Chesterton on the egg (which is an egg).

More on Chesterton. One passage often cited by his admirers comes from his book on Thomas Aquinas:

"Against all this the philosophy of St. Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs. The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkeleian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists; since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble. But no pupil of St. Thomas needs to addle his brains in order adequately to addle his eggs; to put his head at any peculiar angle in looking at eggs, or squinting at eggs, or winking the other
eye in order to see a new simplification of eggs. The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God."

As usual, when someone intones a tautology, some form of "A is A," as if it is of tremendous significance, he or she is trying to sneak in a presumption. Here, Chesterton is being less sneaky than are some who use this ploy. For he's been quite open with us, earlier, about the presumption. By "egg" he means a common-sense egg, the egg that an untutored individual who isn't too much concerned about the "particular go of it" will understand to be an egg. When Chesterton says "eggs are eggs" he means that we can't or shouldn't try to get further in than that in our understanding of them. Addling one's brains in an effort to get behind the obviousness of egghood is a bad thing. That's the message here.

IMHO, that message is exactly wrong, and wisdom consists precisely of trying to go further than "an egg is an egg." To consider any more sustained inquiry a matter of "addling one's brains" is to ask that one's brains be perpetually chained by this "authority of the sense." Although we do need the sense to get started, we also need as humans to remember that the reports of the senses are seldom the end.

Chesterton on the landlady and the lodger

Ciceronianus posted some fascinating thoughts on Wednesday regarding G.K. Chesterton, an author he finds clever, witty, and unprofound.

Chesterton first got onto my personal radar because William James quotes him right at the start of Pragmatism. Chesterton wrote thus: "There are some people -- and I am one of them -- who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy. We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether in the long run anything else affects them."

James professes himself on Chesterton's side in this belief, yet he immediately gives it a more Jamesian twist. Chesterton had spoken of a hypothetical landlady and her equally hypothetical lodger. James, giving a lecture, dispensed with hypothetical people and spoke of "you," the people in the audience before him.

"I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds."

That is a new twist not only because of the direct address to "you," but because of that reference to the "several worlds" of his audience, which seems to me a very un-Chestertonian turn of phrase. Chesterton was of the view that there is only one Orthodoxy and multiple heresies -- that confidence is itself a source of his charm. There is only one Objective world and several ways of getting it wrong. James was of a very different view. The landlady and her lodger may be residents, in an important sense, of different worlds, deternmined by their different perspectives, (although, yes, those worlds obviously overlap and produce disputes over rent and leaky pipes.)

At any rate, I recommend Ciceronianus on this, as on much else.