Last Sunday, after sixteen years, I got another Rabab from Dabgari Bazaar, Peshawar. We are getting used to each other - here is a test run in D# Harmonic Minor:

Click image to view all photos.

چه نسبت است به رندی صلاح و تقوا را

Rubab or Robab (Persian: رُباب Rūbāb, Hindi: रुबाब) is a lute-like musical instrument from Afghanistan. It is not to be confused with the rebab, which is played with a bow. The rubab is mainly used by Afghan and Iranian Kurdish classical musicians. A short-necked lute made of wood, with goatskin covering the body, the rubab has three melody [nylon] strings tuned in fourths, three [two] drone [steel] strings, and 11 or 12 [or 13] sympathetic [steel] strings. The instrument is made from the trunk of a mulberry tree and the strings are [used to be] made from the intestines of young goats, brought to the size of thread.

The rubab is attested since the 7th century. It is mentioned in old Persian books, and many Sufi poets mention it in their poems. It is the traditional instrument of Khorasan (present Afghanistan), and is thus also widely used in countries neighbouring Afghanistan, such as Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Rubabs made in Iran slightly differ from those of Afghanistan, as the Afghan rubab (mostly known as Kabuli rubab) is known to be the more traditionally modeled. The rubab is known as The Lion of instruments, and is one of the two National Instruments of Afghanistan (together with the Zerbaghali).

The rubab possibly can be deemed the ancestor of the North Indian sarod and sarangi[?], which are often used in Hindustani classical music, but - unlike the sarod - it is a fretted instrument. - Wikipedia

Today, Saad surprised me with a few articles and reviews by Alexander Nehamas. I am very thankful to him for looking them up and sending them to me as I was not even aware they existed. Most articles at JSTOR, i.e. the ones you really want to read, can only be accessed through some institutional membership, and it is good for me to have at least one friend academically involved in the humanities.

I just finished reading one of these articles which highlights the pervasive significance and uncertainty of aesthetic values and interpretation in art and life, and consequently suggests that no degree of passion or conviction concerning an intense debate should make any argument or interpretation uncivil. That it is possible to be tentatively and resolutely involved or dogmatically and timidly dismissive in interpretation and appreciation, I am only beginning to comprehend.

Here are a few excerpts:

Art, Interpretation, and the Rest of Life
Author: Alexander Nehamas
Source: Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 78, No. 2, (Nov., 2004), pp. 25-42
Published by: American Philosophical Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3219723

…the effects of our interpretations of works of art on the rest of our lives are far-ranging; they shape and color our experience, they give it form and structure, and they are integral to what each one of us is. To which the obvious objection is that, although that might perhaps be true of a coterie of a few aesthetes and a handful of professors, the only reason academics would like to think that it applies more generally is that it seems to offer some justification for our lives; most people, however, have little use for art and even less for its interpretation. Perhaps, one might think, art is irrelevant to most people because it is at best part of the life of only a small and privileged social group; or because, even if most people are exposed to it, they know only its worst and most trivial instances (in which case, one should hope it remains irrelevant to them); or again because, even if serious art is part of their life, they have neither the leisure nor the ability to respond to the stringent intellectual demands of interpretation. All these considerations presuppose a distinction between the fine arts and high culture, on the one hand, and the crafts and popular culture, on the other. Yet if the history of art teaches us anything, it is that–from the successful efforts of Alberti to show that painting is not a humble occupation but an admirable practice “worthy of all our attention and study” through the failed efforts of a generation of English writers, including Coleridge, to prevent the novel from becoming an object of serious attention” to the victories of photography, film, and jazz–the line between high and low art and culture is always drawn in sand…

It is ignorance, sometimes willful, that prevents people from recognizing that aesthetic experience is neither marginal to life nor restricted to a few privileged arts. Aesthetic experience is, in fact, inextricably woven into the everyday, so that perhaps no experience is completely unaesthetic. Dave Hickey, who believes that “the live effects of art…inform our every waking hour,” remembers “standing on the comer of 52nd Street and Third Avenue on a spring afternoon, six feet from a large citizen gouging the pavement with a jackhammer, and thinking about the Ramones, amazed at the preconscious acuity with which I had translated the pneumatic slap of the hammer into eighth-notes and wondering what part, if any, of the pleasures and dangers of the ordinary world might rightly be considered ‘natural.’” Art and beauty can be found everywhere, and therefore so can interpretation, without which they slip unnoticed by while we sail on oblivious of the wax blocking our ears. The issue is only whether we know–or whether it matters to us to learn–how to discern the beauty and engage in its interpretation…

Interpretation unfolds in time. Steiner, who thinks that Magritte did not paint either women or beautiful pictures, dislikes him; my reading of his work disposes me to find him attractive. My attraction, in turn, is not an isolated state, a brute feeling I experience as I look at, or occasionally recall, his paintings, but is concretely manifested in my actions and the rest of my life. It is an unfolding, a working out of my interpretation. Because of it, I am likely to attend exhibitions of Magritte’s work, read books about him and discuss his pictures with people with whom I would not interact otherwise, think more about Surrealism and the social conditions within which it developed, wonder why Surrealism became, and remains, a favorite style for illustrating print advertisements, and turn to other painters to whom Magritte leads me and who, in turn, steer me toward still other works, other people, and other actions. It permeates my life…

Each one of my interpretations literally determines at least part of the shape of my life and affects its quality. When we argue about interpretation, if we are serious, we argue about just that: the shape and the value of our life. But it is impossible to know in advance where an interpretation will lead. The shape and the value of life are difficult to establish and we can’t presume to know how we will turn out, who we will be, as a result of accepting a new interpretation. We don’t know whether the new interpretation will bring with it benefits or harms, or what those will be. It is for that reason that arguments over interpretation need to be, however intense, civil and calm: we can’t assume that agreeing with us, however convinced we may be of the correctness of our view, will have the right consequences for our audience. Very few interpretations are global enough to have clear consequences for the rest of our behavior. The moral clarity to which so many of us are quick to lay claim requires at least a sense of its own limits. Self-righteousness is not only distasteful, but destructive.

The interpretation of Magritte, and interpretation in general, is not a trivial matter even if it has no obvious consequences, for any interpretation may prove to be central to a life, with consequences that, however obscure at first, may be immensely far-ranging. But whether a view of Magritte will be central to a particular life depends on many other factors; it is a question to which different individuals will give different answers. The value of the place of Magritte (or the novel or television or anything else) in life cannot be established on general grounds: it will depend on the value of the whole life of which it is a larger or smaller part, whatever that value eventually turns out to be. I have claimed that Wayne Booth has misinterpreted the formal features of the visual media and that he is wrong to think that television deforms the soul of its audience. But would it have been better for him if he appreciated it and if he had watched it a lot? There is absolutely no way to know–perhaps he might have written brilliantly about it, but perhaps it might have deprived us of the Rhetoric of Fiction and perhaps it might, in fact, have burnt him out. Not knowing where an interpretation can lead, the sort of life it will become a part of, however confident I am that it is right or wrong, I can’t be certain of the quality of its effects and I surely can’t consider it an instrument of moral progress or decay. Civility and calm are an expression of that uncertainty…

But what now of the countless people whose lives will never intersect with Magritte, Mann, or Wagner? They will still center on something–Frasier or Baywatch or rap or samba or glass beads or Yemeni oral poetry or Bollywood movies or who knows what else–and they will know how to interpret and appreciate it. Nothing short of relentless oppression or desperate hunger can rob life of art and beauty. I don’t see how it is possible to live without finding some things beautiful, related to the world only through appetite and need. And wherever beauty is found, interpretation, the effort to grasp and understand it, has already been there. Plato knew that love and knowledge cannot be separated, and Nietzsche saw, perhaps despite himself, that Socrates was a great erotic.

Nussbaum is currently Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, a chair that includes appointments in the Philosophy Department, the Law School, and the Divinity School. She also holds Associate appointments in Classics and Political Science, is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She previously taught at Harvard and Brown where she held the rank of university professor. - Wikipedia

On Tragedy

Conversations with History

PhilosophyTalk.org: Friendship

What is it? Who do we call friends? Do we need friends out of love for others or for ourselves? Is a life with friends necessarily a better life? Ancient philosophers, such as Aristotle, wrote extensively on the topic. John and Ken examine just what friendship means in the modern life with their friend, Martha Nussbaum, Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago.

Listen online (Download RealPlayer)

PhilosophyTalk.org

The Morning News

Full name, era of birth: Martha Craven Nussbaum, born 1947

Occupation title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime:

Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, The University of Chicago, appointed in Philosophy, Divinity, and Law; Associate in Classics and Political Science, Board member of the Human Rights Program, Affiliate of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and Coordinator of the Center for Comparative Constitutionalism.

In another lifetime I’d love just to be a writer and to have zero meetings to go to.

With these turbulent times, where do you turn for solace or insight? Which philosophers do you find personally significant? Are there specific books you’d love to put on the President’s nightstand?

Often to music. Mahler is a standing favorite, as are Mozart’s operas. Beethoven’s Fidelio is what I’ve been listening to a lot at present. Novels: I love Henry James, and recently have been reading a lot of Theodor Fontane. Poetry: Louise Glück is a special favorite, and Walt Whitman, among poets of the past. I also love the Chicago White Sox, and when they win 17-7, as yesterday, that really consoles me. All these seem to me personal choices; I’m not a big recommender, and I think people should read and listen to whatever moves them. As for philosophers, I find Mill the most soothing because I imagine him as a friend to whom one would like to talk. Most male philosophers of the past are not the friends of women, but Mill is.

I’d love the President to be the sort of person who would read Kant’s Perpetual Peace, Grotius’s On the Law of War and Peace, Mill’s The Subjection of Women, and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. But he is not and never will be that sort of person. That is our problem.

Since you must get to know a lot of young people in your work, I wonder if you get from them a strong sense of civic-mindedness or an absence thereof, excitement to participate as citizens or more laissez-faire?

I find most undergraduates oddly passive and disconnected from political activity. This makes me unhappy. I think they are all preoccupied with job security and success, and too few are civic-minded. There’s a small minority, however, who are very involved: I think of a law student of ours who all by herself organized a huge event for the Democratic National Committee in order to get young people more involved in the campaign. It was very moving to see how a student could put together something like that, with around 1500 people, and get leading politicians to come and speak.

Favorite books: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals; Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments; John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography and The Subjection of Women; John Rawls’s Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism; Henry James’s The Golden Bowl; Joyce’s Ulysses.

Heroes: John Stuart Mill, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Anecdotal, but: In conversations with lots of American women in their twenties, I find most agree with the feminism’s ideals, and would defend them, but dislike being called ‘feminists.’ Has feminism suffered an irrecoverable blow in the P.R. world? Can progress be rolled back if the word gets uglier in the mainstream’s view?

I have the same experience: I think they associate feminism with man-hating. But if you take apart the elements of feminism and ask them what they think, they usually think that women have suffered serious injustice and that it is important to rectify such injustices; that’s my general definition of feminism. Everything else is a matter of dispute among different varieties of feminism. But there is wide agreement that sexual harassment, sexual violence, and, particularly, the lack of social support for childcare and eldercare are large social problems.

Is it the legal expert, the academic, or the philosopher in you that gets angry about specious arguments (say, Judith Butler or Allen Bloom)? Any current writers lauded by the wags you’d like to see put under a big, red pen?

I don’t separate these parts of myself. My friends used to tease me when I was 11, calling me ‘Artha Marguer’ because of my love of arguing, and that was before I thought of myself as any particular thing. I really don’t like bad arguments, but what I especially dislike are bad arguments put forward cultishly, with an in-group air of authority. I think that philosophy should stick to its Socratic roots, as an egalitarian public activity open to everyone. Thus even some admittedly great philosophers, e.g. Wittgenstein, inspire me with unease because they allowed a cult to grow up around themselves and wrote undemocratically. Heidegger was guilty of the same, but he is a much less distinguished philosopher than Wittgenstein, and he also did bad things in politics. So why not use the red pen on Heidegger?

What makes you laugh: Aristophanes’ Lysistrata; Joyce’s Ulysses; Zero Mostel; Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt in Mad About You; Married With Children; The Onion.

Five words that sound great: Ravintola; Valitataalo; Aiuxet; Annankatu; Maito. (These are all Finnish words, and I don’t speak Finnish, so I can respond to them as pure music. They mean, respectively: restaurant, the name of a supermarket chain, adult, the name of a street, and milk.)

In Bryan Magee’s television program on great philosophers, you spoke about Aristotle and mentioned ‘he clearly denies again and again that there are souls in everything,’ in contrast to a popular misconception that Aristotle believed there are souls in everything. What does Martha Nussbaum think? As an issue it seems fairly gray, even ignored, by agnostic America, but concrete and irrefutable in our most popular religions. Where do you stand?

I don’t know any religion that says that there are souls in everything. In my view, they don’t go far enough! If a soul means a complex inner world that deserves to be treated as an end, not just as a means, I think that all humans and most animals have souls, in that sense: they should never be treated as mere means to the ends of others. But most religions don’t include animals, or, worse, they tell us that we have the right to dominate animals.

Perhaps related, do you ever find yourself turning away from philosophers or thinkers—though their arguments are appealing, even rationally and logically correct—because you can’t reconcile them with a mystery you’ve witnessed or experienced?

No. I think that the best philosophers are very sensitive to the mysteriousness of human life. That’s why Mill thought that all philosophers should read a lot of poetry.

Charity worth giving to: Oxfam.

The Morning News—Published May 27, 2004

Alexander Nehamas, Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature: “‘Because It Was He, Because It Was I’ The Good of Friendship” – March 4, 2008

You may like to right-click and save this lecture in video (recommended) or audio format:

MP4 Video
Duration: 01:26:14
Size: 226.06 MB
Princeton University Podcasts

MP3 Audio
Duration: 01:26:14
Size: 39.5 MB
Princeton University Podcasts

The President’s Lecture Series was established by President Shirley M. Tilghman in the fall of 2001 to give Princeton’s faculty an opportunity to learn about the work of their colleagues in other disciplines and to share their research with the University community. First proposed by Alan B. Krueger, the Lynn Bendheim Thoman, Class of 1976, and Robert Bendheim, Class of 1937, Professor in Economics and Public Policy, the lectures are presented three times a year and are open to the public. Past lectures have addressed a wide variety of topics, from “Jane Austen and War” to “How Bacteria Talk to Each Other.”

Today, Mujeeb Khan gave me the good news that the Conversations has been made available at archive.org. I have uploaded the book here in pdf format. I hope the yellowed leaves of the old library copy ‘add’ as much to your reading experience as they do to mine.

Here is
a night that is very long, it is endless. It is not time yet
to sleep in the palace. But go on telling your wonderful story.
I myself could hold out until the bright of dawn…
From Homer’s Odyssey in Richmond Lattimore’s translation

Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann (PDF~37MB)
Translated by John Oxenford

Dream is a second life. I have never been able to cross through those gates of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world without a sense of dread.

and writes a little further on (I found this passage so fascinatingly unusual that it actually made me giggle),

Meanwhile night was gradually falling and the sights, sounds and sensations of the place were becoming blurred to my slumbering mind. I thought I was sinking into an abyss which cut through the globe. I felt myself being buoyed along by a current of molten metal; a thousand similar streams whose hues varied with their chemical compositions were criss-crossing the earth like the vessels or veins that wind through the lobes of the brain. From the pulse and flux of their circulation, I gathered these streams were made up of living beings in a molecular state, which only the speed at which I was traveling made it impossible to distinguish. A whitish light was filtering into these channels, and at last I saw a new horizon open up like a huge dome dotted with islands washed by luminous waves. I found myself on a coast lit by a light not of the sun and saw an old man who was cultivating the soil. I recognized him as the same man who had spoken to me through the voice of the bird, and whether it was his words or my inner intuition of them, it became evident to me that our ancestors assumed the shape of certain animals in order to visit us on earth and take part in the various phases of our existence as silent observers.

Translated by Richard Sieburth for Penguin Classics

Mark Brawner kindly notified me some time ago about the complete text of Walter Kaufmann’s The Faith of a Heretic at archive.org. It is being shared here for the improvement of mankind educational purposes only.

Right-click the following link and ’save target’:

The Faith of a Heretic - Walter Kaufmann (PDF~21MB)