I've been thinking more about the dangers of abstractions that are not tested against individual realities lately, after reading a few essays in the press that have taken up this issue.
In a very interesting retrospective review of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince,1 Adam Gopnik reads that twentieth-century fable from the perspective of the French experience of occupation by Germany in World War II and the phenomenon of Vichy. Apparently, many French intellectuals were quite shaken by the quickness of France's fall and sought in their writings to understand it. As Gopnik puts it:
“Exupery's sense of shame and confusion at the devastation led him to make a fable of abstract ideas set against specific loves. . . . [similar to] his contemporary Albert Camus, who also took from the war the need to engage in a perpetual battle 'between each man's happiness and the illness of abstraction,' meaning the act of distancing real emotion from normal life.”
I find this so interesting because I feel that I have witnessed a similar phenomenon on a much smaller scale. I taught in university English departments for about thirty years, beginning in 1980. During that time, the focus of the English department evolved from teaching literature to teaching critical theory primarily and then literature in the light of theory secondarily. Many of the theorists were French intellectuals. Toward the end of my career in the department in which I spent the great majority of my teaching time, there was only one course required of all English majors, and it was a critical theory course, not a literature course. A graduate-level course in Shakespeare was taught without any readings of Shakespeare, only of theoretical writings that could be applied to Shakespeare. I was a reader on one PhD dissertation in which the student really did not engage with the text from her own perspective at all, but simply took certain ideas from a famous French critic and showed how aspects of certain modern novels fit those ideas. This was not unusual—this was how many in the faculty were teaching students to think: not about the specifics of literature or their own individual responses to it but about the abstract ideas of thinkers who were not even an important part of our culture.
I eventually left that university in part because I could not in all conscience tow that line. The great strength of literature to me is that it brings us to consider very important human ideas and emotions, but through the very particular feelings and experiences of specific characters or through concrete imagery that ties us to the reality of earthly existence. Abstract ideas hold us in thrall; concrete experiences free us to know the world and know others without blending all into one grand generalization. As the poet William Carlos Williams has said:
“Being an artist I can produce, if I am able, universals of general applicability. If I succeed in keeping myself objective enough, sensual enough, I can produce the factors, the concretions of materials by which others shall understand and so be led to use—that they may the better see, touch, taste, enjoy--their own world differing as it may from mine. By mine, they, different, can be discovered to be the same as I, and, thrown into contrast, will see the implications of a general enjoyment through me. That is what is meant by the universality of the local. From me where I stand to them where they stand in their here and now—where I cannot be—I do in spite of that arrive! through their work which complements my own, each sensually local.”2
The relationship between writer and reader is at the primary level intimate—a sharing between two consciousnesses of thoughts, experiences, emotions. Theory, abstraction leaps over this intimacy so that idea is more important than being, experiencing, feeling. Gopnik describes the “French habit of abstraction” as coming from “the French tradition that moved, and still moves, pragmatic questions about specific instances into a parallel paper universe in which the general theoretical question—the model—is what matters most.” Thus the reader is enthralled by/to the ideas and loses her grounding in individual consciousness of experience. When people are not grounded in their own experiences, atrocities can happen, as we have seen repeatedly in human history. Gopnik refers to “those abstractions that keep us from life itself” and urges, “The world conspires to make us blind to its own workings; our real work is to see the world again.” I would add two words to that statement, two very important modifiers: “The [human] world conspires to make us blind to its own workings; our real work is to see the [natural] world again.” Thus, as Gopnik roots this in Le Petit Prince, “You can't love roses. You can only love a rose.” Really, we often think that we love roses in the abstract, but this is an idea, separate from a real relationship with a real plant, separate from our own experiences and feelings. It's like saying “I love humanity but hate particular people.” Baloney!—humanity is an abstract idea that exists only in our heads. It's much more sanitary to love an ideal, but real love is given to real individuals, if at all.
Abstract thought of any sort is dangerous if not tied to specific realities—thus the importance of metaphorical thinking. In the ongoing Stone series of interviews with philosophers on religion, Gary Gutting (the series moderator) recently spoke with Philip Kitcher, who advocates a “soft atheism” and what he calls “refined religion.”3 Kitcher is wary of religious doctrine, to the degree that worshipers take it literally and thus subordinate their own experience of the world to it—that dangerous ascendency of the abstract over the concrete. But Kitcher argues that if we can see doctrine as metaphor, rather than literal truth, then religion still has something constructive to offer the world:
“'Refined religion' sees the fundamental religious attitude not as belief in a doctrine but as a commitment to promoting the most enduring values. . . . doctrines are interpreted nonliterally, seen as apt metaphors or parables for informing our understanding of ourselves and our world and for seeing how we might improve both.” Eventually, says Kitcher, we will not need religious doctrine anymore, as secular humanism more and more absorbs the most important values. “I see refined religion as a halfway house. In the end, a thoroughly secular perspective, one that doesn't suppose there to be some 'higher' aspect of reality to serve as the ground of values, . . . can do everything refined religion can do without becoming entangled in mysteries and difficult problems. Most important, this positive secular humanism focusses directly on the needs of others, treating people as valuable, without supposing the value derives from some allegedly higher source.”
I have been for some time reading through the historical novels of Sharon Kay Penman, which focus on the impact of the Norman French on medieval England. Characters in these novels are constantly assuming God's approval and then questioning why, if God favors them, they suffer misfortunes and defeat. Because they presuppose the existence of God and their own favor in his eyes, they cannot see the reality of their situation—or even truly take responsibility for their actions and the consequences of their actions. Because all believe God is on their side, they proceed almost unceasingly to slaughter each other, as well as innocent civilians on their way to each other. The abstract in the absence of respect for reality enthralls and degrades, as the histories of the three major monotheistic religions have shown—and continue to show. The secular humanism that Kitcher depicts celebrates individual human existence and moral coexistence over any abstract idea, which seems to me much more like Christ's golden rule than any truly dogmatic religion can manage.
As a long-term teacher I know that students wed to abstract ideas cannot easily learn; their minds are closed. In a private religious university I heard students spout such ideas as there is no unconscious mind and secular humanism is evil. In a public university I had students who could not read classical texts with open minds because they were sure they knew how people really thought in those times, based on their previous readings in history. Abstract ideas close the mind unless accompanied by individual realities of text or experience. An Episcopal priest once said to me that many theology students reach a crisis of faith when they come to the point of understanding that biblical texts cannot be read literally, must be read metaphorically, which is surely what Christ meant by his parable of the seeds falling on different soils.4 In another interview by Gary Gutting of Jay L. Garfield, Garfield says quite as a matter of fact, “In Buddhism, as in Christianity, for many lay people the religion is about daily rituals and practices, and doctrine is left to scholars and clerics. And ideas that are complex metaphors to the erudite are literal for the laity.”5
My whole effort in teaching literature to college students was focused on getting them to respond directly to the text before bringing in abstract ideas—in other words, to get them to think metaphorically. I fully believe that the more people can think metaphorically the more empowered they are in a world rampant with abstractions, the more they can think for themselves. There will always be people who choose to shelter behind doctrine and authority rather than think for themselves and take personal responsibility for their actions. I fear this tendency is increasing, as we are more and more pressured by the social media to share all our experiences and ideas and feelings with others and get approval and recognition from them. But hopefully we can get to the point where metaphorical thinking and understanding is not just left to the authorities. Think of the Grand Inquisitor section of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, in which a priest turns a newly present Christ away because he (the priest) knows that the people cannot deal with the reality Christ represents (in part, individual free will) and must be protected by priestly authorities keeping them in ignorance of what Christ really represents. Symbolically, is this what we want for ourselves?
I would hope the point of education would be to help people think for themselves and not shelter behind authorities and abstract ideas. But I am fully retired now, and this is an issue to be carried on by others, in a world in which administrators are cutting out courses and tenured faculty and reaping the highest pay for themselves.6
1http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/04/the-strange-triumph-of-the-little-prince.html?utm_source=tny
2From
“Against the Weather,” rpt in William Carlos Williams, Selected
Essays (New Directions, 1969), pp. 197-98.
3http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/the-case-for-soft-atheism/?emc=eta1
4Matthew
13:3-9.
5http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/what-does-buddhism-require/?emc=eta1
6http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/opinion/fat-cat-administrators-at-the-top-25.html?emc=edit_th_20140524&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=52614392
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