A letter on people-watching.

S.R.,

I’ve mentioned before, I believe, the unfortunate circumstances which led me to spend the summers of my college years working in a sleepy coastal town far away in a foreign land.

I returned recently, and found myself, mid-afternoon, sitting on a stool outside of a diner on the boardwalk, watching the foot traffic, and thinking of nothing in particular. The sun-burnt feet clattered along the sea-worn boards, which now and even when they were first installed probably seemed ageless, as old as the grains of sand over which they loomed seemed numerous. The sun sat pouting in the sky overhead, probably also thinking of nothing in particular, or at least he seemed so (but I couldn’t be sure), and the air was crisp with the scent and taste of salt. And as I looked on, my eyes fixed here, then there, I was reminded of something from Diogenes Laertius:

“And Sosicrates in his Successors says that Pythagoras, when asked who he was by Leon, tyrant of Phlius, replied that he was a philosopher. And he likened life to a festival: as, some go to compete, others to market, but the best come as spectators — and so in life some are servile in nature, others greedy, others in pursuit of fame, but philosophers pursue truth.”

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Life of Pythagoras 8.1.8

Pythagoras says that the philosopher is a spectator, a theates, whence we derive our word theatre and those like it, but what it is he beholds, or watches, needs a bit of exegesis. What is the spectacle, and what does it mean to spectate? Let us consider one or two possibilities, though there are more, and certainly not less.

But rather than pursue the natural and obvious course of this essay, that to spectate is in some way aimed at truth, by system-building or theorization, humor me, if you would, and let me alter its course.

Epictetus has a sobering suggestion, as recorded in the Encheiridion,

“Remember, that you ought to behave as if you were at a dinner party (symposium). Something has come around? Put out your hand and take a reasonable portion. It has passed you by? Don’t hold it back. It hasn’t come yet? Don’t yearn for it, until it comes to you…”

Epictetus, Encheiridion 15 (my translation)

the point of which is a kind of distance from oneself, at least in so far as we are concerned with things outside of ourselves. The multitude of things outside of ourselves is constituted by whatever we can’t directly control, i.e., anything outside of our thoughts, feelings, and actions — though the matter is more complicated.

And yet, what does it mean to be at a distance from oneself?

With respect to the analogy of the dinner-party, one dish comes, another goes, and we are expected to be attentive, not only to our needs, but the needs of others, as well as conscious of what a dinner-party is — a transient affair, where nothing is owned, everything borrowed, and everything returned. There is a kind of literal distance between the party-goer and the party — I am merely a guest here, and everything here is presented to me at its proper time, and removed at its proper time — even myself.

And so it is with everyday life.

The analogy is, by extension, and quite literally in the following lines, directed at those things which we traditionally, unequivocally, unthinkingly call good — loved ones, wealth, positions of power. On the surface it seems to be a statement about the things by which our lives are constituted, objects and persons out there in the world, but really, and rather, I think it a statement about ourselves.

Even in the midst of life, we ought to keep a sort of distance from ourselves in our dealings with things outside of us, not necessarily a distance from the things themselves. This distance consists in an understanding that “I” am not necessarily my thoughts, my feelings, in the strict sense of identity, but that I am separate, and I can metamorphose myself accordingly, if I so choose, and if I so wish (the independence and autonomy of the will is of utmost importance). Spectatorship of oneself, being the seer and the seen, takes on a practical hue, as it is through the separation that I am able to take a good look at myself, my situation, and so act accordingly — but this requires that I step outside of myself and my situation.

Confer the phrase “casting desire far off/too far” (epiballe porro ten orexin), which I try to capture very simply with the image of yearning. The assumption here is that we can not only manipulate our desires (which we are, in the strict sense, not identical with), but also reign them in, and this power is indicative of the kind of autonomy over ourselves we are expected to exercise. We are expected to be mindful, to be conscientious, and, as Epictetus says elsewhere, to be almost suspicious of ourselves, as vigilant as if we were our own enemy (cf., Encheiridion 48).

While the pragmatic value of is not to be understated, this is not all that spectatorship is, but rather that ability to separate the I of experience and the I that experiences, through imagination, is merely one aspect, and one secondarily. Let’s return to the natural course of our discussion: spectatorship as philosophical disposition.

There is an obscure passage in the Phaedo where Socrates likens philosophy to sun-gazing.

“And so it seemed to me to be necessary to seek refuge in words in order to examine the truth in those things.”

Plato, Phaedo 99e4–6 (my translation)

The process of dialectic (of rigorous philosophical inquiry by means of definitions and arguments) is like viewing the sun through a secondary medium, like water, in order to better understand what the sun is. A secondary medium is necessary, as staring at the sun directly (which I don’t endorse), damages one’s eyesight, while viewing it through water is much safer, and allows for an approximate, if not exact, view of it. The correlate of water here is language, seeking refuge in words — but what the alternative is, is unclear, and for another time. The context of the above quote (extending back at least to 97c) is the explication of the causes of natural phenomena — why things are the way that they are (e.g., 97d, why the earth is broad, or circular).

Socrates mentions the Presocratic Anaxagoras, whose philosophy is disappointing for the fact that his causes (explanations of phenomena) are really further phenomena, cf. 98d8, and I caution that by phenomena I mean things in the world of sense perception. To say, as Anaxagoras does, that everything happens by nous (“mind”, 97c1–4) is to create a somewhat exhaustive account of a phenomenon by recourse to other phenomena — which is a natural assumption. For example, if asked why I am sitting here writing, to reply in this way is to say nothing more than I am sitting here writing this because I am disposed in a particular way and have muscles and tendons and bones that maintain my posture, which I can articulate at will, to scrawl symbols which are generally intelligible to a certain group of people with whom I share a common language and culture, etc. This explanation appears to be nothing more than a set of scientific facts, and says nothing of why, but merely how, and in a limited sense. But why and how are inextricably linked, and not easily or clearly divested of one another. And so one question has two perspectives — but to answer one without the other is to overlook something significant, and the why seems to be the more elusive and the more valuable of the two.

It seems that there is something unsatisfactory, at least to Socrates, regarding our scientific explanations of the world, because they lack something, in so far as they do not go far enough, and merely attribute causality to other phenomena. We become trapped in a circuit where no thing is really caused (as its cause is itself caused by something else, and so on), no thing is explained, and no explanation stands on firm ground, because the ground is always shifting (because the phenomena are subject to change), and nothing can be said of anything. But this is a problem which is explored in the Parmenides (cf., 135c), and for our purposes it suffices to say this: Anaxagoras neglected the true causes of things, and we tend to follow in suit, in neglecting to mention more fundamental metaphysical principles.

And spectatorship is in one sense like this — the examination of phenomena out there in the world which we inhabit, discerning what they are, as would the biologist or physicist. Yet something is lacking if we restrict our purpose merely to observation, and don’t untangle that causal nexus, which perhaps terminates in some set of principles (e.g., limit, the unlimited, roundness, straightness, beauty, etc.).

In another sense it is the kind of philosophy that muses with respect to the how–why question in different terms, and is not contented merely with indication, i.e., seeing things and pointing at things, rather than understanding them in a purposive sense, or with respect to those principles aforementioned.

“But I wouldn’t be very confident in asserting this…”

Phaedo 63c1–2 (my translation)

Farewell.

Sincerely,

George