three takes on the good life: Aristotle, Buddha, Montaigne

I am attracted to two views that have been enormously influential for thousands of years.

The first view began with Aristotle and has influenced billions of people by being incorporated (with variations) into all three Abrahamic faiths. 

According to this theory, humans can be happy in the same way that we might describe a lush and towering tree as happy–or a fox that is busy hunting rabbits. It’s not about these organisms’ sensations of pleasure or pain, but whether they are doing what they are designed to do. “Flourishing” may be a better translation than “happy” for Aristotle’s Greek term, eudaimonia.

How do human beings flourish? Aristotle says it is by thinking, since that is our distinctive characteristic and evidently the advanced task for which we are optimized. But we think many things, including ugly thoughts and idle ones that fail to motivate our actions. We know the difference between good and bad thinking because we are taught to recognize virtues

Unfortunately, it is not always evident what a given virtue means, or even whether something called a virtue deserves the title; and the various virtues can conflict. We need a master virtue that is about deciding which virtues to deploy in each situation; call that “practical reason.” 

At least some people may also flourish by exercising a purer kind of reasoning that does not motivate action; for Aristotle, the very best way to spend one’s time is by contemplating the divine. 

To sum up, a happy human life is one guided by practical reason, perhaps with a dose of contemplative reasoning (also known as worship). A person of virtue is fortunate and happy in the same way that a fox flourishes if it can hunt rabbits all day. They live their best lives.

A very different view is also influential, because it is the root of Buddhism, which has about half a billion adherents today. In contrast to Aristotle, Buddha taught that we are not designed for any particular end. Like everything else in the universe, we exist because previous things just happened before. Since we have turned out to be sensitive creatures, we are bound to suffer; suffering is intrinsic (the First Noble Truth). It arises wherever there is a will, because desire is inevitably frustrated (the Second Noble Truth). 

However, we can introspect and discover that the self that we have valued so highly and that seems to intend and to want so many elusive things does not really exist. Specific phenomena just happen one after another, resulting from previous phenomena. This realization allows us to stop attaching our will to things. Instead of feeling wilful and frustrated, we can allow our minds to fill with compassion for ourselves and for everyone else, understanding everyone as determined by events beyond their control. 

This escape can be complete and final, so that we no longer suffer (the Third Noble Truth). No supernatural force is required for escape; it is just a matter of realizing how things really work. Once that happens, we can live a life of active compassion toward others (the Fourth Noble Truth). The conclusion is rather like Aristotle’s vision of a virtuous life, but with a different underpinning and a more dramatic moral.

I am no means against either view, both of which instruct and inspire. But I am skeptical that we are designed or optimized for anything. We emerged as a result of impersonal forces, especially biological evolution. Insofar as we have intrinsic purposes, I doubt that they are all about reasoning, since we have bodies as well as brains, and our brains are embodied. In essence, for me, the First Noble Truth trumps Aristotle’s idea that any natural species has a special natural purpose or end. 

Aristotle defines a virtuous life as happy or eudaimonic. He draws this link because he sees human beings as naturally designed for virtue. If we doubt this premise, then there is no reason to hope that virtue will bring happiness. On the contrary, virtue can easily enhance suffering in the form of guilt, disappointment, and frustration. We should strive to live virtuously for the good of others but not expect it to make us happy.

At the same time, I am also skeptical about the Third Noble Truth, the idea that a complete escape is possible if one fully embraces the truth that there is no self or any intrinsic purposes in nature. 

I just used the word “skeptical” in relation to both Aristotle and Buddhism. Skepticism was one of the ancient Greeks’ philosophical schools, a rival to Aristotle’s tradition. In 16th-century France, Michel de Montaigne read and developed the Skeptics’ ideas, and his work has influenced–or at least found echoes–in many subsequent authors, European and otherwise. 

Montaigne’s skepticism does not rest on a theory of the natural best life for human beings, nor on the idea that human selves are illusory and can be transcended. Montaigne views each human being, including himself, as something imperfect, a bit miscellaneous, without clear boundaries, and largely opaque–yet complex, distinctive, fragile, and precious. “For sure, man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and wavering subject. It’s a queasy business to try to base any constant and uniform judgment about him” (Montaigne 1580, 1:9).

For creatures like this, there is no natural best way to live, nor any escape from suffering. But there is much to be appreciated–even relished–if one attentively studies any particular person. Close, appreciative listening brings moments of compassion and consolation.

Montaigne wrote mostly about himself. “I wish to be seen in a simple, natural, and ordinary manner, without striving [he changed the word to “study” in the 1592 text] or artifice, for it is me that I paint” (Montaigne, 1580, “To the Reader”). This was his revolutionary contribution. Before him, authors in the European languages had never made subjects of themselves in a similar way. St. Augustine had written a great autobiography, but he had seen his life as an illustration of a universal story: the sinner finds God and is saved. Montaigne, in contrast, saw himself as himself. Inventing the very word “essay,” he inaugurated practices of self-description that have become ubiquitous. And he made the search for himself interesting by demonstrating how elusive we are to ourselves.

Today, we probably suffer from a bit too much self-exploration and self-description. The Romantic movement and some of its successors have encouraged writers and other artists to focus on themselves to a far greater extent than Montaigne could have imagined. In a secular and individualistic market-economy, self-presentation literally sells. Some memoirs and confessions are valuable, particularly when the authors have compelling stories. But people like me–we whose lives are quite unremarkable– should pause before we assume that anyone else needs to hear about us.

That brings me to the other side of Montaigne’s essays. He says that his subject is himself, but what does he do with his life? He spends it in his library. The self that he presents in his Essays is a devoted reader, that is, a compassionate observer of many other people, both authors and subjects, living and dead. 

I’ve posted a book-in-progress on this blog entitled Cuttings. My main purpose there is not to understand texts or to explain them to anyone, but rather to experiment with compassionate attention as a modest form of consolation. This is not an original ideal. I take it from Montaigne and many others. In the book (¶20-21), I even criticize originality as another Romantic ideal that has been overemphasized. Generalizations about important matters that are right and good are also likely to be clichés, because why would any of us suddenly discover truths that had been hidden before? Still, the book is full of concrete observations rather than generalizations. It is, in fact, a collection of “cuttings.”

...
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet.

-- Theodore Roethke, "Cuttings (later)," 1948

Source: Montaigne, Michel Eyquem (1580), Les Essais. See also: some basics; Montaigne and Buddhism; varieties of skepticism, etc.

we treat facts and values alike when we reason

Years ago,  Justin McBrayer found this sign hanging in his son’s second-grade classroom:

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

This distinction is embedded in significant aspects of our culture and society. For example, science aspires to be about facts, not opinions. And values are often assigned to the category of opinions. But this distinction doesn’t describe the way people actually reason.

After you utter any standard sentence, another person can ask two questions: “Why did you say that?” And, “What does it imply?” Any standard sentence has premises that entail it and consequences that it, in turn, implies. Any sentence is in the middle of a network of related thoughts, and you can be asked to make those relationships explicit (Brandom 2000).

Imagine a rooster who wakes you up by crowing at a dawn, and a parent who wakes her child in time for school. Both have brains, perceptions, and desires. But only the parent shares a language with another party. As a result, the child can ask, “Why are we waking up now?” or “What do I have to do next?” These are upstream and downstream implications of the sentence: “Wake up!”

Upon receiving an answer, the child can ask further questions. “Why do I have to go to school?” “Why is learning good?” The parent’s patience for this kind of discussion is bound to be finite, but the very structure of language implies that it could go on virtually forever.

The same process works for sentences that are about facts and for those that are more about values. A child asks, “Why do I have to go to school?” The answer, “Because it is 8 am,” is factual. The answer, “Because it’s important to learn” involves values. Either response can, in turn, prompt further “why” questions that can be answered.

The positivist assumption that values are opinions rather than facts suggests that values are conversationally inert, connected to the speaker but not to any other sentences. When you say that you value something, a positivist understands this as a fact about yourself, not as a claim that you could justify. However, we do justify value-claims. We state additional sentences about what implies our values or what our values imply.

In real life, people sooner or later choose to halt the exchange of reasons. “Why do you think that?” “I saw it with my own eyes.” “Why do you believe your eyes?” At this point, most people will opt out of the conversation, nor do I blame them.

Note, however, that the respondent probably could give reasons other than “I saw it with my eyes.” Statements typically have multiple premises, not just one. Further, a person could explain why we typically believe what we see. There is much to be said about eyes, mental processes connected to vision, and so on. I realize that discussing such matters is for specialists, and most people should not bother going into them. But the point is that the network of reasons could almost always be extended further, if one chose.

And the same is true for value-claims. “Why do you support that?” “Because it’s fair.” “What makes it fair?” “It treats everyone equally.” “Why do you favor equality?” At this point, many people may say, “I just do,” which is rather like saying, “I saw it with my own eyes.” But again, the conversation could continue. There is a great deal to be said about premises that imply the value of equality and consequences that equality entails if it’s defined in various specific ways. By spelling out more of this network, we make ourselves accountable for our positions.

Driving a distinction between opinions/values and facts would artificially prevent us from connecting our value-laden claims to other sentences, which we naturally–and rightly–do.

Source: Robert R. Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism. (Harvard 2000). See also: listeners, not speakers, are the main reasoners; how intuitions relate to reasons: a social approach; we are for social justice, but what is it?; making our models explicit; introducing Habermas; and “Just teach the facts..

Healthy Democracy System Map

The Healthy Democracy System Map

The National Civic League has launched its Healthy Democracy Ecosystem Map, with data from 1,257 organizations in 10 states. The map will expand to include the whole country, and you can add organizations to it. The categories of work represented on the map are:

  • Civic associations
  • Civic education/civic learning
  • Civic media
  • Civic research [research about or in support of civic life)]
  • Civic technology
  • Connecting across differences
  • Deliberative, participatory, and direct democracy
  • Electoral reform
  • Faith-based efforts
  • Organizing and advocacy
  • Service and volunteerism
  • Voter engagement

The literal map is useful for seeing the physical locations of organizations. The database also supports other visualizations apart geospatial ones.

I attempted scans a bit like this in previous decades. I put diagrams of what I called the “civic renewal” field on this blog in 2005 and 2016. For people who are interested in global examples–especially in the categories of deliberative or participatory democracy and organizing and advocacy–Participedia.net is the go-to site. You can trace relevant funding at the US Democracy Hub. But for an extensive database of US civic organizations, the Healthy Democracy Ecosystem Map is the place to go.

generosity as a virtue

Summary: I will argue here that generosity is a virtue when it is involves respectful care for an individual. Therefore, paradigm cases of generosity involve acts of personal attention and two-way communication, such as carefully selecting an appropriate gift or making a kind remark. To assess a transfer of money, it is better to ask whether it manifests justice, not generosity. Aristotle launched this whole discussion by drawing a useful distinction between generosity and justice. However, because his ideas of justice were constrained, and because he analyzed generosity strictly in terms of money, he left the impression that generosity was not a very appealing virtue. We can do better by focusing on acts conducted in the context of mutually respectful relationships.


To begin: virtues are traits or dispositions that we should want to cultivate in ourselves and in others to improve these individuals’ characters, to raise the odds that they will benefit their communities, or both.

Generosity is found on famous lists of virtues, such as Aristotle’s twelve (or so) and the Buddha’s six paramitas. However, generosity receives much less attention than most other virtues in contemporary English-language philosophy. Miller (2018) finds only three “mainstream philosophy” articles about generosity prior to his own. Ward (2011) finds little discussion of generosity in scholarship on Aristotle, notwithstanding that a whole section of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is focused on it.

I would propose this explanation. Aristotle continues to provide the most influential framework for theories of virtues in the academic world, partly because he is often insightful, and also because he shaped ethics in the three Abrahamic religions. However, his account of generosity (eleutheriotes–more literally translated as “liberality”) makes it a problematic trait. And that is why the virtue does not receive much attention in Anglophone and European academic philosophy.

Aristotle introduces his discussion of generosity with an explicit mention of money:

Let us speak then of freeness-in-giving [eleutheristes, generally translated as generosity or liberality]. It seems to be a mean in respect to needs/goods/property [chremata], for a man is not praised as generous in war, nor in matters that involve temperance, nor in court decisions, but in the giving or taking of goods, and especially in giving them–“goods” meaning all those things whose worth is measured with coins (NE 1119b–my translations).

For Aristotle, generosity does not mean transferring money to people who have a right to it, because that is the separate virtue of justice. Rather, generosity means donating material things voluntarily because one is not overly enamored of them, and doing so in an excellent way.

Things that are done in virtue are noble and are done for their nobility. The generous man therefore will certainly give for the nobility of it. And he will do it rightly, for he will give to the right people, in the right amount, at the right time, and whatever else counts as right giving; and he will give with pleasure or at least painlessly, for whatever is done virtuously is pleasant and painless, or at least not distressing (NE 1120a).

The appropriate recipient is not one who deserves the money (again, that would be an act of justice), but rather someone whom a person of generous spirit would desire to help. I imagine a land-owner being generous to his tenant or to a retainer of long standing.

Aristotle acknowledges that a person with less money can be as generous as a rich man, since the appropriate measure is the proportion of one’s wealth that one donates. Nevertheless, his paradigm of a generous person is a man of inherited wealth who is liberated enough from the base appeal of material things that he voluntarily gives some money away in a gentlemanly fashion (NE 1120b).

I will not claim that the ideal of generosity in the Buddhist canon is the same as in Aristotle, but the early Buddhist texts also appreciate people who give things away because they are free from a desire for goods:

Furthermore, a noble disciple recollects their own generosity: “I’m so fortunate, so very fortunate! Among people full of the stain of stinginess I live at home rid of stinginess, freely generous, open-handed, loving to let go, committed to charity, loving to give and to share.” Then a noble disciple recollects their own generosity, their mind is not full of greed, hate, and delusion. This is called a noble disciple who lives in balance among people who are unbalanced, and lives untroubled among people who are troubled. They’ve entered the stream of the teaching and develop the recollection of generosity (Numbered Discourses 6.10.1, translated by Bhikkhu Sujato).

One difference is that Aristotle mainly thinks about generosity to people who are poor against their will, whereas the paradigm of generosity in early Buddhism is a wealthy layperson’s donation to monks, who have voluntarily renounced worldly goods. In fact, I am not sure that monks can be generous in the Pali Canon, because their role is to receive alms. Another difference—typical when comparing Aristotle to classical Buddhism–is that the Buddhist path leads toward complete liberation, whereas Aristotle expects us to navigate happiness and suffering until death.

In any case, for Aristotle, generosity is relational (one person is generous to another), and it usually accompanies an unequal relationship. As Ward writes, it “abstracts” from justice. When we are being generous, in Aristotle’s sense, we do not have justice on our minds, although we might also act justly.

If one accepts inequality and suffering as natural, then justice is simply a matter of paying one’s debts, honoring contracts, and otherwise following the current rules; and generosity easily accompanies justice. A true aristocrat exhibits justice by paying his bills and taxes. He may also make generous gifts, although never giving so much as to threaten his social standing. (Aristotle defines prodigality as giving so much as to ruin one’s own resources: NE 1119b–1120a.)

However, if we decide that the current distribution of rights and goods is unjust and should be changed, then we will not be impressed by a person who is generous yet not just. More than that, we may feel that justice is the only standard, and generosity is virtuous just to the degree that it approximates justice. Then a gentleman’s holiday gifts are virtuous insofar as they diminish an unjustifiable disparity between the lord and his tenants. The effect is probably quite small. It would be better if the gentleman were prodigal or if his lands were reallocated. Meanwhile, if he takes satisfaction in his own gift-making–as evidence that he is free from base material desires–then he looks worse, not better. If he makes gifts, he should demonstrate respect for the recipients by making the payments seem obligatory and insufficient.

By alluding to land reform, I am suggesting that a social system should be egalitarian, and some powerful force, such as a modern government, should make it so. This is not necessarily correct. Adam Smith makes a different argument for generosity. In his view, a market economy is best for everyone because it continuously increases prosperity. But rich people should be generous, not only for the sake of those with less but also because a reasonable person will not be overly attached to his own wealth and will know when he has more than enough.

When “a man of fortune spends his revenue chiefly in hospitality” (benefitting friends), he demonstrates a “liberal or generous spirit” and also puts his wealth into circulation, thus contributing to the “increase of the public capital.” On the other hand, by hoarding his money for himself, a person would manifest “a base and selfish disposition” (Wealth of Nations, ii:3). It is less clear whether Smith recommends generosity toward poor people who are not one’s friends (discussed in Birch 1998). But in general, virtues are good for the individual and contribute to a civil society. Generosity is just one example; “humanity, kindness, compassion, mutual friendship and esteem” are others (Theory of Moral Sentiments, IV).

Whether you endorse or reject Smith’s view of markets, at least his theory of generosity is connected to his theory of social justice. Ward argues that Aristotle also considers generosity in the context of his view of a good community. She discusses the sections in the Politics where Aristotle says that the best regime empowers the middle classes. They are neither arrogant, like the rich, nor craven, like the poor (Pol. 1295b5).

A democracy dominated by the middle classes enables deliberation among peers. Equal citizens can look one another in the eye, say what they think, and cast equal votes to set policy. To the extent that Aristotle appreciates this kind of political system, then his discussions of generosity (giving moderate amounts of money to individuals) and munificence (giving lots of money to the city) begin to seem ironic. These are virtues of oligarchy, and Aristotle prefers democracy (albeit with qualifications).

I appreciate Ward’s argument, but I suspect that for Aristotle, equal standing or eisonomia can only work for an elite (even if it extends to the middling sort), and they should be generous to those who are naturally inferior. Members of the Assembly should treat the large majority of humans who are non-citizens generously, while treating one another with equal respect. However, once we embrace universal human rights, then everyone should be a citizen–somewhere–and the Aristotelian versions of generosity and munificence begin to look problematic.

As long as we are thinking primarily about the transfer of money or goods that money can buy, then I think that justice is the relevant virtue, and generosity is a poor substitute. This point does not depend on a radically egalitarian theory of social justice, because a libertarian should also put justice first and generosity well behind.

However, we naturally use the word “generous” for things other than money. For instance, “generous reading” is a common phrase for interpretive methods that seek to reconstruct persuasive positions from texts. Ann Ward reads Aristotle generously by combining his discussion of generosity in the Nicomachean Ethics with his analysis of democracy in the Politics.

Likewise, we can make “generous remarks” at a colleague’s retirement party, and our words will offer real insights about the colleague’s contributions. We can also give things or people our “generous attention.”

Our partner the Vuslat Foundation defines generous listening as “active, empathetic engagement with another person’s thoughts and feelings. At its core, generous listening is about creating a space for authentic dialogue.”

Think of a colleague who skillfully chooses holiday gifts, wrapping them nicely, and adding thoughtful notes. The objects may have limited monetary value yet reflect generous attitudes toward their recipients because they match each person’s desires and needs. Finding the gifts required time, and during that time, the donor focused on the recipient. We would not object if the skillful donor takes pleasure and pride, just as we generally appreciate cases when people derive happiness from their own virtue.

Whereas money is fungible, the generosity in these examples is specific to the individuals involved. Aristotle (like the Buddhist sutra I quoted earlier) is most interested in generosity as a display of freedom on the part of the giver, but in the cases I am sketching, the donors focus on the recipients. And these forms of generosity are relatively independent of the social system. I presume that generous speeches at retirement parties are appreciated alike in state socialism, corporate capitalism, and the nonprofit sector.

We might, then, agree with Smith in the Theory of Moral Sentiments that generosity is one of the virtues that “appear in every respect agreeable to us.” Generosity is agreeable regardless of the social or economic system, and apart from justice. But it is a virtue that requires benevolent respect for the recipient, listening and speaking as well as giving. Contrary to Aristotle, it is least relevant to monetary transfers and does not reflect a gentlemanly insouciance about private wealth. Rather, it is best manifested in reciprocal relationships, when the parties devote time and attention to one another.


Sources: Christian B. Miller, “Generosity,: in Michel Croce and Maria Silvia Vaccarezza, eds., Connecting Virtues: Advances in Ethics, Epistemology, and Political Philosophy (Wiley, 2018): 23-50; Ann Ward, “Generosity and inequality in Aristotle’s ethics.” Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought 28.2 (2011): 267-278; Thomas D. Birch, “An analysis of Adam Smith’s theory of charity and the problems of the poor.” Eastern Economic Journal 24.1 (1998): 25-41.my translations of Aristotle use the text from Project Perseus.

Cezanne, Portrait of Gustave Geffroy

Cezanne’s portait of Gustave Geffroy

In “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1946), Maurice Merleau-Ponty discusses Paul Cézanne’s portrait of the critic Paul Geffroy (1895-6), which led me to some congruent reflections.

Merleau-Ponty notes that the table “stretches, contrary to the laws of perspective, into the lower part of the picture.” In a photograph of M. Geffroy, the table’s edges would form parallel lines that would meet at one point, and the whole object would be more foreshortened. That is how an artist who followed what we call “scientific perspective” would depict the table. Why does Cézanne show it otherwise?

Imagine that you actually stood before Paul Geffroy in his study. You would not instantly see the whole scene. Your eye might settle on your host’s face, then jump to the intriguing statuette next to him. The shelves would at first form a vague pattern in the background. Objects for which you have names, such as books, would appear outlined, as borders filled with color. On the other hand, areas of the fireplace or wall would blend into other areas.

You would know that you could move forward toward M. Geffroy, in which case the table would begin to move below you. Just as you see a flying ball as something moving–not as a round zone of color surrounded by other colors–so you might see the table as something that could shift if you moved your body forward.

A photograph of this real-world scene would be a representation of it, very useful for knowing how M. Geffroy looked in his study, and possibly an attractive object in its own right. But the photo would not represent anyone’s experience of the scene. Instead, it would be something that you could experience, rather like the scene itself, by letting your eye move around it, identifying objects of interest, and gradually adding information. You would experience the photograph somewhat differently from the actual scene because you would know that everything was fixed and your body could not move into the space.

A representation of this scene using perspective’s “laws” would make the image useful for certain purposes–for instance, for estimating the size of the table. Michael Baxandall (1978) argued that Renaissance perspective originated in a commercial culture in which patrons enjoyed estimating the size, weight, and value of objects represented in paintings.

But other systems have different benefits. Here is a print in which Toyoharu Kunichika (1835-1900) uses European perspective for the upper floor and a traditional Chinese system (with lines that remain parallel and objects placed higher if they are further away) for the lower floor. As Toshidama writes, this combination is useful for allowing us to see as many people and events as possible.

Print by Toyoharu Kunichika from Toshidama Japanese Prints

Perspective does not tell us how the world is–not in any simple way. The moon is not actually the size of a window, although it is represented as such in a perspectival picture (East Asian or European). Perspective is a way of representing how we experience the world. And in that respect, it is partial and sometimes even misleading. It overlooks that for us, important things seem bolder; objects can look soft, cold or painful as well as large or small; and some things appear in motion or likely to move, while others seem fixed. We can see a whole subject (such as a French intellectual in his study) and parts of it (his beard), at once and as connected to each other.

Merleau-Ponty writes:

Gustave Geoffrey’s [sic] table stretches into the bottom of the picture, and indeed, when our eye runs over a large surface, the images it successively receives are taken from different points of view, and the whole surface is warped. It is true that I freeze these distortions in repainting them on the canvas; I stop the spontaneous movement in which they pile up in perception and in which they tend toward the geometric perspective. This is also what happens with colors. Pink upon gray paper colors the background green. Academic painting shows the background as gray, assuming that the picture will produce the same effect of contrast as the real object. Impressionist painting uses green in the background in order to achieve a contrast as brilliant as that of objects in nature. Doesn’t this falsify the color relationship? It would if it stopped there, but the painter’s task is to modify all the other colors in the picture so that they take away from the green background its characteristics of a real color. Similarly, it is Cézanne’s genius that when the over-all composition of the picture is seen globally, perspectival distortions are no longer visible in their own right but rather contribute, as they do in natural vision, to the impression of an emerging order, of an object in the act of appearing, organizing itself before our eyes.

The deeper point is that a science of nature is not a science of human experience. Third-person descriptions or models of physical reality are not accounts of how we experience things. And even when we are presented with a scientific description, it is something that we experience. For instance, we actively interpret a photograph or a diagram; we do not automatically imprint all of its pixels. And we listen to a person lecture about science; we do not simply absorb the content.

There are truths that can be expressed in third-person form–for example, that human eyes and brains work in certain ways. But there are also truths about how we experience everything, including scientific claims.

And Cézanne is a scientist of experience.


Quotations from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Cézanne’s Doubt” (1946), in Sense and Non-sense, translated by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Northwestern University Press 1964); image by Paul Cézanne, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. The image on the Mus?e d’Orsay’s website suggests a warmer palette, but I don’t know whether it’s open-source. I also refer to Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy : A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford, 1978).

See also: Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing; trying to look at Las Meninas; Wallace Stevens’ idea of orderan accelerating cascade of pearls (on Galileo and Tintoretto); and Rilke, “The Grownup.” My interactive novel, The Anachronist, is about perspective.