In a message dated 5/31/2015 11:11:32 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: "Love one another or die" might seem
maudlin
[...]".
-- which I think Auden would like, since after all Maudlin is the best
college, architecturally speaking, in Oxford, some say! (as /ˈmɔːdlɪn/ stands
next to the River Cherwell).
We are considering:
i. We must love one another or die.
ii. We must love one another and die.
In a message dated 5/31/2015 8:32:20 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
_donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxx.uk_ (mailto:donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx) writes: "The
"must"
of loving one another and the "must" of die are distinct but ...
inextricably linked: ... we "must" die because we have no choice otherwise but
we
"must" as in "ought to" love, where we have a choice otherwise. ... Auden
plays
on "must" having both a sense of factual necessity and
normative-imperative. By putting them together, [Auden] is trying to make to
the point that
the normative-imperative of "love" is a kind of factual necessity. In [the
"and"] version, this point is made more subtly [than in the "or" version].
[T]he aim [...]: to load the "must" of loving with the force of the "must" of
dying, and the loading comes from the implicit idea [explicit and less
subtle [in the "or"-version] that if we fail to love we shall precipitate our
demise. In the "and" version, Auden aims to suggest this thought, via the
ambivalence of "must", while explicitly accepting the inevitability of death.
[...T]his alignment is not only more subtle but is meant to avoid possible
shallowness in the earlier version where it might seem to be suggested
that through love we can escape death rather than merely delay the inevitable.
Conversely, the acknowledged inevitability of death is meant to reinforce
the sense of factual necessity whereby we "must" love."
I agree. I enjoyed Geary's use of 'choice' in his post, though, since the
keyword, for some is "free choice", a term of art used once by a
philosopher, Hans Kamp at the Aristotelian Society.
Geary has long known of the change that Auden later made and it has never
made any sense to him.
i. We must love one another or die.
ii. We must love one another and die.
And it may be interesting to compare with still other possible versions.
Auden rightly uses the strongest of the modals, 'must', and includes himself
'we'. That's different from the garden variety 'free choice' example, but I
am reminded that in Geary's original post, the paraphrase indeed was:
iii. Love one another or die.
which could be interpreted as an imperative, and then we may have
iv. You may love one another or die.
Geary:
"I don't think Auden ever seriously thought of changing it to read:
"and/or". That's atrocious. Even Auden's choice of "and" seems to me to
diminish the soul of the poem. The "and die" version reads that there are two
things all human beings must do: one is "love one another" and the second is
"die." Both are inescapable for all human beings. But we that is *not*
true. Obviously, we do not have to "love another" -- in fact, we humans
seldom
do. But yes, we all must die. The earth is going to go poof eventually,
but that is not germane to the poem. The poem says, Take care of one
another, asshole people, *or* war will kill us all long before the big poof.
Not
loving one another will bring death to us all. You have a choice. That's
the poem."
You're welcome.
It's interesting Geary should use 'choice', since 'free choice' is a phrase
that philosophers (like Hans Kamp) have been used to interpret utterances
like Auden's. And for the record it should be pointed out that he did allow
the "or" version reprinted in a Penguin collection, AFTER the "and"
version reprint in the Williams collection.
Auden seems to be concerned with a conjunctive interpretation of a
disjunctive construction. The relevant conjunctive interpretation is sometimes
referred to as a "free choice effect" as attested when a disjunctive sentence
is embedded within a modal operator.
In other words, we may need to understand how Auden's two versions should
receive the modal logic formalisation -- where "□" stands for "must", "∨"
for the earlier "or" version, and "∧" for the later "and" version:
□(p ∨ q)
□p ∨ □q
□p ∧ □q
While "You may love one another or die" seems to be the characteristic
'free-choice' context, the 'must' may confuse. But I'm not sure we need to
appeal to two 'senses' of "must", as McEvoy phrases his exegesis above. After
all, in Geary's original post, the thing was merely expressed as an
imperative
Love one another or die.
versus
Love one another and die.
-- the latter of which sounds rude.
I'm not sure about Auden, but for Grice (an English philosopher) and Kant
(a German philosopher), the categorical imperative is best understood as
'must', and if we just erase the second disjunct we get at Kant:
We must love one another.
----
Therefore, we must love one another or die.
(Cfr. Hare, "Post the letter; therefore, post the letter or burn it")
(There is also an element of 'ignorance' in the use of 'or' which Grice
exploits
in his example, as an answer to "Where is your wife?", "She is in the
kitchen or in the garden").
The understanding in terms of 'or' invites the 'free' choice (or 'choice',
as Geary rather has it, since surely, _contra_ Kemp, 'free choice' sounds
oxymoronic). But the definition of "or" in terms of "if" and "not" bring an
element of conditionality that a Kantian categorical imperative precisely
denies.
And cheers for Magadalen!
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
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