[lit-ideas] Methods, Kafka's and Tony Hill's
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 1 Nov 2009 12:36:10 -0800
I picked up The Castle this morning and read the introduction by Irving Howe to
see if perchance it would inspire me to reread this depressing novel, something
I swore (after reading it the first time years ago) never to do. The nature
of Kafka’s writing is such that there has never been agreement or even
consensus about what he means. Howe offers his opinion. Also in the volume I
have, is the opinion of Thomas Mann.
And can there be agreement about the meaning of words like “method” when
applied to individuals like Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and Cesar Milan?
I’d like to add Tony Hill to this list. He is the psychologist-police advisor
in the BBC series “Wire in the Blood.” I have watched the episodes one after
the other (on Netflix) and am up to Season 5. What he does would defy an
orderly person’s prejudice about the meaning of “method,” but he has one none
the less. And it is a pragmatic “method” comparable (at least initially) to
Cesar Milan’s. He is mostly quiet when he begins, looking at the murder scene,
looking at the body, listening to the witnesses, listening to other people’s
opinions, and if he speaks, he is like Cesar, asking for clarification.
After that, Tony Hill engages in antics that baffle and alarm his coworkers.
He talks to himself, talks as though he were the killer he is trying to find,
repeating key words, acting out the crime in his mind, while he revisits
witnesses, acquaintances of the victim, the daily life of the victim over and
over until something fits – or doesn’t fit. He is not constrained by an
external system like the ones Gadamer rails (if that word can be applied to
Gadamer’s mild approach) against, but he has preconceptions and these form an
internal system, a Tony-Hill-Modus-Operandi.
To insist that Tony Hill has a “method” might seem counter-intuitive, and I
only do it to make the point that he doesn’t expose himself to undifferentiated
chaos. He has an approach that over time (the time of his investigation) he
makes order out of the pieces of the chaos that he selects. His coworkers see
only the chaos, but he pulls out this piece and that one and as he does so, he
slowly produces order. At the end of each episode order is achieved.
Order is never achieved in The Castle, and yet when one steps back from this
novel, and his others and his short stories as well, one see that he wrote out
of something, out of some system of preconceived ideas or dreams. If you have
a vivid dream-life, for example, as Kafka did, and resolved to develop these
dreams in short stories, the end result would seem and perhaps be chaotic, and
yet couldn’t we in the psychological sense view what Kafka does as his “method”?
Lawrence
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
Sent: Sunday, November 01, 2009 11:00 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] How to Raise the Perfect Dog: Through Puppyhood and Beyond
Method in Dictionary of Philosophy
Thanks for sharing, L. Helm.
Method is an interesting philosophical word, that I don t use!
The Greek etymology is very precise: it has to do with hodos , path, and meta
, through. In America, through-roads, I understand, are for trucks only.
The problem started really with Descartes. Without his la methode -- why
method should be feminine escapes me: path was in Greek, possibly, but surely
meta- sounds more like an epicene or asexual thing to me -- no Gadamer.
The path idea has to be explored. For surely a path is between points
A B
so the straight line should be hodos. So why bother with a method, less so with
a treatise or (the French love this, a discourse ) about it.
It s like Mrs. Marx said of her hubby: "I wished he had spent more time
producing some than writing about it". True, Descartes was not really a
Parisian french, so let he be forgiven.
In English, or Anglo-Saxon, there is no equivalent for the word of Greek
origin, Method . Even it was inexistent in Rome, hence the use of metodo in
the Romance language.
Italians speak of metodico , because it s something (if you ve seen
one) (Italians I mean), you ll appreciate they lack it. Method is boring.
Searle seaks of regulative and constitutive rules. A method is more like a
regulative rule, which are otiose. Methods of fishing, or raising a pup, to use
your example.
What of an ACTIVITY that it NOT repeated, and does not SPRING from a
regulation like that: as Collingwood said of conversation: it is formed IN
CONVERSANDO. Ditto for method. I would think that while a stretch to the
language, if Mrs. B (Beeton) uses steps S1, S2, and S3 to arrive at concoction
(for the first and only time), she s following a method, applying a method. She
represents the method. But then the word becomes otiose or vague, since we may
just as well describe the steps she undertook.
In matters of life ("Sparrows methods for mating off season"), it s all so
species-specific that it hurts. Geary reflects, Sparrows f ck the whole year
round. The article in _Nature_ proposes ditto for the human race. Not Memphis,
I say. We ain t no sparras in Memphis".
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Fri, Oct 30, 2009 1:58 pm
Subject: [lit-ideas] Method in Gadamer, Wittgenstein and Cesar Milan
http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2009/10/method-in-gadamer-wittgensetin-and.html
I just posted a note on my blog entitled Method in Gadamer, Wittgenstein and
Cesar Milan.
I have some preexisting issues over what is method and what is not, and I
explore those a bit in the above note.
Lawrence
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest
on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Methods, Kafka's and Tony Hill's - Lawrence Helm
