Not Even Wrong: Ethics, Andrea Long Chu and Everlasting Irony in the Logical Space of Reasons
by M. Munro
I absolutely do court disagreement in that sense. But what I like even better are arguments that bring about a shift in terms along an axis that wasn’t previously evident. So it’s not just that other people are wrong; it’s that their wrongness exists within a system of evaluation which itself is irrelevant.[1]
In the Phenomenology, Hegel’s view is that woman is the “everlasting irony in the life of the community” and she brings it down by making it a “laughing-stock.” We might say that from the perspective of the male master, the collapse of the community is tragic. But from an equally important perspective, the perspective of woman—the slave—the collapse is comic.[2]
At an academic event, I was once asked what I had meant by the term ethics as I’d used it in a publication. I hesitated and then I said, “I think I mean commitment to a bit.” The audience laughed, but I meant it; they laughed because I meant it. In stand-up comedy, a bit is a comedic sequence or conceit, often involving a brief suspension of reality. To commit to a bit is to play it straight—that is, to take it seriously. A bit may be fantastical, but the seriousness required to commit to it is always real. This is the humorlessness that vegetates at the core of all humor. That’s what makes the bit funny: the fact that, for the comic, it isn’t.[3]
Andrea Long Chu’s Females is—already—many things to many people, including, as Bryony White notes, “an exercise in logic, not what they were expecting.”[4] In context, those two phrases are merely contiguous and otherwise disconnected (“confusing, a difficult read, an exercise in logic, not what they were expecting, controversial, offensive”), but I wonder whether it’s not perhaps possible to read them together, one directly modifying the other. That is, might not one of the difficulties here reside in the question of whether there’s a certain “logic,” however unexpected, to what remains logically unexpected? In other words, what is the relationship between logic and expectation—and expectations of relevance, not least? In what sense, if any, might the unexpected comprise “a” logic of its own, and (more importantly) in what might its exercise consist?
Perhaps a clue—and the first lineaments of an answer—may be glimpsed in this commitment to a bit.
A young man in his mid-twenties knocks on the door of the noted scholar Rabbi Shwartz. “My name is Sean Goldstein,” he says. “I’ve come to you because I wish to study Talmud.”
“Do you know Aramaic?” the rabbi asks.
“No,” replies the young man.
“Hebrew?” asks the Rabbi.
“No,” replies the young man again.
“Have you studied Torah?” asks the Rabbi, growing a bit irritated.
“No, Rabbi. But don’t worry. I graduated Berkeley summa cum laude in philosophy, and just finished my doctoral dissertation at Harvard on Socratic logic. So now, I would just like to round out my education with a little study of the Talmud.”
“I seriously doubt,” the rabbi says, “that you are ready to study Talmud. It is the deepest book of our people. If you wish, however, I am willing to examine you in logic, and if you pass that test I will teach you Talmud.”
The young man agrees.
Rabbi Shwartz holds up two fingers. “Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face, the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?”
The young man stares at the rabbi. “Is that the test in logic?”
The rabbi nods.
“The one with the dirty face washes his face,” he answers wearily.
“Wrong. The one with the clean face washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. So the one with the clean face washes his face.”
“Very clever,” Goldstein says. “Give me another test.”
The rabbi again holds up two fingers. “Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face, the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?”
“We have already established that. The one with the clean face washes his face.”
“Wrong. Each one washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. So the one with the clean face washes his face. When the one with the dirty face sees the one with the clean face wash his face, he also washes his face. So each one washes his face.”
“I didn’t think of that,” says Goldstein. “It’s shocking to me that I could make an error in logic. Test me again.”
The rabbi holds up two fingers. “Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face, the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?”
“Each one washes his face.”
“Wrong. Neither one washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. But when the one with the clean face sees the one with the dirty face doesn’t wash his face, he also doesn’t wash his face. So neither one washes his face.”
Goldstein is desperate. “I am qualified to study Talmud. Please give me one more test.”
He groans, though, when the rabbi lifts two fingers. “Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face, the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?”
“Neither one washes his face.”
“Wrong. Do you now see, Sean, why Socratic logic is an insufficient basis for studying Talmud? Tell me, how is it possible for two men to come down the same chimney, and for one to come out with a clean face and the other with a dirty face? Don’t you see? The whole question
“is narishkeit, foolishness,” the rabbi concludes, “and if you spend your whole life trying to answer foolish questions, all your answers will be foolish, too.”[5]
References:
[1] Andrea Long Chu, “Andrea Long Chu is Ready for Criticism,” interview by Thora Siemsen, The Nation, November 4, 2019, https://www.thenation.com/article/andrea-long-chu-females-interview/.
[2] Philip J. Kain, “Hegel, Antigone, and Women,” Owl of Minerva, 33 (2002): 157-177. See version at https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/phi/51/. The quotation is found on page 14 of the file.
[3] Andrea Long Chu, Females (New York: Verso, 2019), 18-9.
[4] Bryony White, “‘Everyone is Female and Everyone Hates It’: Andrea Long Chu’s Theory of Desire,” review of Females, by Andrea Long Chu, Frieze, November 7, 2019, https://frieze.com/article/everyone-female-and-everyone-hates-it-andrea-long-chus-theory-desire.
[5] Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998), 47-8, https://aleph.org/resources/the-rabbi-is-in-two-men-come-down-the-same-chimney.
About the Author:
M. Munro is author of the open access chapbook, Philosophy for Militants (punctum books, 2017).
