Unofficial Thoughts

After some telephonic build-up, I'm posting my translation of Unofficial Thoughts, a 1948 essay by Yakov Druskin, a Russian mathematician and philosopher. You will see how, without engaging in direct polemic with Husserl, of whom Druskin was aware, he presents a sceptical view of signs and their relation to meaning. I hope this short essay might refresh our minds and help our digestion of the properly Husserlian matters. I'll be grateful for your remarks on the essay and/or the translation.

Yakov Druskin. Unofficial Thoughts

29 January 1948

Unofficial thoughts are thoughts not from reason, or even, not founded in reason, but certain thoughts of this kind are some of the most intelligent. This is something never understood by Tolstoy. Reason is official. Unofficial thoughts are fruitless, meaning that one cannot build any system out of them. They are unfounded, found nothing themselves, do not lead anywhere, do not have any application—moral or any other kind.

Might some classification of unofficial thoughts be possible? Even if so, it might only be empirical, meaning superficial, outward. Among unofficial thoughts belong the majority of the most interesting arguments about the soul, death, and God. The thought of the existence of unofficial thoughts is itself an unofficial thought.

There are unofficial thoughts. There is an impulse to squeeze an unofficial thought into a system of official thoughts. So, when an unofficial thought is contemplated for a long time, it is perverted until it finally becomes official. In the same way, unofficial thoughts are perverted and become official if one attempts to classify them.

An unofficial thought belongs to the final remainder that partakes in no system whatsoever, and one cannot deduce anything from it because if I make such a deduction it [the unofficial thought, AR] will be perverted and become official.

The most unofficial of all: the soul.

The most unofficial of thoughts: the Good news.

An unofficial thought is connected to a certain temptation. In itself, it is not a temptation, but it is related to a temptation, as when I see a certain margin of error in an equilibrium.

Every conviction is official. But this in itself is an official thought. Better to put it this way: an unofficial conviction lacks the form of a conviction. Even better: to say nothing at all.

A thought that permits no further inference is a fruitless or empty thought. But perhaps some, a very small share of such thoughts are unofficial? Then they are not empty. The most infertile of thoughts is the Good news. The conclusions people draw from it are usually banal, moral, and official. But this very thought, the most infertile of all thoughts, turned out to be the most fertile: it changed the world and, most important, the soul.

Is it needed to discuss one’s thought, that is, to think about it, which means repeating and memorizing it? The messengers neither memorize nor remember anything. Maybe a yurodivy speaks like a messenger. I think Bashilov was like that. Not only did he not care to repeat or remember his thought, he simply could not repeat it or remember it. In repeating it, he already turned it into something different. Each thought of his was new, i.e. a revelation. This is the meaning of yurodstvo: to be like a messenger in real life. But no one can learn it: the language of messengers is a gift: gratia gratis data. For Bashilov, the language of messengers was a native tongue… But for those unworthy of yurodstvo, repetition and memorization are necessary. Kierkegaard wrote about this, too.

I had some intention and committed an act: I moved from state A to state B. But between states A and B there was a certain thought “a” and a certain characteristic—a quantum of thought, a criterion of its permissibility: X. So that A → X(a) → B. The state B is conditioned, or determined, by the thought “a.” But X which permitted me to have the thought “a”: is that X determined? I think that there are undetermined quanta of thought—hence the consciousness of guilt and responsibility. If X is the norm of what is permissible, it is still me and not someone else who accepts it as the norm. It might be that the majority of norms are inculcated by the upbringing, fear—meaning that they’re determined. But conscience and shame before oneself are not reducible to upbringing alone.

We think in general concepts. But a general concept does not communicate reality. We combine realities into concepts. But a combination of realities is too a general concept, and as such, it too does not convey reality. Concepts and thoughts signify relations. But that which relates, stands in relation, we know not—we do not even know whether it does stand in relation, because relation is a general concept and does not convey reality.

All of us are insane, but we have a shared language. Not even a language but shared words and rules for combining them—grammar. Each one speaks of something that’s his own, and the other does not understand him, but thanks to the shared language and shared grammar sometimes it looks as if one were understood. To break out of this insanity would mean to see and understand that between I and you lies a chasm that cannot be traversed. I am speaking here not of some emotional or psychological but principal—gnoseological and metaphysical—incomprehension.

I’ll take an example—a naïve one, but no matter how incredible, it cannot be refuted logically. I take the simplest proposition, such as 7+5=12, and try to understand this proposition not as a set of formal logical relations, but essentially—noumenally. It is, after all, a person who utters this proposition. Once it too was for him a discovery, a living thought—a thought that was not, to his mind, an abstraction but a revelation. Then he got used to that thought, it grew threadbare and became an abstract thought—a set of relations among abstract symbols.

I am seeking the primal element, an atom of the noumenal, i.e. a vital comprehension, and that is why I take the simplest thought: 7+5=12. It has the form of a totality, meaning that if I go ahead and write the symbols 7+5, anyone at all shall write after the symbol “=” the symbol “12.” Two mathematicians with the help of identical signs will demonstrate identically that it cannot be any other way. But I doubt that they have an identical understanding of the noumenal meaning of those signs. They know only the rules of connecting those signs and, if one of them could enter directly into the soul of the other, then maybe he would say: “You’ve written down all the symbols correctly, but what you understand by them is not at all an identity but a summer evening, and your proof, as you understand it, despite the correct arrangement of symbols, is not a proof at all but a description of a stroll alongside a lake on a summer evening.”

Life is irrational; language is rational: we speak using general concepts. If I want to express something irrational, I assert the equivalence of two incompatible propositions or states of affairs. But I cannot utter them at once—I utter them one after the other and then assert the equivalence, requiring the listener to combine in a single moment what I uttered sequentially. This means that I presuppose in myself and in him an ability for intellectual contemplation, which Kant denied in writing but in actuality presupposed and required.

The equivalence of two inconsistent propositions or states of affairs is unthinkable, and therefore it is already not a thought but intellectual contemplation. If immediate communication of thought were possible, immediate wordless communication of the contents of contemplation would probably also be possible. If people were able to achieve this, they would return to a golden age, and it would become the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. From the time when people stopped communicating their thoughts immediately and until the time when they regain that ability, people are actually insane: we speak nonsense, supposing that there’s sense in it.

A logical question arises: what is “sense”? Relations among concepts may be identical while their meanings may differ. For example, let there be a proposition a ⊃ b, meaning that a is in b. Let α be the object of the concept a and let β be the object of the concept b. Seeing a certain relation between objects α and β, everyone might say, identically: a ⊃ b. But, firstly, do we see and understand the relation of α and β identically? We call them identical names and connect identically these names that we invented, but do we see and understand those relations identically? [This is a key presupposition in the semantic tableau method. AR] And secondly, do we understand identically the relation of each object to its own concept, α to a and β to b? For we communicate in signs—general concepts—and our mind has established rational relations among those concepts, whereas the world, life, soul, and spirit are a-rational. But even logic and logical relations themselves are understood by everyone differently. Maybe when someone says “argument” what he means by that is what I mean by “function.” The rules for connecting variables may remain exactly the same, because they are created precisely to be used with symbols that in themselves do not express anything. But does it follow that—in content, and not only in form—we understand identical connections identically?

There is a certain kind of incompatibility, especially in value judgments, when someone says, for example: “How intelligent is the design of the human body,” substantiating this only by examples of those organs in those cases when they function normally. But if one recalls that all people get sick and die—for the most part, not from being sated with life, like the Biblical patriarchs, but accidentally, or from illnesses, or simply get sated with life before their time—or that there are many unintelligent organs, one might as well say that the human organism is designed unintelligently. These two propositions cannot be called equivalent, simply because they express nothing at all beyond the human need to utter general judgments, i.e. a simple desire to talk, a preference for talking rather than keeping silent. This kind of behavior is typical of the insane. Therefore we are all precisely insane. But, having uttered this, I, too, speak like an insane person. My insanity in this case consists in uttering a general judgment without having sufficient grounds for it. I was coming from empirical, and moreover, rational grounds. I discussed rationally illnesses, premature satiation with life, and premature death. But how do I know that they’re premature, that illness has no purpose, when in my experience it has been granted me to see its purpose and the madness of the wise who deemed that is has no such purpose? For a human being is not a body, not an organism but God’s image and likeness. When my arguments cross their proper boundary, I become a madman. I pick up distinct inklings, although they are mere inklings, of a supra-rational, irrational rationality, of the existence of Providence, but I reduce the life of a person to merely the life of a human organism, and supplant absolute rationality with my own limited, irrational rationality.

There is, in fact, only one kind of insanity or source of all insanity: disbelief.

When I utter a general judgment without having faith, and when I do not utter a general judgment without having faith, and when I keep silent without having faith—I am insane. Can I draw any conclusions from this? Yes. Can I express it in words to myself or another? Only as a madman. And again, there are two senses here: an elementary one and the other one, of which Apostle Paul says: “a temptation for the Jews and a madness for the Greeks.” [?] And also: “God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the things that are mighty” (I Cor. 1:27).

In life there are excesses and deficiencies. Let’s suppose that God instantaneously turned all the excesses into deficiencies and all the deficiencies into excesses. Will anybody notice this change—given that all the relations remained exactly the same, only the plus became the minus and the minus the plus? But even if someone would, he would not be able to express it, because the relations have remained the same, and the language of general concepts reflects only relations, but not contents. Even if every instant God would turn excesses into deficiencies and deficiencies into excesses—even then, no one would be able to express it to someone else or even to oneself…

What I just wrote, no one else will be able to understand; that is why it is asserted that no one undertands anyone, and even when one has understood, he has not really understood, and when he hasn't understood, he has understood, but even the latter cannot be understood. But I myself can no longer understand what I wrote just now, because "just now" is already not now but, as they say, "a different now" that does not exist now: now—is always now, the only now, just the same as my soul. For the soul is the very thing of which I, in a completely singular manner, say: mine. Mine is my soul, exactly in the now, and "just now" is no longer mine: mine is the now of my soul. Between you and I there is a chasm, and an equal chasm is between me now and me just now, between me and myself, and there's no natural way to traverse this chasm. That is why we talk to one another and think that we understand, but apart from the rare cases of noumenal intercourse, when words themselves may be unnecessary, no one understands anyone or even oneself. We are all insane—including myself: instead of keeping silent, I speak.

If I travel on a train and the train changes its direction to the opposite and I miss the change of direction because the windows are curtained and I cannot see where we travel and to what destination, then how can I find out whether the train is traveling forward or backward? It will seem to me that the train is always going in the same direction. It is the same way between people, and for any person and himself. We go along, seemingly together, and I go along with myself—but we change our direction, without noticing it, so often that we've in fact parted ways a long time ago and are actually going in opposite directions still thinking that we're going along together. But the opposite also happens: we thought that we had noticed a change of direction and that we had parted ways and now walk in opposite directions, but in actuality the changes of direction aligned themselves accidentally and we are walking in the same direction even though we do not know where we're going. We know nothing and understand nothing—neither others nor ourselves—and can only ask God to grant us a noumenal understanding of one another and ourselves—at least an inkling of noumenal understanding.

"When I say, my foot is uncertain, may your mercy, O Lord, strengthen me; and when my grief multiplies in my heart a consolation from you will refresh my soul." (Psalm 94). [Check quote; the Russian and English Bibles were translated from different sources. AR]