Know Thyself...

A small story crafted by Schopenhauer (in his book Parerga and Paralipomena) amidst his philosophical ramblings:

In simple terms, it explains how relationships are needed, yet a little 'reasonable and respectable distance' is imperative in them. A balanced intimacy is one where each partner carries their own personal space too. We are all reflective beings and at some point we invariably descend into introspective journeys, and there will always be moments that we spend alone, in our reflections, and this makes our 'personal space' very important to have. Make no mistake, this personal space is not for the sake of privacy, but for exercising one's identity and experiencing the reality of one's self not in relation to anything else but in terms of its own intrinsic worth.

All extremities are to be avoided- the desire to isolate oneself from the world, the desire to completely surrender oneself to the other, or the desire to dominate and own the other- none of these will result in a longlasting relationship as the 'quills of reason' are sure to create discomfort someday.

This analogy holds ground not just in interpersonal relationships but in inter-religious and international dialogues as well.

PS: Would you want to explore this further, search for the 'The Porcupine's Dilemma' on the internet.

Arthur Schopenhauer - Born 1788, Died 1860, a span of 72 years, lived traveling, across various parts of Germany, settling and unsettling, not just in life, but also in mind and thoughts. He belongs to the school of Modern Western Philosophy and is one of the streams of revolutionary thoughts that sprung out of Germany in those times.

Born into a family that "couldn't have been worse", with a depressive father and, somewhat, repressive mother, took Arthur into pathways of life, sometimes suppressive, sometimes expressive. His father, a merchant by profession, committed suicide when he was very young and he had serious disagreements with his mother, who was a famed novelist of her times, and this put Arthur on a path of his own. Initially, he was coerced into the family lineage, yet he broke away and pursued philosophy. At the age of 25, he had earned his PhD.

Schopenhauer had felt he hit upon a 'perfect solution' with his 'doctrine of the will', yet his philosophical thoughts and writings had no takers during his time, which swayed to the winds of Kant, Hegel and Fichte. This made Arthur slide into a life of isolation and reduced him into the drudgery of jealousy and hatred. Yet, the light of wisdom that had shone in his heart was not to be suppressed. He created masterpieces of philosophy - with his expanded volume of 'World as Will and Idea' and other supplements to it. His essays went on to win top prizes. In the final years of his life, which he lived in Frankfurt, he tasted the fame and popularity that he had craved for in his earlier days. But for him, it was all too late, or probably, all too unnecessary.

Schopenhauer's philosophy had the distinguished mark that it seemed to bridge a lot of gaps - it seemed to start from where his predecessors left, yet correcting some of their mistakes, while also binding the divergent approaches of the western and eastern thoughts. He seemed to have landed on the perfect solution in his idea of the will, yet his further explanations, and efforts to reconcile with other's thoughts, exposed holes in his thought. Schopenhauer was deeply influenced by the Upanishads and Buddhistic thoughts, and this was to mould his philosophy in a big way.

Yet! Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy is one that reaches out to the common man. He has a distinct pessimistic flavor to his approach (both in its origin and in its ends) and this resonates well with the experiences of the common man. He didn't create hyperbolic concepts that would only fit in academic discourses, he did not theorize on high-flying concepts which lived in the abstract realms. He wrote in lucid style, rich with day-to-day examples, in down to earth fashion, that rained its meaning down into the heart of mundane people.

From mean and disturbed beginnings, Schopenhauer had risen into a stature that left an everlasting image in the annals of Western Philosophy. He is, today, one of most widely read of German philosophers.

Happy Birthday, Arthur!


PS: More on his philosophy in my later posts.

It is said there are three main orders in the living world. The plant world, the animal kingdom and finally the world of human beings. Humans, owing to their unique capacity of spiritual reflection, are classified (even though they have animal characteristics) in altogether a different league of their own.

Now, plants obviously have a completely different set of characteristics. They are supposed to have vegitative and inanimate souls. Animals, on the other hand, have an animate and sensitive soul, which primarily means they are capable of locomotion and have feeling of sensations. Now, understood from a human perspective, sensations means anything that is perceived through the senses. This would primarily point to stimuli of sight, smell, touch, sound and taste. Would pain fall into one of the sensational categories? 

Various sources define Pain as, "an extreme feeling", "intense unpleasant sensation that may be associated with damage or injury", "motivation to take defensive or prohibitory action". They do call it a sensation but is there a sensory organ for pain? Our common painful experiences like getting cuts or burns may seem like they use the sense of touch (sensory organ: skin) but what about painful memories? pain caused by the loss of a loved one? Pain due to pang of hunger or fear? Physiological sciences say pain is just a chemical reaction composed of nervous synapses, traveling to the brain and the brain, in turn, sending sharp messages of intense feeling. So just because pain "seems to" travel on the same nervous pathway where all other sensations travel, can we classify it as a sensation too? Are all people who travel on one road necessarily of the same nature? Yes, Pain is a feeling. But most of our feelings cannot be described in terms of sensory organs and chemical reactions. What about feeling of Love, Fear, Inspiration, etc? If Pain is one of such feelings, then I would say it springs up from our spiritual being and not related to our sensory experience at all.

Man is the only being endowed with a spiritual soul (one that can contemplate in a systematically reflective way and introspectively reach out into the metaphysical realms) and hence from that spirit soul comes the feeling the pain. Pain is a feeling, not to satisfy any biological need, rather to flag messages to our conscience whenever it takes a wrong turn.

As this spiritual soul is absent in Animals and Plants, I wonder if they feel pain at all? Yes, they show symptoms which are symbolic of pain, for eg. in their sudden recoil, in their flight from threat/danger, in their loud shrieks and noises, in their struggles, but could there be more primitive reasons for those reactions, not really driven by pain?

A dog wails and runs when hit by a stone, but it could just be due to the sudden thrust of the stone. A lamb bleats aloud or a chick cocks clamourously when they face the knife at a slaughter house, but it could just be due to heightened sense of fear at being bound and forced. In fact, I see examples that prove to me animals dont feel pain at all. Consider these - If humans dont brush their teeth, then we develop painful cavities within few years. Animals dont brush at all, yet they chomp happily on their food all their life. When we have an accident or injury, we can't move out of bed until it is reasonably cured. I see animals moving around with their cuts and handicaps without any squirming at all. I have spotted so many dogs and birds, involved in accidents, with flesh dangling from their open injuries, yet they keep scooting around, dragging that flesh, without any hint of suffering. Finally, a lot of animals even eat their own kind. If they even had an inkling of that feeling of pain, they could never have been able to do that.

Animals bleed when cut, they cry when beaten or hurt, they shout and struggle when threatened, all these are very similar symptoms to what humans do when we are in pain, but this "may not" mean they feel pain too. Sometimes our instincts force us into sudden reactions, which happen even before we perceive pain. We recoil our hand from a hot iron, even before we feel the burn. Its in our instinct. May be similar instincts are programmed into animal brains too. Maybe they are just acting on instincts that are built into them by virtue of being sensitive souls, and they may not be driven by pain at all.

In trying to justify that animals dont feel pain, I am definitely not trying to remove our feeling of sympathy towards sufferings of animals. But why base our love towards animals on an assumed sympathy of pain? As spiritual beings, we anyways have the duty to love all God's creations and as intelligent beings, we anyways have the responsibility to ensure a life of peace and bliss in this world of ours. Lets fulfil our responsibilities in a more orderly and mature fashion rather than beat around the bush with stories of animal pain and anguish.

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Disclaimer: This post is not to demean animals in any way or to justify their killing or culling for food or sport. Its just a critique on certain assumed judgments on animals.