The Grief of Things as They Are: Conversations and Letters

Michael Oakeshott once recounted Chuang Tzus story of the Duke and the Wheelwright
in a footnote to one of his essays. It was here I first learned of the parable-poem, and its closing
lines stuck with me ever since:

The men of old took all they really knew

with them to the grave.
And so, Lord, what you are reading there
is only the dirt they left behind them.

The story, not much longer than four or five stanzas, is about a conversation between Duke
Hwan of Khi and a wheelwright working in the field. The Duke is sitting under a tree reading a
philosophy book, the wheelwright slaving away, when the latter cuts in and asks, May I ask
you, Lord, what is this you are reading? The Duke replies: The experts, the authorities. The
wheelwright then goes on to ask whether they are dead or alive, and when the Duke replies that
they are long dead, the wheelwright says, Then, you are only reading the dirt they left behind.
This must have struck the Duke as highly offensivewho would want to be told the book
they were reading was nothing more than dirt? Indeed, the Duke immediately tells the
wheelwright to justify his words lest he kill him right there on the spot. You had better give me
a good explanation, the Duke says, or else you must die. In the penultimate lines, the
wheelwright takes a shot at this justification:

Let us look at the affair from my point of view.

When I make wheels, if I go easy they fall apart,
and if I am too rough they dont fit.
But if I am neither too easy nor too violent
they come out right,
and the work is what I want it to be.

You cannot put this in words,

you just have to know how it is.
I cannot even tell my own son exactly how it is done,
and my own son cannot learn it from me.
Se here I am, seventy years old, still making wheels!

I think Chuang Tzuand perhaps by extension, Oakeshottwas only half right. They
were right to insist that there is a massive difference between, in philosophical jargon, knowing
that and knowing how, and that the latter was far more important. The importance of know-
how is often inversely correlated to the extent that it is thought of as second-rate knowledge as
compared to the supremacy of technique and good ole fashioned book learnin. Only
intellectuals, Aaron Haspel says, confuse what they know with what they can articulate."
In my mind, conversation is to this know-how what treatises are to knowing-that.
And so taking this line of thought and the parable literally, I always felt that a conversation
between, say, Richard Rorty and I or Michael Oakeshott and I, would reveal far more to me than
anything theyd ever written. Listening to them intently in a conversation, noticing their
mannerisms, their quirks, their movements; all would reveal something deeper, I think, then their
books could ever pluck atand their books have plucked pretty hard already. Or perhaps our
conversation would make something of previously little emphasis a matter of great emphasis,
thus changing nearly everything. As Hans Blumenberg says, the products the readers have in
their hands [i.e. books] are final versions, in which everything that could be taken as a capricious
trace of subjectivity is deleted. It is tempting to believe, counterintuitive as it may be, that
everything Rorty or Oakeshott had worth knowing, everything they had worth handing down to
us, died with them.
I say that I think this sentiment is only half right perhaps because Im covering for a
jealousymy resentment toward the idea that I did not get the opportunity to speak to my
intellectual and philosophical heroes as some did. It could just be a hopeless attempt to get
even with those who begin their essays Oakeshott and I had many a conversation over the
years or Rorty and I were good friends These people will always have the upper hand no
matter how swift, witty, and gymnastically wonderful my justifications are, or how much I try to
read or fully comprehend them. At least if the wheelwright is right.
The half-truth, only somewhat recoverable, is that books and essays written are often
written to no one in particular, present company included. Its true, of course, that a certain
general audience is often intended, and some writers even get the chance to see their work seep
beyond intended boundaries, but the best writers are the ones that seem like they are speaking to
you, the reader, directly. Its not necessary, but it often makes up a lot of ground toward the idea
that everything that is worth handing down by any given writer they took with them to the grave.
We cannot help but see generalists as missing a very necessary human connection, and
sometimes the want to know more, the need to prod further, is frustrated by the idea that all they
ever wrote was general, and now they and everything worth actually knowing is gone for good.
Good books, then, make up some of the ground, but still not nearly enough as, say, a
conversation that lasts deep into the night or personal letter whose defining purpose is to stay
between the eyes of only those involved; those intended. If we never got the chance to converse
deep into the night with our heroes or exchange letters with them, this may just be, as Jane
Addams says, the grief of things as they area lamentable but sad reality. Perhaps only a sad
reality for those, like myself, who think the wheelwright is more right than wrong. We can, I
think, fill this gap a bit though. This gap between life as lived and life as writtennot to insist on
some hard and fast dualism or anything.
__________
 For some reason or another, a particular exchange between the French philosopher
Jacques Bouveresse and Richard Rorty has become, in my mind, the quintessential example of
writing that gets at this mystery for me. At first I thought I appreciated the exchange because of
its civility, the humility and respect given by each in their turnnot to mention the genuine and
pleasantly small, as opposed to sycophantic and sweeping, praise each offered to one another.
Bouveresse isnt flamboyant or agitated in his essayafter all, the exchange is found in the
volume Rorty and His Critics, so one could expect its contributors to be agitatedbut
surprisingly guarded and takes the character of someone who is constantly hedging his own
thoughts, coming across as if he too, perhaps, should ruminate on the question he is asking of
Rorty a bit longer as well.
And Rortys response is typical: calm, collected, and civil; dismissive of certain questions
he finds uninteresting but not in a bombastic, condescendingthat is to say, Trumpianway.
The whole tone of the exchange is one of a conversation between two friends, addressing what
comes up, sometimes in a drawn out and rigorous manner, and sometimes in a dismissive one,
but no one is the worse for either approach, and no one, I can only imagine, takes it to heart. A
conversation, Oakeshott tells us, lies in the acceptance of the convention that talk is neither a
search for truth nor the propagation of a belief, but it to be understood as a partnership in
intellectual pleasure.
Rorty ends his reply to Bouveresse by saying,

I have rarely read a discussion of one philosophers work by another that is so

clearly aimed at facilitating a mutual understanding, as opposed to achieving a
dialectical victory.

I say this is about as close to a conversation between two friends without it actually being a
physical, face-to-face conversation because, as Rorty said, its purpose is so clearly aimed at
facilitating a mutual understanding and intellectual pleasure as opposed to attempting to win
or show why the other person loses. But there are, indeed, wins and loses in this exchange.
Points that I find myself nodding in agreement to from both men, at different times. We may
win a point, score a hit, Oakeshott says, but that is incidental: nobody wins the conversation.
Ive read the exchange multiple times, multiple, and it is true; there is no discernible winner.
This is coming from someone who understands that my sympathies undoubtedly lean toward
Rorty in every hostile engagementin other words, he rarely loses, and things are rarely
deadlocked.
Theres little doubt that Bouveresse and Rorty came away from that exchange differently.
Or, perhaps, they would at least admit to being better off in having had the exchange without
knowing precisely why they were better offmaybe it was just a pleasant exchange, and, for
Rorty at least, a pleasant surprise considering the ire hes attracted throughout his career. Its true
that pleasant exchanges are often more powerful than rigid and well-reasoned ones, yet the
paradox is not to view pleasantness as a rhetorical tool; not to see it as merely one more
dialectical method by which I can convince you of something. Conversation as rhetorical
strategy is no conversation at all.
__________

In my moments of grandeur I always find myself wishing that more of our writing took
the Bouveresse-Rorty framework as its guidegoodness knows that we could stand to lose a
little by way of mainstream journalism and stand to gain a bit more by way of intellectual
exchanges hinging on mutual understanding and not, as it were, mutual exclusivity (like here at
The Point). And a mutual understanding that isnt riddled with willy-nilly motive ascription but
rather an exploration and prodding of what this person means, what they possibly could have
meant when they said this, and trying ones best to see just how their world is arranged such that
they could say such a thing?
Thomas Kuhn, was right to advise us that, when encountering an absurdity in someones
writing, thinking, or thoughts, that we should

ask [ourselves] how a sensible person could have written them. When [we] find
an answer when those passages make sense, then [we] may find that more
central passages, ones [we] previously thought you understood, have changed
their meaning.

I would add or amend this by replacing absurdity with peculiar or confusingtheres no reason
why this little Kuhnian maxim wouldnt work in general with any aspect of someones thoughts,
beliefs, or writings. These days, people dont get much beyond someone elses base,
uncontroversial propositions much less their absurdities.
The Bouveresse-Rorty exchange is a searching conversation between a man who found
another mans proclamations to be peculiar if not just a bit absurd and went about addressing
them in a civil, casual, and enlightening way, knowing full well that any interpretation he is
bringing might not be at all the interpretation intended. It is not to say Let me go after him, but
rather Let me see if Im correct in my suspicions. Most of all, Bouveresse and Rorty address
each other as if they were in the same room: most writing these days seems to think it can afford
to be flamboyant and vile because the author knows that, for the most part, they will never have
to read what they wrote out loud to their intended audience much less confront a replyits just
put it out there, and on to the next piece. Perhaps this should be a general rule of engagement:
write as if youre going to have to someday read it to the person or persons you are addressing
or, more likely in todays world of journalism, talking down to.
We may continue to think, with Tzu and Oakeshott, that most everything worth handing
down by thinkers and geniuses died with them, but this is not something that ought to make us
wallow. Rather it should make us move more toward the conversational end of the spectrum; the
side of the spectrum that isnt about parade or pomposity, but mutual understanding and
sympathy. We should come to see life, with Oakeshott, not as an argument but a conversation.
We should cease to think in terms of winners and losers, and instead think of the plurality of
utterances that make up our social sphere as different voices and idioms; different, if somewhat
off-tune, notes in the symphony. What else could a symphony be than a cacophony that we hear
differently?