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The Ethics of Belief
2 min read
"That the prophet preached certain doctrines and predicted that we would find in them spiritual comfort only proves his sympathy for the human nature and his knowledge of it ; but it doesn't prove his superhuman knowledge of theology." — William Cllifford, The Ethics of Belief, 1877.
In that short but fundamental essay, Clifford sets up the principle for an ethical atittude towards beliefs: the most crucial question, the most important question to ask is not to know whether such a belief leads us to act well, or is useful or makes one feel good; it is not to know whether the prophet's teachings will improve society as a whole — the essential question is "how could he possibly know whether what he preaches is the truth?" This is a question rarely asked, but within that framework, it is the only relevant one, because it is the one that determines the ethical validity of believing. It leads Clifford to formulate the following princile : "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to ignore evidence that is relevant to his beliefs, or to dismiss relevant evidence in a facile way."
Later pragmatists (notably James in 1896) will strongly oppose that view, but as Russell explained (Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian, 1957), adhering to a belief for its measurable advantages is neither ethical nor grounded on any kind of attraction towards truth, as efficiency is unrelated to morality (if not opposed to it). It is calling "true" what isn't, and what we have no reason to think it might be, just for the benefits of it.
More reading : plato.stanford.edu/entries/eth…
In that short but fundamental essay, Clifford sets up the principle for an ethical atittude towards beliefs: the most crucial question, the most important question to ask is not to know whether such a belief leads us to act well, or is useful or makes one feel good; it is not to know whether the prophet's teachings will improve society as a whole — the essential question is "how could he possibly know whether what he preaches is the truth?" This is a question rarely asked, but within that framework, it is the only relevant one, because it is the one that determines the ethical validity of believing. It leads Clifford to formulate the following princile : "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to ignore evidence that is relevant to his beliefs, or to dismiss relevant evidence in a facile way."
Later pragmatists (notably James in 1896) will strongly oppose that view, but as Russell explained (Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian, 1957), adhering to a belief for its measurable advantages is neither ethical nor grounded on any kind of attraction towards truth, as efficiency is unrelated to morality (if not opposed to it). It is calling "true" what isn't, and what we have no reason to think it might be, just for the benefits of it.
More reading : plato.stanford.edu/entries/eth…
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Music
3 min read
Music is absinth for my lone mind. Learning or listening to :
- Bach, Invention 4 BWV 775 : an exercice at two-part counterpunctal playing, composed by Bach for his students. D minor key, the "archetypical" key for counterpoint, and fantastic piece to improvise around.
- Bach, Sonata BWV 1001 : composed for violin, intended as a sonata di chiesa (church sonata), with a typical slow/fast rythm, starts with a quite interesting prelude. Bach may have given the first performance himself.
- Beethoven, Sonata op. 13 n°8 : called "Pathetique", the first movement, a C minor that starts grave and solemn, inaugural, builds up, grows, crawls, E-flat minor, major, G-minor... C minor, F minor! And a dramatic closure back in C minor. A real mastery of theatrical harmony.
- Beethoven, Sonata op. 49 n°1 : a delicate, simple, short piece, meant for beginners.
- Chopin, Andante Spianato et grande polonaise brillante op. 22 : serene, smooth shore-like, magical sparkling litte music.
- Chopin, Mazurka op. 67 n°2 : a singing, G-minor/B-flat rythmic and modern-sounding piece, evokes nice memories in a gentle way.
- Chopin, Mazurka op. 17 n°2 : another beautiful mazurka, short and symmetric, a singing quality mazurka with a droplet of childish nostalgia of E minor.
- Chopin, Sonate n°3 : Chopin's last sonata for solo piano, turbulent and virtuoso, galloping and streaming, requires a perfect fingerplay.
- Couperin, L'Épineuse : designed for harpsichord, a subtle and delicate poetic piece of the baroque genre.
- Czerny, Les Cinq Doigts op. 777 : an alloy of piano technique and musicality.
- Franck, Les Plaintes d'une poupée : poetic, short, simple, doll's lament - sadness never lasts long.
- Haendel, Courante from Suite 2 HWV 427 : a dance movement requiring good rythm and agility.
- Haydn, German dance Hob. IX:22/2 : simple music leaving a huge room for improvisation.
- Janequin, Un jour Robin : a pornographic renaissance song about the well-endowed Robin and his beloved Margot.
- Liszt, Un Sospiro : a large ample theme coated in lisztian arpeggios.
- MacDowell, Woodland sketches op.51 (To a Wild Rose) : thoughtful, romantic, translucent soft tune.
- Pescetti, Presto : the teacher of Salieri wrote superb pieces of his own, like this one, a moving picture in harmonies.
- Satie, Gymnopédie n°1 : questioning, ancient, walk along the sea, pure and calm.
- Schubert/Liszt, Standchen : adapted to piano from Schubert, profoundly moving, lieder-like.
- Schubert, Impromptu op. 90 n°4 D.899 : the score lies! A-flat major? it's actually A-flat minor, and the cascades and murmurs, echoes and replies slowly bring the theme up, and up, and up, until A-flat minor is indeed reached.
- Schumann, Fantasiestucke op. 73 n°1 : much better than the original clarinet, a cello sets the world immediately, the piano glitters over a beautifully moving seamless melody, in a charming, tender and expressive dialogue, from a melancholic and dreamy A minor, finishing on a hopeful and consoled A major
- Steffani, Amami e vederai (from Niobe, regina de Tebe, act III scene 1) : "love me and you'll see", golden velvet voice and silences, strength and brittleness.
- Steibelt, Adagio : Steibelt is mostly famous for being humiliated publicly by Beethoven at an improvisation contest. But he also produced charming little pieces like this one.
- Vivaldi, Spoza son disprezzata : soulcrushing call from an humiliated lover who didn't deserve the pit of desperation she's been put in, with all the power of expression of Vivaldi.
- Bach, Invention 4 BWV 775 : an exercice at two-part counterpunctal playing, composed by Bach for his students. D minor key, the "archetypical" key for counterpoint, and fantastic piece to improvise around.
- Bach, Sonata BWV 1001 : composed for violin, intended as a sonata di chiesa (church sonata), with a typical slow/fast rythm, starts with a quite interesting prelude. Bach may have given the first performance himself.
- Beethoven, Sonata op. 13 n°8 : called "Pathetique", the first movement, a C minor that starts grave and solemn, inaugural, builds up, grows, crawls, E-flat minor, major, G-minor... C minor, F minor! And a dramatic closure back in C minor. A real mastery of theatrical harmony.
- Beethoven, Sonata op. 49 n°1 : a delicate, simple, short piece, meant for beginners.
- Chopin, Andante Spianato et grande polonaise brillante op. 22 : serene, smooth shore-like, magical sparkling litte music.
- Chopin, Mazurka op. 67 n°2 : a singing, G-minor/B-flat rythmic and modern-sounding piece, evokes nice memories in a gentle way.
- Chopin, Mazurka op. 17 n°2 : another beautiful mazurka, short and symmetric, a singing quality mazurka with a droplet of childish nostalgia of E minor.
- Chopin, Sonate n°3 : Chopin's last sonata for solo piano, turbulent and virtuoso, galloping and streaming, requires a perfect fingerplay.
- Couperin, L'Épineuse : designed for harpsichord, a subtle and delicate poetic piece of the baroque genre.
- Czerny, Les Cinq Doigts op. 777 : an alloy of piano technique and musicality.
- Franck, Les Plaintes d'une poupée : poetic, short, simple, doll's lament - sadness never lasts long.
- Haendel, Courante from Suite 2 HWV 427 : a dance movement requiring good rythm and agility.
- Haydn, German dance Hob. IX:22/2 : simple music leaving a huge room for improvisation.
- Janequin, Un jour Robin : a pornographic renaissance song about the well-endowed Robin and his beloved Margot.
- Liszt, Un Sospiro : a large ample theme coated in lisztian arpeggios.
- MacDowell, Woodland sketches op.51 (To a Wild Rose) : thoughtful, romantic, translucent soft tune.
- Pescetti, Presto : the teacher of Salieri wrote superb pieces of his own, like this one, a moving picture in harmonies.
- Satie, Gymnopédie n°1 : questioning, ancient, walk along the sea, pure and calm.
- Schubert/Liszt, Standchen : adapted to piano from Schubert, profoundly moving, lieder-like.
- Schubert, Impromptu op. 90 n°4 D.899 : the score lies! A-flat major? it's actually A-flat minor, and the cascades and murmurs, echoes and replies slowly bring the theme up, and up, and up, until A-flat minor is indeed reached.
- Schumann, Fantasiestucke op. 73 n°1 : much better than the original clarinet, a cello sets the world immediately, the piano glitters over a beautifully moving seamless melody, in a charming, tender and expressive dialogue, from a melancholic and dreamy A minor, finishing on a hopeful and consoled A major
- Steffani, Amami e vederai (from Niobe, regina de Tebe, act III scene 1) : "love me and you'll see", golden velvet voice and silences, strength and brittleness.
- Steibelt, Adagio : Steibelt is mostly famous for being humiliated publicly by Beethoven at an improvisation contest. But he also produced charming little pieces like this one.
- Vivaldi, Spoza son disprezzata : soulcrushing call from an humiliated lover who didn't deserve the pit of desperation she's been put in, with all the power of expression of Vivaldi.
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Books
2 min read
On the course of the last two months, thinking around Death, I have read (or read again) those books (sometimes only chapters of them) as thoroughly as possible, collecting comments and notes from previous readings:
- Alain, Propos
- Ameisen, La sculpture du vivant
- Aristotle, Metaphysics
- Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei
- Avicenna, Kitab al-Shifa
- Ayer, Language, truth and logic
- Bergson, L'ame et le corps
- Bergson, Introduction to metaphysics
- Bossuet, Sermon sur la mort
- Cohen, Belle du Seigneur
- Comte, Discours sur l'esprit positif
- Descartes, Principes de la Philosophie
- Descartes, Lettre au Père Mersenne
- Engels, Anti-Dühring
- Epictetus, Dialexis
- Feuerbach, Thoughts on death and immortality
- La Fontaine, Fables VIII
- Freud, Abriß der Psychoanalyse
- Hegel, Encyclopedia of philosophical sciences
- Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
- Hugo, Les Misérables
- James, Pragmatism
- Jankélévitch, La Mort
- Kant, Critique of Practical Reason
- Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
- Kant, What real progress has metaphysics made in Germany since the time of Leibniz and Wolff?
- Klarsfeld, Biologie de la mort
- Landsberg, Essai sur l'expérience de la mort
- Leibniz, New system of nature
- Lévy-Strauss, L'Homme nu
- Lucretius, De natura rerum
- Mach, Knowledge and Error
- Ménuret de Chambaud, Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences et des arts
- Merleau-Ponty, La métaphysique dans l'homme
- Merleau-Ponty, L'oeil et l'Esprit
- Montaigne, Essais III
- Nietszsche, Gay Science
- Nietszche, Twilight of the Idols
- Pascal, Pensées
- Plato, Phedo
- Pierce, Collected papers VI
- La Rochefoucauld, Maximes
- Rousseau, La Nouvelle Héloïse
- Sade, Juliette ou les prospérités du vice
- Sartre, L'Etre et le Néant
- Schopenauer, The world as will and representation
- Spinoza, Ethics
- Strawson, Individuals
- Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii de Trinitate
- Voltaire, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie
By the end of December, I hope to complete a bit of Wittgenstein and Russell and possibly include a bit of literature that's been (or will be) suggested to me.
- Alain, Propos
- Ameisen, La sculpture du vivant
- Aristotle, Metaphysics
- Augustine of Hippo, De Civitate Dei
- Avicenna, Kitab al-Shifa
- Ayer, Language, truth and logic
- Bergson, L'ame et le corps
- Bergson, Introduction to metaphysics
- Bossuet, Sermon sur la mort
- Cohen, Belle du Seigneur
- Comte, Discours sur l'esprit positif
- Descartes, Principes de la Philosophie
- Descartes, Lettre au Père Mersenne
- Engels, Anti-Dühring
- Epictetus, Dialexis
- Feuerbach, Thoughts on death and immortality
- La Fontaine, Fables VIII
- Freud, Abriß der Psychoanalyse
- Hegel, Encyclopedia of philosophical sciences
- Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
- Hugo, Les Misérables
- James, Pragmatism
- Jankélévitch, La Mort
- Kant, Critique of Practical Reason
- Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
- Kant, What real progress has metaphysics made in Germany since the time of Leibniz and Wolff?
- Klarsfeld, Biologie de la mort
- Landsberg, Essai sur l'expérience de la mort
- Leibniz, New system of nature
- Lévy-Strauss, L'Homme nu
- Lucretius, De natura rerum
- Mach, Knowledge and Error
- Ménuret de Chambaud, Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences et des arts
- Merleau-Ponty, La métaphysique dans l'homme
- Merleau-Ponty, L'oeil et l'Esprit
- Montaigne, Essais III
- Nietszsche, Gay Science
- Nietszche, Twilight of the Idols
- Pascal, Pensées
- Plato, Phedo
- Pierce, Collected papers VI
- La Rochefoucauld, Maximes
- Rousseau, La Nouvelle Héloïse
- Sade, Juliette ou les prospérités du vice
- Sartre, L'Etre et le Néant
- Schopenauer, The world as will and representation
- Spinoza, Ethics
- Strawson, Individuals
- Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Librum Boethii de Trinitate
- Voltaire, Questions sur l'Encyclopédie
By the end of December, I hope to complete a bit of Wittgenstein and Russell and possibly include a bit of literature that's been (or will be) suggested to me.
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