“The only organ of contact with reality is love”
Skeptics, lovers and Simone Weil
Borges in love
In his uber-Kantian meditation on the lives of Heisenberg, Borges...and Kant, William Egginton suggests that the Argentine writer abruptly changed his mind about the reality of the world before reaching his thirties. Enamored of the poet Norah Lange, who (uber-poetically) compared him to the dew on a flower, Borges spent the early part of 1926 in an ecstatic mood that, as his friends would tell you, was unlike him. Better known for his morbid obsession with nothingness, that year he wrote an essay (since disowned) on The Writing of Bliss, in which he asserted the impossibility of conceiving "the negation of all consciousness, of all sensation, of all differentiation in time or space[1]."
After a spring party at which the poetess ostensibly preferred a nasty rival, the writer Oliverio Girondo, Borges would have another say.
The greatest sorcerer would be he who bewitches himself to the point of taking his own phantasmagorias for autonomous apparitions. Is that not our case?' 'I conjecture,' responds Borges, 'that it is our case. We, the indivisible divinity that operates within us, have dreamt the world. We have dreamt it resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and firm in time. But we have consented within its architecture tenuous and eternal interstices of unreason to know that it is false (Avatars of the tortuse).
The interstices of unreason to which Borges alludes, and which he believes attest to the unreality of the world, are various antinomies and paradoxes, in particular those to which Zeno of Elea gave his name. As we can see from the image above[2] , for Achilles to catch up with the tortoise, he must already have reached the point where it is now, but by the time he gets there, it will already be a little further away, and the same problem will arise again, ad infinitum... Which seems to imply, paradoxically, that Achilles will never be able to catch up with the tortoise.
Just as some people look for glitches or bugs in the web of appearances to prove that we're living in a simulation, Borges saw Zeno's paradoxes as evidence of the "hallucinatory nature" of reality.
Reality as value and the sense of reality as emotion
This strange reversal from Borges in love, certain of the world's reality, to Borges spurned, losing all confidence in it, raises a beautiful question of the psychology of metaphysics: that of the link between moods or emotions on the one hand, and a sense of reality on the other. Could it be that we perceive the reality of the world better, or more intensely, in certain affective states than in others?
I have a terrible cold, said Pessoa
And everyone knows how terrible colds
Alter the whole system of the universe,
Set us against life,
And make even metaphysics sneeze.
This hypothesis is not at all absurd. After all, what is an emotion? It is, according to a relatively consensual definition, a way of apprehending the value of things. Fear of this dog presents it to me as dangerous, anger presents these words to me as an affront, aesthetic feelings present this tree to me as beautiful, disgust presents this attack to me as morally repugnant, and so on. For the “sense of reality of existence” to be an emotion, then, existence would have to have a value. From Plato to Spinoza, there is a very long and respectable tradition that has construed existence as a value, and even a positive value - in the words of St. Anselm of Canterbury, a "perfection". This idea that existence is a value has, moreover, the merit of providing a very simple explanation to the sublime question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
- Why is there something rather than nothing?
- Because existence is good, and by definition what is good is what must be.
In numerous articles and monographs, Canadian philosopher John Leslie has defended this answer, attempting to dissociate it from the idea of a creator (and good) God. The world exists because its existence is good, and what is good must be, not because a creator thought "well, the existence of the world would be good, and what is good must be, so I'm going to create it to be a good creator who makes things that are good".
Finally, well beyond the anecdote of Borges' reversal, this hypothesis of existence as emotion and the sense of existence as emotion finds some empirical support in psychopathology. There is a pathological condition known as depersonalization (aka "depersonalization and derealization disorder" in the DSM-V), characterized by the persistent impression of the unreality of things (of oneself, of the external world, and even, sometimes, of time). Since its discovery, this pathology has been conceived by many clinicians as an affective disorder (Dugas 1998, Deny and Camus 1905, Oesterrich 1908). It is still characterized as such by many philosophers and neuroscientists today (notably Phillip Gerrans 2019 and Nick Medford 2012). In an as yet unpublished manuscript, philosopher Richar Dub has drawn on this observation in particular to defend the idea that the sense of reality is indeed an emotion (cf. also Dub 2023).
Ambivalence of reality
Although, to tell the truth, it bothers me a little, I don't think this hypothesis of existence as a value and the sense of reality as an emotion holds. First of all, it's unfortunately far from clear that existence is a value. Indeed, it seems that it can be described as good or bad, depending on whether or not it is appreciated. Similarly, it seems that the impression of existence or reality can be correctly described, depending on the context, as having a positive or negative valence. While, for example, Rousseau describes the feeling of existence as a positive emotion that represents a positive value, others, such as Sartre and many Buddhist philosophers, describe existence as essentially negative and the feeling of existence as a nauseating and/or inauthentic and deceptive feeling (on Buddhism, see Siderits 2007). (Amusingly, Schopenhauer considered that we were all led to philosophy by the paradoxical realization (remember, the good is by definition who ought to be) of the repugnant nature of existence.)
Compare the amiable Rousseau in his Fifth Walk with the grumpy (and no doubt slightly daubed) Sartre:
The feeling of existence stripped of any other affection is in itself a precious feeling of contentment and peace (Rousseau, Promenades du rêveur solitaire).
Figure 2 Rousseau offering Sartre natural antiemetics
Never before these last few days had I sensed what it meant to "exist". I was like the others, like those who walk by the sea in their spring clothes. Like them, I'd say "the sea is green; that white dot up there is a seagull", but I didn't feel that it existed, that the seagull was an existing seagull. (...) If someone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered in good faith that it was nothing, just an empty form added to things outside, without changing their nature. But then, all of a sudden, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly revealed itself. It had lost its innocuous allure of abstract category: it was the very dough of things, this root was kneaded in existence. Or rather, the root, the garden gates, the bench, the rare grass of the lawn, all that had vanished; the diversity of things, their individuality was only an appearance, a varnish. This varnish had melted away, leaving monstrous, limp masses in disarray - naked with a frightening, obscene nudity. (...) We were a bunch of awkward, self-conscious existing beings, none of us having the slightest reason to be there, each of us confused, vaguely worried, feeling that we were too much in relation to the others. Too much. That was the only relationship I could establish between these trees, these railings, these stones. I tried in vain to count the chestnut trees, to situate them in relation to the Velléda, to compare their height with that of the plane trees: each one escaped from the relationships in which I tried to enclose it, isolated itself, overflowed. I could feel the arbitrariness of these relationships (which I insisted on maintaining to delay the collapse of the human world, of measurements, quantities and directions); they were no longer biting into things. The chestnut tree across from me, a little to the left, was too much. Too much Velléda...
And I - veiled, languid, obscene, digesting, tossing around dreary thoughts - I too was too much. Fortunately, I didn't feel it, I mostly understood it, but I was uncomfortable because I was afraid of feeling it (even now I'm afraid of it - I'm afraid of it grabbing me by the back of my head and lifting me up like a tidal wave). I vaguely dreamed of killing myself, to annihilate at least one of these superfluous existences. But even my death would have been too much. Too much, my corpse, my blood on these stones, between these plants, at the bottom of this smiling garden. And my gnawed flesh would have been too much in the earth that had received it, and my bones, finally, cleaned, flayed, clean and sharp as teeth, would have been too much: I was too much for eternity. (...) At this very moment - it's awful - if I exist, it's because I hate to exist. It's me, it's me who pulls me out of the nothingness to which I aspire: hatred, disgust for existence, these are all ways of making me exist, of sinking me into existence. (Sartre, La Nausée, translated by GTP4 (sorry)
Rather than a value, existence seems to me to be rather a condition of the value (positive or negative) of things: to exist in itself is neither good nor bad, but to be truly good or bad, one must exist. Existence is, to put it another way, antecedent to value, a "proto-value" or, better, an "arch-value", not a value. This seems to me to be confirmed by a closer look at depersonalization. Even if sufferers often complain that they no longer feel emotions ("kissing my husband is like kissing a table," said a patient of Dugas and Moutier (1911), "not the slightest shiver"), their problem seems to go much deeper. First of all, they do seem, from the outside at least, to feel emotions. Rather, their condition seems to be explained by the fact that they don't feel at all concerned by these “pseudo-emotions”. In a way, we could say that they perceive the values around them and within them, but don't feel concerned by them. When the tip of a pin sinks into their skin, they perceive the danger, withdraw their arm, but they explain that somehow, this danger doesn't seem to matter to them.
Love and values
To understand what's going on here, and, more fundamentally, the link between a sense of reality and emotions, we need to step aside and meditate on the way values ordinarily appear to us. Typically, if a vicious dog comes barking at me, it seems to matter to me, of course, but it also seems to matter simpliciter. Just as a magazine that appears visually to be to the left of me actually appears visually to be to the left simpliciter (I do not see me, I do not appear in the visual image). We can express this by saying that, phenomenologically, I am implicitly the spatial center of the world (the magazine to the left of me is left simpliciter) and also the axiological center of the world (what seems to matter to me seems to matter simpliciter). If, on the other hand, I read in the newspaper that JP, the mayor of Podunk, had been attacked by a dog (I read such newspapers), that would certainly seem to count for him, but not necessarily to count simpliciter. In that sense, JP doesn't normally seem to me to be the center of the world.
I say normally because, things can change. Imagine that start loving JP, whether it's friendship, erotic love, or Christian love, in which case what's important to JP will certainly seem to me to be important simpliciter – not just for him. What seems to me to be good for him will seem to be good simpliciter.[3]
Iris Murdoch says in several places that love is the most disturbing experience because it shifts the center of the world and makes us aware of a separate reality. Indeed, inspired Murdoch, we can define love, in its broadest sense, as the realization that what matters for someone else matters simpliciter. The realization that someone else is, in this sense, the center of the world.
Falling in love is for many people their most intense experience, bringing with it a quasi-religious certainty, and most disturbing because it shifts the centre of the world from ourself to another place (Metaphysics as a guide to morals)
[It is] the most extraordinary and uplifting experience of their lives, whereby the phenomenal center is suddenly stripped of its self, and the dreaming ego takes in a shock consciousness of an entirely separate reality .
Love as a sense of reality
What does this have to do with a sense of reality? I said that existence is an arch-value, not a value. Love in the sense I've defined it is not an emotion, but something more fundamental, an arch-emotion, which places and shifts the center of the world to make possible the apprehension of real values, of things that matter simpliciter. I'd like to link these two points by suggesting that what makes us aware of the reality of things, the sense of reality, is love.
From the age of 17, I was tormented by skeptical doubts that soon led me to philosophy. When I was 20, shortly after my father's death, I changed, and came across this sentence in Simone Weil's notebooks - one of the most beautiful aphorisms on Earth, the Universe, and in Marseille, where she wrote it - which described my feelings perfectly.
We can doubt everything (...), which is why the only organ of contact with reality is love. This is also why what is real is beautiful (Weil, Carnets).
Later, I unwittingly returned to this aphorism hundreds of times, and without realizing it, I started a (short) collection of quotations along the same lines (Rilke, for example, said that when he fell in love with Lou Andrea Salome, he felt for the first time that he was meeting someone absolutely real). Perhaps love is indeed the sense of reality. The love of oneself (nothing wrong with that), the sense of one's reality. The love of X, the sense of his or her reality. And even: the love of stones and twigs, of earwiggers and broomsticks, the sense of their reality.
[1] Analógicamente, no es imposible que la nada de nuestro yo (la negación de toda conciencia, de toda sensación, de toda diferenciación en el tiempo o en el espacio) sea una realidad. Lo cierto es que ni podemos imaginárnosla ni menos ubicar en ella la dicha: satisfacción de la voluntad, no su perdimiento.
[2] Created by Grandjean, Martin (2014), available on Wikipedia.
[3] Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to work for hate. If I hate him, what seems bad for him will probably seem good for me, or (if he's evil and hurts others) good for those he hurts, I find it hard to imagine that it could seem good at all.