In one of his essays, Thomas Hobbes, the modern English philosopher
(philosophers use 'modern' to mean what others use 'ancient') gives an example
of the thought processes associated in implicature. This I was reminded after
McEvoy mentions w3 in the analysis of the Dylan ballad set in South Dakota.
For the record, in today's NYT, there was an essay with an implicatural title,
"The meaning of Dylan's silence," which reminds me of Grice's example:
i. A: We are going to miss Terry and Agatha.
B: We are going to miss Agatha.
(The implicature: "We are not going to miss Terry," so the writer of "The
meaning of Dylan's silence" MUST have read Grice, maybe).
He writes -- the writer of "The meaning of Dylan's silence," not Grice):
"In the summer of 1964, Bob Dylan released his fourth album, “Another Side of
Bob Dylan,” which includes the track “It Ain’t Me Babe.” “Go ’way from my
window/Leave at your own chosen speed,” it begins. “I’m not the one you want,
babe/I’m not the one you need.” That fall, coincidentally, the philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre played a variation on the same tune in a public statement
explaining why, despite having been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, he
would not accept it. “The writer,” he insisted, must “refuse to allow himself
to be transformed into an institution, even if this occurs under the most
honorable circumstances.” Dylan was talking to an imaginary lover, Sartre to an
actual Swedish Academy, but the message was similar: If you love me for what I
am, don’t make me be what I am not."
Which, as implicatures go, is a BEAUTIFUL one!
The writer goes on:
"We do not *know* whether Dylan was paying attention to l’affaire Sartre that
fall 52 years ago. But now that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in
Literature, he seems to be following in Sartre’s footsteps. Indeed, Dylan has
done the philosopher one better: Instead of declining the prize, he has simply
declined to acknowledge its existence."
This reminds me of the Strawson/Grice polemic:
A variant:
A: Nobel is really disinterested.
B: Disinterested persons do not exist. Real disinterestedness does not exist.
A: Yes, they do. Disinterested persons do exist. Yes, it does. Real
disinterestedness does exist. Nobel is really disiniterested.
Another variant:
A: Nobel is really disinterested.
B: There is no such person as Nobel.
A: Yes, there is. He is really disinterested.
The writer goes on:
"Dylan hasn’t issued a statement or even returned the Swedish Academy’s phone
calls."
Perhaps he was busy talking to McEvoy who calls him "Bob".
"A reference to the award briefly popped up on the official Bob Dylan site but
was then, qua implicature, cancelled — at his instruction or not, nobody knows."
Actually, everybody SHOULD know that
ii. The acknowledgment was cancelled either at his instruction, or not.
"And the Swedes, who are used to a lot more gratitude from their laureates,
appear to be losing their patience: One member of the Academy has called Mr.
Dylan’s behavior "impolite and arrogant" -- only in Swedish."
Since Dylan does not READ Swedish, the implicature of insulting is brought to
the forum. In Swedish, "impolite" comes out as what Americans call
"discourteous". Whereas "arrogant" comes out as what Americans call "brave." So
Bob, McEvoy's Popperian exegesis would have it, with a pinch of salt and
Popper's w3, may turn the insult not to injury, but to compliment.
"There is a good deal of poetic justice in this turn of events. For almost a
quarter of a century, ever since Toni Morrison won the Nobel in 1993, the Nobel
committee acted as if American literature did not exist — and now an American
is acting as if the Nobel committee doesn’t exist."
Russell called these 'reciprocal relations'. "One example is "... is the cousin
of...". Thus, if Smith is Geary's cousin, Geary is Smith's cousin. Reciprocal.
"Giving the award to Dylan was an insult to all the great American novelists
and poets who are frequently proposed as candidates for the prize. The
all-but-explicit message was that American literature, as traditionally
defined, was simply not good enough."
This is by writer. I disagree with the implicature!
"This is an absurd notion, but one that the Swedes have embraced: In 2008, the
Academy’s permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, declared that American writers
“don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature” and are limited by
that “ignorance.”"
Oddly, in Italian "Horace" becomes Orazio, from "Horatius". The great Roman
poet was called Horace, in English, to complicate things, and so is in French,
but the French won't care to pronounce the "H".
"Still, it’s doubtful that Dylan [m-]intends [as per implicature] his silence
to be a defense of the honour of American literature. (He did, after all,
accept the Pulitzer Prize for “lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic
power.”)"
But Pulitzer is American? This may be what Grice terms 'DISimplicature.'
"No one knows what Dylan intends [or implicates] — Dylan has always been hard
to interpret, both as a person and as a lyricist, which is one reason people
love him."
Griceian love, I call it.
"But perhaps the best way to understand his [implicature-laden] silence, and to
praise it, is to go back to Sartre, and in particular to Sartre’s concept of
"bad faith."".
Cfr. Urmson on grading apples as bad apples and bad apples ("and regular
apples") -- "On Grading".
"Bad faith, Sartre explains in “Being and Nothingness,” is the opposite of
authenticity. Bad faith becomes possible because a human being cannot simply be
what he or she is, in the way that an inkwell simply is an inkwell. Rather,
because we are free, we must “make ourselves what we are.” In a famous passage,
Sartre uses as an example a cafe waiter who performs every part of his job a
little too correctly, eagerly, unctuously. He is a waiter playing the role of
waiter."
This is ripe for implicatural analysis. As Witters said:
iii. That horse cannot LOOK like a horse: it is a horse.
Moore replied:
iv. Wrong, Austrian engineer: a horse cannot BUT look like a horse (unless you
disguise him, that is!)
"But this “being what one is not” is an abdication of freedom; it involves
turning oneself into an object, a role, meant for other people. To remain free,
to act in good faith, is to remain the undefined, free, protean creatures we
actually are, even if this is an anxious way to live. This way of thinking is
what used to be called existentialism, and Dylan is one of its great products.
Living like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone, is living in Sartrean
good faith, and much of the strangeness of Dylan’s life can be understood as a
desperate attempt to retain this freedom in the face of the terrific pressure
of fame."
v. Like a rolling stone.
however is a SIMILE. It's different when Jagger and Richards do say:
vi. We are the rolling stones.
which is a metaphor, and thus an implicature based on a category mistake (two
singers cannot be stones, let so rolling ones).
"In a profile in The New Yorker in that same year of 1964, Dylan was quoted as
saying that he didn’t “want to write for people anymore” but rather wanted to
“write from inside me.”"
His implicature was later taken up by a philosopher who thought he would refute
Grice ("Grice without an audience," Analysis).
The philosopher didn't. For Grice, if the utterer's intention is directed
towards the recognition by an addressee, where addressee = utterer, this does
not render the expression or utterance meaningless. "Otherwise, I should forbid
my daughter to writer, "Dear Diary," every blessed night!"
"To be a Nobel laureate, however, is to allow “people” to define who one is, to
become an object and a public figure rather than a free individual. The Nobel
Prize is in fact the ultimate example of bad faith: A small group of Swedish
critics pretend to be the voice of God, and the public pretends that the Nobel
winner is Literature incarnate. All this pretending is the opposite of the true
spirit of literature, which lives only in personal encounters between reader
and writer. Dylan may yet accept the prize, but so far, his refusal to accept
the authority of the Swedish Academy has been a wonderful demonstration of what
real artistic and philosophical freedom looks like."
Or not of course. Stockholm in November looks so pretty! (And the implicature
is:!)
Cheers,
Speranza
