Book Review: Henry Fielding's Shamela

So I am not the only person who is absolutely sick of Richardson's Pamela. The great early English novelist Henry Fielding is equally disgusted by Richardson's novel. (On another note: I was as shocked to see that the great Alexander Pope, the greatest poet living at the time, he too extremely admires Richardson's book. Fielding was disappointed that even such a great intellectual as Pope lack sense. But I digress.)

To Fielding's disgust of Pamela's success he wrote a parody, titled Shamela. In this very brief work (40 pages in all) Fielding uses the letter form (just like Richardson) to correct the "misrepresentation" of the real character of Pamela, whose real name is Shamela. The parody is highly satirical, and Fielding basically inverts the characters of Richardson's novel. In the novel, Shamela, instead of being the great virtuous heroine, is a much more realistic girl who uses her beauty and art to bewitch and manipulates the poor defenseless Mr. Booby, who is undergoing puberty, I think. Shamela is actually in love with Parson Williams (who, in Richardson's novel, is the nice parson who very willingly helps Pamela with her troubles). Shamela, however, doesn't marry Williams because he's too poor and Mr. Booby is rich. Williams is a hypocritical parson who preaches that adultery is okay, and that one only needs to repent afterwards.

In short, Fielding's criticism (slightly different from mine) is that Pamela is anything but possible. Virtue is hardly rewarded (just imagine a real life servant girl!). Even more important is that even if it is possible, this kind of reward - Pamela's marriage to a loving, rich husband - is wrong: virtue's reward is not earthly and should not be earthly. Earthly reward is a bonus, but it should simply be a happiness because of one's clean conscience. Pamela, according to Fielding, encourages otherwise, encourages readers to think of social and economic reward for virtue (particularly virginity). Fielding wants to tell us that this distorted view is the same thing as treating virginity as an economic commodity, like Shamela. The Church, according to Fielding, is also capable of preaching the wrong views of religion, as examplified with parson William. Thus it almost seems that Fielding is asking the reader to truly reconsider the thesis of Pamela, this idea of "virtue reward" - what does virtue really mean, and what does reward mean? The reader is asked to think outside of ideological bound and into their own hearts.

Fielding's Shamela is a work of art because, contrast to Richardson's Pamela, Fielding's work is a critical reflection of society. I believe one function of art is to examine the times critically and produce approiprate commentaries to the reader, who might be lost within the network of ideology. I think anyone who reads Pamela a second time will not be so naive and fall for Richardson's fatal sentimentality.

What My Grandma Said

Hmm...translations might be a bit difficult. Well, today she said the following:

"I remember Man-Long a long time ago with his Mama (mother of my father). Man-Long you were locked up in that chicken pen butt naked while NaiNai (how my Poh Poh addresses my Mama) was just covered with a piece of cloth. I remember it very well, poor Man-Long locked up in the chicken pen, that little chicken pen, crawling butt naked (yes, Poh Poh repeated what she said - old people tend to do that) and I could not stop laughing. I laughed until my lung bursted. I laughed until I died. I thought to myself, 'Yum Gon (I'm not sure how to translate that - it roughly means poor you), why doesn't my grandson and my NaiNai have clothes?'"

~What really happened is that I was in my baby bed (with the bars, hence the chicken pen) and I was lying down to cool my body. I didn't have pants on, and my grandma only had a piece a cloth is not to be explained by poverty - my Mama was hardly poor, but that it was truly a very hot day. But what you can see there is a very death or suffering driven metaphors to describe my actually fairly happy childhood. To be locked up in a "chicken pen" is a lot worse than to lie down in a baby bed; to have just a piece of cloth is a lot worse than actually being fully dressed. Being butt naked because of the poverty is also a much worse picture than because of the heat.

Today I did realize that my grandma suffered a lot and is still suffering - according to her she is suffering disrespect from certain members of the family. But she is a tough character, and hence she can speak of suffering with a beautiful dignity; she can also speak metaphorically, mixing sublimely a tone of the tragic with an image of the comic.

In the future if I remember any more translatable passage I'll post them up.

My Grandma

Old people are certainly interesting. My Grandma (I call her Poh Poh) has just arrived in Vancouver. I find that she has this very pessemistic outlook towards life. Coming out of that outlook, however, is a very intimate kind of humour. Her jokes do not seem to be intentional, but they are funny because she is entirely able to combine the comic and the tragic together. Perhaps this is exactly what life experience give that no books can substitute.

Book Review: Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey

The Jane Austen Cycle: Northanger Abbey

"...I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny or reward filial disobedience."

I don't believe one can ever be bored with Auntie Jane's novels. In terms of its philosophoical scope, Northanger Abbey is a far lighter novel than Persuasion, or even Emma. Northanger Abbey, however, is a much more explicitly satirical work. Austen, as usual, satirizes the snobbishness of the high society, with, again, her memoriable characters. Isabella Thorpe is an absolute hypocrite, claiming that constancy is a virtue while being inconstant herself; John Thorpe is a self-centered man who only likes to talk about horses (his own horses, in particular); General Tilney is a phony who cares for nothing but money. In this novel, however, Austen also makes fun of the gothic novel by imitating her heroine Catherine's adventure in a gothic scene, only to let her discover the ridiculousness of her own fancy of being a heroine in a gothic novel.

Two things I want to note in this review. Firstly, there is this strange theme of the value of the novel form. Austen's opinion, expressed through the hero Henry Tilney, is that the novel form is every bit as worthy as the poetic form; only idiots like John Thorpe would think novel as useless and trash. This point is interesting because it shows historically the conflict between the prose and the poetic form. Austen, being a brilliant artist herself, seems to be highly aware of the novel form's limitations as well as its strengths.

The second thing is that very strangely, in this novel Austen's narrator voice is especially pronounced. When we read her other works, like Persuasion and Emma, the narrative voice is almost invisible - we are not conscious of a narrator telling the story. But in Northanger Abbey, the narrator is ever present; we are constantly reminded that Austen is telling us a story, that the story is not simply unfolding itself. The novel, in short, is self-reflexive. I think this self-reflexivity functions to remind the reader that this is a novel, this is fiction, that this is not real. While by itself it does not seem to be profound, but it really completes Austen's satire of the readers of gothic novel in the 18th and 19th century, like Catherine, who enters into Northanger Abbey and thinks that she is actually going to become a gothic heroine.

Tyranny

I am secretly enraged at my father's tyranny: why is he imposing his own capitalistic ways on me? I shall imitate some of the things he said to my aunt over the phone:

"He must return to HongKong and never stay in Canada."
"He thinks of going to England for his masters, but according to me it is best that he goes back to Hong Kong to do it."
"He reads too much. He is getting too smart."
"An education that lasts until the age of 30 is ridiculous. Who is going to pay for it?"
"At this rate, he will never care for money and never form a proper family."
"I'm encouraging him to get a government job in Hong Kong. He is fit for it. It also pays very well."
"A BA is good enough. He does not need anything else to make good money."

So he has his agenda all along. We are ideologically different: he considers me as a stubborn intellectual; I see him as an illiterate capitalist.

I think he is so obviously wrong, but when the differences are ideological, how can one convince the other? Yet he, as the father, has power over me and my destiny. How should I fight and resist? Or a better question: can I fight and resist, without disrupting a (seeming?) unity of the family?

Richardson's Guideline for Being a Proper Wife

Very interestingly, towards the end of the novel Pamela, Pamela summarizes the rules her husband expect her to follow after their marriage. There are a total of 48 rules. Pamela writes "I thanked him for these kind rules, and generous assurances: and assured him, that they had make so much impression on my mind, that these, and his most agreeable injunctions before given me, and such as he should hereafter be pleased to give, should be so many rules for my future behaviour." (p.475) She further writes that in knowing and memorizing the rules it is her "first stage of happiness". My dear readers! I'll list out an exerpt of them and see if you'll make a model 18th century wife!

1. That I must not, when he is in great wrath with any body, break in upon him without his leave.
4. That I must never make a compliment to any body at his expense.
6. That I must bear with him, even when I find him in the wrong.
7. That I must be as flexible as the reed in the fable, lest, by resisting the tempest, like the oak, I be torn up by the roots.
22. That there are fewer instances of men's than women's loving better after marriage.
27. That a man should desire nothing of his wife, but what is significant, reasonable, just.
28. But then, that she must not shew reluctance, uneasiness, or doubt, to oblige him; and that too at half a word; and must not bid twice to do one thing.
30. That if the husband be set upon a wrong thing, she must not dispute with him, but do it and, expostulate afterwards.
34. That in all companies a wife must shew respect and love her husband.
35. And this for the sake of her own reputation and security; for,
36. That rakes [womanizers] cannot have a greater encouragement to attempt a married lady's virtue, than her slight opnion of her husband.
37. That a wife should therefore draw a kind of veil over her husband's faults.
38. That such as she could not conceal, she should extenuate.
42. That she must be cheerful and easy in her behaviour, to whomsoever he brings home with him.
47. That his[the husband's] imperfections must not be a plea for hers.

(Richardson does not list out any rules for men as husbands, so I do not know if the 48 rules are all reciprocal.)

Yes, I purposely picked out the problematic ones. (The logic of #34-38 is incredible!) This set of rules, as I see it, is all about preserving the authority as well as the good name of the husband. Wives, under these rules, are like beautiful ornaments for the husbands. And Pamela, who intends to memorize them, is going to internalize all these rules. She is, I dare to say, happily oppressed.

Book Review: Samuel Richardson's Pamela

For those who are not students of English literature, I have no doubt that you probably have not heard of Samuel Richardson or Pamela. What I can tell you briefly is, published in 1740, that it is considered as one of the first modern English novels. The story is a long series of letters and journal entries that narrates Pamela's three month (?) journey from her mistress' death to her happy marriage with her mistress' son. (Mistress is to be understood as the female counterpart of master.) Richardson spends the first 250 pages describing Pamela's virtuous character, as she endures her imprisonment as ordained by Mr. B (the mistress' son) and his attempts to seduce her with authority, wealth, lust, etc. At the end of the 250 pages, Mr. B, supposedly touched by Pamela's virtue, gives up his project; Pamela in turn is touched by his sincerity of letting her go and she instead returns to him. The next 100 pages describe the two weeks after Pamela's return to Mr. B and the day before their marriage. The final 150 pages describe another week or so of after-marriage actions. To tell the truth, nothing really happens in the final 250 pages apart from a resketching Mr. B's true character (he was "wicked" before, but now he is "all goodness") . The novel ends with an explicit summary of the moral of the story: be virtuous, and you shall be rewarded.

I do not blame Richardson for writing such a terrible novel because he had no models to follow. Jane Austen, the master (or I guess mistress) of character sketch and analysis, was not even born when Richardson died. The book is basically a very tedious read, with layer after layer of Pamela's virtuousness and even more layers of people complimenting of Pamela. Depending on how you read the novel, you can really say that Pamela is virtuous, or you can just say that Pamela's a weakling who is too afraid to fight back. She is ridiculously generous and forgiving, takes tremendous care and pride in her own virtue.

But I suppose my attacks are unfair because I am a 21st century non-Christian reader. For the 18th century Christian reader, Pamela would be the perfect model woman. Pamela conforms exactly to the feminine expectations of the time. This is what makes this novel, while boring and tedious, fruitful for discussion. For the 20th or 21st century reader, the many assumptions about women and femininity which would be unquestioned in the 18th century would now be exposed very clearly. Women, it seems at the time, are expected be weak and helpless, and hence rely on the men. The gentlemen are supposed to spoil them with clothes and other ornaments. They are expected to be virtuous, although in reality (as Pope satirizes) it is more true that they should look virtuous. There is one passage that is stunning to me but might seem perfectly normal: aristocratic men are allowed to marry below their social class, but aristocratic women are not. This is obviously highly problematic for us, but does not seem to be so for earlier readers.

I will end by saying that if one truly wants an analysis of the human character, this novel is anything but that. Jane Austen and George Eliot remind as the mistresses in that category. But Pamela is a novel that is so obviously ideologically based, that, without the author himself intended, it makes for a fantastic and fascinating shaded reflection of 18th century English high society.

Four Theses

Today marks the beginning of a philosophical journey. The following is an outline of four related essays.

On the True and the Correct

1. True morality and Correct morality: the rise of ideology and social consciousness
2. Father Correct and Mother True: a Freudian reading of social consciousness
3. The Cult of Correctness: on science and ideology
4. Mistaking the True for the Correct: the rise and fall of Art

the True: subjective reality
the Correct: confirmation of the subjective reality and the objective world.

We'll see how far I get to in the course of this summer.

On Friendship

Extract from an email sent to a friend.

Friendship is not Platonic; it is anything but Platonic. The foundation of a friendship is not on memories but on ability to handle changes. In a relationship between any two (or more) figures, there are bound to be happy and sad memories; there is bound to be some kind of secret sharing or soul communing, or else it is not a friendship. Hence, to say that one values one's friendship because of its memories is to make a tautology - it is to not say anything at all. Good friends, I believe, are those who are most willing and capable of transforming oneself for another to suit another, in act or in being. For example, this is my perspective on the friendship between Tiffany Chan and I. I think both of us have change a lot for each other over the four years. From Chem buddies to Bus buddies to Concert buddies we are most able to entertain each other at all time. Of course there are a few memories; of course there are a few moments of secret sharing (actually, I'm all too surprise that there is only a few! But that's okay. Language is a game anyway, no?). These are natural when two people are spending time with one another. But what happens when both of us change? We bear it; and we bear it most tolerably. We still laugh, at old jokes, at new jokes, at my own ignorance in pop culture or her ignorance in philosophy; but we, too, laugh differently, as we understand the changes and each other, and we laugh in the way that would make the other further laugh. Perseverance through change - that is the key to friendship.

Your friend's conception of friendship seems to be entirely contrary to what I think. He thinks that the two of you have established a bond. But there is a problem with this metaphor: a friendship is not a bond that times two individual together; it is a bond that links memories of each other together. Your friend seems to have taken the former, which, I think, is incorrect. To link person with person assumes the existence of persons - yet this entity of "person", which is not at all the physical person, does not exist: the "me" last night is different from the "me" talking now. But memories exist, and when we link them together, we form a narrative of two people, in which we call "friendship". The girl who sits next to you on the bus, with whom you talked about your life and she hers, but who you will never see again, is not a "friend" because there is no narrative, no friendship.

If one friend no longer talks to another (or at least not as frequent as before), it does not mean that a friendship is falling apart: rather it means each friend now has to readjust his position in the other friend's life. I often tell myself this truth: do not be so proud and think that you are everything to this person or that person - you may perhaps be important, but we each have our own lives, our own goals, our own ambitions that only that each of us can determine. Perhaps before you always talk to this person; now there is less frequency of talking. Alright. This is no big deal. Reflect upon yourself and readjust yourself to suit the need of your friend. If the present dialogue narrative is too difficult to continue, adjust your language to help your friend to continue. If indeed the narrative must end, then let it end ever quietly and gracefully, not just for your own sake but for the peace of mind of your friend.

Ode to a Windchime

For May, in May time...

O! I feel a melodious breeze kissing
My left cheek, while a breezy melody
Brushing my right: a distant windchime hanging
In midwinter spring, or in May time. I,
Too, feel th'internal wind stirring my soul;
And, guided by that mighty Spirit, free
Of earthly thoughts, I hear my own chime toll -
Monophonic, but not without th'echo
Of history: music of the celestrial.
The mighty Spirit's breath conducts a flow
Of melodies, an arabesque of tones,
That interwines with the breeze of Time. O!
Yet all harmonious windchimes are but common stones
If their sounds no one hears, their silence no one moans.

Book Review: Jane Austen's Persuasion

The Jane Austen Cycle: Persuasion

I am such an idiot! Instead of doing a half Woolf and half Lawrence cycle, why not do a full Jane Austen one?

* * *

It has been an absolutely remarkable two days reading Austen's final novel. For those of you who have read other works of Austen (probably Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, or Emma), if you read this work for pure pleasure, it is going to be disappointing compare to her other works. This, of course, is not to say that Persuasion is not enjoyable. It is highly satisfying. The difference between Persuasion and, for example, Emma, is that Persuasion is a much darker novel. Emma is a very happy work; Persuasion in a sense is not. Emma has always been the happy mistress; the novel is about her journey of self-discovery. Anne Elliot is a total loner; at the beginning of the novel, nobody other than Lady Russell really cares about her, and it was Lady Russell who persuades her to give up her true love, Captain Wentworth. The novel is sparse in plot: a couple of parties reintroduces Captain Wentworth back to Anne's world after a seven or eight years of separation (since Anne's rejection), and Anne, after another couple of parties, accepts Captain Wentworth as her husband. Of the four Austen novels I've read, the plot of this one is the thinnest, and yet it is because of this that Austen is able to concentrate all her energy on satirizing the people, in all seriousness and ruthlessly criticizing the so-called high society.

In Emma, one gets the sense that we are laughing with the characters. We do not really laugh at Emma's father, the nice but annoying Mr. Woodhouse, and we definitely do not laugh at the poor lady Miss Bates. These two are examples of Austen's comic characters - we laugh with Auntie Jane as she creates them, and we can imagine she laughing with us. But in Persuasion, Austen cuts these comic characters. We also laugh in this final novel, but we no longer laugh with the characters; we laugh at them. Mary is a laughable character - Anne's tolerance of her sister greatly understates just how terrible Mary is. Sir Walter and his "Elliot pride" is also laughable; I am immediately reminded of a gentleman in the opening of Candide who was rejected for marriage because he could only name 71 generations of nobility.

The merit of other characters in the novel are also greatly diminished in Persuasion. In Emma, we genuinely like characters like Mrs. Weston or even Mr. John Knightley (even if he is a bit odd). Other characters are clearly marked out as terrible snobs. The plight of the villian Frank Churchill is not a terrible one. He does, at the end of the novel, enjoy a supposedly happy marriage with Jane Fairfax. But in Persuasion, I do not know if there is one genuine character we like, nor if Austen actually allows us to like the high society. All the characters are selfish, proud, vain. Mr. Elliot is an absolutely terrible man; Lady Russell has good-intentions at best (she is very much full of pride and vanity); even Mrs. Smith is selfish, although her plight is absolutely understandable and so her fault is forgivable. In this novel, then, Austen ruthlessly criticizes the majority of the people in high society. We are left with the two lovers with whom we are made to like. We like them because at the end of the novel they are both honest and true characters. In Captain Wentworth's letter, we, along with Anne, detect a sense of authenticity. We know they genuinely love each other, and this is why this almost concludes the novel: Austen does not need to put in any scenes to show the contrast between genuine love and high society polity.

In my opinion, Persuasion is the best of the four Austen novels I've read. (I still have to read Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey to fully judge the six novels.) In compensating entertainment value, Persuasion offers artistic value: the plot is very much tightened; the setting made the novel as a work for character study far more universal; the prose language is Austen at her very best: drawing profound thoughts in the clearest possible language (unlike George Eliot's massive philosophical metaphors). Everything is centered around character study and Austen most certainly did justice to this task.

Book Review: Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe

For anyone who likes conventional chivaric values, the story in which the gallant knight saves the beautiful princess, Scott's Ivanhoe is one to go. Scott's romance, also considered as England's first historical novel, talks about the advantages of Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who, at the beginning of the novel, returns to England from the East (from the Crusades), and after a few battles, rescues the beautiful Jewess Rebecca and marries another beauty, Lady Rowena. Parallel with the return of Ivanhoe is the return of Richard the Lion-hearted, who reclaims the English throne. Scott's language is clear, simple, humourous, delicate and poetic at the same time. His narrative technique is superbly controlled; his secondary characters, ranging from the swineherd Gurth, to the jester Wamba, to the evil Templar Bois Guilbert, to Robin Hood, to Rebecca are all unforgetable round characters; oddly enough the primary characters of Ivanhoe, Richard and Rowena are all rather flat (but this is justified because this is as much a historical novel as it is a nationalistic novel; there is a sense of nostalgia in Scott's writing, lamenting for England's former greatness).

Of course, if Scott's novel is only about the romance of Ivanhoe, then it would not be considered as one of the greatest novels written in the English language. Ivanhoe explores many contemporary issues; the setting back in the middle ages allows Scott to sketch out the extremes of modern day racism, sexism, classism and religious conflict. Scott rarely interjects into the narrative to comment on these issues, but there are moments when he subtly critiques these issues, and there is certainly evidence that Scott meant the novel, in a way, to be a satire on modern day social politics.

Ivanhoe, whether you want to read it as a social critique or as a purely adventure novel, is most certainly an enjoyable. Personally, I'm a little torn between the two readings: since elementary school days I've always desired to be a knight rescuing a lady; but since univerisity days I've also realized I should not oppress female power. Can a feminist occasionally indulge himself with a little nostalgia?

Being and Existing: I

Continuing with cj...

The point about the being of an apple is interesting and I think it might be worthwhile to pursuit this point a little bit. According to Einsteinian physics, an apple is an event occupying all four dimensions of physicality. But fundamentally speaking, this has nothing to do with the being of the apple. The apple as an event only points to the fact that it objectively exists. On this point leads to a necessary distinction between "being" and "existing".

[What I'm about to say from this point on might be very Heideggerian, but please keep in mind that I have no command over Heidegger's philosophy.]

I have purposely used the word "existing" instead of "existence" because to the word "being" must be understood in the sense of "be-ing", grammatically parallelled to "exist-ing". We know what it means to "exist". But what does it mean to "be"? When Hamlet speaks "To be, or not to be, that is the question", what does he mean by "to be"?

With inadequate knowledge of modern physics, I will nevertheless assert the difference between "to exist" and "to be" is liken to the difference between "the objective" and the "subjective". A thing existing has objective ontological status. The apple is there, at a point within the space-time fabric which anyone can locate, regardless of the actual location located by a perceiver. On the other hand, a thing being has subjective ontological status. The apple is not there because I am not eating it, nor touching it, nor smelling it; my consciousness has no need to recognize its there-ness and therefore will not recognize its there-ness. For a thing to be, it requires an individual's consciousness to recognize its there-ness.

For those of you who have read Heidegger's works, you might remember in one of his essays, he gives the example of the bridge. Let me try to paraphrase that example. (If I am mistaken, please tell me.) I live in Richmond, and everyday I take the bus to school. Everyday the bus goes on the Oak Street Bridge to take me to UBC campus. Does the bridge exist? Yes: the bridge exists as a thing or an event (depending on how scientifically sophisticated you want to be). It has a specific location in space, and, for the aliens traveling at near light speed from another planet, time. It has existed since it was built, and it will continue to exist until something calls for its destruction. But does the bridge be? This is a very awkward question, but I can tell you for most of the time the bridge does not be. It is not. This is because whenever I'm on the bus I do not pay attention to the bridge. I'm only thinking about my Shakespeare papers, or my friends, or that girl with the nice dress. In my consciousness there is no bridge. It is a tool which I have become accustomed to. When the bus goes on the bridge, while my eyes are looking out at the Fraser River, in my consciousness I do not say "hey, I'm on a bridge".

But does the bridge never be in my consciousness? Well of course it does. It is just very rare. For example, when the traffic is terrible and the bus is going slow. I ask myself "what's going on?", and my automatic reaction is to look to the front of the bus to see the traffic on the bridge. Or imagine if one day the bridge collapses: then I am forced to recognize the former existence of the bridge, and the bridge now is in my mind. But much of the time we do not pay attention to the bridge.

One might perhaps object that this is just metaphysics in disguise, and aren't we, in the 21st century, with the triumph of science, way over metaphysics? Isn't consciousness just brain waves and hormones? To say this would be to totally miss the point. Consciousness exists as brain waves and hormones, but consciousness is consciousness, the undeniable ego that commands the body.

Perhaps we need not worry about the being of an apple. But what about human beings? I think this ties extremely well into my previous Marxist comment about labour and alienation. We exist, there is no doubt about that. The question is "Are we?" I think we can read Marx in this way, that we are not because, upon specialization, we have become mere tools. When we are doing our specialized jobs, we do not enter our own stream of consciousness; others do not put use into their own stream of consciousness. The bus driver is a tool, a machine. Nobody really cares if he is having a bad or good day; nor can he himself care, at least not during work: work is to be the best machine as possible. We can stop being machines when we stop working, when we go home and endure our own miserable lives. But something more terrible happens: when we are at home, just as we think we can be authentic, we've internalized the machine-mentality and we have our own expectations of what our family members should do - we start to behave according to ideology and conventional values. To mask the ideology, we start to confuse the meaning of "being" and "existence", thinking that if we exist, then we are. True we exist, but we are not. We are not authentically us. We exist, stuck to a web of ideology. In our consciousness we do not see ourselves but machines and ideology; we mistake that to be ourselves. Maybe my picture is a bit of a stretch, but from a simple discussion on the ontology of apple we have come to an astonishing analysis of social ideology.

On the other hand, if we are being, we will not be so easily engulfed by social ideology. My work is my life. We are intimately connected with who we are, what others are. Our world would be in our own terms.

Being and Doing

For cj...

I was writing a huge response to your question when I found myself encountering a huge problem: given that Being is doing, does not that mean there is no such thing as a subject? Let me illustrate what I mean with an example:
If we no longer believe in traditional ontology, then we no longer believe in essences. For instance, "human beings are not rational beings", because "rationality" is an essence which exists for some mysterious reasons inherent in us, or out there in the Platonic realm. Instead, what is true is that "human beings do rational things", because being is doing, or in other words, a thing is what it does. The problem is this: how can we ever describe what we do, since our very grammar structure is rooted in essentialism? All adjectives (or predicates, properly speaking) are "essences" of a sort. "Rational things" indicate the essence of rationality inherent in those things. In fact, the proposition "apples are red" is problematic because the object we see as "apple" is a concept with its definition, which is its essence and "redness" is one of its attributes. Under the definition "being is doing", one wonders how is it possible for something like "apple" to have its being, when clearly it is before our eyes.

(Perhaps the idea of "existence" and "being" needs to be distinguished, for the apple exists, but it does not have to be.)

This might not be a problem for human beings, who are compelled to act. Whatever they do the actions will define their being. But it is all too easy to lapse back to essentialism. When Bob gives a loony to a beggar, we would like to describe him as a charitable man. But "chartiableness" is a kind of essence. We are now forced to ask ourselves: is it Bob's essence that causes him to act charitably, or is it Bob's action that causes us to attribute the characteristic of "chartiableness" to him? Nietzsche already suggested the latter; but, as he had warned us, our grammar system forces us to believe in the former: in a phrase, a subject is freely attached to any predicates; but as Nietzsche suggests, there is no such thing as a subject - the subject is an illusion. For example, "lightning flashes" is an absurd phrase. Here "lightning" is the subject and "flashes" is the predicate. But, Nietzsche, where do you see "lightning"? You only see the flashing. But the grammar structure demands us to invent a free subject, "lightning", and then attaches a predicate, as if lightning has a choice to flash or not flash. But if you extend this example to a human being, for example, "Bob" "donates a loony": it is very difficult to imagine that we only see the "donation of a loony" without seeing "Bob", for Bob did the action. We cannot help but think that Bob freely choose to donate the loony.

I do not believe the above passage made any sense. I myself am struggling to grasping the notions of "being" and "doing". I personally do believe that "a thing is what it does". This way one can escape "the tyranny of scientific knowledge" - a table to be described in terms of atoms and bonds, a cup of ice-cream in terms of sugar content, my walk to the bus stop in terms of centimeters. But it is then very important to either clearly divorce from essentialism or compromise the two concepts (essence and action) into one neat system of thought.

*PS: it is neat to see that in Chinese poetry very often the subject is omitted and there is only the predicate. If you refer back to my translations of Li Bai's poem "Thoughts of a Quiet Night" (in the entry "Translation of Two Chinese Poems"), you will see that in the literal translation there are no subjects, which is awkward in English, but perfectly normal in Chinese. I'm not sure if this has to do with modern ontology...

Hobby and Occupation

A recent comment said that my hobby of reading is now my occupation. And I suppose the converse - my occupation of school is now my hobby - is also true. For the modern person this is certainly bizarre - to completely dissolve the boundary between hobby and occupation. But, as Marx already exhaustively analyzed this, it is the modern person who is bizarre for making a separation between occupation and hobby. In pre-modern time there is no such separation: a being's work is his life. But with the advert of capitalism and wage economy, occupation becomes forcibly specialized and human beings are alienated from his job. With the Industrial Revolution, workers not only become specialized, they also become mechanical. Specialization and mechanicality alienates human beings, forcing them to draw the line between occupation and hobbies.

Now, the problem with this separation is that we are forced to become consumers and materalists. Being alienated in labour, we have to step outside our own sphere of actions and look for hobbies available to us. Capitalists so readily feed us with plenty of toys we can use to claim as "hobbies". (A person who is not alienated from his work, who makes no distinction between hobby and occupation, does not need the toys.) One might argue that one can make his own toys or whatever, without being a consumerist; but I ask this question: how is that possible, when everywhere is private property? I suppose you can go to the public parks, on foot...this is a very limited form of hobby or entertainment (which I don't disagree - I am a man of Nature). One, if one is doomed to be a sophisicated urbanist, is doomed to become a capitalist, constantly under the spell of wage economy.

I do suppose the Marxist view of wage economy is not such a bad thing, if 1. one likes one's job as a specialized, mechanical tool, or 2. one is okay with being a capitalist (that is to say, a victim of the capitalist system - you must be a victim if you are not the rich-business-people). By my readers, reflect a little: can you actually be okay with either of the two conditions? Material satisfication, I agree, is important; but only to a degree: it is spiritual (I do not mean it in a religious sense, but in a general metaphysical sense) independence that is most important - being autonomous in this world of (economic) necessity. For me, right now, my dissolution of hobby and occupation (through reading and writing essays) gives me this kind of independence.

My readers! When will you seek to break out of the capitalist system, or am I just blowing a bubble that is about to burst?