Because I was adopted as a baby, I am sometimes asked (e.g. by prospective adopting parents) about how I viewed my family situation when I was growing up. I always reply that I believed my situation was no different from anyone else's: we are all, I reflected, thrown into the world from we-know-not-where; my own circumstance is thus just like anyone's, except perhaps, as it were, writ large. I of course had not read Heidegger when I was twelve, but I am quite sure that while I didn't say "writ large," I did indeed use the words "thrown into" (at least to myself), and probably from about that age if not earlier. This was my conclusion, despite the fact that I was also raised in a faith (to which I certainly consciously subscribed) which held that we did indeed know "where we came from," since Mormonism has a well-articulated doctrine of pre-existence of souls. Ever since my break from that religion, it's been interesting to me that I was able to hold these two positions--the existential sense of geworfenheit and the LDS doctrine of pre-mortality--simultaneously without so much as blinking. This stance seems to me to be the flip-side of the indifference with which Wittgenstein regarded the question of an afterlife:
The temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say, its eternal survival after death, is not only in no way guaranteed; but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive for ever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.I find myself thinking on this because today is my birthday, as well as the U.S. observation of Memorial Day. (When I was born, this date was always Memorial Day; I was born on the day when we commemorate the fallen).
(It is not problems of natural science that have to be solved.)
(Tractatus 6.4312, tr. Ogden)
This coexistence of two ostensibly contradictory thoughts might be put down to the lack of self-reflection of a child, or the pernicious influence of religion in compartmentalizing one's thoughts, or any number of other explanations; but I think it was just the budding realization that an ontological mystery obtains no matter what one's cosmology. It was also, I think, an incipient ease with inconsistency at a certain discursive level. While I went through a period of intense discomfort with apparent logical incompatibility, I've come to experience such inconsistency as more like the growing edge of articulation than as inevitably some symptom of a deep-seated problem (though the growth at the edge always includes reiterations of checking for such such problems). Probably some intense semi-mystical experiences, even earlier than age 12, also had something to do with it. It is salutary (especially for one with a precocious vocabulary and argumentative style) to realize that no matter how you try to express certain things, words will fail. Philosophy is the path to this realization of failure, paved with words of the most exacting precision you can muster.
Thanks for sharing this. If I am allowed to add my personal experience (if not, please delete the post;-)), I have always suspected I had been adopted (although I look very much like my father). This because I had the mixed feeling of belonging to my family, but also of not belonging completely to it. And this is just the general condition of human beings, if only they realise it.
ReplyDeleteSkholiast:
ReplyDeletePreexistence in your case adds more that the wonted meed of mystery if you will excuse the Lovecraftian diction. Coincidentally I am reading at the moment Lodi Nauta’s paper on that topic : The Preexistence of the soul in Medieval Thought.(on line) You probably have read it. It goes to show how open to neoplatonic speculation Catholic theology was before it got locked down in the modern era. Essentially the thought is: if we are from God are we not of God?
thank you for sharing this. I agree with what elisa said about belonging but feeling one does not belong to be an essential aspect for all humans. but I cant help the feeling that the experience of adoption accentuates this aspect of the humanity we share. The separation from ones matrix, it must have left an emotional response that lies very deep. and shapes behavior dependent on how ones free will reacted to such an experience.
ReplyDeleteIt is not clear to me what, if any, is the inconsistency in holding the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul and subscribing to Heidegger's portentous notion of "Geworfenheit".
ReplyDeleteOne could subscribe to the notion that we are souls which existed prior to our birth or embodiment and also consistently hold that our birth or embodiment is not in our control but in the hands of supernatural agencies, God, or determined by our karma in a previous life, etc.
Both claims may be true or may be false, but they are certainly mutually consistent.
Heidegger's portentous notion of "Geworfenheit" expresses a truism: we do not choose the circumstances of our birth. Of course, this is necessarily true if we have no pre-existence. But even if we have pre-existence, this does not entail that we are able to choose the circumstances of our birth or embodiment.
"It is salutary (especially for one with a precocious vocabulary and argumentative style) to realize that no matter how you try to express certain things, words will fail. Philosophy is the path to this realization of failure, paved with words of the most exacting precision you can muster."
How does one distinguish between cases of alleged "failure of words" due to opacity or confusion of thought or diminished verbal ability and cases in which the failure is due to the fact that the experience is "ineffable"?
One could subscribe to the notion that we are souls which existed prior to our birth or embodiment and also consistently hold that our birth or embodiment is not in our control but in the hands of supernatural agencies, God, or determined by our karma in a previous life, etc.
ReplyDeleteThat is true, but those are not the LDS doctrines to which, as a 12-year-old, I subscribed.
even if we have pre-existence, this does not entail that we are able to choose the circumstances of our birth or embodiment.
Again true; and there is no official Mormon pronouncement (of which I know) on whether premortal souls do so choose; but it is a widespread assumption in LDS culture; I certainly was taught it.
How does one distinguish between cases of alleged "failure of words" due to opacity or confusion of thought or diminished verbal ability and cases in which the failure is due to the fact that the experience is "ineffable"?
I am not sure there is a fail-safe rule here. If there were, philosophy would be reduced to technique. Ineffability is not the same as indubitability, but these same issues arise in other cases-- the question is always, "am I mistaken?". One struggles for purity of intention, one asks oneself hard questions (like the one you raise here), and in the end one runs against certain experiences which one cannot gainsay-- but one can't predict which (or what) those will be.
Thanks for your response, Skholiast.
ReplyDeleteBut how does one recognize or know that an experience is "ineffable"? Such recognition or knowledge implies that one has discerned, by means of concepts, some properties of the experience in question.
And this, in its turn, implies that the experience is "effable" to some extent, i.e., to the extent falling within the range of those concepts and their corresponding words.
Wittgenstein and the Mormons
ReplyDeleteSkholiast, Wittgenstein was fascinated by and admired the Mormons' ability to commit deeply to their beliefs and to stake everything on those beliefs. You may be interested in the following recollections by O.K. Bouwsma of Wittgenstein's remarks on the Mormons:
"As we approached the car, he asked me whether I had ever had any acquaintance with the Mormons. They fascinated him. They are a fine illustration of what faith will do. Something in the heart takes hold. And yet to understand them! To understand a certain obtuseness is required. One must be obtuse to understand. He likened it to needing big shoes to cross a bridge with cracks in it. One mustn't ask questions.
Later in the car, he mentioned a chapter in Dickens' Uncommercial Traveler - an account of Dickens' visit to an immigrant ship of Mormons and his amazement at finding it all so clean, and so orderly, and contrary to everything he had expected. The account of a prejudice. I should read it. He (W) also had read a history of the Mormons - Edward Meier."