce us to music written in the past year or two. The last time I saw her perform, she played a dozen new pieces, among them one written for her just a month before. And she played them all faultlessly from memory.
Then came the Bach, and I just closed my eyes and relished, for it included my absolutely favorite piece of music, the great Chaconne from the D minor Partita. It is by far the longest and most complex of all the movements in the solo sonatas and partitas, and is, I think, the piece by which any violinist must ultimately be judged. Her performance was perfect, as her playing always is perfect, rich with insight and nuance, tasteful, intelligent, intricately precise and deep, and carried off with impeccable intonation and technique. In her hands, the Chaconne truly comes alive in all its variety, and expressiveness. She brings to it, I think, as much skill as anyone who has ever attempted it, and derives from it all the spiritual insight with which Bach infused it.
I have seen her perform the Sibelius Concerto, also one of my favorite pieces of music, and she does so with all the inspired attention to detail that she brings to Bach. Yet in its sprawling, icy virtuosity, the Sibelius allows her to expose aspects of her personality which the Bach does not. Sibelius is a romantic, of course, but his romanticism is always constrained by his Nordic heritage, and this suits her exquisitely, for her character and her technique, while capable of the great romantic gestures of the piece, are always grounded in a striving for perfection of expression. I had the good fortune to meet Hillary Hahn briefly, and I must say that she struck me as being every bit as serious, focused, and utterly unaffected as I had imagined her to be.
Yuja Wang, on the other hand, is all about the celebration of youth and the joy of being alive. She is so delightful, so effervescent, yet when she sits at the piano to play, she is transformed. The first time I saw her I had no idea who she was, but her program was rich and varied and I thought, how bad can she be? I was overwhelmed. She played a stunning variety of pieces with equal skill, virtuosity, and verve, and the culmination was the one I had really come to see, La Valse, by Ravel. This must be one of the most daunting tasks a pianist can undertake, and I almost literately held my breath as she started. She was magnificent: powerful, poetic, technically brilliant, and inspired. I had never heard the piece performed so well.
Last night, unable, as usual, to sleep, I watched a video of Yuja Wang playing the Liszt Sonata in B minor; a monster in one continuous movement, 30 minutes long, varied, intricate, yet with an overarching intellectual integrity that must be sustained through all its dramatic fireworks and lyrical interludes. And again, it was breathtaking. But I must admit that I enjoyed watching her face as much as listening to her playing. That she is completely immersed in the music, transcendentally concentrated, is clear from her expressions, which are not, like my other favorite pianist Mitsuko Uchida, vast and melodramatic, but, rather, they are contained, internal, and wonderfully subtle. And I realized as I watched and listened that the essence of her playing is not, as I had thought before, poetry and power, it is spirituality.
I have often remarked to my son, when Mozart comes on the radio in the car, that it is difficult to believe that such genius could have been incarnated in a single human being. Yet last night, I saw it incarnated in Yuja Wang. Her playing, and her experience of playing, are a spiritual exercise, every bit as much as those of the great mystics of our tradition, yet much more moving in that she makes them so gracefully and generously accessible.
Two women, both very young, both supremely talented, and both, in my understanding of the idea of genius, living examples of its rare and glistening incarnation.
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