BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhD)
d_ozkan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Last Thursday, Bilkent’s Philosophy Department held the eleventh iteration of its World Philosophy Day workshop, an annual event that celebrates UNESCO’s World Philosophy Day with a full day of talks and discussions on a broad range of philosophical issues. This year’s Philosophy Day talks at Bilkent were dedicated to highlighting the diversity of philosophical undertones that occur in a particularly unlikely domain: that of fiction.
The workshop began with Dr. Patrick Fessenbacker’s analysis of George Eliot in the context of utilitarianism and intuitionism, the two warring behemoths of moral philosophy during Victorian times—both of which, however, are ultimately rejected by Eliot’s own account of morality, which seeks justice not in maximized happiness or an innate understanding of good and evil, but in a moral framework that is developed through activity and tempered by sympathy. Indeed, passages in both “Middlemarch” and “Adam Bede” support the idea that the capacity to perform meaningful work is the greatest distinction between the moral man and unthinking beasts, and that work itself is a necessary component for developing the moral fiber required for higher judgment. This work- or vocation-derived moral compass, however, is not in itself sufficient for decision-making in Elliot’s view—it must further be refined through a filter of sympathy for those whom it would act against, and must consider the specific circumstances underlying each decision rather than relying on sweeping generalizations.
The next talk, by Dr. Sandrine Berges, concerned another woman of letters, Margaret Cavendish, who was seen as an eccentric not only on account of her social anxiety and peculiar sense of fashion, but also her desire to be recognized for her talents and adamant refusal to use a male pseudonym for her works (she is now indeed widely recognized, with “The Blazing World” in particular being considered among the first examples of science fiction). A royalist with close ties to the English crown, Lady Cavendish wrote fiction that understandably offers a favorable view of monarchy, but Dr. Berges pointed as well to inconspicuous passages suggesting that her sympathies may lie with some form of democratic freedom as well—in particular with regard to the abolition of slavery. Both the fiction and reflections of Cavendish also place heavy emphasis on the roles and capabilities of women, and her protagonists are typically women who establish themselves in positions of power—which perhaps is indicative of her own desire to see the educational and social status of women improve.
Switching from the philosophical musings of writers to the literary musings of philosophers, Dr. William Coker provided an account of 18th-century German idealism and its attempts to have philosophy assume the mantle of fiction. Envisioned as a means to render philosophy both accessible and attractive to the masses, the German “new mythology” would rely on constructed narratives to impart philosophical ideas without delving too deeply into philosophical jargon, and the resulting pop myths would ideally transform society for the better by eliminating existing doctrines and initiating a new age of reason. There is, however, cause for caution here: the act of dressing philosophical issues as myths and stories is no newfangled invention, but an ancient and prized art that has existed since Socrates and his allegory of the Cave—and even further back. The enterprising poet-philosopher therefore ought to take care, warned Dr. Coker, for what he purports to be new mythology may just be old mythology in a new bottle.
Representing a return to literary analysis, Ayşe Çelikkol’s talk concerned Charles Dickens’ “Our Mutual Friend” and its astonishing disregard for—or even opposition to—the organic form, the prevailing literary ideal of the time. Running counter to the notion of a neat, well-functioning whole that is assembled from similar but distinct components, the novel’s entire structure is one of sameness and redundancy: events occur and reoccur with a different cast but in the same sequence, characters are so similar that they may well be doppelgangers of one another, and even the lines between persons and objects begin to blur at times—but their lack of identity is not a flaw of composition, but a form unto itself. By detaching his characters from their distinguishing characteristics, Dickens allows them to fill any mold he pleases—every actor is a blank state, and fit to play any role. Their interactions, likewise, are not characteristic of a well-organized whole, but rather to an amorphous, inorganic mass—like the dust and the river that are mentioned so frequently in the story itself. But this inorganic form is an ephemeral thing, argued Dr. Çelikkol; just as the mistaken identity plot is resolved in the end, the characters cannot be alienated from their identities for long, and will soon differentiate themselves in one way or another.
Focusing on a more fundamental concern in fiction, Dr. William Wringe outlined and tackled the inherent problems in treating fictional characters as real but abstract objects—a status that is ordinarily reserved for numbers and other mathematical concepts. Indeed, taken at face value, statements about the lives and doings of fictional characters are intuitively false, for these characters do not in fact live and act as real people do—but they are held to an implicitly different meaning of “acting,” argued Dr. Wringe, such that the veracity of these statements is tested not by physical events but by their consistency with the literary canon. Likewise, the existence of the same fictional character across multiple series (which is especially prominent in the case of public domain characters) appears to suggest that two characters A and B can both be the same object as a prior character C, and yet be distinct from each other—but that is hardly a problem if the derived characters are considered in the context of their literary environment, branching off from the person or prior character that serves as their original.
The last talk of the day was given by the chief organizer of the event, Dr. Saniye Vatansever, who described a cognitive system consistent with Kant’s account of beauty as a “disinterested pleasure” that arises when the faculties of imagination and understanding are in harmony. Although traditional models of pre-, multi- and metacognition (which posit that aesthetic pleasure is derived prior to cognition, through a combination of multiple possible interpretations of an object, or when the cognition of an object is exceptionally complete and fulfilling) are limited in covering the full range of objects that one would consider beautiful, Dr. Vatansever’s theory avoids their issues by placing the appreciation of beauty at the very moment of cognition, defining it as a sense of accomplishment that occurs passively when the input received from sensory organs is mapped to the cognitive centers of the brain. The cognizer is therefore provided with an account of what they behold, but has no preconceptions about what they ought to behold—which in Kantian thought would lessen the artistic appreciation by confining it to a purpose.