Feline Philosophy

Day Fifteen. Still on track. And rather a triumph: recognizing that the soup would run out, I shopped and began the soup yesterday afternoon, and finished it up this morning, despite (because of?) being scheduled to drive to Eugene today. I successfully identified the traitor: a smarmy little rodentlike thought who said “oh, something will turn up…. Maybe you won’t run out… a can of tuna fish… (sotto voce) an excuse to pig out on something…” No. The soup wasn’t going to stretch through Saturday, and this was the last chance to stay ahead of it, so stay ahead I did. So I am tired, and there may be a morning nap in my future or may not, but I feel so much better than I would have if I had succumbed to the insinuations of the rodent.

Reading John Gray’s Feline Philosophy, which is a serious book of philosophy, and also seriously about cats, real cats, with names and histories; the cats are not a pretext for the philosophy, nor the philosophy a pretext for the cats. It’s a lovely book. I have at least two fundamental disagreements with Gray, but he brings a great gift: genuine liberation from historical teleology. Which seems like a small thing – as long as everything seems in order and the inevitable progress towards utopia seems to be being made – but at a time like this our religious devotion to it proves to be a curse of despair and blindness. We really cannot see what is happening, and we really can’t devise or negotiate a sensible hope with our opponents, whom we see simply as evildoers. Losing twice to a ridiculous clown like Donald Trump should be a clear warning to us, but it doesn’t seem to have been. Our response is ever more urgently: “Double down! Double down!”

It’s not going to work.

But. Enough. When I do speak of this stuff I tend to rant, since I no longer allow myself to speak in public, or even to speak honestly in private, except to my kids. But it’s not really what I want to talk about, not what I want to think about.

My two disagreements with Gray: I think that in fact we do have free will – that when we are deliberating we are actually doing something, and something creative and interesting; not just inventing excuses and fabricating backstories. I do not share his metaphysical commitments. (Which blessedly are not dogmatically held: he actually is a real philosopher.)

And second: I don’t think that the fact that there are fashions in morality, and that customs differ, necessarily disproves “the centrality of good.” It means that we should dismiss attempts to reduce goodness to lists of simpleminded commandments; it means that no formulation or algorithm can replace judgement; but I think it’s actually striking how easy it is to orient oneself morally in different cultures and contexts. The configuration is different, but the elements are familiar. I don’t read stories from distant cultures that are morally unintelligible.

I am less sure of the second than of the first. But D.C. Schindler’s formulation of the three transcendentals – “the primacy of beauty, the centrality of good, the ultimacy of truth” – haunts me. It throbs and buzzes with truth.