It’s quite a machine, this a priori motorcycle. If you stop to think about it long enough you’ll see that it’s the main thing. The sense data confirm it but the sense data aren’t it. The motorcycle that I believe in an a priori way to be outside of myself is like the money I believe I have in the bank. If I were to go down to the bank and ask to see my money they would look at me a little peculiarly. They don’t have “my money” in any little drawer that they can pull open to show me. “My money” is nothing but some east-west and north-south magnetic domains in some iron oxide resting on a roll of tape in a computer storage bin. But I’m satisfied with this because I’ve faith that if I need the things that money enables, the bank will provide the means, through their checking system, of getting it. Similarly, even though my sense data have never brought up anything that could be called “substance” I’m satisfied that there’s a capability within the sense data of achieving the things that substance is supposed to do, and that the sense data will continue to match the a priori motorcycle of my mind. I say for the sake of convenience that I’ve money in the bank and say for the sake of convenience that substances compose the cycle I’m riding on. The bulk of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is concerned with how this a priori knowledge is acquired and how it is employed.
Kant called his thesis that our a priori thoughts are independent of sense data and screen what we see a “Copernican revolution.” By this he referred to Copernicus’ statement that the earth moves around the sun. Nothing changed as a result of this revolution, and yet everything changed. Or, to put it in Kantian terms, the objective world producing our sense data did not change, but our a priori concept of it was turned inside out. The effect was overwhelming. It was the acceptance of the Copernican revolution that distinguishes modern man from his medieval predecessors.
What Copernicus did was take the existing a priori concept of the world, the notion that it was flat and fixed in space, and pose an alternative a priori concept of the world, that it’s spherical and moves around the sun; and showed that both of the a priori concepts fitted the existing sensory data.
Kant felt he had done the same thing in metaphysics. If you presume that the a priori concepts in our heads are independent of what we see and actually screen what we see, this means that you are taking the old Aristotelian concept of scientific man as a passive observer, a “blank tablet”, and truly turning this concept inside out. Kant and his millions of followers have maintained that as a result of this inversion you get a much more satisfying understanding of how we know things.
I’ve gone into this example in some detail, partly to show some of the high country in close perspective, but more to prepare for what Phædrus did later. He too performed a Copernican inversion and as a result of this inversion produced a resolution of the separate worlds of classical and romantic understanding. And it seems to me that as a result it is possible to again get a much more satisfying understanding of what the world is all about.
Kant’s metaphysics thrilled Phædrus at first, but later it dragged and he didn’t know exactly why. He thought about it and decided that maybe it was the Oriental experience. He had had the feeling of escape from a prison of intellect, and now this was just more of the prison again. He read Kant’s esthetics with disappointment and then anger. The ideas expressed about the “beautiful” were themselves ugly to him, and the ugliness was so deep and pervasive he hadn’t a clue as to where to begin to attack it or try to get around it. It seemed woven right into the whole fabric of Kant’s world so deeply there was no escape from it. It wasn’t just eighteenth-century ugliness or “technical” ugliness. All of the philosophers he was reading showed it. The whole university he was attending smelled of the same ugliness. It was everywhere, in the classroom, in the textbooks. It was in himself and he didn’t know how or why. It was reason itself that was ugly and there seemed no way to get free.
12
At Cooke City John and Sylvia look and sound happier than I have seen them in years, and we whack into our hot beef sandwiches with great whacks. I’m happy to hear and see all their high-country exuberance but don’t comment much, just keep eating.
Outside the picture window across the road are huge pines. Many cars pass beneath them on their way to the park. We’re a long way down from the timberline now. Warmer here but covered over with an occasional low cloud ready to drop rain.
I suppose if I were a novelist rather than a Chautauqua orator I’d try to “develop the characters” of John and Sylvia and Chris with action-packed scenes that would also reveal “inner meanings” of Zen and maybe Art and maybe even Motorcycle Maintenance. That would be quite a novel, but for some reason I don’t feel quite up to it. They’re friends, not characters, and as Sylvia herself once said, “I don’t like being an object!” So a lot of things we know about one another I’m simply not going into. Nothing bad, but not really relevant to the Chautauqua. That’s the way it should be with friends.
At the same time I think you can understand from the Chautauqua why I must always seem so reserved and remote to them. Once in a while they ask questions that seem to call for a statement of what the hell I’m always thinking about, but if I were to babble what’s really on my mind about, say, the a priori presumption of the continuity of a motorcycle from second to second and do this without benefit of the entire edifice of the Chautauqua, they’d just be startled and wonder what’s wrong. I really am interested in this continuity and the way we talk and think about it and so tend to get removed from the usual lunchtime situation and this gives an appearance of remoteness. It’s a problem.
It’s a problem of our time. The range of human knowledge today is so great that we’re all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him. The lunchtime here-and-now stuff is a specialty too.
Chris seems to understand my remoteness better than they do, perhaps because he’s more used to it and his relationship to me is such that he has to be more concerned. In his face I sometimes see a look of worry, or at least anxiety, and wonder why, and then discover that I’m angry. If I hadn’t seen his expression, I might not have known it. Other times he’s running and jumping all over the place and I wonder why and discover that it’s because I’m in a good mood. Now I see he’s a little nervous and answering a question that John had evidently directed at me. It’s about the people we’ll be staying with tomorrow, the DeWeeses.
I’m not sure what the question was but add, “He’s a painter. He teaches fine arts at the college there, an abstract impressionist.”
They ask how I came to know him and I have to answer that I don’t remember which is a little evasive. I don’t remember anything about him except fragments. He and his wife were evidently friends of Phædrus’ friends, and he came to know them that way.
They wonder what an engineering writer like myself would have in common with an abstract painter and I have to say again that I don’t know. I mentally file through the fragments for an answer but none comes.
Their personalities were certainly different. Whereas photographs of Phædrus’ face during this period show alienation and aggression… a member of his department had half jokingly called it a “subversive” look… some photographs of DeWeese from the same period show a face that is quite passive, almost serene, except for a mild questioning expression.
In my memory is a movie about a World War I spy who studied the behavior of a captured German officer (who looked exactly like him) by means of a one-way mirror. He studied him for months until he could imitate every gesture and nuance of speech. Then he pretended to be the escaped officer in order to infiltrate the German Army command. I remember the tension and excitement as he faced his first test with the officer’s old friends to learn if they would see through his imposture. Now I’ve some of the same feeling about DeWeese, who’ll naturally presume I’m the person he once knew.
Outs
ide a light mist has made the motorcycles wet. I take out the plastic bubble from the saddlebag and attach it to the helmet. We’ll be entering Yellowstone Park soon.
The road ahead is foggy. It seems like a cloud has drifted into the valley, which isn’t really a valley at all but more of a mountain pass.
I don’t know how well DeWeese knew him, and what memories he’ll expect me to share. I’ve gone through this before with others and have usually been able to gloss over awkward moments. The reward each time has been an expansion of knowledge about Phædrus that has greatly aided further impersonation, and which over the years has supplied the bulk of the information I’ve been presenting here.
From what fragments of memory I have, Phædrus had a high regard for DeWeese because he didn’t understand him. For Phædrus, failure to understand something created tremendous interest and DeWeese’s attitudes were fascinating. They seemed all haywire. Phædrus would say something he thought was pretty funny and DeWeese would look at him in a puzzled way or else take him seriously. Other times Phædrus would say something that was very serious and of deep concern, and DeWeese would break up laughing, as though he had cracked the cleverest joke he had ever heard.
For example, there is the fragment of memory about a dining-room table whose edge veneer had come loose and which Phædrus had reglued. He held the veneer in place while the glue set by wrapping a whole ball of string around the table, round and round and round.
DeWeese saw the string and wondered what that was all about.
“That’s my latest sculpture”, Phædrus had said. “Don’t you think it kind of builds?”
Instead of laughing, DeWeese looked at him with amazement, studied it for a long time and finally said, “Where did you learn all this?” For a second Phædrus thought he was continuing the joke, but he was serious.
Another time Phædrus was upset about some failing students. Walking home with DeWeese under some trees he had commented on it and DeWeese had wondered why he took it so personally.
“I’ve wondered too”, Phædrus had said, and in a puzzled voice had added, “I think maybe it’s because every teacher tends to grade up students who resemble him the most. If your own writing shows neat penmanship you regard that more important in a student than if it doesn’t. If you use big words you’re going to like students who write with big words.”
“Sure. What’s wrong with that?” DeWeese had said.
“Well, there’s something whacky here”, Phædrus had said, “because the students I like the most, the ones I really feel a sense of identity with, are all failing!”
DeWeese had completely broken up with laughter at this and left Phædrus feeling miffed. He had seen it as a kind of scientific phenomenon that might offer clues leading to new understanding, and DeWeese had just laughed.
At first he thought DeWeese was just laughing at his unintended insult to himself. But that didn’t fit because DeWeese wasn’t a derogatory kind of person at all. Later he saw it was a kind of supertruth laugh. The best students always are flunking. Every good teacher knows that. It was a kind of laughter that destroys tensions produced by impossible situations and Phædrus could have used some of it because at this time he was taking things way too seriously.
These enigmatic responses of DeWeese gave Phædrus the idea that DeWeese had access to a huge terrain of hidden understanding. DeWeese always seemed to be concealing something. He was hiding something from him, and Phædrus couldn’t figure out what it was.
Then comes a strong fragment, the day when he discovered DeWeese seemed to have the same puzzled feeling about him.
A light switch in DeWeese’s studio didn’t work and he asked Phædrus if he knew what was wrong with it. He had a slightly embarrassed, slightly puzzled smile on his face, like the smile of an art patron talking to a painter. The patron is embarrassed to reveal how little he knows but is smiling with the expectation of learning more. Unlike the Sutherlands, who hate technology, DeWeese was so far removed from it he didn’t feel it any particular menace. DeWeese was actually a technology buff, a patron of the technologies. He didn’t understand them, but he knew what he liked, and he always enjoyed learning more.
He had the illusion the trouble was in the wire near the bulb because immediately upon toggling the switch the light went out. If the trouble had been in the switch, he felt, there would have been a lapse of time before the trouble showed up in the bulb. Phædrus did not argue with this, but went across the street to the hardware store, bought a switch and in a few minutes had it installed. It worked immediately, of course, leaving DeWeese puzzled and frustrated. “How did you know the trouble was in the switch?” he asked.
“Because it worked intermittently when I jiggled the switch.”
“Well… couldn’t it jiggle the wire?”
“No.” Phædrus’ cocksure attitude angered DeWeese and he started to argue. “How do you know all that?” he said.
“It’s obvious.”
“Well then, why didn’t I see it?”
“You have to have some familiarity.”
“Then it’s not obvious, is it?”
DeWeese always argued from this strange perspective that made it impossible to answer him. This was the perspective that gave Phædrus the idea DeWeese was concealing something from him. It wasn’t until the very end of his stay in Bozeman that he thought he saw, in his own analytic and methodical way, what that perspective was.
At the park entrance we stop and pay a man in a Smokey Bear hat. He hands us a one-day pass in return. Ahead I see an elderly tourist take a movie of us, then smile. From under his shorts protrude white legs into street stockings and shoes. His wife, who watches approvingly, has identical legs. I wave to them as we go by and they wave back. It’s a moment that will be preserved on film for years.
Phædrus despised this park without knowing exactly why… because he hadn’t discovered it himself, perhaps, but probably not. Something else. The guided-tour attitude of the rangers angered him. The Bronx Zoo attitudes of the tourists disgusted him even more. Such a difference from the high country all around. It seemed an enormous museum with exhibits carefully manicured to give the illusion of reality, but nicely chained off so that children would not injure them. People entered the park and became polite and cozy and fakey to each other because the atmosphere of the park made them that way. In the entire time he had lived within a hundred miles of it he had visited it only once or twice.
But this is getting out of sequence. There’s a span of about ten years missing. He didn’t jump from Immanuel Kant to Bozeman, Montana. During this span of ten years he lived in India for a long time studying Oriental philosophy at Benares Hindu University.
As far as I know he didn’t learn any occult secrets there. Nothing much happened at all except exposures. He listened to philosophers, visited religious persons, absorbed and thought and then absorbed and thought some more, and that was about all. All his letters show is an enormous confusion of contradictions and incongruities and divergences and exceptions to any rule he formulated about the things he observed. He’d entered India an empirical scientist, and he left India an empirical scientist, not much wiser than he had been when he’d come. However, he’d been exposed to a lot and had acquired a kind of latent image that appeared in conjunction with many other latent images later on.
Some of these latencies should be summarized because they become important later on. He became aware that the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.
In all of the Oriental religions great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine of Tat tvam asi, “Thou art that”, which asserts that everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided. To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened.
Logic presume
s a separation of subject from object; therefore logic is not final wisdom. The illusion of separation of subject from object is best removed by the elimination of physical activity, mental activity and emotional activity. There are many disciplines for this. One of the most important is the Sanskrit dhyna, mispronounced in Chinese as “Chan” and again mispronounced in Japanese as “Zen.” Phædrus never got involved in meditation because it made no sense to him. In his entire time in India “sense” was always logical consistency and he couldn’t find any honest way to abandon this belief. That, I think, was creditable on his part.
But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phædrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory. The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.
Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phædrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up.