The Pursuit of Happiness

We intuitively understand that happiness is our aim and the very point of our existence. I outline the various theories on happiness, and use Hannah Arendt’s vita activa and Georges Bataille’s concept of sovereignty to explore how we can be happy in a world that seems to, on the contrary, propel us away from our happiness.

Jackass! What a Blast!

Jackass! What a blast! How I first discovered the film franchise was when I needed a mood lightener. I was studying philosophy at the time and really needed a laugh, and so I searched for ‘wacky films’ online. And boy, what a discovery.

Labour, Work, Action by Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt investigates the sources of human happiness in her essay entitled Labour, Work, Action, exploring the relation and differences between the three concepts. The text was originally a lecture delivered in 1964.[1] Since the ancient Greeks, the vita contemplativa (life of contemplation) has been considered a superior form of life than the vita activa (life of action). However, both aspects can be found in every person, as distinct but related “faculties” and are also “ways of life.”

Being in the Moment: Sovereignty in Bataille

The Accursed Share, Volume 3: Sovereignty, Georges Bataille
Chapter 1: Knowledge of Sovereignty
1.1
Bataille begins the volume by explaining what he is not describing in his concept of sovereignty. His sovereignty is not the sovereignty of states but the sovereignty of people. What is sovereign is not “servile and subordinate.” Sovereignty belonged to kings and chiefs, gods and their priests which by being close to the gods shared in their sovereignty. However, the sovereignty that Bataille is interested in is the sovereignty that all people possess.

Sovereignty in The Accursed Share, Volume 2 & 3 by Georges Bataille: First Impressions

What is sovereignty for Georges Bataille? When was the last time you did something for its own sake, where you indulged in an activity for the sheer pleasure it gives you and not for some other purpose such as earning money? Do we go for a run so that we can enjoy the wind in our hair and the change of scenery, or do we do it for some functional purpose such as to lose weight just so that we can become more attractive for other people?

On Diversions from Pensees by Blaise Pascal

Is man a happy creature? Is it in our nature to be happy? Blaise Pascal in his Pensees, translated as ‘thoughts,’ muses over these questions in his chapter on diversions and concludes rather pessimistically that we are not happy creatures. The book is a collection of his notes and was not meant by him to be published in its current form. Hence a reader of the work might find it fragmentary and incomplete. This is not a terse and rigorous philosophical treatise. He makes non-sequiturs, repeats himself often and some sentences are merely phrases. He wasn’t being intentionally cryptic -- this is his notebook we are reading though he did have in mind for it to serve as a basis for a work on Christian apologetics, i.e. a defence of the Christian religion. Unfortunately, this project still remained incomplete upon his death in 1662. Pascal is not a theologian, in fact most people would recognise his name from his theorems in mathematics but he was more than that, he was also an important and interesting thinker. There are some valuable jewels in this work such as his chapter on diversion which I would discuss here.

The Experience Machine Part 2

Previously, I have explained what Nozick’s thought experiment on experience machines is about and his arguments against plugging in. If you have not watched it, please find the link, watch it first and then return here. To recap, his three arguments are and I quote:

1) “We want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them.”

2) “We want to be a certain way, to be a certain sort of person.”

3) “Plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality.”

While they may seem reasonable, I have hinted at some scenarios such as wanting a holiday or to escape from a life of suffering, to be reasons why people might want to plug into the experience machine. I want to expand on that today, to argue against Nozick’s arguments and then reconcile it with what I think is the real takeaway from his thought experiment.

Dialectical and Historical Materialism by Joseph Stalin

“Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party,”[1] reads the first sentence of Stalin’s text, which explains the importance of his book, Dialectical and Historical Materialism. Originally published in 1938, it was a section of a chapter in a larger book entitled History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks): Short Course. [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1939/x01/]

In the year of publication, Stalin was the secretary-general of the Communist Party and already he had amassed a lot of power. He will become the premier of the Soviet Union three years later. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, he exercised dictatorial rule over the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century. Among his achievements is his industrialisation of the Soviet Union, bringing it from peasant nation to the country with the 2nd highest industrial output only behind the US. During his rule, the USSR also defeated the Nazis during the second world war, and he led the Soviet Union into the nuclear age. However, he did all these through a paranoid reign of terror that led to the deaths of tens of millions including the most powerful members of the elite closest to him. [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Stalin]

Can’t We be Friends? Analysing Singapore’s LGBT Struggle Through a Schmittian Lens

It is often better to be a friend than an enemy of the state. This paper uses Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political and its friend-enemy distinction to analyse Singapore’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual (LGBT) situation. While Schmitt describes the political as a domain where participants may have to engage in physical combat when pushed to the extreme, this paper applies his concepts to politicians ‘fighting’ for their political lives, to be elected. Analysing Singapore’s laws and policies affecting the LGBT using Schmitt’s concepts suggests that the conservative segments of society belong to the friend-group and the LGBT community the enemy-group, because of greater electoral support from the former due to its larger numbers. Hence, it is coherent that Singapore’s leaders have indicated that societal acceptance of LGBTs is an important criterion to change the country’s policies affecting them. Therefore, a plausibly suitable strategy is to sway the electorate so that they will decide that the LGBT community, currently an enemy, is instead a friend. The paper suggests how this can be done and the price its members may have to pay.

Superabundance and Excess: Is Bataille’s Conception of General Economy Credible?

Georges Bataille’s concept of general economy strikes at the core of our prevailing understanding of economics. He posits two contrasting premises in the first volume of The Accursed Share (TAS):

1) The condition of the world is one of superabundance rather than scarcity. Bataille proposes that all life and wealth derive from the sun, which is effectively an unlimited source of energy. In the general economy, what the world faces is not scarcity, as foundationally assumed in conventional economics, but superabundance. While pockets of poverty can be found, the world on aggregate has an excess of wealth.

2) However, there are limits to growth, because there is only so much space on the planet which life can occupy. Once the limits are reached, no further growth is possible. Hence the excess cannot be used for growth; it cannot be saved and it needs to be expended. The choice we have is to either expend it well or badly.

Is Bataille’s conception of general economy credible? In addition to examining these two premises, this paper investigates Bataille’s method to reconceptualise how we can understand the world by adopting a radical position on political economy so as to derive novel insights. Specifically, I analyse his idea of limits and savings, his empirical approach and his critique of scarcity and utility in conventional economics. I contrast his views of capitalism and potlatch with Jean-Joseph Goux’s critique that Bataille’s solution of consumption has already come to pass in today’s capitalist economies and George Gilder’s notion that giving is central to entrepreneurial capitalism, and propose a possible Bataillean response. I then consider Andrew Abbott’s extension to Bataille’s theory of general economy, which Abbott draws on to argue that problems of excess are fundamentally different from problems of scarcity, hence requiring their own solutions. I conclude by assessing whether Bataille has been successful in challenging conventional economics and the applicability of TAS to political economy today.

My Reflections on Nomadland

I am the Philosophical Bachelor and today I want to talk about Nomadland, a front runner for the Best Picture at this year’s Oscars in 20 21 and already the winner of the best picture at the Golden Globes. So I had finished watching the film just last night and when I was recommending it to my friend, he asked, what is it about?

While that is seemingly an obvious and also simple question, it set me thinking—so what really is nomadland about? The story itself is simple, of a woman, named Fern, who was travelling across America in search of work but that is of course not what makes this a great film. What is characteristic of the best films, is how they have the capability to speak to each of us in our own individual condition, in different ways. For adults who have had some experience in life, they will see themselves in her situation, perhaps only in some narrow aspect, but yet they will be able to sympathise or at least understand, to empathise with her situation in its manifold of details, from the pain of separation, from having to power through a grinding day at work, from the suffering of the cold, to her hunger, her anguish but also her joy. 

The Observer Effect

The observer effect is a phenomena in physics where just from the act of observation, the experimental results are changed. It is the disturbance of an observed system by the act of observation. The instruments used to measure the data, by necessity, alter the state of what they measure in some way. I want to use this effect as an analogy of how, human being as actors, modify the situation, since we, like the observer, insert ourselves into the space of action, hence changing the space of action. The elements in that space react to us, as we react to them. 

The Paradox of Tolerance for the Faithful

A devout believer of a specific religion, given the strength of her devotion, is likely to hold that the doctrines of her religion are the monolithic truth, and that her gods are the true gods. Since there are many religions, they cannot all be true, if her religion is the true one. Therefore, she must conclude that the other religions must be false. There hence exists a tension between tolerance, pluralism and truth, with religious ideologies as a potential source of intolerance.

Johan De Tavernier examines this tension at the institutional, cultural and theological levels, explaining how our understanding of tolerance has evolved and can be justified. However, there is a paradox between a staunch religious belief and a tolerance for the belief of others. This paradox can be resolved if we understand that in tolerance, justice and love for others is more important than judging whose version of truth is right. I propose some practical measures that believers can take in the face of the challenge from tolerance, in line with De Tavernier’s belief that believers should avoid fanaticism, and instead adopt a quiet conviction. 

Leibniz Explains How to Become Happy

Human beings are never at rest, not even in sleep, according to Gottfried Leibniz. We are constantly bombarded by small perceptions, most of which we are unaware of, which incline us to certain actions. Because our nature wants to be more at ease, these small perceptions give rise to small impulses to overcome small obstacles. This overcoming gives us small joys, which can translate into a larger happiness if we use our experience and our reason to guide us in deciding which small impulses to allow and which to forbid.

The Myth of Science

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42526072

Is Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment still relevant? It was written in the midst of the second world war and aiming to explain why “humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.”[1] Is its prognosis of how “thought in its headlong rush into pragmatism is forfeiting its sublating character, and therefore its relation to truth”[2] still accurate?

Learning to Love the Shit-Stirrer

By London Stereoscopic Company - Hulton Archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30913285

The liberty to speak one’s mind is not absolute, nor is it necessarily the highest priority when it conflicts with other values. John Stuart Mill believes that free speech is valuable in creating a dynamic, creative and progressive society, even as he acknowledges the need for limits in situations such as when a society is under threat from enemies[1] or when speech can lead to harmful actions.[2] While we may seem to be able to speak more freely today than in Mill’s time, there remain threats to free speech, with the decline of the mainstream media, attacks on and detention of journalists[3], the rise of echo-chambers on social media platforms reducing the access to alternative views, and the prevalence of fake news. There are potentially also chilling effects[4] from laws putatively put in place to prevent harm but may stifle free speech, such as hate speech laws in Europe and Singapore’s Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act.

Similar Premises, Different Conclusions

Can two philosophers with similar presuppositions and argumentation end up with vastly different conclusions? Locke in Two Treatises of Government and Hobbes in Leviathan present their accounts of the State of Nature (SON). While they ground their theories on rather similar presuppositions and argumentation, they come to diametrically different conclusions on what the ideal government is. This reflects the differing historical circumstances shaping their thinking, but it also demonstrates the continuing value of studying both thinkers, as different societies may require different solutions.

The Myth of Certainty

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

Do you feel that there is one correct way for you to lead your life and if only you make the right decisions, you will succeed?

Are you then frustrated by the uncertainties you face, nagged by a feeling that there must be a correct way but you just do not know what way that is? Do you wish that life have the mathematical certainty of 1+1=2?

The Non-Neutrality Thesis and What Designers Must Do

Our lives are saturated with technologies. These technologies range from the simple, such as clothing, to the complex, such as airplanes. They may be firmly established, such as the refrigerators found in most homes. They may be new, like cryptocurrencies which are much hyped but still niche. They may belong only in the future, like nuclear fusion power plants which are currently being researched. They may only be conceptual or not even conceived yet. Nonetheless, the conduct of human life is so deeply intertwined with technological artefacts that we barely notice, though if they suddenly vanished, we would be paralysed.

The proof of this is how our lives grind to a halt during a power outage. Things we take for granted to work, such as the television or the lights, cease to do so, and we turn to earlier technologies such as matches and candles to light our way. In this way, technology is integral to our way of life and its effect on the human condition is profound. This paper will consider the moral status of technology given its deep relation to the human condition. I will argue against the neutrality thesis, after which I will outline what more must designers of technologies do, given the moral status of technologies.

Walking Crosswise to Reality - A Zen Buddhist Perspective

If speaking of aims and achievement is appropriate, the aim of the practitioners of Buddhism is to achieve satori. Though considered an ineffable concept, satori has been explained or expressed as enlightenment, awakening, realisation, non-dependence[1] and liberation from suffering,[2] a complete reordering of the individual in his relation to the world.[3] According to Hakuin, “Buddha means ‘one who is awakened.’”[4] Various branches of Buddhism have their own methods for attaining satori, including deep study of the sutras and its commentaries, and meditation. Reacting against these traditions, the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism presents a radical take on how satori can be gained. The Rinzai school is one of two major sects in Zen Buddhism in Japan. This paper will examine the ‘crazy’ practices of the Rinzai school, which aims to disrupt the minds of its adherents, sometimes literally shocking them into a sudden awakening.

What they do realise or are awakened to is that there is after all no-thing. They will then be able to see, experience and live the true reality beyond the phenomena that we are ordinarily confronted with. I will contrast this notion of true reality with Kant’s transcendental idealism, which definitively explains why it is not possible to go beyond the phenomenal realm to the noumenal, and why Rinzai Zen Buddhism’s radical shift might suggest a way to do so.