Why Wonder? 1. Prof. Dr. Jayme Paviani 2

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Why Wonder? 1. Prof. Dr. Jayme Paviani 2"

Samuel Morrison
6 years ago
Views:

1 Why Wonder? 1 Prof. Dr. Jayme Paviani 2 What is wonder? Why wonder? How is one to explain the loss of one s capacity to wonder? These questions posed by the early Greek philosophers are still asked today and get different answers. However, as is natural for philosophy, every question continues to pose itself even when apparently silenced by an answer. As well as this, the question that poses the query about the nature of wonder is looking for a satisfactory answer or explanation of the phenomenon wonder, but in reality, it is also searching for much more, it wants to know something about the human being itself. For starters, from the point of view of ordinary, common language, wonder indicates the action or effect of wondering to the point that it entails a strong feeling of pleasure in the presence of someone or something that is considered to be unusual or extraordinary. Furthermore, it can be said that wonder is an emotional disposition expressing respect, consideration, or reverence for a person or action, or for specific aspects of the human personality. In the latter situation, one can explain the word wonder as a sentiment expressing astonishment, surprise, amazement, in the presence of something that was not expected. 1 The initial version of this text was presented in the no Projeto Café e Debate: Conexão Razão-Fé-Vida, [Coffee debate: Reason-Faith-Life Connection], in the Paulus bookstore in Caxias do Sul, organized by Professor Dr. Paulo Cesar Nodari, April 12, Professor of Philosophy and co-coordinator of the Post-Graduate program, Master s Degree Course, Caxias do Sul University. & Cultura - Ano VI, n

2 These notions or characteristics of wonder gained new conceptual developments down through the history of philosophy and science. Therefore, from the theoretical point of view, it is possible to show the relevance of the phenomenon wonder in relation to, for example, philosophical knowledge and understanding of the human person, the world and others. From this perspective, the history of the concept wonder, and its origins, just like many other phenomena, is to be found in Plato and Aristotle. They were the first, in their writings, to identify the relationship between the phenomenon wonder and the very origin of philosophy. Wonder in Plato Plato, in the Theaetetus, a dialogue about knowledge, when dealing with the theory of Protagoras, based on Heraclitus and his thought, that man is the measure of all things, of the existence of that which is and the non-existence of all that does not exist (152 a), after examining the objections to the thesis on knowledge as intuition, at a given moment in the conversation, under the impact of the arguments used by Socrates, proclaims: By the gods, Socrates, what fills me with great wonder is what all of this can mean, and just to think about it makes me feel dizzy (155, c, d). Socrates, then, in the light of this statement by Theaetetus, comments: I see, my friend, that Theodore did not erroneously judge your nature, because wonder is the true characteristic of the philosopher. Philosophy has no other source. Apparently, the genealogist who said that Iris was the daughter of Thaumas (Wonder) was not far out. (Theaetetus, 155 d). Love of wisdom and philosophy is aroused by wonder. But it is part of Plato's style to play with words. He uses the Greek term taumasein or Thaumas, who Hesiod, in Theogony, verse 265, says is the father of Iris, the gods messenger to men. It so happens that Iris too is also identified with philosophy. Thus, according to Hesiod, Iris, Thaumas daughter, is the symbol of philosophy which is born of wonder. Socrates observes that Theaetetus perceives the relationship between everything that is said and the proposition attributed to Protagoras. This ability to perceive is what causes wonder. He is filled with wonder when he discovers the relationship between the becoming of Heraclitus and the Protagoras relativism. & Cultura - Ano VI, n

3 Wonder in Aristotle Aristotle writes that it was wonder that stimulated the first philosophers to think. In Metaphysics, Book I, 2, 10-20, he writes: In fact, men began to philosophize, today as at the beginning, as a result of wonder, to the extent that, initially, they felt perplexed in the presence of the simplest problems; and then, progressing little by little, they started to face bigger and bigger problems, for example problems related to the phenomena of the moon and the sun and stars, or problems concerning the formation of the entire universe. Now, whoever experiences the sensation of doubt and wonder admits that they do not know; and it is also due to this that the one who loves myth is, in a sense, a philosopher: myth, in fact, is made up of a series of wonderful things. The fact that men philosophized to free themselves of their ignorance is clear evidence that they sought knowledge solely for the sake of knowledge itself, and not for any other practical purpose. And the way things developed is proof of this: when they already acquired almost all that was necessary for life, for comfort and their wellbeing, they then went in search of this kind of knowledge. It is clear, therefore, that we do not seek it for any advantage that that may be obscure; and more so still, it is clear that, we refer to as being free the man who is an end in himself and is not subject to others, so only this science, among all others, is referred to as free, because it alone is an end in itself. Wonder in Descartes wonder: Descartes, in part II, article 53, of The Passions of the Soul, says the following about When the first contact with an object surprises us, and when we consider it to be new, or somewhat different from what, up to then, we had known, or what we had considered it to be, this leads us to be filled with wonder and admiration in its presence, and as this can happen before we, in any way, know if this object is or not useful to us, it would seem that wonder is the first of all the passions; and it has no & Cultura - Ano VI, n

4 opposite, seen that, if the object that presents itself has nothing in itself that surprises us, we are in no way affected by it, and we examine it without any enthusiasm. In the first part of The Passions of the Soul, Descartes defines passion: [...] everything new that is done or happens is usually classified by philosophers as being passion in relation to the subject to which it happens, and as action in relation to the one that makes it happen. Descartes, when listing the passions, after wonder, he mentions esteem or scorn, generosity or pride, and humility or lowliness. He continues by listing veneration and contempt; love and hatred; desire; hope, fear, jealousy, certainty and despair; hesitation, courage, boldness, emulation, cowardice and dread; remorse; joy and sadness, ridicule, envy, pity; self-satisfaction and repentance, and some others. Finally, in art. 70 he defines and indicates the cause of wonder. He says: Wonder is a sudden surprise of the soul, which leads it to carefully meditate the objects which, to it, seem rare and extraordinary. Thus, it is primarily caused by the impression one has in the brain, representing the object as being rare and consequently worthy of being highly considered; then, by the movement of the spirits, which are disposed by this pressure to forcefully tend towards the place in the brain where it is located, so as to strengthen it and preserve it there; as also they are disposed by it to move from there to the muscles destined to retain the organs of the senses in the same situation in which they are, so that it may still be maintained by them, if it were formed by them. Later on, Descartes, in art. 73, states that astonishment is an excess of wonder. Wonder in Spinoza Spinoza, in Ethics, on writing about the origin and nature of the affects, after defining desire as the very essence of man, whereas this is conceived as determined to do something by means of some affection or other found in it, presents wonder (admiratio) as the imagination of a thing that the soul remains fixed on because this singular imagination has no connection with the others (see Proposition 52 of this part and the scholium). & Cultura - Ano VI, n

5 In fact, for Spinoza, only joy, sadness and desire are primary or primitive affects. He mentions wonder because this use had been introduced, it being derived from the three previously mentioned affects. It is also important to remember that Spinoza considers affection to be a passion of the soul, but, according to him, we have a mixed-up idea of what affection is. The expression power to exist and the expression that the soul is determined to think one thing instead of another are in no way enlightening. Wonder in Pascal Pascal, in Thoughts, fragment 401, states: Animals do not admire each other. A horse does not admire its companion. That does not mean that there is no emulation in the race, but without any consequences; because, in the stable, the heaviest, worst shaped does not give its oats to the other, as men wish they should do to each other. Its virtue is satisfied by itself alone. In fragments 347 and 348, Pascal makes his famous statements about the man as a weak, but thinking reed. For him, all human dignity lies in the power to think. Wonder, in this case, is an impulse to think. Wonder in Heidegger The Platonic and Aristotlian concept of wonder can be understood today as being an attitude or a state of the soul (an existence) according to Heidegger in Being and Time. We could relate the phenomenon of wonder to the concept of openness. In other words, Heidegger speaks of the allowing of oneself to enter into the unveiling of being. An explanation of the expression may, perhaps, express special, spontaneous admiration, which man has or may have in relation to the world. The concept of Heidegger's phenomenology can be summed up in the to allow and make manifest that which reveals itself, as it reveals itself starting from itself. & Cultura - Ano VI, n

6 This, undoubtedly, refers to a starting point of philosophy, an access to phenomena that requires a safe, appropriate method for it to be unveiled. More explicitly still, Heidegger in What is philosophy?, commenting on the above-mentioned extracts from Plato and Aristotle, after asserting that philosophy and philosophizing are part of a human dimension that is the affective disposition, states that: It would be very superficial, and above all, a very ungreeklike mental attitude if we were to think that Plato and Aristotle only concluded that wonder is the cause of philosophy (1971, p. 37). So, after analyzing the meaning of the Greek words arche and pathos, he states: Only if we understand pathos to be a dis-position (dis-position), can we better characterize thamazein, astonishment (wonder). In astonishment we withhold ourselves (être en arrêt). It is as if we drew back in the presence of a being by the fact of its being and being this way and not another. The surprise is not limited to this drawing back in the presence of the being of the being, but in the very act of drawing back and remaining in suspense and at the same time being attracted and as if fascinated by that which is drawing back. Thus, astonishment is the dis-position in which and for which the being of being opens itself. Astonishment is the dis-position through which, for the Greek philosophers, the relationship of being to being was assured. (1971, p ). Wonder in José Ferrater Mora José Ferrater Mora in his Dictionary of Philosophy briefly presents three aspects of wonder: a) Wonder is a first openness to that which is outside, caused by something that makes us stop the normal course of psychic flow. The astonishment strongly draws our attention to that which reveals itself as being astonishing to us, but without triggering off questions about it. b) Wonder is surprise. What makes us wonder is at one and the same time, wonderful and problematic. The surprise, as docta ignorantia, is a humble attitude through which we move away from both pride and indifference as arrogance from ignorabimus. & Cultura - Ano VI, n

7 c) Wonder, properly speaking, puts into action all the powers necessary to answer the question raised by surprise, to clarify its nature and meaning. In this case, there is a haunting inquisitiveness about reality and also a certain love for it. It makes us discover things as they are, regardless of their utility. It is the philosophical astonishment or dismay that Plato spoke of. Wonder in Gerd Alberto Bornheim Gerd Alberto Bornheim, in the Introduction to philosophizing (1970), examines three fundamental attitudes in relation to the act of philosophizing. The first is the so-called Greek wonder; the second is the Cartesian doubt; and the third is the feeling of moral dissatisfaction. Bornheim writes: In the wondering behavior man becomes aware of his own ignorance; such awareness leads him to question that which he does not know, until attaining the suppression of the ignorance, that is, knowledge (1970, p. 10). In the chapter Analysis of naive wonder, Bornheim examines the phenomenon of wonder in its primitive manifestations, bordering on ingenuity and spontaneity, and gives it certain features or characteristics. The first is the sense of openness, which can be better explained through the anti-wonder attitude par excellence, the pessimistic attitude. The pessimist feels wonder in the presence of nothing, and is thus closed to the world, does not want to or cannot be surprised by anything. The naive pessimism comes accompanied by deep mistrust in the face of reality. Wonder, on the other hand, is man s openness to what is real. As well as this, what is characteristic of wonder is the recognition of the other as other, and because I recognize the other as other I can feel wonder (1970, p. 23). This does not mean that there is a fusion between the I that admires and that which is admired. The second characteristic, after the recognition of the other as other, that is, of the distinction, is consciousness. The naive consciousness spontaneously finds itself looking outward and can only be justified by the presupposition of subjectivity, interiority, that is, of the knowledge in its inwardness. In this sense, the naive consciousness has two basic characteristics: a) distance and b) the experience of heterogeneity. & Cultura - Ano VI, n

8 Distance consists in the human being feeling separated from that which is around it. If the human person were pure exteriority, he/she would become a thing among other things, and would have no consciousness. If the human person were reduced to interiority, the distance from the incarnated consciousness would disappear. Finally, consciousness is of such a nature that its act does not permit fusion, full penetration into the world; it always continues to be consciousness, directed towards things, the world. It is in this duplicity or ambiguity that a relationship with the world is established: An exterior interiority and an interior exteriority... (1970, p. 26). Consciousness is the experience of heterogeneity, that is, of the other, of that which is separate, different. In view of this, wonder presumes distance, the rupture of all immanence and surrendering to the transcendent (1970, p. 27). Ad-miratio, as the word itself explains, presupposes distancing oneself from the object admired. Moreover, wonder can only exist where there is conscious life. In naive wonder consciousness is made manifest. That is why the heterogeneity is experienced as something extraordinary, exceptional. The third characteristic, as well as this Bornheim states that astonishment is not to be identified with the experience of astonishment, as the latter is more radical and involves perplexity in the face of reality, neither is it to be identified with surprise, because this suppresses all indecision and all indistinctiveness. In contrast, naive wonder has a positive meaning. (If we wonder at an assassination, for instance, the wonder is focused on the investigation of the execution, but not on its harmful and immoral aspects. Perhaps this is why writers, such as Borges in his short stories, describe the act of dying). Wonder is much more than astonishment and surprise, although those qualities may exist in wonder. There is in it, for example, the possibility of embracing all reality. These are the characteristics that make wonder one of the causes of philosophizing. In conclusion, with malice This brief overview of the different notions of the act of wondering is an example of how the history of philosophy and science is made up of conceptual changes. Concepts developed through theories come with a signature, that is, they have owners, and are reflections of conceptual networks of a given period, of a system, of a theory. & Cultura - Ano VI, n

9 To explain whether or not man has lost the capacity to wonder is not easy. What seems to be true is the fact that many people, for some reason or other, no longer wonder. Because of this Millor Fernandes, with his critical, ironic spirit, which still makes us wonder, says with all his sharpness: How worthy of wonder are those people who succeed in going through life without doing anything wonderful, and with greater malice still, he adds: How worthy of wonder are all those people who we do not know quite well! (2007, p. 13). That means, in the last analysis, that wonder is related to knowledge, and that it is enough to know something or someone to no longer wonder. One of the most direct roads to knowledge is, undoubtedly, the road of wonder. Bibliographic References ARISTOTLE. Metafísica [Metaphysics]. São Paulo: Loyola, BORNHEIM, G. A. Introdução ao filosofar [Introduction to Philosophizing]. Porto Alegre: Globo, DESCARTES, R. Obra escolhida [Chosen Work]. São Paulo, ESPINOSA, B. Éticas [Ethics]. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, FERNANDES, M. Millôr definitivo; a Bíblia do caos [Definitive Millor; the Bible of Chaos] Porto Alegre: L&PM, FERRATER MORA, J. Diccionario de filosofia [Dictionary of Philosophy] Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, HEIDEGGER, M. Que é isto a filosofia? Identidade e diferença. [What is Philosophy? Identity and Difference]. São Paulo: Livraria Duas Cidades, Ser e tempo [Time and Being]. Petropolis: Vozes, PASCAL. Pensamentos [Thoughts].São Paulo PLATÃO. Teeteto e Crátilo. Tradução de Carlos Alberto Nunes. Belém: Universidade Federal do Pará, [PLATO Teeteto e Crátilo. Translation: Carlos Alberto Nunes. Belém: Pará Federal University] English translation: Thomas McGrath & Cultura - Ano VI, n

10 & Cultura - Ano VI, n

PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT FALL SEMESTER 2009 COURSE OFFERINGS

PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT FALL SEMESTER 2009 COURSE OFFERINGS INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY (PHIL 100W) MIND BODY PROBLEM (PHIL 101) LOGIC AND CRITICAL THINKING (PHIL 110) INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS (PHIL 120) CULTURE