In a message dated 12/5/2015 10:48:54 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx shares with us a passage from a lecture by Borges
as
Norton lecturer at Harvard. Borges uses 'creed' in the title -- were the
titles original to the lecturer, or provided posthumously by the editor? In
any
case, the titles have inspired Helm. If Borges speaks of "a poet's creed",
it has inspired Helm to think of his own creed!
May I share my impressions on reading Borges? As a Griceian, I kept my eye
(metaphorically) on the modal -- and I loved Helm's modal intended to
supplant Borges's: for Borges speaks of 'can', while Helm prefers 'must'.
But I would also like to generalise Borges's point. While he speaks of
'reading' and 'writing' (which should remind one of the Mock Turtle -- "Reeling
and Writhing, of course, to begin with --, but as a Griceian, I would like
to generalise. So there's the utterer and the utterer's addressee: there's
speaking and hearing, as it were, or meaning and understanding, or
uttering and interpreting what is being utterered, or addressing and being
addressed.
Borges spoke:
"I think of myself as being essentially a reader. As you are aware, I
have ventured into writing; but I think that what I have read is far more
important than what I have written. For one reads what one likes -- yet one
writes not what one would like to write, but what one is able to write."
The two modals in Borges and Helm then become:
Borges:
i. I write what I can.
Helm:
ii. I write what I must.
(if I may paraphrase). While Borges is struggling with the modals, he comes
up with 'being able to do', but I think he has 'can' in mind. "Can" in the
English usage, not the German one, that means 'know' (as in "Do you can
John Peele?").
But back to Borges, and the detection of his ironies:
"I think of myself as being essentially a reader. As you are aware, I have
ventured into writing"
This is again a typical Borgesian false modesty, if that's a figure of
speech he specialised in. It would be otiose for the committee at Harvard to
appoint as Norton lecturer a mere "reader" (the cruel world being as it is!),
so he KNOWS that his addressee KNOWS that he has 'written' (and more
importantly, that his 'fictions' were translated into Norton's mother tongue!)
"I think of myself as being essentially a reader. As you are aware, I have
ventured into writing; but I think that what I have read is far more
important than what I have written."
The use of "I think", very guarded, was also typical of Borges.
He possibly should have added, "far more important TO ME".
And that was due to various reasons. False modesty implicates some sort of
pretended low self-esteem. Cortazar used to say that there were two types
of readers, the 'active' reader and the 'passive' reader, but perhaps we
shouldn't go there!
Borges:
"I think of myself as being essentially a reader. As you are aware, I have
ventured into writing; but I think that what I have read is far more
important than what I have written."
And now Borges gives a logical, philosophical, conceptual, or as I prefer,
Griceian explanation for that:
"For one reads what one likes -- yet one writes not what one would like to
write, but what one is able to write."
i.e. what one can write.
Perhaps Helm's "must" compares with 'ought', but one think I do NOT like
about 'ought' is that it takes "to" ("ought to") and in this, it's not really
a modal like 'must' is or 'should' is, or 'shall' is, or, 'can' is.
But if we were to consider 'must' as more or less meaning 'ought', we have
in Helm and Borges the famous Kantian paradox that Sinnott-Armstrong
summarised as:
"Ought" Conversationally Implicates "Can".
But back to Borges's explanation:
"For one reads what one likes --"
This is not so evident as it should. For one can think that I may like to
read a very antique Chinese manuscript to learn about Buddhism, but that
manuscript may be kept out of circulation in some lost monastery in Tibet: so
one can imagine a scenario where one does NOT read what one likes."
Borges goes on:
"[Y]et one writes not what one would like to write, but what one is able to
write."
-- or can write.
Borges used to call himself a 'hedonist' reader (never mind Cortazar on
active vs. passive readers). So he is being very serious about 'reading what
one likes'. When professor of English literature, I think he used to lecture
his students on how STUPID the standard course curricula go when they
refer to 'assigned' or 'mandatory' readings. "If it becomes mandatory, don't
read it!" I think he said to his students of English literature. "Why read
Macbeth, say, if you don't enjoy reading it?" (I won't use 'want', because
'want' means 'lack'. Borges uses 'like' which is very _English_ of him:
'like' has rare cognates in the Germanic languages.
"[Y]et one writes not what one would like to write, but what one is able to
write."
-- or can write. In Griceian terms, this is not quite so. For one _can_
utter, say x. So he is working with this 'constellation of presuppositions'
(already contained in the full title of his lectures, "This craft of verse")
of the 'belles lettres': the writer as an artist. Homer wasn't a writer,
yet a poet. So Borges should be more careful here, since what Homer did had
NOTHING to do with writing! (nor enjoying the "Iliad" with _reading_
originally!)
It is in this 'belles-lettres' conception that Borges is having in mind,
which, added to his false modesty, yields this 'can', that Helm wisely
replaces by a 'must'.
What is this basis of this 'must'? (For surely Borges was 'faking' when
referring to this 'can'). Grice would see it as part of the _intention_ to
utter, or express, and the intention to address an addressee.
But back in 1967, Borges was not listening to Grice, who oddly enough, was
delivering the William James lectures at Harvard, not far from Borges!
In the fifth William James lecture, Grice played with 'meaning' without an
addressee, and soon enough, other philosophers were mocking him, and
publishing their mockeries in prestigious journals, too. My favourite must be:
Alec Hyslop*, "Grice Without An Audience", that Hyslop dared publish in
"Analysis", vol. 3.
Cheers,
Speranza
*An interesting philosopher. Other work by Hysop (lovely surname) includes:
Hyslop, A., “Other Minds as Theoretical Entities”, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, 54.
––– Other Minds, Dordrecht: Kluwer.
––– “Sartre and Other Minds,” Sartre Studies International, 6.
–––, and Jackson, F. C., “The Analogical Inference to Other Minds,”
American Philosophical Quarterly, 9:
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