The famous Dutch historian, Pieter Geyl, in his Napoleon, for and against (Dutch, Napoleon: voor en tegen in de Franse geschiedschrijving) teaches us that there are “arguments without end.” One example is the question surrounding the concept of detachment. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, proposes “eudaimonia,” a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of good spirit coming from imperturbability. This sense of things is all over the Western tradition. Think of the line from the British poet, Alexander Pope, “For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.” (An Essay on Criticism, 1711). You see from this that fools lack detachment and act on impulse.
We get a confirmation of Geyl’s arguments without end when we remember that almost every love song recommends the opposite. For example, “Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread)” originally made famous by Frank Sinatra and later Elvis Presley, offers us the line “But wise men never fall in love / So how are they to know.” From this, we can interpret that wise men can be foolish and foolish people can be wise. You may also have in the back of your mind Tennyson’s “Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” It is not wise to be careful always.
We get a twist on this in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical South Pacific. Think of “Some Enchanted Evening”:
Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons—
Wise men never try.
Fools give you reasons because they think everything can be explained, where wise men realize this is not always true. The larger point, from existential thinker Gabriel Marcel, is that all the phenomena of life that are explainable are themselves wrapped up in a larger mystery. He discusses the question of detachment in Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary, which we covered in “Existence and the Problem of Separability” and “Is the World Broken?”.
Marcel says:
March 8th [1929]
I am more and more struck by the difference between the two modes of detachment: the one is that of the spectator, the other of the saint. The detachment of the saint springs, as one might say, from the very core of reality; it completely excludes curiosity about the universe. This detachment is the highest form of participation. The detachment of the spectator is just the opposite, it is desertion, not only in thought but in act. Herein, I think, lies the kind of fatality which seems to weigh on all ancient philosophy—it is essentially the philosophy of the spectator.
But one thing must be noted: the belief that one can escape pure spectatorship by devotion to a practical science, which cannot quite clearly formulate it as yet. I should express it by saying that the modifications which such a science imposes on reality have no other result (metaphysically of course than of making that science in some sense a stranger to reality. The word ‘alienation’ exactly expresses what I mean. ‘I am not watching a show’—I will repeat these words to myself every day. A fundamental spiritual fact.
The interdependence of spiritual destinies, the plan of salvation; for me, that is the sublime and unique feature of Catholicism.
I was just thinking a moment ago that the spectator-attitude corresponds to a form of lust; and more than that, it corresponds to the act by which the subject appropriates the world for himself. And I now perceive the deep truth of Bérulle’s theocentrism. We are here to serve; yes, the idea of service, in every sense, must be thoroughly examined.
Also perceived this morning, but still in a confused way, that there is profane knowledge and sacred knowledge (whereas previously I have wrongly tended to assert that all knowledge was pro-fane. It isn’t true, profane is a supremely informative word). Inquire on what conditions knowledge ceases to be profane.
Incredible how thronged these days are spiritually! My life is being illuminated right into the depths of the past, and not my life only.
Every time we give way to ourselves we may unawares be laying an additional limitation on ourselves, forging our own chain. That is the metaphysical justification for asceticism. I never understood that till now.
Reality as mystery, intelligible solely as mystery. This also applies to myself.
Gabriel Marcel, Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary, Harper Torchbooks, 1965, pages 20-21.
Notice this discussion starts by analyzing modes of detachment and concludes with Marcel talking about reality and himself as mystery. This brings us full circle to Geyl and his concept of arguments without end because trying to define pros and cons of detachment and what is a mystery is ultimately undecidable. This may remind you of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, that finding a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible.