The coming of wit
Nicholas Mosley
The philosopher Karl Jaspers suggested that a turning point in human history occurred around 500 BC — an age in which there lived Socrates, the Greek Tragedians, Confucius, Lao Tse, Buddha, Zoroaster, and the central Old Testament prophets. Through the agency of such exceptional people and the interest of others in what they were saying some change seems to have taken place in the ways in which human beings thought about themselves. The change was to do with a person's capacity for self-reflection. Whereas previously a person's view of himself and his condition seems to have been somewhat animal-like in its acceptance, after 500 BC a person seemed ready to ruminate upon his lot; especially upon the fact that although he was evidently part of an animal order of things, yet in this very ability to reflect upon himself he was different. Thus there entered into his conscious life not only an extra way of thinking but a contradiction: for what he had to live with was the knowledge that although in his animal part he seemed to have little autonomy, there was also a part of him that gave him the impression he had. Such speculations by Jaspers could be ignored by scholars whose business it is to demand exact evidence for historical conjectures: but it seems to me that the virtues of such speculations are in the area not of scholarship but of imagination.
Jaspers also suggested that humanity might be moving now towards another climactic period; a suggestion which could even more easily be ignored, since Jaspers was not explicit about what he thought such a change might be, and it is a habit of would-be prophets anyway to claim that the age they live in is climactic. But these speculations of Jaspers's do seem to me to form shapes and patterns in the mind; which might be useful in the placing of more exactly verifiable evidence.
That there was some profound cultural and intellectual change in parts of the world around 500 BC seems to me undeniable; not just because of the various prophets and teachers who appeared in various places at that time to try to inform men of a growth in consciousness and ways of dealing with the contradictions inherent in it. There was also, in the Mediterranean world at least, a striking change in the works of art that depicted the ways in which human beings thought about themselves. A walk through the archaic and classical rooms of any museum containing Greek sculpture will illustrate this: those smiling, archaic figures so blindly and almost madly striding forwards change, around 500 BC, into the bowed, dramatically tragic, characters with all the cares of the world on their shoulders. These are the people who have suddenly become conscious of their predicament — who perhaps know that although cruelty and suffering are endemic in the natural order of things, yet now there is some demand upon them to refuse to accept this nature of which they are part: even, perhaps, to try to alter it. And yet the impression of helplessness remains. It is as if the cares of the world that have come down contain not only demands, but impossibilities.
The reason why Jaspers said so little about the further change which might be coming upon human consciousness now seems to me to be that although he felt the change to be something hopeful in which old impossibilities might be resolved, when he looked round on the world he could see only occasions for despair. He died in 1969; at which time evidence for despair was still powerful. But I think there is evidence now of old impossibilities expending themselves.
Modern philosophy, it has been said, has been little more than footnotes to the work done by Socrates and Plato in the fifth century BC. This seems true in the sense that a style of philosophy was then set which was to expose everything to question — not so much with the aim of finding answers, though of course these were attempted, as with the feeling that this process of doubt and criticism was itself the virtue of philosophy. Philosophical method was to find some theory open to attack and knock it down: to see what might be set up out of the rubble, perhaps, but in the knowledge that this of course in turn would be knocked down. Philosophical behaviour in this respect resembled a game of skittles. It was as if the way in which humanity had chosen to try to deal with impossibilities presented to it around 500 BC — when it seemed that there were demands but no solutions was to try to allay the anxieties caused by this predicament by ritualistic representations of it in games-playing; so that by this the predicament might seem customary.
This also, it seems to me, has been the pattern of much social and political life since 500 BC. It was found then that the most suitable form of political life was one in which the participants were encouraged to take sides and to try to knock each other down — either by argument and abuse of from time to time in wars and revolutions — for this sort of games-playing was the best way in which men might experience the freedom that they felt they possessed. As Sartre has said, human societies only maintain their cohesion when threatened by an enemy without and the suspicion of a traitor within: like this they have the feel of autonomy. All this seems to be the result of the necessity for games-playing: so long as everything in reality is open to doubt, for reassurance it is best if prejudice and hostility are held within the style of games.
Recently however the impression has been growing — and it is here that there might be some evidence for Jaspers's feeling of a move away from despair — that although for thousands of years there has been the idea that human life functions properly if everything put up is there to be knocked down (with the exception of religious feeling perhaps: though religious peo" plc for the most part seem to like knocking each other down) yet this idea itself — that everything is open to doubt —is not open to doubt; and this certainty — that it is doubt° less that everything is open to doubt — is somehow cheering: in spite of (or perhaPs because of) the riddle-like form in which it is put. Philosophers are notoriously wary such statements because they go round arid round: they reflect back on themselves, and do not produce a nice knock-down argument. They are like the statements of that enigmatic fellow, the Cretan, who said that all men were liars. So was or was not the Cretan a liar? The difficulty with suet' statements, I believe philosophers say, is that they transfer a statement from oile logical category to another; one that refer" not just to things outside it but also to itself. And so such statements do not knock other statements down: they bend back, to their own cause and effect. The Cretan, certainlY' seems suited less to a syllogism than to a limerick. And did not Plato want to ban oil poets from his Republic?
In political life there seems to have arisellf the idea that although the best system government is one that is there simPlY t(), correct the abuses inherent in any system °I. government, yet this system, if working correctly, cannot be said to contain abuses: it has placed itself, as it were, in a different logical category. In ethics, there seems to bef the growing idea that the best way ° encouraging morality might be to tell pe°pie that within practicable limits they can d° what they like: in this way they can lear° what is likeable and what is not: whereas imposition is apt to be counter-productive, since it encourages not learning but the taking of sides. All these ideas are riddle" like, bending back on themselves: not flout; ing reason, but using it in complex log'c° categories. I is evidence now that con; rg th oirnikes. sciousness itself — the ways in which human being sees himself and his conditi°, —might be said to be ready to move into to' acceptance of some more complex category: that whereas in 500 BC human heirl became used to seeing themselves, willebt caused them some despair, now they 0.1ig„,a be said to be becoming used to see7t themselves seeing themselves; which mir cause them some cheer. There is, first, the growing realisation that the old ways of games-playing have i become too dangerous: if mankind s to continue to exist, there has to be some change from the habit of national and international skittles. The change has. been m caused by technology: the results are the mind. The vision that has come about is that the Players necessarily matter more than the game: if players can become accustomed to seeing themselves as players as well as to being players accustomed to seeing the game, then they will see, in spite Of the different sides that are necessary for the game, that they as players have some unity: and it is this that might give them encouragement for thus they might stay alive . Also, of course, their games might Fontinue: the hope, as has been said, lies not 111 simplicity but im complexity; old habits are not expunged, they are only superseded. But if in a society for instance a trade union leader can see himself as a trade union leader; a capitalist as a capitalist; a materialist as a materialist and a man with a vision Of God as a man with a vision of God —then, in SO far as they thus can not only all see themselves but also see themselves seeing themselves, on this ground they can meet: for they will all be engaged in the same business — that of being on the level of some different category of vision, where people who are different — seeming on a lower category, are the same. They might even see themselves as slightly funny. And because they will be on this common ground they Will know that damage done to one may come back to haunt another: and so at this level there might be peace. Man has hitherto believed himself to be a social animal: but he has only achieved this state, aS Sartre said, at a terrible cost. A man cannot be a true social animal — cannot exist, that is, without taking sides — until he has been able to stand back and see himself; see himself and others seeing themselves; exorcising the enemy without and the traitor within because thus he will see, such is his relationship with himself, that these h, ave been inside him all the time: and then ne can come to terms with others.
A man does not easily come to terms with new visions and new attitudes unless he has models on which to base his understandmg. In 500 tic there were prophets scattered round the world to exhort men how to bear et, e impossible vision of themselves: now there do not seem to be many prophets to encourage the vision of this strange envisagement. Modern artists have felt the force of everything being open to question: but What they have portrayed is more the anxiety of the question-mark than the fecundity of that androgynous object turned round tiPon itself. If the vision of hope in the Modern world is that of people being able to see themselves and others seeing themselves from a higher category of vision, then it is likely that its form of expression, referring both to what it refers to and also to will be less like that of prophets g comfort and instruction than that of the Cretan who was something of a wit.
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