A New Image of Comedy

Schizo-Analysis and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Dayman:

‘Dayman, aah-aahh-aaahhh, Fighter of the Nightman, aah-aahh-aaahhh, Champion of the Sun, You’re a master of karate and friendship for everyone, Dayman, aah-aah-aaahhh, Daaaymaaaannn…’

– Dayman, by Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly

Removing Structure from the image of thought:

            In envisioning their philosophical method, Deleuze and Guittari faced one over-arching plane of immanence that could summarize the whole of their intent for the project that they invested such great amounts of time and effort into.  This goal, if one calls it that, was to challenge the very structure within which we pertain to think about thought; challenging the framework that had culminated in the ‘End of Philosophy’ in the Hegelian and Heideggerian schools, and to establish what might be termed a ‘new image of thought.’  This ‘new image of thought’ would force a completely re-imagining of how we comprehend our reality - now a ‘plane of immanence’ - and how we answer the question ‘what is philosophy’.  This new image of thought would additionally require a new groundwork to replace the hierarchy-establishing and depth-seeking systems dominating philosophical-thought in the modern era.  These related methods were the approaches advanced in Marxism, Freud’s Psychoanalysis, and structuralism, such as the system outlined by Heidegger.  Deleuze and Guittari saw these theories as the result of the culmination of philosophy in Hegel’s ‘end of philosophy’.  Hegel’s system of incorporating negation as applied to the identity-difference relationship had allowed him absorb any critique into his philosophy.  Every new attempt in philosophy, moreover, seemed inevitably bound to simply repeat Hegel’s philosophy.

            Hegel’s ever-so-powerful tool for making this ‘truth’ was the dialectic.  The dialectic established that the identity of a subject-statement was the result of the negation of propositions; x is y, and x is not y.  According to Deleuze, this image of thought searched for truth in the ‘depths’ because it believed that there existed a true identity of difference.  This was the culmination of Plato’s search for the ‘forms’ started thousands of years ago at the dawning of western civilization.  This has led western philosophy and theology to forever seek out truth in the answers to questions of ‘being’.  However, Deleuze says that all philosophers and philosophies that take this approach fall victim to ‘subjectification’.  They favor ‘being’ over ‘becoming’; what is actual in contrast to what is potential.

            Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, and structuralist semiotics all make this same mistake.  Each of these systems assumes various substructures subsume every construct.  The identity of reality was thus hidden in the difference between the visible structure and its underlying sub-structure.  This method of thought constitutes the basic approach of ‘structuralism’.  Marxism takes the Hegelian approach to the dialectic and applies it to socio-economic concerns.  It establishes the existence of the lofty ‘super-structure’ and contrasts it with the underlying ‘base’ or infrastructure.  Freud proclaimed the dialectic created by the ‘conscious’ in opposition to the ‘subconscious’.  Structuralism in semiotics sees language through the lenses of the signifier and the signified.  True meaning is established through the difference between the signifying word and the signified-subject.  Each of these philosophies makes an unwarranted subjectification where they evaluate the sub-structure of depths as being prior to the witnessed structure.

            Thus, while Marxism, Freudianism, and Structuralism have formed much of the groundwork of modern thinking, abandoning the dialectic will require entirely new foundations to be dug in order to establish a new image of thought.  The new philosophy would rest on the notions of ‘surface’, ‘sense’ and ‘nonsense’.  Instead of the dialectic and negation at a molecular level, the new image of thought would see structure as resonating through the molar repetition of differences.  Deleuze and Guittari began to see existence as constructed through the multiplicity of rhizomes and called this new approach, rhizomatics.  A good model of this strategy of thinking comes from the post-modern quantum theory for atomic structures; elements exist molecularly as the result of the differences in structuring of atomic particles repeated billions of times.  Multiplicty, the existence of several planes and the abandonment of a determinable center, would now be key, as opposed to negation in the Hegelian school of thought.  Rather than analyzing the inner-workings and depths of the psyche, they seek to map out desire.  Schizophrenics could be said to occupy at the surface of their desire, perceiving everything in terms of their will and infinite becoming.  In light of this, Deleuze and Guittari advance ‘schizo-analysis’ as the future-way to understanding the mind.

A New Image of Comedy:

            Penetrating what Deleuze is attempting to communicate with these concepts of ‘surface’ and the ‘logic of ‘sense’ requires understanding how ‘nonsense’ manufactures sense.  The consequences of a new image of thought extend far beyond debates on structuralism in classrooms and into every area of thought, communication, and culture.  The philosophy of Deleuze is clearly rhizomatically related to iconic developments in popular culture of Deleuze’s era and in the time since.  There may be no better endeavor with which to apply schizo-analysis, than to that gallant tradition of destruction of nobility in carefully constructed thought; well-timed comedy.

Humor exists, according to Deleuze, in order to quickly deterritorialize the barest of presuppositions.   Humor, thus, is a very definite function of the war machine.  Yet, comedy has for long instead been derived from what Deleuze calls ‘Socratic irony’.  True humor has always evaded this form of comedy, however.  This is because the sense of humor demands the rapid destruction of absurdity. Deleuze comments that, “By same movement with which language falls from the height and depths then plunges below, we must be led back to the surface where there is no longer anything to denote or even to signify, but where pure sense is produced.” (Deleuze, 136) This is often most effectively performed through the embracement and projection of the absurd, of nonsense.  Irony however establishes the co-existence of two contradictory meanings, leading to a resentful sarcasm that favors the underlying intent.  Deleuze describes classical irony as, “The instance which assures the coextensiveness of being and of the individual within the world of representation.” (Deleuze, 138) Well into the twentieth-century, comedy seemed to fall into the same structuralist traps as Marxism and Freudianism.  Youth-culture movements such as the ‘hipsters’ favored being ironic over literal.  However, this form of territorializing comedy would never last.  By the twenty-first century a term had emerged for a new cultural direction; post-irony.  In order to define such a pop-culture based term there is only one conceivable source of definition, the user-contribution based UrbanDictionary.Com.  Urban Dictionary defines ‘post-ironic’ as, “When one's ironic appreciation of something becomes genuine, usually due to either prolonged exposure or the enjoyment derived from how amusingly terrible it is.”  Deleuze himself has very specific complaints about comedy derived from irony.  He writes that, “What all the figures of irony have in common is that they confine the singularity within the limits of the individual or the person.  Thus, irony only in appearance assumes the role of a vagabond.” (Deleuze, 139)  In simpler terms, irony is never funny because it focuses what it calls ‘absurd’ within boundaries it has set to derive a measure of truth.  It cannot be funny because it ignores the potential of the individual’s desire, rather than embracing it as a way of destroying absurdity.  Irony is only hypocrisy then.

            Hence, the concept of the ‘post-ironic’ would seem to strike the heart of the sense of humor.  After all, what is funny is always being simultaneously being laughed at and with.  Thus, true comedy would favor no subjectification.  Jokes would not be constructed through the contrasting of the ‘real’ world within an ideal one as is the case with jokes based purely in irony. Deleuze summarizes how to be funny as such, “What is required is humor, as opposed to the Socratic irony or to the technique of the ascent.” (Deleuze, 135)  Through nonsense the comedy would rapidly generate a sense of destroying the absurdities proclaimed all around as truth or logic.  The characters would thus need to be appropriately schizoid; living presently, occupying the surface, and perceiving desire as one intense flow.  They would approach issues nomadalogically, letting their lines of flight guide them along their planes of immanence.  Humor is referred to as an adventure by Deleuze, and indeed it is, he summarizes, “This adventure of humor, this two-fold dismissal of height and depth to the advantage of the surface is,…, the adventure of the Stoic sage.” (Deleuze, 136)  Thus, comedians embody what could be deemed a post-modern embracement of Stoicism, accepting and confronting the chaosmos in its absurd entirety without resentment.

The great Steve Martin once pined, “Chaos in the midst of chaos isn't funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.”  Mr. Martin thus grasped that in order to be funny comedy must affirm the chaosmos by showing how chaos emerges from order in everyday life.  Any attempt to search for depth, height, or the illusion of progress would ultimately be doomed to absurdity.  Deleuze expands that, “There is a difficult relation, which rejects the false Platonic duality of the essence and the example.  This exercise, which consists in substituting designations, monstratinos, consumptions, and pure destructions for significations…” (Deleuze,136) These destructive elements would spread the most refreshing elements of the war machine throughout the living rooms of Comcast customers everywhere.  Only such a comedy, imagined from these lines, would be truly funny. Perhaps, no show on American television has a better grasp of this, and schizo-comedy in general, than It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, created by Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, and Charlie Day.

The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention:

Charlie:  “Dude man what is going on with you man, you’ve been going off the deep end lately?”

Mac: “Really Stepping up the Insanity Frank”

Frank: “I’m trying to push myself see how far I can go.”

Dennis: “ I feel like you’ve been standing on the edge of a cliff for a while now, I say, ‘hop off.’”

- From ‘The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

            In the momentous episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, ‘The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention’, the gang, a group consisting of three male and 1 female thirty-year olds who run a bar, seek urgent assistance for their nomadic patriach, Frank Reynolds, a drug-addled former robber-baron, played by Danny Devito.  Frank has enough money and few enough morals that he is able to live out his glory days perfectly nomadically.  He is always experimenting with his limits, trying to map out new territories for himself. Frank understands becoming, living within the realm of his possibilities.

            Eventually, however, the Gang comes to the conclusion that some new ‘event’ is required to re-territorialize Frank’s life.  However, they struggle to communicate their special needs for an intervention to the therapist attempting to assist them.  She asks them for information to help her ‘understand’ Frank’s problem.  “What’s Frank struggling with the most?”  The Gang, who understands that Frank’s problem is beyond comprehension, gives her a reply that is completely at the surface, only reflecting what they see as the main problem along Frank’s plane of immanence.  Dennis responds to the therapist, “Well he is trying to bang our aunt.” (which is true, as now she and Frank are both widows).

            The therapist, like most therapists, struggles to see the situation without evaluating the problem as lying with drugs and alcohol.  She states, “These things normally have more to do with drugs and alcohol.”  The Gang however, realizes that drugs and alcohol are not the cause of Frank’s problem they are however related to it at the surface, which they are trying to map out.  Charlie summarizes for the therapist, “Drugs and alcohol are rolled into what we’re talking about.”

            The therapist tries to gain an understanding of the situation, but at the end of their conversation she can only say, “You know? I do offer group therapy.”

The Gang is absolutely bewildered by this, responding, “What is this?  Did you try to intervene on us?”  The therapist politely reflects upon what they have been discussing, “With All Due Respect, you’re talking about bringing guns to an intervention, and you’re drinking wine out of a soda can.”

The therapist immediately begins to search for depth in the Gangs comments and actions, seeing problems with how they live at every turn.  She cannot understand that the live at the surface.  The Gang however can see the situation in no other way.  There thoughts have already followed their lines of flight to wine-filled soda can.  Dennis interjects, “You’re drinking out’ve that can?”  This leads Dee and Charlie to map out Frank’s other qualities.  Dee responds, “Yeah you like that… he’s a smart man.” Charlie agrees, “You stole Frank’s idea… he’s got good ideas… but I do I think she just tried to intervention on us.”  This leads the gang back to the plane of immanence currently facing them with the therapist and intervention.  Dennis refuses to allow the therapist to territorialize for them like that, casting her aside with, “I do think she tried to intervene on us… I think you’ve lost control of the room here.”

            Later on, the Gang takes the initiative to initiate the intervention according to their desire.  They decide to map out their desire by writing letters to Frank explaining the various ways in which his addiction has injured them.  Charlie, being illiterate, dictates to Dennis, posing this revealing question for Frank; “When was the last time we played night-crawlers together Frank?”  Dennis can’t help but ask, “Okay, what is that?”  Charlie explains to him that, “It’s no big deal… it’s what it sounds like.”

            At this time however, Dennis can no longer resist the line of flight pulling him towards greater discovery. Dennis claims, “Yeah, but now you’ve said it, and I can’t move past it… What it sounds like is that you two crawl around together at night… like worms.” This new line of flight was begun by the event that Dennis cannot move past; night-crawlers.  Perhaps Dennis desires explore a similar becoming-animal to the surface mapped by Charlie and Frank in their apartment games. 

            The time for the intervention approaches, and the Gang has realized that they may not know if what they are doing is a good idea.  This leads them to ask the therapist to return to help them however, as Dee surmises, “I’m guessing from that look on your face you wouldn’t have lured him [Frank] down here with a fire.”  The therapist continues to resist deterritorializing from the normal boundaries within which she acts and thinks, commenting, “Yeah.  And I wouldn’t have an intervention at a bar either.”  Sweet Dee can only reply, “Well, look lady, all mistakes we made on our own, so it’s a good thing that you’re here.”

Suddenly Frank bursts into the room waving his pistol high in the air.  Filled with the passion of the war-machine and ready to face the destructive and deterritorializing force of the fire he yells, “Where’s the Goddamn fire?”  However, the Gang quickly descends upon him frantically trying to wrestle the firearm away from Frank while shouting, “Intervention!  Intervention… Intervention! Woooooop!   You’re trapped!  You’re trapped… you’re trapped!  Woooooooop! Gotcha! Gotcha!”

Frank confused about where the lines of flight are leading from this event asks, “What’s going?”  Dennis’s reply summarizes the Gang’s mapping out of surface of the event very plainly for them.  He drunkenly proclaims, “You sit down so we can tell you what an asshole you’ve been!” while Dee adds “We’re gonna get all in your face and point out your faults!”

Frank, however, in true schizophrenic fashion, transforms the event so that at the surface, which Frank most definitely occupies, becomes something according to his desire; “A Roast?!”  “I’ve always wanted to be roasted!”

Series on the Intervention:

Charlie: “Why do we never play night-crawlers anymore?”

Frank: “I don’t know Charlie?”

Dee: “What is that?”

Dennis: “It’s a game where they crawl around at night like worms.”

Charlie“I never said that.”

Frank: “Yeah, well that’s what it is.”

Charlie: “Intervention! Intervention! Is nothing private Frank?”

-From ‘The Gang Gives Frank an Intervention, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

“Intervention!  Intervention… You can’t be banging Gail the snail!” shout Dennis and Dee at a new event interrupting their plane of immanence and directing their lines of flight away from the previous events.  This new event was the intervention of the gangs other member Mac.  He replies with, “What are you interventioning on me for… Donna just reminds me so much of your mom which was you know like the best sex I ever had.”

            Suddenly Frank shouts “Intervention!  Intervention!  You banged my dead wife?”

 The Gang’s line of flight has been rapidly deterritorialized by the intervention of another event; Mac’s past affair with Frank’s now deceased wife.  The word, ‘intervention’, has come to have an entirely different sense as it is used by the Gang in comparison to what normal semiotics would interpret it to signify.  The Gang may just as well substitute the word ‘event’ for intervention and say that they are staging an event rather than giving an intervention.  All they are really looking to do is create a moment of aggression in order cause a detteritorialization.  This event causes them to remap their plane of immanence and to redraw their lines of flight according to their desire.  Thus, by screaming, “Intervention!” in someone’s face, the Gang have discovered a method in which they can create an event allowing them to exist at the surface.  By shouting they draw attention to the present moment, the line of flight that have brought them there, and the plane of immanence facing them.

It is obvious how the characters within the show make use of the word to keep themselves and others at the surface, but it was the writers of the show that are the real engines of comedy.  By always keeping their characters at the surface – usually through on-screen intoxication – the producers of the show have also found a way to continually and rapidly deterritorialize their show for the audience.  The show is less written filled with jokes rather than it is determined by the schizophrenic interruptions of its cast.  This prevents the audience from attempting to create territories for the show.  Such territorialization might allow them to extract meaning from the show, but there is none to be had.  It is entirely at the surface, and must be watched as such.  Anyone who cannot do this will not enjoy the humor in the show.  It is not a show for state-thinkers.

Mac: “Well she was alive at the time? Did you not know that?”

Frank: “No…”

Charlie: “It’s cool man.  Intervention… Intervention.”

-From ‘the Gang Gives Frank an Intervention, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

The Nightman Cometh:

Charlie: “doo deedee doo deedee doo, some other musical stuff!”

Mac: “What’cha doing buddy?”

Charlie: “I wrote a musical”

-From ‘The Nightman Cometh’, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

And with that completely nonsensical opening, begins a new tale of superheroes, Princesses, monsters, and villains.  There will be bravery and there will be mischief.  And true to form, the paradigm episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s fourth season, ‘The Nightman Cometh’ is completely devoid of depth whatsoever.  It is a pure schizophrenic episode.  The coming of the Nightman could indeed be seen as an event within the context of the show in the true Deluzian sense of the term.  It was this coming that served as the major focal event around which the show’s most schizoid character, Charlie Kelly, organizes his plane of immanence.  The writing of his musical was an act borne solely out of desire.

            The gang responds to Charlie’s statement with their usual astoundment.  Dennis asks, “What?  Why?”  Sweet Dee even proclaims to Charlie that, “Nobody writes a musical without a reason.  That makes no sense.”  However, this search for ‘reason’ betrays Dennis and Dee’s common miscomprehension of the term sense.  Sense is not produced through formal logic in statement.  Things do not need a reason to make sense.  In fact, having a reason for action is inherently a search for depth, thus keeping the actor from acting on the surface of their desire. “But who verses?  Who are we doing this verses?” Mac asks.  Neither Mac, nor the rest of the Gang, can apprehend the situation through any mechanism other than the dialectic.  They see everything in terms of negation; their actions continually expect and enforce a displacement of the other.  Charlie understands this, however the others do not.  To their questions, Charlie’s only response is a mere,  “Okay, well, this guy did.”

            Dee later has additional struggles with interpreting the ‘meaning’ of the performance.  She asks Charlie in frustration, “Charlie… What the hell is this play about?  However, she inevitably fails in her quest to do so, because she cannot envision the drama without conceiving of a substructure to it, the words and lyrics must imply some deeper meaning.  Sweet Dee continues, “I’m a Princess who lives in a coffeeshop?  Why am I in love with a little boy?”  Charlie tries to calm Dee by answering, “You’re in love with a young man.”  However, Dee cannot understand yet how a boy becomes a man – by the end of the episode, everyone will – she claims, “You wrote boy… the audience is going to think I’m a child molester.”   Sweet Deandra can only see the subject boy as signifiying a little boy, and her intents as signifiying to commit statutory rape, as if her performance of a character in a play would cause people to seek a molesting-depth in the nonsensical song she is supposed to sing.  Dee continues to impede the progress of the play, “Charlie, are you goddamn Kidding me?  You’re wanting me to say I want to make love to a tiny, little, baby boy!”

Charlie has soon had enough of Dee’s problems, later saying that he will “Smack the face out of your face!”  Charlie, again by far the most schizophrenic character, knows that the drama he has written has no meaning – after all, Charlie is illiterate.  The words are only reflective of his desires, which are discovered later in the episode.  Charlie argues with Deandra, reiterating, “I’ve explained this to you.  It’s a metaphor.”

Dee, however, can still not abandon her search for deeper meaning, questioning him, “I’m not convinced you know what that word means.”

Series on Trolls:

Frank: “You’ve gotta pay the troll toll, to get into this boy’s hole, you’ve gotta pay the troll toll to get in, you’ve gotta…”

Charlie: “Okay, stop, stop.  Good rhythm, I like the enthusiasm.  It sounds like you’re saying ‘boy’s hole’, and its clearly ‘soul’.”

-from ‘the Nightman Cometh’, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

            Dee’s confusion over the play’s obvious lack of meaning is shared by the rest of the cast.  The Gang’s perennial attempts to search for symbols within the work continue to forcefully territorialize it.  Mac presents the issue as, “Charlie, can I bring something up?  I think we have to be very careful about how we do the rape seen.”  The Gang misreads the schizoid play like Freudian psychoanalysis misreads the schizophrenic mind, favoring the depth to form a hierarchy.  Charlie point blankly responds that, “There’s no rape seen.”  Mac, who plays the character of the Nightman while Dennis play the part of the little boy to become Dayman, continues with, “Well sure… I pay the troll-toll, then I rape Dennis.”

Words and their meanings have a very different function in the schizophrenic mind of Charlie.  Charlie attempts to explain the very different concepts embodied by the words he uses, telling Mac that, “No, you do not rape him… you become him…. Let me walk you guys through this….  Once he gets near you, you have to sense him, suddenly you sense him!”  The meaning in the language that Charlie uses is based on his desire rather than on words functioning as symbols for a signified something.  The fact that the audience gets the ‘sense’ of rape from this scene underscores the inherent aggression and violence in becoming.  The Nightman approaches the sleeping boy from behind, turning away from the face and betraying the trust of the boy.  However, by doing so the Nightman initiates an event of becoming, which forever changes the little boy.  This event actually leads the boy on the path to fulfillment by forcing him to become a man, finally allowing him to follow his line of flight.

            Hence, the event of the coming of the Nightman leads the boy to a profound affirmation of his own manliness.  He gains the strength to confront the troll that has dominated and territorialized every aspect of his plane of immanence.  The troll demands, “Come over here and scratch my itchy-witchy toesy-woesies… I control you!”  However, the coming of the Nightman has brought something the despot-troll did not expect, for the boy has not emerged as Nightman, but as Dayman, his polar opposite.  The boy now makes his declaration of manliness, “You control nothing.  I am not you’re slave anymore, and I am not a boy!  I am not a man… I am… the Dayman!”  There is not a dialectic established between the Nightman and the Dayman, the identity of ‘the boy’ – which reflects Charlie – is not determined by the negation of the two.  Rather Charlie’s identity can only be understood through Charlie’s desire to become ‘Dayman’ as he has shaped his plane of immanence entirely in response to the event of the coming of the Nightman.

Becoming the Charlie Day-man:

Princess: “You have defeated the evil that was here.  You once were a boy but now you’re a man and I am in love with you.”

-From The Nightman Cometh, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

            Throughout It’s Always Sunny there is one character that embodies the new image of comedy in its fullest sense.  That event is Charlie Kelly, who goes by the first name of the actor who plays him, Charlie Day.  Psychoanalysists would most likely kill to get Charlie Kelly onto their plush velvet sofas.  Throughout the course of several seasons the It’s Always Sunny audience comes to learn that Charlie’s mother was – and actually still is – a prostitute who commonly has relations with his Uncle.  It also becomes quite evident however, that this Uncle molested Charlie multiple times when he was a child, quite possibly with the knowledge of his mother.  Psychoanalysis will never be able to correctly understand the impact these abuses had on Charlie however because the do not map out the his schizophrenic desires that have arisen in response.

            Only schizo-analysis can begin to bring revelation about this character and the nonsensical musical he produces.  His drama, ‘The Nightman Cometh’, contains no symbolism and no deeper structure underlies it.  Only understanding it at its surface can bring clarity.  The search for depth leads the Gang to look for meaning under the surface sense of the plays songs and lines, causing them to see molestation everywhere within it.  Now obviously audiences – although in multi-season long dramatic irony, not the Gang – make the obvious connection between the abuses Charlie suffered in childhood and the Dayman’s conflict with the troll and Nightman.  However, psychoanalysis offers no further understanding because it does not see how the play is in response to Charlie’s desire, not his response to being molested years ago.

            A the very end of the musical, after the choir has finished the last refrain of Dayman, Charlie Kelly emerges in a brilliant yellow Producer’s suit to sing one final song.  In this song he affirms his past, but also his becoming into something new.  He reveals that the play was not reactive, but an active force of his desire.  What Charlie desires, is that Coffee-shop Princess singing about little boys performed by Sweet Dee.  The real Coffee shop waitress is however sitting in the audience, for Charlie had agreed to stop stalking her on the condition that she come watch the musical.  He reveals to the entire audience that the entire play was only the instrument of his desire for her.

“I was that little boy, that little baby-boy was me, I once was a boy, but now I am a man, I fought the Nightman, lived as Dayman, now I’m here to ask for your hand, so if you want to marry, will you marry me?”

-from ‘The Nightman Cometh’, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

            Obviously her reply is a firm and resolute, “No!”  The Charlie Kelly of Philadelphia may have failed his audience, however Charlie Day, the writer and actor, has provided real audiences with the perfect summary of schizoid desire, all in within one twenty-two minute episode.  His comprehension of how to keep a character at the surface, of how to communicate a character’s desire, is strongly reminiscent of another legend of American comedy with the same name, Charlie Chaplin.  These geniuses keep their audiences from penetrating the surface of their show, relying on nonsense to produce sense for their watchers.  This is as Deleuze explains, “In all these respects, the surface is the transcendental field itself, and the locus of sense and expression.” (Deleuze, 125) Thus, they are able to create a world of continual and violent deterriotrializiation that is quite simply very funny.  As Deleuze writes about humor in The Logic of Sense, “The important thing is to do it quickly: to find quickly something to designate, to eat, or to break, which would replace the signification (the Idea) that you have been invited to look for.  All the faster and better since there is no resemblance between what one points out and what one has been asked.” (Deleuze, 135)  Charlie Day and the rest of the Gang from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia understand that humor functions in this way, providing them with a finely honed comedic sense allowing them to turn the most ordinary and meaningless of themes into absurdly revealing situational comedy.  They possess what Deleuze refers to as an ‘odd inspiration’ — that, “one know how to ‘descend.’” (Deleuze, 135)  This is the new image of comedy.

On Maimonides

1) Short Answer (Question 1)

Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed is quite arguably one of the most intricate and expansive philosophical works in all of the histories of the traditions stemming from the Ancient Greek Philosophers and the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.  While, Maimonides was a devout believer and a respected rabbi, he realized that there existed deep divides between common or literal interpretations of Hebrew Scripture and the logical necessities of philosophy and science.  However, Maimonides also believed that comprehending the complex resolutions to these issues would be beyond the vast majority of persons and their misreading of his text might have dangerous implications for societal cohesion – and perhaps for Maimonides himself!  Hence, it was written with the utmost care and deliberation by its author, so that he would not be misunderstood by the ‘vulgar’ masses but would so guide a chosen few students out of their perplexity and towards a far deeper understanding of the Divine.

Thus, Maimonides begins his work carefully with a discussion on the corporeality of God and how it relates to the creation of humankind in his image.  In the very first page of the first chapter of The Guide Maimonides makes it clear that true belief in God would be inconsistent with believing in his corporeality.  He writes, “Now with respect to that which ought to be said in order to refute the doctrine of the corporeality of God and to establish His real unit – which can have no true reality unless one disproves His corporeality.” (Maimonides, 1.1, 21)  Maimonides arguments for why God must be non-corporeal are provided throughout the rest of the three volumes of The Guide, however it is absolutely critical for him to first establish the premise that God has no material existence in order that he may then establish what he truly thinks is meant by the scriptural dictum that humanity was designed in the ‘image of God’.           

If God is not a material being akin to some sort of superhuman, then as Maimonides explains to us, we are only like him in relation to humanity’s true form, which is the apprehension of the intellect. Hence, the Divine must truly be a sort of rational intellect that apprehends itself and the universe in the way that a human being is conscious of themselves and their ability to think.  Throughout the rest of the Guide, Maimonides ventures to describe as much as can be understood about this intellect, drawing on the ideas of many preceding thinkers from both Ancient Greece and Islam, but he is chiefly driven by the Aristotelian conception of an Active Intellect; which is the first cause or prime mover of the Universe.

While there are many variations of the idea of the Active Intellect that different thinkers have proposed, the general concepts are quite similar; the Universe is in some way willfully emanated from a rational, but non-corporeal entity whose will provides order to the whole of the cosmos.  This being would be necessarily perfect but beyond complete comprehension by any lesser intellects.  Its absolute perfection is not just the result, but in fact ‘is’ its essence as a purely rational entity.

Thus, humanity could not have been created in the physical image of this Deity or Cosmic Intellect.  The only trait that a person could have that would be at all comparable to this entity would be their intellect.  The human intellect; its ability to think rationally and to apprehend itself, is humanity’s sole perfection and why we humans can be said to have been created in the image of God.  As Maimonides’s reflects on this point, “Now it is a thing to wondered at that man’s punishment for his disobedience should consist in his being granted a perfection that he did not possess before, namely, the intellect.”

2) Essay (Questions 4 & 6)

Maimonides on God: God’s Being, God’s Unity, God’s Essence, God’s Ways

            One of Maimonides’s self-declared motivations for his writing of The Guide of the Perplexed was to draft a philosophically and theologically cohesive cosmology through a synthesis of the traditions stemming from both Aristotle’s Active Intellect and the Abrahamic religious traditions. However, with Maimonides’s immediate discarding of any corporeal divine being on the very first page of The Guide, it is clear that a cogent explanation of God will be far more complex than of the simplistic doctrines for the ‘vulgar’ masses.  For Maimonides’s to come to a proper understanding of what he so fervently believed it was necessary delve into the very nature of God’s being.  These topics revolve closely around the questions of God’s ‘quiddity’, or ‘thatness’, and his ‘annity’, or ‘whatness’.  Achieving a clearer comprehension of how these terms apply to God’s being is essential in beginning to answer any questions about God’s attributes or actions, such as; his unity, ways, and free will.  However, to reveal the full scope of the complexity of these issues, Maimonides’s answers to these issues are drawn from the arguments for a divine, rational entity of both Ancient Greek philosophers and the Islamic Muktakallimun.  The thinkers and theories most central to these specific subjects are undoubtedly Avicenna with his arguments from necessity and Aristotle with his arguments from the first motion of the universe.  Thus, the questions surrounding God’s ‘thatness’ and ‘whatness’ are absolutely essential to understanding Maimonides’s Neo-Platonic re-interpretation of the teachings of the Torah.

In Chapter 1.59 of The Guide of the Perplexed, Maimonides summarizes about God’s quiddity and annity that, “God… is existent of necessity and that there is no composition in Him, as we shall demonstrate, and that we are only able to apprehend the fact that He is and cannot apprehend His quiddity… For he has no ‘That’ outside of His ‘What’ and hence an attribute cannot be indicative of one of the two.” (Maimonides, 1.59, 135)  To properly understand this quote, it is useful to gain a better understanding of what is meant by quiddity, annity, and God’s being.  Avicenna was also central in Maimonides’s own development of these concepts.  E.M. Macierowski’s analysis of Avicenna’s writings on God’s quiddity in includes an in depth discussion of these terms. Quiddity is the ‘essence’ of something, or what it is that makes up something; ‘whatness’.  The essence of physical creatures and objects is matter.  If God were to not have an essence, then he would be rendered completely unknowable to humankind.  Annity is a slightly trickier notion of essence denoting the ‘thatness’ of a thing; what makes something that particular thing.  Annity is the ‘being’ of a thing.  Avicenna tells us that God’s annity is that he is necessary for the bringing of the universe into being.  Macierowski makes it clear that he believes that according to Avicenna God did have a quiddity.[1]  However, God’s quiddity is most exceptionally unique in that it is the same as his annity.  In this manner Avicenna pioneered the argument that the essence of the First Intellect is that it is absolutely necessary of existence; God is Being.

This critical distinction between God’s quiddity and annity is at the very center of coming to a better understanding of the Divine Intellect as Maimonides would depict it.  It frames the entire discussion of what one can even say to know about God’s nature or Divine attribute.  Maimonides highlights this issue in when he continues the discussion in Chapter 1.60.  He makes the analogy, “An example is that of a man who has heard the term elephant and knows that it is an animal and demands to know its shape and true reality….” (Maimonides, 1.6, 146) Maimonides claims that it is very well possible that another person may entirely misinform this ignoramus as to the form of an elephant, and he may believe it.  However, this does not mean that this poor fool knows a single thing about elephants.  As Maimonides continues, “But I shall say that the thing that he has imagined as having these attributes is merely an invention and is false and that there is nothing in existence like that.” (Maimonides, 1.6, 146)  This comparison provides simple concrete imagery that makes the logic of Maimonides argument quite clear.  Hence, in the same manner, no one can be said to know anything about God’s annity, ‘thatness’; or what it is about the Divine that makes it God?  The result of not knowing his annity is that no one can positively name any of God’s attributes, the only accurate way to discuss Divine attributes is through negation; saying what God is not.  This claim of Maimonides is certainly amongst the most valuable conclusions in the entire of The Guide of the Perplexed.

However, while nothing further can be said of God’s annity, God’s quiddity, , is according to Maimonides something that humanity can apprehend – if properly educated and attuned – and is deeply dependant on the arguments for the existence of a one singular God provided by prior thinkers who were critical in the formation of Maimonides’s own beliefs.  Avicenna’s argument from the existence of people, the universe, and everything for the necessity of God’s own existence is certainly one of the most important of these ideas.  Avicenna writes, “If we suppose something possible of existence to be non-existent, no impossibility follows from that, so it cannot do without a cause for its existence.  And if it does exist, it becomes necessary of existence by another thing.” (Avicenna, 1.2.1, 14)  This highlights the distinction that Avicenna makes between things that are necessary and things that are possible.  The universe is possible of existence and is of necessity brought into existence by something else which is necessary (God).  Things that are shown to be necessary, by virtue of something else, may possibly exist by themselves.  Thus, Avicenna makes the case for God as a necessary existent of nature.

Avicenna’s concept of necessity was not the only argument for God’s existence earnestly believed by Maimonides, Aristotle’s theories on the origin of motion of universe.  By postulating from what he deemed to be readily apparent; that motion in the universe is continuous and eternal, Aristotle claims that there must be one eternal cause of this motion.  This cause would be necessarily unmoving, because what is continuous must have a stable cause according to Aristotle.  More importantly, it would necessarily have no other cause for its existence, because then that would beg the question of what the cause of that entity was.  Thus, Aristotle declares that there must exist a ‘Prime Mover’ that was the source of motion in the Universe.  Maimonides would use the works of later thinkers to evolve this concept into his “First Intellect’ which was God.  Aristotle summarizes the bulk of his argument as such; “Motion must be continuous, because what is always is continuous, whereas what is in succession is not continuous.  But further, if motion is continuous, it is one, and it is one only if the mover and the moved are each of them one, since in the event of a thing’s being moved now by one thing and now by another the whole motion will not be continuous but successive.” (Aristotle, Bosley-Tweedale, 98)

While Avicenna and Aristotle approached the issue of God’s existence from different angles, the two of them need to be understood together in order to comprehend what Maimonides’s has to say about the nature of the Divine.  Avicenna’s arguments from necessity are not easily apprehended and rely heavily on an understanding of the God’s essence and being.  Aristotle’s discussion of the Prime Mover is more easily understood as merely identifying that there must be a first cause to bring motion into the universe.  The concept of necessity however reveals perhaps more in the way of delving into the nature of God through its discussion of God’s quiddity and annity.  Additionally, Avicenna’s ideas lead to the concept of an emanating universe.  Aristotle’s discussion of the Prime Mover is usually considered to be closely linked with belief in an eternal world.  Maimonides’s own position on the creation of the world is clearly against an eternal world making emanation a much closer belief to his own.  However, as in so many things in the history of ideas, it is far from clear that the differences between the Aristotelian concepts of first motion and eternity and the Neo-Platonized concepts of necessity and generation are no more than a difference of terms, rather than meanings.

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[1] E.M. Macierowski, “Does God Have A Quiddity According to Avicenna”. Pg. 83

On Plato

Part A:

What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn't believe in the beautiful itself and isn't able to follow anyone who could lead him to the knowledge of it?  Don't you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state?  Isn't the dreaming: whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?  (Republic V, 470 6c)

Plato’s Republic delivers one of the most renowned discussions of epistemology in the whole scope of literature.  In fact, this Socratic dialogue pioneered the concept of ‘truth’ within the academic traditions of all Western cultures.  In the republic, Plato draws a distinction between those persons who are concerned with surface appearances of things, ‘likenesses’, and those who study actual things themselves, ‘the thing itself that it is like?’.  One of the examples Plato provides to illustrate his point concerns the search for beauty, and the differing methods these two parties have for ascertaining it.  Someone who concerns themselves with the ‘likenesses’ of things would in Plato’s view, be a ‘nominalist’; someone who believes that their knowledge comes only from their sense-perceptions.  Thus a nominalist, believing that things indeed are as they appear to themselves, would believe that true beauty exists merely as something that appears beautiful to their subjective consciousness.  This person would not believe that there exists an objective truth to beauty outside of their subjective perceptions; they would not, ‘believe in the beautiful itself’.  Plato also refers to this party in other passages as a ‘lover of sights and sounds’.

            The other type of person believes in the beautiful itself because they believe in actual ‘knowledge’, the objective truth of things outside one’s own perceptions of them.  Plato elsewhere in the republic makes the case that this objective true nature of things are abstract, non-spatiotemporal forms.  Plato refers to this party as the real philosophers, or those who love the sight of truth, as opposed to simply sights and sounds.  In the above passage, Plato argues that in comparison to the philosophers, the nominalists are living within a waking dream state; “Don’t you think that he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state?” (Republic V, 470 6c) After all, Plato asks, what is dreaming other than confusing one’s perceptions, the way things appear to one’s own mind, to be reality. He writes, “Isn't the dreaming: whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?”  (Republic V, 470 6c)

            The analogy of nominalism and dreaming is an important argument for Plato, and one that constitutes the most critical of components in his famous ‘Allegory of the Cave’.  Indeed, it seems that one of Plato’s biggest motivations in writing was to spread the idea that sense-perception is so obviously wavering and fallible that to believe in its truth limits one to living truly outside of reality, in their own dream.  Thus, this became his motivation for promoting his theory of the forms, the study of which Plato believed would lead humanity to true knowledge.  The principle from this true knowledge would allow Philosopher-Kings to guide the rest of society towards a more perfect state.

As Rather, the safest course by far is to propose that we speak about these things in the following way: what we invariably observed becoming different at different times – fire for example – to characterize that, i.e., fire, not as "this," but always as “what is such," and to speak of water not as "this," but always as “what is such." (Timeaus, 49d)

In this section of the Timeaus Plato is addressing tendencies of persons to mistakenly refer to some things that are not material objects as if they were.  Plato saw that at the time, this was a mistake that was carried to the very foundational levels of physics when the Classical Greeks spoke of the four elements; Earth, Air, Wind, and Fire.  However, this tendency is still a common type of mistake used in language today.

In this passage, Plato first brings up the concept of ‘becoming different at different times’.  One simple way of reading this is that something is always changing, or in a state of flux.  The example Plato gives of this here is ‘fire’.  At the time ‘fire’ was considered to be one of the four basic elements that made up all of matter.  Thus, people spoke of ‘fire’ as something that was ‘this’, a material object of some sort.  One might have incorrectly said, “Pour water on ‘this’ fire,” as if ‘this’ fire were one thing.  However, there is no such thing as ‘fire’ if one tries to conceive of it as such a singular material object.  Fire is something that is always becoming such that it is ‘fiery’.  In this manner, Plato asks that one not speak of fire as ‘this’, but speak of it like an adjective, as ‘what is such’ that it is becoming fiery.  If one thinks of water as something that is always flowing, in flux, then it would be appropriate to level the same restriction on the use of ‘water’ versus ‘watery’.             In the Timeaus, Plato proposes a model of physics drawn from these ideas of becoming versus being.  His model is built a perceivable world in constant flux, the receptacle within which matter is arranged into perceivable things, and finally the non-dimensional or material forms upon which the shape of matter within the receptacle is based.  Essentially, Plato posits that what humans have access to through their perceptions is always in a state of flux because of the insights Heraclitus proffers.  These objects of matter are always in a state of ‘becoming’ what they are, and thus ‘what they are’ cannot be something material as they are continuously changing in that regard.  ‘What they are’, their form, must then be something that does not exist within space-time.   This is the realm of ‘being’, or what actually is, and it is the world of the perfect forms whatever infinite number of them there may be.  These realms of ‘becoming’ are ‘being’ are connected by a medium Plato refers to as a ‘receptacle’.  The forms are essentially concepts that when arranged in the fundamental medium of the receptacle to become our objects of perception.  The objects of perception may be arrangements of multiple forms at multiple times and thus are always in a state of flux, which is why according to Plato, the realm of ‘becoming’ cannot be the realm of true knowledge.

Part B:

But since not even this abides, that what flows flows white, but rather it is in a process of change, so that there is flux in this very thing also, the whiteness and it is passing over into another color, lest it be convicted of standing still in this respect—since this is so, is it possible to give any name to a color which will properly apply to it? (Theatetus 182d)

In this passage of the Theatetus, Plato is creating what Burnyead refers too as the extended flux doctrine that nominalists such as Protagorus and Heraclitus must theoretically also accept. According to Burnyead, Plato synthesizes these premises in an extravagant reductio ad absurdum; he demonstrates that the first two premises are co-dependent and the third necessarily follows.  At this point, the nominalist position is constructed in its most cohesive and seemingly flawless structure, and Plato garners his opponents’ approval of his synthesis. By combining his opponents’ arguments, he can simultaneously make them more mutually dependent, and thus when he attacks one of them the damage spreads to the other.  For example, Plato argues against perception and knowledge by claiming it results in the impossibility of recalled knowledge outside the present sense experience.  “Then we have this result, that a man who has come to know something and still remembers it doesn’t know it because he doesn’t see it?” (164 b)  This, according to Socrates, is an impossible result.  Plato also provides the problem of future knowledge, or predictions, as an argument that limits knowledge as perception merely to the present experience.  Socrates summarizes his point, “But so long as we keep within the limits of that immediate present experience of the individual which gives rise to perceptions and to perceptual judgments, it is more difficult to convict these latter of being untrue.” (179 c)   Convicting them of being untrue, however, will be Socrates’ goal.

Plato then outlines the consequences of the third premise, Heracliteanism, which Protagoras must also accept; that an expanded concept of flux would devoid all language of any meaning whatsoever.  This is the basis of the Burnyead’s extended flux doctrine that Plato uses to show that perception cannot be what constitutes true knowledge because if one accepted the extended flux doctrine language would not be possible because becoming white would also be the same as becoming not white.  ‘Seeing’ would be no different than ‘hearing’.  However, language is not impossible so the position would seem absurd, so because of the reductio ad absurdum, Protagorus and Thaeatetus would also have to be incorrect.

There is also a conservative interpretation of this passage from the Theatetus.  This interpretation does not rely on an extended doctrine of flux, but instead rests on the concept that all of Plato’s opponents must accept Heraclitean flux, because if any stability could exist, then so could unity outside of perception. Thus Plato’s trap lies in that those who accept Heraclitean flux end up not being able to accept any stability in their model whatsoever, and which in turn means they must also accept that there is nothing they know about their sense perception because that must also be completely unstable.  Any stability would produce a unity that could conceivably be knowable as an objective truth.  This unified concept would be objectively true outside of sense perception, and thus would refute knowledge as perception.  This interpretation definitely turns on the above passage.  Plato uses the notion of color and attempts to define and communicate it linguistically.  ‘White’ according to Plato is not something that  ‘is’ white.  Instead, it is something that is in a state of becoming something one perceives and refers to as white.  It, if it is even an it, ‘flows’ white.  However, if it is always in a state of becoming white, it is always changing at the material level, the level of perception.  If perceptions all one can know, such as a nominalist does, then one could never really know anything at all.  This is because a perception could not exist as a singular unitary concept that one could distinguish, much less actually ‘know’.  The perception that one has of white could just as easily be referred to by the name of any other color because that perception was always changing to another color anyways.  This surely cannot be the platform on which to base knowledge.  There must be a form of white, which the perception may become at one moment but may always become something else.  This form is what should be considered true knowledge and studied.

This is why the conservative interpretation seems to be a more accurate interpretation.  It only makes sense that Plato would be arguing for his position in the firmest and most consistent approach possible, and thus would choose the interpretation that made the least radical assumptions.  The conservative interpretation does not make Plato make any radical claims, but simply allows Plato to use his opponents’ simple and basic premises to show that their ideas would necessitate the absurdity of knowledge.  This is a safer approach then attempting to force his opponents into accepting a radical doctrine of extended flux that makes seeing equal hearing and results in the impossibility of language because that seems unfair.  This interpretation would imply that Plato believed in a lesser degree of flux, so if Theatetus or Protagorus were here they would most likely also be able to only accept that lesser flux and hence avoid refutation based on extended flux.  Instead, it is easier and more consistent for Plato to simply use basic flux to show that knowledge could never be knowledge if it is always fluctuating.  Thus, no one can ever claim that one derives their knowledge from perpetually changing perceptions nor that man is the incorrigibly accurate measurer of the world.

“You see, the man who has been thus far guided in matters of love, who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of loving; all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature; that, Socrates is the reason for his earlier labors.  (Symposium, 210e)

The Symposium is considered to be one of Plato’s finest literary achievements and one of the most complete discussions by Plato of his complete ontology.  Within the Symposium Plato made one of the most famous and certainly most elegant discussions of love and beauty in the history of literature.  This discussion of love and beauty was one of the key matters around which the debate of Plato’s theory of forms revolved.  The above passage from the Symposium is critical in illustrating how Plato’s theory of forms relates  to his ontology, or how Plato believed the world to really exist as; what was reality for Plato.  There are two very important but different interpretations of Plato’s ontology that can be easily applied to this passage in an effort to summon understanding from perplexity.  These interpretations are those of Plato scholars Gregory Vlastos and Terry Penner.                                                                                    Gregory Vlastos pioneered a dominant contempory view of Plato and his theory of forms called the ‘Degree’s of Reality’ Thesis.  This theory interpreted Plato to mean that there were higher or lower levels, degrees, of reality.  Thus, some levels of reality would be more ‘real’ than others.  Ultimately, this view holds that Plato believed that the forms occupied the highest degree of reality.  In this way, it is not that Plato believes that objects of opinion do or do not exist, but instead that are a less correct version of reality.  Thus, the object of opinion X would be both X and not X at the same time.  Socrate’s discusses in the Republic, “Or can you find a more appropriate place to put them than intermediate between being and not being?  Surely, they can’t be more than what is or not be more than what is not.” (Republic, 479, c).  However, by studying the forms, one is discovering more accurately what an object truly is because a form literally is the perfect version of a ‘thing’ through universal literal self-predication; the form of X is literally X. Vlastos’s argument is supported in part by text from the Symposium where Diotima describes the ‘upward path’ persons embark on when discovering beauty.  First, they love beautiful objects, then, they love beautiful laws.  Finally, they love the form of beauty itself and have found reality.  As Diotima explains, “You see, the man who has been thus far guided in matters of Love, who has beheld beautiful things in the right order and correctly, is coming now to the goal of Loving: all of a sudden he will catch sight of something wonderfully beautiful in its nature.” (Symposisum, 210, e).  However, many others realize that what Diotima is explaining here is the ‘order of discovery’ and not different degrees of reality for beauty.                                                                                                              There is another interpretation of Plato proffered by the scholar Terry Penner that removes many of the problems from Vlasto’s thesis.  This interpretation relies on the distinction – that Plato makes throughout his works – of being and becoming.  The essential idea of being is that ‘to be’ a thing that thing must become one unified whole.  Something that is becoming something else is always becoming more than one thing.  This is based on a world of flux where everything is always in motion and becoming something else.  Objects of opinion and perceptions are always in this flux and thus are never becoming one thing.  On the other hand, the forms are the form the receptacle – Plato’s basic material substratum imagined in the Timeaus – takes when the receptacle has become one thing.  Plato states that the receptacle is, “a receptacle of all becoming – its wetnurse, as it were.” (Timeaus, 49, a) Thus, because everything else is changing, being while not being, while the forms are one, they are ‘being’, there are not degrees of reality but ‘degrees of oneness’.  In the Timeaus, Plato writes, “Since these things are so, we must agree that that which keeps it own form unchangingly, which has not been brought into being and is not destroyed…, is one thing.” (Timeaus, 52, a)  Plato simply identifies philosophy and knowledge with being rather than becoming.  This is a far stronger interpretation in comparison to Vlastos’s theories.  Vlastos makes the mistakes of assume literal self-predication and assuming the theory of forms, rather than constructing an argument for them.  By not assuming what Plato is promoting but instead interpreting it, Penner stays far more faithful to the text.

Part C:

While some thinkers would certainly love to re-open debate, as is inevitable with philosopher types, it can easily be accepted for the sake of argument that Plato’s discussion in the Theatetus firmly forces the basic Protagorean concepts that ‘knowledge is perception’ and ‘man is the measure of all things’ into a great shadow of doubt.  Indeed, Plato’s victory at the time of his writing helped keep the writings of the Pre-Socratic’s mostly hidden Western intellectuals (what few there may have been) for millennia.  However, the question remains, does Plato’s refutation of Protagorus have any serious implications for any more modern theories of epistemology or philosophy of mind.  Does Plato successfully refute any major portions of these modern theories in the Theatetus.  The most obvious tradition to test given Plato’s original opponent is Nominalism’s cousin and Protagorus’s descendant.  This tradition is the collection of modern and post-modern empirical theory.  Not only is empiricism a naturally conflicting set of ideas for Plato, it has also been incredibly influential in creating the modern world and perspective over the last three centuries.  One of the greatest early pioneers of empiricism, and a thinker even non-empiricists still have to confront, is the early-modern English-Scottish philosopher and skeptic, David Hume.  Skepticism plaid a huge part in Hume’s empirical epistemology, and that it forced radical re-evaluations of thought and knowledge would be an understatement of immense proportions.  Whether or not Plato’s Theatetus will successfully rebuff much of empiricism’s worldview will depend in large part on how the observations of Hume can frame the discussion.  However, this should not be about trying to declare a winner, for Plato and Hume and other philosopher undoubtedly shared a myriad of exceptionally insightful observations that would otherwise have been unthinkable for the greater part of humanity.  Even without complete resolution this type of comparative philosophy will help grow the tradition that has always in turn helped humanity grow, the tradition that all great thinkers from Plato to Hume and beyond have been a part of.

Hume’s epistemology distinguishes between two types of ‘knowledge’; matters of fact and relations of ideas.  Matters of fact are derived from experience – or perception.  Questions of matters of fact are answered through observation of the external world.  An example of a matter of fact would be the number of cookies in a cookie jar.  Relations of ideas are concepts that are created from multiple distinct ideas.  Relations of ideas are true or false based on the accepted meaning of the ideas or words representing them.  An example of this is that a bachelor is an unmarried male or that one-dollar is equal in value to four quarters.  Statements such as these are implicitly and necessarily true based on the definitions of bachelor and unmarried male, of dollar and quarter.  However, the key distinction that Hume makes is that only relations of ideas can be necessarily true a priori.  This is because Hume, like Plato, realized that observations based on perception are inherently inaccurate to some degree, which is why one can never be absolutely positive about a matter of fact.  It can only be reduced to a matter of probability.  This is such a critical moment in Hume’s epistemology because it obliterates many of the basic assumptions about their external surroundings that humans take for granted to be true a priori.

One example of this is the assumptions that all effects have a cause.  Hume argues that there is no warrant available to us that can be used to justify the claim that any effects have a cause.  Instead Hume claims that concepts like ‘cause and effect’ have been ground into humans as a matter of customary fact.  As people evolved in their natural surroundings, or a newborn baby experiencing the world, unconnected events seemed to happen all around without rhyme or reason.  However, after innumerable series of these events, the human brain programs itself through custom to imagine connections between events so that one can make sense of the world; hence one arrives at the notions of cause and effect.  However, these remain merely notions as there is no justification for them other than that like effects have like cause is observed countless times by all.  However, everyone encounters situations in their life-experience that while their maybe a high degree of probability that this is the case, there are still instances where one finds out that what seemed like an obvious inference was actually incredibly off-base.  With things in the ordinary world human brains may have adapted so that they can make inferences about the immediate physical world with some degree of accuracy, especially through controlled scientific observation.  However, when imaginations turn to the more lofty subjects of meta-physics, with little or no empirical observation to at least grant a notional level of confirmation, our thinking apparatuses are simply not adequately equipped to determine ‘truth’.

If one considers forms of empiricism based on Hume’s interpretation, then Plato’s refutation of nominalism in the Theatetus does not carry the same weight against modern empiricism as it did against Protagorus.  Plato’s argument in the Theatetus focuses on extending the doctrine of flux inherited from Heraclitus to its logical conclusion that all knowledge is impossible, hence knowledge could not be perception.  Another way of stating the conclusion is that man cannot be the measure of all things if it is impossible for him to measure anything.  This would be the result of everything everywhere being in flux all of the time.  There could be no constituency whatsoever, so attempting to apply a label ‘knowledge’ to any perception of the fluctuating world would be necessarily impossible, because whatever ‘thing’ it was would already have changed to something else.  Indeed, even the concept of time would not be workable in such an ontology because there would not be any objectivity on which to base it.  Time would be absolutely relative because any attempt to relate multiple events would be entirely subjective.  The absurdly limited potential that this limits Protagorus to, essentially absolutely nothing is knowable, is where the strength of Plato’s refutation lies.

I believe that Hume would accept all of Plato’s argument in his refutation of Protagorus and Heraclitus. However, Hume’s epistemology does not fall into quite the same trap because Hume and modern empiricism work within this doctrine of extended flux.  In fact, Hume uses this notion of a completely random and fluctuating external world to construct his own argument against customary metaphysical assumptions, such as like effects having like causes.  Empiricists no longer say perception is knowledge. Nor does Hume claim that man is the measure of all things.  The evolved form of Protagorus claim becomes with Hume that things may be for a man as they appear to him, but that does not mean that he knows anything.  Hume shows that while all one has access to is sense-experience that does not mean they have definitive knowledge about that sense-experience.  Knowledge, at least about things outside of one’s mind, becomes something probable and fallible, instead of something objectively true or false.  The only absolutely true things are concepts humans make up inside their heads in order to relate different ideas (concepts like a dollar equals four quarters).  Thus, Hume commits himself to extended flux and explains how humans can still be functioning beings without having access to any objective truth.  This is how Hume avoids Plato’s refutation, by acknowledging it.

This is why it should not be a major confrontation between empiricism and Plato.  They have entirely different epistemologies, but they both construct their ideas with respect to the same problem they have witnessed.  This problem is the problem of humans coming to know their external world and make valid deductions based on their observations.  Plato realizes the inherent ambiguity of perception, and thus desires that their exists objective truths which would necessarily exist only outside of space and time.  Plato desires this because he does not want complacent people to simply accept their very flawed perceptions as truth and force that untruth onto other people (such as happens in the Cave).  Hume however realizes the same ambiguity and thus believes people should be rationally skeptical about any concepts of ‘truth’ that they have no access to and no method of verification.  Essentially both thinkers do not want people to become deceived and confused by their sense perception, but their models for sorting through that confusion are achieved through opposite approaches.  One of these is a belief in permanent perplexity stimulating a search for deeper, more real, knowledge.  The other is a permanent and unrelenting skepticism.  It is ultimately up to each individual to accept a variation of one of these models because they are both rooted in the same obvious problem, however a permanent resolution between the two continues to elude the searching of even the greatest minds the humans species has yet to proffer.