COMO CITAR:
Clariano, Tiago. «Brett Bourbon, Finding a Replacement for the Soul: Mind and Meaning in Literature & Philosophy». Forma de Vida, 2021. https://doi.org/10.51427/ptl.fdv.2021.0051 .
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51427/ptl.fdv.2021.0051
Tiago Clariano*
(Versão em português / Portuguese translation)
In what might consist the process of replacing a soul? What are the motives for that research? These are the main questions that Professor Brett Bourbon raises in his book.
Since the beginning of thought, the soul has been a subject of intellectual interest and a fountain of continuous inspiration for our kind. Pythagoras referred to metempsychosis (a sort of reincarnation). In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates told the allegory of the chariot pulled by two horses (a black one and a white one). Aristotle wrote a treatise On the Soul, and from within our contemporary times we could summon-up a myriad of other books and writings on this subject to add to this catalogue. The common denominator among these references is found in the idea of movement: there is something that moves human beings, or that moves among them, and we cannot accurately determine what it is. It is no coincidence that the Latin word for soul is anima, a plausible root for many expressions that we have for movement: things that move are animated; animosity is a word that describes a moving feeling of active hostility.
Brett Bourbon's worries in Finding a Replacement for the Soul, however, are not centred in metaphysical, theological or scatological issues, but rather ones that derive from language and, for that reason, the author's approach is rooted in the Philosophy of Language. It is through language that Bourbon proves the functionality of the concept of soul pertaining to what the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein called "form of life", which the author here describes as "what counts as human biology, our species-being, history, culture, society, language, desires, values, commitments" (p. 210-211).
The theory that motivates this book might be summed up in two main ideas: that we deposit, or invest, a little bit of ourselves in everything we do, when we talk, when we interpret the world, poetry or fiction, when we deal with nonsense and when we try to translate it to our own version of a possible sense, and that what is deposited or invested in these activities is the soul. In these exchanges, the soul is manifested and described in two ways: one that is reflexive, being that which we think about ourselves; the other being derivative, comprised of the characterisation that others make of our investments. This theory comes from Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea, in Philosophical Investigations, that "meaning is use", i.e., that the meaning of a word does not depend on a web of semantical connections or its referential, but rather on the impact that it has in the linguistic game in which it surfaces. As a result, the meaning of the soul depends on its investments. Bourbon's theory might lead to a confirmation of some lines by Ricardo Reis: "Put all you are into the least of your acts", without a need for the phrase to sound imperative, but rather assertive, transforming it into something like "all you are is in the least of your acts."
The descriptions of the soul found in this book are analysed from the point of view of the Philosophy of Language, as previously stated. If I had to describe the kind of thought one might find in this book, then I would have to say that it resembles a balancing act between the fields of Semiotics and Hermeneutics, over a rope called Philosophy of Language. The title Finding a Replacement for the Soul seems to derive from a Latin phrase usually quoted by those who study Semiotics: aliquid stat pro aliquo, which we can translate to "this that replaces that," corresponding to the operating formula of a sign. In this case, the sign is the soul and its replacement corresponds to the process of semiosis (of replacing). This is a search for the semiotic shapes of the soul, i.e., the ways through which the soul manifests itself. In this context, Semiotics is a field that studies replacements, processes that allow saying that "this replaces that", that the pronoun "I" in a sentence written by me corresponds to my person, myself, that x might be equal to y, or that Juliet is the sun. Even though the title might point in this direction, the only explicit reference made to Semiotics is made with a hint of disdain:
This link [between fictional meaning and sentence meaning] is usually based on undefended or implicit conceptual pictures or theories of meaning (commonly semiotic in nature — and thus I would say already deeply flawed) (p. 90).
This phrase comes up in a chapter entitled "The Emptiness of Literary Interpretation," where Bourbon's argument is about a certain relativism which allows one to say anything when interpreting poetry or fiction, as long as the interpretation is framed logically by argumentation, and in a way to show that it pertains to the object of which it is an interpretation. We might conclude that an interpretation is not good when it is argumentatively undefended or devoid of elements that connect it to the work it interprets. It will not be a good interpretation because it is not persuasive of the conclusions that it means to transmit. This point is not problematic, and it is well explained through the episode of the tarts' theft in the last chapter of Alice in Wonderland. In this chapter, Alice is in a court hearing to find out who stole the Queen of Hearts' tarts. Then, the King of Hearts comes up with what he considers to be a fundamental proof: a poem described by Alice, who says, "I don't believe there's an atom of meaning in it." The King of Hearts proceeds to interpret an exceedingly pronominal poem regarding the situation in which he found himself. Bourbon explains what determines this interpretation:
The lack of clear meaning in these poetic lines facilitates the King's tendentious and self-serving allegorical interpretative method, and at the same time makes more apparent the emptiness of this method (p. 81).
Thus, the King of Hearts replaces the pronouns to point the Knave of Hearts as guilty, by finding in the poem a solution to the dilemma in which he was (and because it was probably useful to him to finish the judgement and carry on with his life). Bourbon adds:
Furthermore, there is no end to the kinds of justifications, and no final adjudication about the adequacy of justifications. The inconclusiveness of interpretations and their justifications means that they are the sites for a kind of self-reflection whose content is inconclusive as well (p. 100).
Because there is no barometer that accurately points the degree of adequation of an interpretation (of a person or a work of fiction), Bourbon asserts that "almost any poem could be interpreted to confirm the Knave's guilt" (p. 81). It is in the justification of the means to the ends of an interpretation (in its argumentation) that the hermeneutic facet of this book comes in. In its most etymological sense, Hermeneutics is a field that studies the exegesis of the holy writ, which is a kind of writing that demands a specific sort of reading. In fact, some of the scriptures were particularly criticised in Eric Auerbach's Mimesis for relying too heavily on a pronominal language, whose references might seem opaque or hard to grasp. As such, the reading and the interpretation of the holy writ depend a lot on a crossing of knowledge from the fields of Rhetoric and Psychology, as Bourbon ends up stating about all kinds of texts:
If a text is understood as (1) making a claim, having cognitive content, or (2) producing emotive effects, the study or value of these rests on philosophical and scientific arguments (p. 85).
The author refers to Rhetoric (the text "makes a claim, having cognitive content" and Rhetoric makes philosophical arguments) and to Psychology (the text "produces emotive effects" and Psychology makes scientific arguments). These fields flavour interpretation, making us recognise each interpretation's individuality (literary or otherwise) as an emotive reaction to the cognitive content of what is interpreted.[i] It is then that Bourbon makes a thunderous remark: "Literary criticism is in many ways decayed theology and glorified commentary" (p. 86), which means, on the one hand, that literary criticism is the interpretation of messages that transcend times—it is in the interpretation of eternity that we find the theological side—, on the other hand, it is at anyone's grasp—just like the ability to comment upon whatever.
Bourbon uses these parallels between theology and commentary to explain how to interpret, what it is about, and in what consists the act of reading Finnegans Wake, a work by James Joyce. The Wake is particularly popular for the weird way in which it is written. For instance, it contains thunderwords of around 100 letters, the sound of which is determinant to understand what they mean. The author's argument about Finnegans Wake consists of stipulating each reader's interpretation as an interpretative game that grants meaning to a text otherwise particularly hard to understand. So hard that great parts of it are considered pure nonsense. Here comes the soul's employment:
Reading FW as a kind of fiction is at best like reading a fictional letter, in which we are unsure not only who wrote it but also if it is addressed to us. It is not that there is something hidden underneath the blanket of Wakean nonsense, but that I cannot tell the difference between these descriptions and what they seem to point to. This suggests two ways of reading the Wake. (1) In reading it my interpretations (my hand touching the blanket) constitute what I interpret, or (2) I have to learn to understand Wakean descriptions, especially of the Wake itself, to be somehow similar to some aspect or description of my life, of what I take myself to be (p. 179)
The underlying analogy in this description of the Wake has to do with a poem by John Godfrey Saxe, "The Blind Men and the Elephant," in which six blind men find an elephant, but they are unable to decide what kind of animal or thing it is (for example, the first one thinks it is a wall, for feeling its belly; the second one thought it was a spear, for touching its tusks, and so on). Finnegans Wake is John Godfrey Saxe's elephant covered by a blanket.[ii] This means that in Finnegans Wake, the hardship in grasping meaning from its textual form blinds the readers and it is the interpretative route of the blind to some clarification that grants meaning to the Wake. If this book's interpretation is so volatile, then it is not easy to understand what it is about. Yet Bourbon finds a sort of solution for that problem in his theory and in asceticism, which couples very well with the exegetic tendencies previously described. So, the Wake's subject (what it is about) is this human activity of trying to translate into meaning whatever escapes the scope of the things we understand. In that sense, it is about each of us and consists in this interpretative ordeal.
One might try to reduce the conclusions of Finding a Replacement for the Soul to one sentence: we are all blind men trying to define what is this beast that is the world we are in. I say beast because of the undefinition and the multitude of meanings that each person derives from it, which makes it seem animated, as if each interpretation deposited a piece of soul that animates the world. The proof of our animation of the world we live in (or where we act) is in the way we invest the soul in our interpretations and perspectives of it: "The sense of the soulfulness of literature, conversation, and persons would seem to be akin to the sense of being held by language and the world" (p. 189). Bourbon also describes this sense in a piece of extraordinary prose:
I can see you in your words. I can be fooled to see mock versions of you as real. What I see is often the shape of you made by my assumptions and my recognitions, sometimes faulty, of a shared background in which you have a place. If I lose this background, I can lose my sense of you. If I lose you, in whatever way, I can lose this background: the world can turn mysterious or threatening. My dependence on the relationship between these is what we call the expressiveness of each. The expressiveness of gestures, persons, smells, and appearances is an expression of my knowledge, of my cognitive dependence on these for my identification of anyone (p. 180).
Here lies the attested functionality of the concept of soul, the motive for this book. The soul exists within this need of understanding ourselves, others, the scenery, what happened and what might come to pass. It is not that we have to find reasons to replace our souls, but rather that there is no escaping from this condition of doing so through an investment of our soul in our way, be it as it may.[iii]
[i] Aristotle considered that Rhetoric made persuasive appeals to the public’s ethos (character), logos (intellectual faculties) and pathos (emotional faculties). In this sense, Rhetoric is not separate from the emotive question. It has, on its own, a strong psychological factor.
[ii] This is somewhat similar to what Sheldon Brivic does to explain language in James Joyce’s Ulysses, in an essay titled “The Veil of Signs: Perception as Language in Joyce’s Ulysses.” In fact, it is not very different from several theories that propose language as a veil or a blanket that covers its meanings or referents.
[iii] I must thank Ana Mendes da Silva, João Gabriel and Pedro Banha for the conversations we had about soul; and to Professor Brett Bourbon, for his seminars, teachings and inspiration.
*Program in Literary Theory, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon. FCT Doctoral scholarship (reference: 2020.05089.BD). e-mail: tiagoclariano@campus.ul.pt.
Note: amended reference to Plato’s Phaedrus, on 10 April 2021.
REFERÊNCIA:
Bourbon, Brett. Finding a Replacement for the Soul: Mind and Meaning in Literature & Philosophy. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2004.