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Jack Foley
New member
Username: Foley
Post Number: 5
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 06, 2010 - 07:57 pm: | 
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I would argue against the notion of "essence." What follows is from a letter I wrote someone recently. I had presented excerpts from Stephanie Coontz's excellent book, "Marriage, A History" on my radio show. At the end of the show, I said this:
“We are used to saying, ‘Marriage is this, it has this essence.’ That is a Platonic way of thinking. But, as Stephanie Coontz’s book demonstrates, Plato’s is not the only way to think. Marriage has no essence, but it does have a history—a complicated, often contradictory one. For this reason, it is always open to change. People arguing against gay marriage are often arguing ‘essence’: marriage has one, they feel, and it doesn’t include gays. People arguing for gay marriage—and Stephanie Coontz—are arguing ‘history.’” The notion of marriage changes over time and what you have to say about it depends upon which group you are discussing."
A listener took exception to my statement about essences. I answered:
This question of “essences” is one that has been much discussed in the twentieth century. I think that the notion of essences goes back to Plato: the notion that everything that exists, that “is”(esse, to be), has a set of qualities which define it in its uniqueness. If an entity has these qualities, then it is whatever it is; if it doesn’t have these qualities, it isn’t. In Plato, such qualities are timeless, unchanging "ideas."
You are perhaps familiar with Jean Paul Sartre’s famous formulation, “Existence precedes essence.” One might say as well, following Sartre, that history precedes essence. “Essence” in Sartre’s formulation is not something timeless which manifests itself in the world of time but a product of history, of one’s life—and as such is subject to change. You refer in your letter to the “institution” of marriage. By calling marriage an institution, you practically guarantee that it will have an “essence.” But I don’t think Coontz’s book is about an institution: it is about various, diverse practices—mating practices which are often quite different from one another. In shifting from the word “institution” to the word “practices” we move from the world of the monolithic to the world of time, history—things people do.
Perhaps the most compelling attack on the notion of essences came from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his book, “Philosophical Investigations.” I have in mind Paragraphs 65 - 67, “Philosophical Investigations I” in the translation by G.E.M. Anscombe. Wittgenstein is discussing the nature of language. He remarks that someone might object to his observations by saying, “You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language?” Wittgenstein answers that there is nothing “common” to all these activities: “I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all, but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all ‘language’”:
“66. Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?—Don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would not be called “games”—but look and see whether there is anything common to all.—For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!—Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball-games, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.—Are they all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear.
“And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.
“67. I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way.—And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.
“And for instance the kinds of number form a family in the same way. Why do we call something a ‘number’? Well, perhaps because it has a—direct—relationship with several things that have hitherto been called number; and this can be said to give it an indirect relationship to other things we call the same name. And we extend our concept of number as in spinning a thread we twist fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.”
It is Wittgenstein’s point that these “similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that” do not add up to an “essence”—to something unchanging and eternal. Rather, if we are to talk of essences at all, we must talk of something tentative, open to change, something deeply rooted in history. To put it another way: Is it possible to think, after all these years, that Plato was wrong? If we wish to understand a thing, we must not ask about its “essence”—those “eternal” qualities which make it itself and not something else—but must try to understand the various contexts in which it arises. What are the many particular things that have been called by its name? And what is their relationship to one another? “And the strength of the thread does not reside in the fact that some one fibre runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres.” |
Melanie L Huber
New member
Username: Melanie_l_huber
Post Number: 11
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 06:35 am: |
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I think here we come to that problematic issue of interpretation of words...an issue with semantics as "essence" being defined by a couple different philosophers seems to point, in this article, to more of a "non-essence" in favor of a universal commonality based on "history." Very interesting article but I'm not certain "Existence" can simply be catagorized as "history," or that Sartre meant only the sum of a linear time starting at a and going to z to be looked at on any point in between and it's place determined by its order. (Could be wrong in my assumption of course.)
Are there eternal truths, is the big question that this brings up, or is it all relative to time, place, and person. OR in other words again, is reality based only in the tangible quantities of earth-life time and is existence of "self" based soley on these tangible quantities?
I like the way you quote Wittegenstein's fibre metaphor...however, if you look at say a Navajo rug, or any sheet for that matter you will find that the threads do in fact run through the whole length, overlapping with others...
What does that mean?
I'm not imagining I know...
In relation to poetry, words, and what have you concerning an "essence" the word itself is problematic in its definition of above, but what other word will do? In trying to outline, describe a "thing" make it tangible it becomes what we describe, in a way, and therefor it does have essence in that moment of description no? Does it lose something of essence in being described, or does it become essence BY being described?
Thanks for posting this...fun to ponder these things this morning... |
Jack Foley
New member
Username: Foley
Post Number: 6
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 11:35 am: |
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Thanks, Melanie. Wittgenstein's rug metaphor is powerful but limited. A rug is after all a "thing"--and history/time is not a "thing."
My point is primarily that trying to think in terms of "essences"--which is the way we are usually trained to think--doesn't work very well. You leave things out when you do that.
Same problem with the notion of "unity." To achieve it, you leave out all the things that glimmer around a subject and perhaps contradict it.
Essence = a group of characteristics which define a subject and without which the subject can't be itself. Mallarme and others have thought of poetry as being the contemplation of essences, but I don't think they were right about that. It was the appropriation to poetry of a kind of quasi-religious vocabulary. Don't words--including the words of a poem--change? If we put two poems next to each other, don't they "converse" in a sense? Don't they change their meanings to a degree? To put it another way: No absolutes, no essences. But relationships, yes--and relationships allow things to touch one another. To change.
Thanks for that word "fun."
If you wish to pursue this a little further, take a look at the Wikipedia article about me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Foley_(poet)#Biography
The article quotes a poem of mine called "Bukowski." My poem quotes the entirety of a poem by Charles Bukowski along with my "response" to Bukowski's poem. But my response is done on a line by line basis. I write "between the lines" of Bukowski's poem--a line by Bukowski followed by a line by me. What happens to Bukowski's poem when it intersects with mine? |
Melanie L Huber
New member
Username: Melanie_l_huber
Post Number: 12
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 01:25 pm: |
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Ol' Bukowski huh, this should really be fun. I'll check it out. |
Melanie L Huber
New member
Username: Melanie_l_huber
Post Number: 19
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 07:10 pm: |
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Hi again,
Took this evening to read the article and poem, which would be great if you posted here too...appreciated the interplay between the Buckowski poem and then the reaction to the poem...and how distinctly it did change the poem.
Concerning:
Don't words--including the words of a poem--change? If we put two poems next to each other, don't they "converse" in a sense? Don't they change their meanings to a degree? To put it another way: No absolutes, no essences. But relationships, yes--and relationships allow things to touch one another. To change.
I have to consider your definition of essence and would argue then, (essence) for lack of a better word again...does "exist" in said "relationships" from one word relating to the next, and the fact that the words meanings change relates to the essence of the relationships of words/poems in poetry. In other words it is in the ever changing flow, these mutating relationships based on time/history/canons/revelations/personal histories related each to each...the "sharing" of such which does...indeed make up an "essence" of poetry. No? |
Melanie L Huber
New member
Username: Melanie_l_huber
Post Number: 21
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 07:35 pm: |
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Or thinking of other things to consider along this line: would a poem be a poem without words? Aren't words like, part of the "deal" by definition, (though in part, of course I know there is an unmentionable other thing being left out) SO Doesn't a poem need words/language to be a poem? Or--would a poem be a poem if it existed only in the author's head? Why or why not? |
Jack Foley
New member
Username: Foley
Post Number: 7
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 08:23 pm: |
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I think my definition of "essence" (which I've held to with considerable force of will!) precludes the idea that "these mutating relationships...indeed make up an 'essence' of poetry."
You ask, "would a poem be a poem without words"? This is a more complex question than you allow for. I've written about this and may post something. (See my book "O Powerful Western Star," published by Pantograph Press in 2000.) Western "Poetry" begins as an art something like singing--with the Homeric Bard telling the tale of the tribe. Since Homer is blind, we know he couldn't have been a writer: no Braille in Homer's day. But he was not only a poet but the very type of the poet--as is evident by the phrase "Homer nods." This notion of poetry is rooted in physical presence and sounds; it is, again, an art something like singing and is taken in primarily by the ears. Writing, on the other hand, is taken in by the eyes. It is an art something like painting. At a certain point in its history the oral/aural art of poetry begins to be disseminated primarily by the visual art of writing. (Read Book VI, if memory serves, of Augustine's "Confessions" to see a marvelous moment documenting the transformation from the oral to the written--a moment in which Augustine discovers silent reading, reading with the eyes alone and without "sounding" what is read.) In brief--and inadequately--"poetry" splits into two traditions which are never fully reconciled: one oral/aural (as with poetry "readings") and the other visual (involving the eyes and silent reading). Dick Higgens in his book "Pattern Poetry" has demonstrated part of the extensive tradition of visual or "concrete" poetry, a tradition which takes the visual aspects of writing to an extreme. These poems are certainly understood to be poems, and while some of them do involve "words/language" to one degree or another, many of them do not. E.E. Cummings' famous poem, "grasshopper" would be one example. (Recognizing the visual aspects of poetry, Cummings at times makes poems out of letters, not out of words.) The differences between the oral and the written have been explored extensively by the great writer, Walter J. Ong, S.J. What are "words"? Are they sounded with our breath or are they something we see (like what I'm writing here) on a page? How is the word "love" different when it is spoken to someone from when it is only written? I'll post a piece from "O Powerful Western Star" that tries to deal with these questions. Thanks for taking the time to think about these things. Do you write poetry? (Well, of course you do!) Are your poems on the internet? You can find a sizeable sample of my work in the current issue of a magazine called "Ekleksographia":
http://ekleksographia.ahadadabooks.com/skillman/ |
Melanie L Huber
New member
Username: Melanie_l_huber
Post Number: 23
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 08:46 pm: |
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Language/words *sound*...and images/art *visual* is of particular interest to me. I do think there is a very recent movement in present day to reconcile those two, at least in some of the activities I've been a part of...and some noted publications online and experimental small presses esp. with the advancement of technology, youtube, and such are trying to blend and meld the two. Poetry really *is* everywhere now though it might be the most notable artists/poets are getting lost it the general noise, there is in fact a force of poetry *out there* growing and not diminishing, as many folks who buy into the McPoem debate might believe.
Thanks for sharing your brain...and giving me some wonderful places to explore.
Yes *sigh* I write poetry. I'm here and there online. Some publications in the NYQ, most recently an essay on the current state of poetry in America in which I interview poets, editors, Mfa students, Professors of poetry, high school students and "regular" people I'd randomly try to engage in conversations grounded around poetry. (The reactions were always fun.)
Mostly I like to do interviews, review books and pick the brains of other poets so I've not invested a whole lot of time in publishing/contests blah blah myself as I find sending out poems to be a tedious and vastly boring affair. No, thank you. I do work with local poets and read/participate in local spoken word nights. For the most part, I think there are a whole lotta poets out there whose work I admire SO much more than I admire my own (many on this very board) and so I don't much care to promote myself. Right now I am very much enjoying being a "listener" and think this is something of an art in itself.
Please do post more. |
Jack Foley
New member
Username: Foley
Post Number: 10
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 07, 2010 - 10:58 pm: |
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A few things in response:
I don't think poetry is (as has been remarked many times) "essentially" speech. Note my emphasis on concrete poetry, visual poetry. Rather, the history of poetry places the art in a mixed media situation which is never fully resolved.
The emphasis on "spoken word" contains an equal emphasis on "individuality"--the "individual" poet speaking his poem. I wrote this in an introduction to my "Greatest Hits":
I can’t get it out of my head that, though I may be “unique,” I am not an “individual.” The word “individual” comes from the Latin individuus—indivisible, something which can no longer be “divided.” If I think of myself as a political entity, then I am happy to be individuus: the rights of the individual are everywhere to be respected. If I think of myself as a thinking/feeling entity, however, I am something very different: I am not at all individuus; I am as divided as I can be.
My poems are made out of multiple voices and frequently involve performances in which my wife and I are speaking simultaneously. Slam and spoken word usually involve assertions of the individual I--and in fact owe much of their popularity to that fact. Much of my work is an attack on the notion of "individuality" and an attempt to find alternative modes.
There is no need to "blend and meld." "Unity" is not all that great a virtue. If there are two things, they do not have to "blend and meld": they may comment on each other while remaining separate. I don't think my "Bukowski" poem blends the two voices, do you? The unthinking assumption that unity is necessarily a virtue arises out of (among other things) monotheism--a culture of one god--and is often capable of doing great damage. Rather than unity ("blend and meld") I prefer a fruitful tension among disparate elements. Poets like John Ashbery feel obliged to assert that their poetry all adds up, that it is ultimately "unified." I don't think that's true, but they are obliged to say such things if they expect their poetry to be taken seriously. I'm for chaos of a sort (Michel Foucault writes of "the disorder in which a large number of possible orders glitter separately"); I'm for fuzzy (multivalent) definitions. |
Melanie L Huber
New member
Username: Melanie_l_huber
Post Number: 29
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010 - 10:15 am: |
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Hmmm>>>I've yet to decide or force myself to conform to any singular viewpoint or definition when it comes to the craft of poetry and boxes in general make me uncomfortable. It would often raise my hackles instantly when in a workshop the first thing the teacher would ask "What type of poem is this?"
in other words: How can we label it...
hate that...
yet in order to understand a "thing" such as poetry (if it is or not a thing, I'm not claiming I know) or anything to relate to, or to become aware of...there must be some sort of "order," perhaps, or a base to begin to build from?
I say, yes. Yes to the chaos, but yes to the order too. There is a unity and there is an individuality also, I think...in most things from macro to micro...the random universe often produces astounding un-random beauty. Not that beauty is a value (that's a whole nother issue)...
but I really must get going, running late as it is. I shall return... |
Jack Foley
New member
Username: Foley
Post Number: 14
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010 - 07:14 pm: |
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I may post my piece on Slam. It's in The Dancer & the Dance. In it I say this:
Americans like to think of themselves as “individuals” and feel that “self-expression” if properly presented is a good thing: after all, everyone is different, we all have individual feelings and they should be expressed. It seems to me that the problem with that formulation is basically that it isn’t true—which is why so many “individuals” end up saying exactly the same things! The “ego” of “individuality” is the ego generated by mass culture; it isn’t real. From a political point of view, that fictional ego is very useful: one man, one vote. But from the point of view of self-contemplation, it is false. It arises not out of a genuine confrontation with the self but out of the notion of economic man in the marketplace: the “individual” is economic man choosing this product rather than another. Though a slam poet may be attacking mass culture on one level, on another, perhaps deeper level he is affirming it by affirming the individual I.
...I wonder whether anyone but you is reading these things! |
Melanie L Huber
New member
Username: Melanie_l_huber
Post Number: 34
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Friday, January 08, 2010 - 10:55 pm: |
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Well Mr. Foley,
I don't know if anyone else but me is reading them, but if they aren't they are missing out. I've been obnoxiously hinting at others that they should take a peek up here...I'd say some folks are reading it, but a lot of people just like to read and don't always have an opinion they feel comfortable sharing. I am not afraid to look like a dumbass and do so (I hate to say) fairly often so, I think that's why it might be easier for me to engage in conversations regarding craft and such.
For clarity:
Are you advocating the end of individuality??? Or are you saying individuality is an illusion? And: if we all contain a singular brain within a singular body, though there are "relationships" the body and brain might have with other bodies and brains...how can there not be an "I" at least in a specific space and time (assuming time exists, which is another thing I'm not so certain of)
Perhaps linear thinking is the problem... |
Staff Christine Potter
Board Administrator
Username: Staff_christine_potter
Post Number: 91
Registered: 12-2009
| | Posted on Saturday, January 09, 2010 - 08:03 am: |
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I've been looking in, Mel & Jack--
...not always with time to comment, tho'! Toldja it was a treat to have Jack back home!! I'll throw another post on the announcement thread.
Chris
Christine Potter,
head moderator, The Gazebo
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Jack Foley
New member
Username: Foley
Post Number: 17
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Saturday, January 09, 2010 - 11:01 am: |
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Thanks, Chris!
Your mentioning "home" makes me think of still another column...
Jack |
Jake Berry
New member
Username: Jakeberry
Post Number: 7
Registered: 02-2010
| | Posted on Thursday, January 06, 2011 - 03:54 am: |
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A bit out of left field, and a year late, but I wonder if complexity theory might be relative to this discussion. The website of the Santa Fe Institute will explain: http://www.santafe.edu |
Scott Zimmerman
New member
Username: Scott_zimmerman
Post Number: 2
Registered: 12-2010
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 - 09:56 am: |
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Metaphysics is hard enough without adding culture to the mix, so I'll talk about chairs instead. Imagine you're helping me move, and as we pack each item, I ask you whether it's a chair. How often will you say, "Slow down, I'm not sure." When we unpack everything later, how often will you give a different answer for an item? What does the certainty and consistency of your answers say about chairs? Or does it only say something about your understanding of chair?
It gets worse though: we're moving my furniture store, not my home. There's chairs, stools, benches, couches, loveseats, art made out of furniture, my four year old, my humongously fat brother, and me--the head of the company's board of directors. Will you ever call something a loveseat or piece of art, only to have my brother or son say that it's a chair? When two of you disagree, does anything change? What if my wife forbids our son to ever sit on the piece of art?
If you think that something does change, are you saying:
-There is no essence chair
-The object has no essence
-The essence chair changes
-The object's essence changes
-chair is changed in a non-essential way
-The object is changed in a non-essential way
-The change occurs in the world
-The change occurs in you
And so on . . .
It gets still worse though: so far we have only been discussing the meaning of the word chair in the English language. Any debate about metaphysics (or epistemology) risks being either meaninglessly vague or hopelessly convoluted until we agree on the answers to every question posed so far. And in reality, we should be just as precise about existence.
Or we can just say the hell with all that and watch my four year old play salesman. When a customer asks to see some chairs and my son shows her sofas, then stools, then couches, then beds, then the bathroom, does that affect the likelihood of selling her a chair? Of all the questions raised so far, was that last one the most important?
Now let's talk about marriage, especially: what if my wife forbids our son to ever marry a man?
Scott |
Jack Foley
New member
Username: Foley
Post Number: 116
Registered: 01-2010
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 - 10:50 am: |
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Dear Scott,
You seem to lead a complex and somewhat baffling life.
Sit down. Have a chair. As a friend of mine used to say, Dunt vorry.
In some contexts it's a chair; in others it might be a throne; in still others it might be a toilet "seat." Depends on context. But that doesn't mean there's an essence. And if there's no essence, a lot of things follow from that.
Can't speak for your wife. |
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