Download Non-rational human beings, the poverty of philosophy

William Forest for King’s College London Undergraduate Conference 2014
Non-rational human beings, the poverty of philosophy, and suicide: still the
most important philosophical problem
"Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of
philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or
twelve categories — comes afterwards" - so wrote Albert Camus in his essay on the matter. The man who contemplated suicide himself - was so preoccupied by the question that it formed a good part of his
life's philosophical work. Like most post-enlightenment thinkers, he had consulted the reason, and
found it wanting. Life for him had no rational meaning or order at all. He was famously unable to decide
between committing suicide, or getting a coffee. He eventually resolved his problem, but only after
abandoning philosophy as it is conventionally understood completely. This journey, titled by Camus as
the doctrine of Absurdism, far from being simply an idiosyncratic story on the fringes of 1960s French
Existentialism, is far more important than anyone currently believes. This essay will argue that there is a
realm of human thought that is innately non-rational, and that it is a poverty in modern philosophy that
it is unable to engage with this realm. There will be a focus throughout on Camus' problem of suicide, as
a particularly evocative case study, and one illustrative of the importance of these claims.
First it is necessary to elucidate what is meant exactly by 'non-rational', both by defining it and
giving examples of considerations which are it. For the purposes of ths essay, 'rationality' will be defined
as the modality of human thought which ascertains the truth value of statements with logical content,
i.e. propositions; 'irrationality' as the misuse or poor application of rationality; and 'non-rationality' as all
human thought which is neither rational nor irrational. This distinction makes sense; it means that by
definition 'rational' considerations can be worked on by systems of logic and conclusions can be drawn
within this field that are in a certain sense objective. That is what is usually taken as meant by rational,
in the sense that man is a supposed rational animal and is thus able to understand that if the apple is
released from the tree it will fall to the ground, that if you add two more apples you will have three
apples, and know the truth of propositions of this kind. One example of non-rational thought is the
apprehension of music and art, a clearly aesthetic, rather than rational, experience. The existence of this
aesthetic sphere of contemplation may be instructive in deciding how to characterise other ways that
we think non-rationally. A second example of non-rational behaviour is the assignment of normative
value to actions. A more detailed examination of the subjectivity of morals is not possible within the
confines of this essay, it is salient to note that in fact, that there is no objective morality is a commonly
held moral intuition amongst modern laypeople, sociologists and is a near uniform consensus amongst
anthropologists. None of this changes that values exist, and it does not entail that they have no
meaning. The charge is merely that their contemplation takes and ought to take place in the
non-rational realm of thought. The same applies to the assignment of normative value to things, in the
way that a sceptre holds symbolic meaning, or a grandmother's ring can have value beyond its worth. A
third non-rational activity is the assigment of a narrative to a progression of historical events. What this
William Forest for King’s College London Undergraduate Conference 2014
means is best elucidated by means of example again. In Soviet Russia, large numbers of people were
moved from the sattelite states and replaced by Russians, as part of Stalin's policy of Russification. This
is a fact in every sense that the word normally signifies, but what that fact means to you depends on
whether you are Will Forrest, a peasant in 1930s Ukraine, or Joseph Stalin, even before you have
assigned a moral value to the fact. There is no standard by which this fact can be fit into a narrative that
is in any way more objective than any other, and thus it fails on the necessary condition for rationality as
here discussed; objectivity. It is clearly not an irrational activity either, without a narrative to give form
to historical analysis no understanding can be achieved at all beyond merely listing occurences. So three
notable manners in which human thought is non-rational are the assignment of normative value to
things or actions, the selection of narratives within which to comprehend events, and the appreciation
of music and art.
These non-rational activities can all be categorised under one heading: thought which helps us
frame events in a Camusian world, devoid of inherent meaning or order. Moral values enable us to
assert good and bad, a natural human activity; historical narratives impose order on fundamentally
chaotic events, where all causality is inferred, and unsituated knowledge of facts is impossible; and
music and art likewise posit framings by which we can take in information. Guernica springs to mind; in
Picasso's world, it was not a heavily bombed Spanish city, but a 'Tragedy'. Categorisations like these are
not for the reason to work on, but they are clearly not devoid of meaning either. What must be rejected
is the proposition that rationality is the only valid modality of human thought, and it is this that the
second half of this essay will tackle.
Turning again to Camus' problem of suicide, it becomes instantly quite clear that the decision of
whether or not to destroy oneself is not a rational one. The lack of any meaning that might inform that
question was apparently a truth not in need of further justification to Camus, but it fits in with the
account of non-rational thought as a framing apparatus within which understanding takes place. This is
corroborated by modern psychological practice. One does not treat depression with three point
syllogism. Rather, it is modelled as a disorder with how someone perceives the world, and how they
internalise value-neutral facts. Art and music have powerful capacities to influence our choice of
framing, but, I will argue, so does philosophy. To further develop this point, it should be examined what
Camus actually proposed as a solution to his 'problem'. He abandons cogent logical argument in favour
of a more aesthetic form, recommending itself to this other part of the mind. He famously references
the myth of Sisyphus, whose scorn of the Gods earnt him a punishment forever rolling a rock up a hill,
only to have it fall back down again. But Camus sees Sisyphus as triumphant, claiming that every time he
trudges back down the mountain to retreive the stone, he proves that he is "stronger than the rock". In
this informal argument he recasts the decision to keep on living as an act of rebellion. By becoming
conscious of the futility of our existence, we take ownership of it, according to Camus. If the cold light of
the reason of the analytic philosophers is turned on these statements they are quickly found to be free
of the kind of logical content that they ordinarily require, but that is manifestly not sufficient to say that
Camus' enquiry was not a meaningful, or to refuse that he is a philosopher at all. More, it is a
demonstration that there is more to philosophy than the analytic school. In the same manner as art,
music and literature, it can suggest framings within which we can understand the world. It's direction of
William Forest for King’s College London Undergraduate Conference 2014
thought can explore outwards, rather than refine inwards. It can be an art, not a science.
To conclude then, the 'poverty of philosophy' is therefore British philosophy's inability to take
up this mantle and engage with the project initiated by the existentialists. The two central points of this
essay, that there is human thought which is non-rational, and that there is space within philosophy for
this thought to occur, have been exposited in full. There is scope for further consideration, not least for
the restrictions of the format on exploring every possible avenue of discussion. For example, does the
assignment of moral value share anything with that of historical narrative, or value to art?
(Neuroscience can presumably make limited statements about this, but the conscious phenomena,
rather than the physical, are the subject of the question) Is it possible to be an analytic philosopher and
one in Camus' aesthetic tradition at the same time, or does one require the cultivation of a way of
thinking incompatible with the other? Are there political implications? All these and more are the
subject of essays in a discipline given to exploring the non-rational, and one I hope will germinate in
good time, though perhaps not with the name philosophy assigned to it. Time will tell, but it is certain
that whether analytic philosophy accepts it or not, it is something with which it shall have to contend.