In the last two posts I reviewed the first three chapters of Bryan Magee’s final book, Ultimate Questions. In the fourth chapter called Can Experience Be Understood?, he restates Kant’s proposition that we can never know a thing-in-itself, only our experience of it. Because “our conceptions and apprehensions of things are not constituent parts of the things apprehended,”14 it follows “reality is not and cannot be ‘like’ representations and thoughts.”15 The implication of this is that the empirical world is different for everyone and none of us can know what the world is like for another. Seen reflexively, this means we can never understand the us others experience. By this line of thinking, the ‘empirical world’ is subjective not actual and did not exist before minds and will end when all minds disappear. 
This is a tricky concept since on initial hearing one is inclined to respond that the world will be just as it was when we experienced it after there are no minds, but that is a misunderstanding of the point. And the point is important since one implication is that at death (then mindless), we escape the empirical world and possibly enter the nuomenal world or ‘real reality’ as envisaged by, for example, Plato or religion, though he thinks this is doubtful. On the other hand when we die our unique empirical world comes to an end as well, thus both may lapse into nothingness, though that too is not certain.
In Chapter 5, Where Such Ideas Come From, he indicates his aim in writing the book is to express his thoughts as ‘directly as possible’ on the fundamental human condition, particularly as apprehended in his own existence rather than extracted from his reading of others. His two realizations of ‘bodily existence’ are (1) the contingent truth of the sensory equipment we have and (2) the dependence of our sensibilities and categories of understanding on that apparatus. Therefore despite the devices we create to augment the senses, there will always be a limit on what we can know and understand. “We cannot get outside our apparatus. In fact, in one sense, we are our apparatus.” 16
At the end of the day, our concept of a thing, e.g. time, is not the reality of it. “In itself reality’s mode of existence must be unintelligible to us. This is so even in regard to our own existence.” 17 This means not only that there is much we can never know, but also that knowing itself is confined by the apparatus at our disposal, all of which is contingent on “the empirical circumstances that brought it about in the process of evolution.”18 It also means that “to conclude that nothing inconceivable can exist is an error,” 19 which also means “Anything else may exist.”20 
He uses the example of radio waves; consider the deceptiveness of empirically empty air that contains innumerable radio waves we were unaware of until relatively recently. He concludes, “the most important single truth in philosophy…however difficult it may be for us to grasp, most of reality is unknowable by us and, – because beyond all possibility of apprehension – unconceptualisable.” 21
(third continuation next post)
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14Magee, Bryan, Ultimate Questions. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2016. ISBN 978-0-691-17812-7, page 60.
15Ibid., page 65. 16Ibid., page 73 . 17Ibid., page 75.
18Ibid, page 76. 19Ibid. 20Ibid., page 77.
21Ibid., page 85.
He suggests there is an inexplicable, invisible, immediate connection of our inner beings to those of other people which he calls an ‘inner oneness’ that may be the foundation of morality. But there’s more: “…the notion of inner oneness may possibly contain the key not only to morality, but to the enigma of life itself. According to the theory of evolution, a living individual existence has been passed on unbrokenly, continuous, self-renewing, from the amoeba to everything living today.”9
The second is Martin Luther who chose to appear at the Diet of Worms at the risk of death due to his beliefs, and offered only, “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me.”12 He ends the chapter again arguing religion is the wrong response to the mystery of existence and inner connectedness, suggesting explanations have a developing history and should not be pre-empted with speculation. In the meantime, regarding the world we live in, “the challenge is to live in it (and die in it) without understanding it, and without closing our eyes to the fact that, whether we like it or not, it is our situation…”13
“WE HAD NO SAY IN EXISTING – WE WERE NOT GIVEN any choice. We just woke up into the world and found ourselves in it…most of us are in thrall to an instinct for survival that is programmed into us biologically. We are here now, and we want to go on living; so we try to make the best of it.” – Bryan Magee.2
His obituary available at theguardian.com says he was a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, Oxford, King’s College among others, published over 20 books, was an authority on Richard Wagner, an erstwhile television and media critic, and twice a member of the British Parliament in addition to his broadcast career. According to Wikipedia, Ultimate Questions was his last book (2016), but in the author’s opinion his only original contribution to philosophy. He was quoted in 2018, then living in a nursing home, that with this book he hoped to approach the originality of Karl Popper, Bertrand Russell, or Einstein “not because I want to be a clever chap but because I want to do things that are at a much better level than I have done them”3 – hard to believe!
“…it is not rank but virtue that makes a man good; not office but character. A proud man disdains his former friends, ignores acquaintances made yesterday, is contemptuous to old companions.”– Lothario Dei Segni (Pope Innocent III).
But I do know: and so I treat him kindly and fairly, following the natural law of our fellowship, but at the same time I give him his proper desert in matters which are morally neutral.”15 Regarding anger and fame he sees them as passion and desire in which one surrenders oneself to the offence or judgment of others. As for needing help from others he says, “Do not be ashamed of help. It is your task to achieve your assigned duty, like a soldier in a scaling-party, What, then, if you are lame and cannot climb the parapet by yourself, but this is made possible by another’s help?”16
It is in this inhabited world where we must perform our duties and where we encounter the relationships that permit the demonstration of our capacity for kindness and our skill in maintaining tranquility. Next time we will sum up the Stoic idea of purpose in acquaintance, reviewing Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Join me then.
Take for example his advice for dealing with self-interested persons. “How cruel it is not to allow people to strive for what seems to them their interest and advantage! And yet in a way you are forbidding them to do this when you fuss that they are wrong; surely they are drawn to their own interest and advantage. ‘But is it not actually so?: well then, teach them, show them, do not fuss.”10 Another example is his reflections on those with a variety of other faults. “Whenever you are offended at someone’s lack of shame, you should immediately ask yourself: ‘So is it possible for there to be no shameless people in the world?’ It is not possible. Do not then ask for the impossible. This person is just one of the shameless inevitably existing in the world. Have the same thought ready for the rogue, the traitor, every sort of offender. The recognition that this class of people must necessarily exist will immediately make you kinder to them as individuals.”11
Marcus also has an almost Christian attitude to his adversaries. “When another blames or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what kind of people they are. You will realize there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any other opinion of you. But you should still be kind to them. They are by nature your friends…”12 Or we can follow a different course, “In the field of play an opponent scratches us with his nails, or gives us a butting blow with his head: but we do not ‘mark’ him for that, or take offence, or suspect him afterwards of deliberate attack. True, we do keep clear of him: but this is good-natured avoidance, not suspicion or treating him as an enemy.” 13 There is much more on maintaining composure in the face of others characters, for example: ignorance, disloyalty, or ingratitude (Book 9:42:3), wrong-doing (Book 5:25, 5:35, 8:56, 9:2, 9:20, 9:42:2, 10:30, and 12:11), untruthfulness or injustice (Book 6:47), propensity to criticism (Book 10:13, 11:13), obstructivism (Book 11:13) and even grief-sharing (Book 5:36).
Since Marcus thinks action in the world is essential to a meaningful life but worldly annoyances may affect one’s tranquility, he suggests one prepare for the day with a few useful reflections. Book 5 begins: “At break of day when you are reluctant to get up, have this thought ready to mind; ‘I am getting up for a man’s work. Do I still then resent it, if I am going out for what I was born for, the purpose for which I was brought into the world?’ ”4 And he defines ‘man’s work’ in this quote: “Man’s joy is to do man’s proper work. And work proper to man is benevolence to his own kind, disdain for the stirrings of the senses, diagnosis of the impressions he can trust, contemplation of universal nature and all things thereby entailed.”5 
He also advises on meeting new people, “ask yourself first this immediate question: ‘What beliefs does this person hold about the good and bad in life?’ Because if he believes this or that about pleasure and pain and their constituents, about fame and adversity, death and life, then I shall not find it surprising or strange if he acts in this or that way, and I shall remember that he has no choice but to act as he does.”8 And if you can, “show them the better way. If you cannot, remember that this is why you have the gift of kindness. The gods too are kind to such people, and in their benevolence even help them to achieve some ends – health, wealth, fame. You can do it too.”9
“If you want to gain control of pain, open up this blessed book and enter deep within it. Its wealth of philosophy will bring you to see with ease all the future, the present, and the past, and you see that joy and distress have no more power than smoke.”– Simokattes Theophylaktos (attributed), codicil to Book 12 of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.
Societal life then is analogous to a wrestling match or contest where providential duties are completed in a virtuous manner and with tolerance of one’s fellow human beings.2 About one third of Meditations describes intellectualized techniques for dealing with others that facilitate equanimity and serenity.
“A crowd is not company.” – Francis Bacon
He has similar concerns about large groups. “Contact with the crowd is deleterious; inevitably vice will be made attractive or imprinted on us or smeared upon us without our being aware of it.”4 He also warns of the danger of seeking public approval which has little value for the Stoic and is inevitably suspect; “The many admire you, but have you grounds for self-satisfaction if you are the kind of man the many understand?”5
