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Show Chapter VIII. First-Person Anomaly 346 thought that it's a jungle out there and every man for himself, to fabricate documents, enter into sordid business relationships, blackmail the powerful, etc. (think Eve Harrington in Manckiewicz's All About Eve) - provided only that she not name her behavior to herself. Similarly, in the many accounts of childhood sexual abuse that have begun to saturate the media in recent years, I am struck by the number of abusers who used in common the tactic of conceptual silence - of maintaining it themselves, and enjoining their victims to maintain it, during as well as after the episodes of abuse. It is almost as though not thinking about or naming what they were doing while they were doing it enabled the abusers to act, by postponing the infliction on themselves of the price of self-conscious awareness, namely guilt. And it is almost as though not thinking about or naming what was being done to them as it was being done enabled the victims to survive the abuse, by postponing the infliction on themselves of the corresponding price of self-conscious awareness, namely shame. It is almost as though a requirement of complicity was somehow to prevent the left brain from knowing what the right brain was doing. These are the kinds of cases that harden my resistance to pedestrian AntiRationalist arguments against "thinking too much," or "analyzing everything;" and in favor of spontaneity, instinct, and emotion. Like Nietzsche, I suspect that beneath this disdain for our sorry pseudorational fumblings lurks the arrogance - and the unscrupulousness - of power (although unlike Nietzsche, I do not approve of this). Still, using reason as a kind of cattle prod to moral rectitude is a distinctly inferior alternative. However, there is no necessary connection between conceptual silence and morally irresponsible behavior. So not all unselfconscious agents are wantons in need of a cattle prod. An agent may act generously, compassionately, shrewdly and well - indeed, better in the presence of conceptual silence, provided only that he fail to articulate his attitudes and behavior to himself. In some agents, conceptual silence may be a precondition for those genuinely anomalous acts of conscience, skill or bravery just as it may be a precondition for unconscionable, irresponsible or wanton behavior in others. Indeed, many artists insist on conceptual silence as a necessary precondition of creativity. They find that work can only emerge when the grip of the will is loosened and the chatter of rational analysis is silenced. But some artists, and many Eastern philosophers then develop their insight about the benefits of conceptual silence into a finely elaborated philosophical thesis. They then defend this thesis vehemently and at length, in conversation and in writing. This is ignorance of oneself as a particular writ large. and "wanton" are themselves normative, and valorize and derogate respectively; we rightly think a person ought to care which inclinations she acts on. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
