One of the most important works of “ordinary language” philosophy was J. L. Austin’s 1955 lecture series How to Do Things with Words. It was in these lectures that Austin introduced his theory of “performative utterances.”

Before Austin, philosophers who studied language assumed that it had a single function: stating facts about the world. (The “world” was broadly defined, and could include dreams and imaginings and fantasies and the rest.) Austin suggested that doing so left a very important piece of the puzzle unaccounted for: words that actually did something. Unlike other kinds of sentences, these weren’t “true” or “false,” any more than running or sleeping or taking a shower is “true” or “false.” They are simply actions.

Examples of “performative utterances” are easy to find: “We’ll name him Roger”; “I hereby pronounce you man and wife” and “I leave all of my worldly possessions to John Jones” all qualify. Put that way, it’s shocking that it took philosophers thousands of years to notice…

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The Buddhist conception of Karma (from Sanskrit: action, work) is the impetus behind Samsara, or the cycle of suffering and rebirth for each being. Both good and bad actions produce “seeds” in the mind of the individual that will either come to fruition in this life or in a subsequent rebirth. In Theravada Buddhism there can be no divine salvation or forgiveness for one’s Karma, since it is a purely impersonal process that is a part of the make up of the universe. Thus, one must absorb suffering in order to ultimately transcend earthly agonies.

Famous poet Ted Hughes’ poem, Karma, is a melancholy meditation on the suffering and carnage wrought by “civilized” man. It is influenced by the Buddhist belief in the retracing of time and the inexorable karmic bondage to suffering. In the poem, the narrator feels profound sadness as he contemplates the suffering around him, and realizes that there exists no earthly rationale that renders human misery comprehensible. However, by embracing the fact that there is no solution or explanation for suffering, he is able to absorb it fully and transcend the bondage of blame.

Karma

When the world-quaking tears were dropped
At Dresden at Buchenwald
Earth spewed up the bones of the Irish.

Queen Victoria Refused the blame
For the Emperors of Chou herding their rubbish
Into battle roped together.

The seven lamented millions of Zion
Rose musically through the frozen mouths
Of Russia’s snowed-under millions.

They perch, as harps,
Over the slaves whose singing blood still flows
Through the Atlantic and up the Mississippi

And up the jugular
Smoulderingly,
Skywriting across the cortex

That the heart, a gulping mask, demands, demands
Appeasement
For its bloody possessor.

And a hundred and fifty million years of hunger
Killing gratefully as breathing
Mouldered the heart and the mouth

That cry for milk
From the breast
Of the mother

Of the God
Of the world
Made of Blood.

They have gone into dumber service. They have gone down
To labour with God on the beaches. They fatten
Under the haddock’s thumb. They rejoice
Through the warped mouth of the flounder.

They have melted like my childhood under earth’s motherly curve
And are nowhere they are not here I know nothing
Cries the poulterer’s hare hanging
Upside down above the pavement
Staring into a bloody bag Not here

Cry the eyes from the depths

Of the mirrors seamless sand.

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Way back around 300 BCE, the Greek philosopher Epicurus somehow discovered that matter was composed of atoms. (His theory would not be definitively proven until Einstein published a paper on “Brownian Motion” in 1905.) How he came to that conclusion so long ago is a mystery, but many were convinced even at the time.

One of the most prominent followers of Epicurus was the Latin poet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius, who expounded on the master’s teaching in his first-century BCE epic poem De Rerum Natura, or, On The Nature of Things. It’s a marvelous work, poetic, lyrical and scientific all at once. Much of it is an expansion on the theories of Epicurus, but Lucretius did make at least one original contribution to the theory of atomism, and to the debate about the freedom of the will.

In Book II of the poem, in lines 216-293, Lucretius discusses the “swerve” of atoms. Here’s a sample (from a translation by Martin Smith):

When the atoms are being drawn downward through the void by their property of weight, at absolutely unpredictable times and places they deflect slightly from their straight course, to a degree that could be described as no more than a shift of movement. If they were not apt to swerve, all would fall downward through the unfathomable void like drops of rain; no collisions between primary elements would occur, and no blows would be effected, with the result that nature would never have created anything.

What conclusion did Lucretius draw from this random “swerve” of the atom? That human beings have free will: the randomness proves that the universe if not deterministic.

It’s a clever thought, and it’s been an influential one. If you want to read more about it, a quirky place to start would be with a pamphlet called “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature”: in March 1841, it was submitted as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Berlin by a 23-year-old student named Karl Marx.

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Impression Management, also sometimes referred to as, “Identity Management” or “Self-Presentation,” is a theory of personal identity employed by sociologists and social psychologists to describe the manner in which individuals both consciously and unconsciously attempt to shape the impressions other people form of them. Thus, Impression Management theory focuses on the ways and means by which individual actors regulate and control the information that they present about themselves in social interactions.

Impression Management theory was first fully articulated by Erving Goffman in his seminal sociological work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959). In this work, Goffman attempts to describe the motivations and processes through which people cultivate, preserve, protect and try to boost their social identities. He highlights two central motives governing self-presentation: the desire to influence others/ gain rewards and the need for personal expression. These motives can be broken down into three specific goals: ingratiation, intimidation and supplication. Ingratiation describes an individual’s efforts to “put their best foot forward,” in social interactions, with the purpose of making people like them. Intimidation is the display of aggression and/or anger, with the purpose of eliciting fear or submission. Supplication explains the ways in which vulnerability and sadness are displayed, in an attempt to elicit sympathy and assistance from others.

Impression management also operates as a means of self-expression. Individuals construct an image of themselves to claim a desired personal identity, and try to present themselves to others in a manner that is congruous with this image. An individual’s Impression Management relies on there being a given definition of a situation, i.e. socially agreed upon expectations within a given context, so that people can model their image presentation appropriately.

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Between 1910 and 1913, the Cambridge philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead published one of the landmark works of Analytic philosophy: the Principia Mathematica. Over the course of three volumes Russell and Whitehead purport to derive all of the major principles of mathematics from a series of simple axioms, and logical proofs leading from these simple beginnings to greater and greater complexity. They propose a self-contained system of mathematics that admits of no error and no paradox. It was one of the great landmarks of philosophy, mathematics, and logic, and in 1931 a 25-year-old German mathematician named Kurt Gödel proved the whole thing wrong.

Russell and Whitehead attempted to build mathematics into a self-contained logical system. Gödel didn’t simply find an error or inconsistency in their work—that could have been corrected easily enough. Gödel went much, much farther: he proved that every formal system has inherent limitations, the Principia among many others.

The fundamental idea behind Gödel’s proof is that every logical system contains a version of the paradoxical statement “This sentence is false.” (Think that one through for a minute.) Therefore, deriving a complete system of mathematics from a set of axioms (the goal of the Principia) is inherently impossible. This is a very important result to philosophers, logicians and mathematicians, but in 1999 it became a pop culture phenomena. Douglas Hofstadter made the idea famous in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach. It’s a brilliant and long-ranging book, delving into the illusions you can see in M. C. Escher’s prints (like the one above), the complexities you can hear in J. S. Bach’s fugues, and the paradoxes of Gödel’s proof. I heartily recommend it to all Devoted Intellectuals. However, I’d start by reading another book first. Hofstadter claims that he first became entranced with Gödel’s proof when he read an explanation of it written by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman at the age of fourteen. After the success of his book, Nagel and Newman’s work was republished with an introduction by Hofstadter. It’s tough going at times (The Devoted Intellectual is still confused about “Gödel Numbers”), but Gödel’s Proof is a project every Devoted Intellectual should tackle.

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Between 1910 and 1913, the Cambridge philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead published one of the landmark works of Analytic philosophy: the Principia Mathematica. Over the course of three volumes Russell and Whitehead purport to derive all of the major principles of mathematics from a series of simple axioms, and logical proofs leading from these simple beginnings to greater and greater complexity. They propose a self-contained system of mathematics that admits of no error and no paradox. It was one of the great landmarks of philosophy, mathematics, and logic, and in 1931 a 25-year-old German mathematician named Kurt Gödel proved the whole thing wrong.

Russell and Whitehead attempted to build mathematics into a self-contained logical system. Gödel didn’t simply find an error or inconsistency in their work—that could have been corrected easily enough. Gödel went much, much farther: he proved that every formal system has inherent limitations, the Principia among many others.

The fundamental idea behind Gödel’s proof is that every logical system contains a version of the paradoxical statement “This sentence is false.” (Think that one through for a minute.) Therefore, deriving a complete system of mathematics from a set of axioms (the goal of the Principia) is inherently impossible. This is a very important result to philosophers, logicians and mathematicians, but in 1999 it became a pop culture phenomena. Douglas Hofstadter made the idea famous in his book Gödel, Escher, Bach. It’s a brilliant and long-ranging book, delving into the illusions you can see in M. C. Escher’s prints (like the one above), the complexities you can hear in J. S. Bach’s fugues, and the paradoxes of Gödel’s proof. I heartily recommend it to all Devoted Intellectuals. However, I’d start by reading another book first. Hofstadter claims that he first became entranced with Gödel’s proof when he read an explanation of it written by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman at the age of fourteen. After the success of his book, Nagel and Newman’s work was republished with an introduction by Hofstadter. It’s tough going at times (The Devoted Intellectual is still confused about “Gödel Numbers”), but Gödel’s Proof is a project every Devoted Intellectual should tackle.

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The philosophic tradition with the strongest emphasis on “realism,” as opposed to “idealism,” is undoubtedly the British. From the empirical philosophy of John Locke to the economic theories of Adam Smith, the great contributions of British philosophy have almost all been of a “realist” bent. There have been British idealists, though. Perhaps the most famous was Bishop Berkeley, who called his theory “immaterialism” and summed it up with the Latin expression, “Esse est percipi” or “To be is to be perceived.” This is the phrase by which Berkeley is largely remembered today, but he expounded his theory over hundreds of pages in his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge and his Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous.

But as the theories grew more elaborate the refutations grew more abrupt. After reading Berkeley’s work, the writer and critic Dr. Samuel Johnson simply kicked a large stone and shouted, “I refute it thus!” This habit of glib refutation continued for centuries. Another famous realist was Bertrand Russell, who wrote on everything from the foundations of mathematics to the case for nuclear disarmament. During one of his seminars at Oxford, a student who recently arrived from Austria argued that it was impossible to prove anything using sense data alone. Russell amused his class by running about and looking under chairs for a rhinoceros. When he couldn’t find one, he declared the non-presence of a rhino in the room proven. But, in this case, the joke was on Russell. The student he was arguing with was Ludwig Wittgenstein. While Russell’s works of pure philosophy are almost completely ignored today, Wittgenstein is considered by many to be the most important philosopher of the twentieth century.

Another great debate between an idealist and a realist was a famous 10 minute encounter between Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. Read a wonderful account of that debate here.

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