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State University of New York Press - Nancy J. Holland

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120 pages

English

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Neither self-effacing modesty nor religious meekness, ontological humility is a moral and philosophical attitude toward transcendence—the unknown and unknowable background of existence—and a recognition and awareness of the contingency and chance that influence the course of our lives. It is a concept that Nancy J. Holland finds both throughout the history of philosophy and across the volumes of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Tracing it through the philosophical thought of figures ranging from Descartes, Hume, and Kant to Heidegger, Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida, Holland uses the Harry Potter saga as a guide to illustrate the concept, revealing a whole set of ethical imperatives. Connecting the concept to contemporary gender and race theory, she demonstrates its implications both for our understanding of the philosophical tradition and for the way we live our own lives.
Acknowledgments

Prologue: Defining Ontological Humility

In the Beginning
Lord Voldemort and the Philosophers…
The Arrogant Eye and the World Picture
The Wizard of Infinite Resignation?
The End of it All

1. Epistemological Humility

Descartes
Hume
Kant

2. Ontological Humility in Heidegger

The Thrownness of Dasein
The Humility of Ancient Greek Philosophy
The Arrogance of Technology

3. Existential Humility and Its Other

Sartre
Beauvoir
Merleau-Ponty

4. Postmodern Humility and Its Order

Foucault
Derrida – Linguistic Humility
Derrida – Humility Unto Death

5. Feminist Humility

Epistemologies of Ignorance
Humility beyond the Divides – Race/Gender
Humility beyond the Divides – Race/Sexuality

Conclusion
Bibliography
Endnotes

Sujets

Philosophie

Épistémologie

Métaphysique

Éthique et morale

Epistémologie

Philosophy

History of philosophy

Metaphysics

Ethique et morale

Informations

Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	14 février 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438445519
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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ONTOLOGICAL HUMILITY
Lord Voldemort and the Philosophers
Nancy J. Holland

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2013 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Eileen Nizer Marketing by Anne Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holland, Nancy J. (Nancy Jean)
Ontological humility : Lord Voldemort and the philosophers / Nancy J. Holland.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 978-1-4384-4549-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Humility. 2. Knowledge, Theory of. 3. Ontology. 4. Postmodernism. 5. Rowling, J. K.—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
BJ1533.H93H65 2012
121—dc23
2012011096
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

This one is for Jeff—“I love you in a place where there's no space and time.”
Acknowledgments
Many people have helped this project to move along from idea to reality. My gratitude begins with Rosa Slegers, Morny Joy, John King, and the others who heard an initial exploration of these ideas at the 2006 meeting of the International Society for Philosophy and Literature; and with Marilyn Frye, who encouraged the project in an early stage.
Since then, my thinking has benefited from the input of the enthusiastic students at the 2008 Goucher College Undergraduate Philosophy Conference; Phyllis Rooney, Nancy Tuana, and others in the audience at the 2009 Feminist Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Methodology of Science conference at the University of South Carolina; those who attended a paper drawn from this work at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy; and Jorella Andrews and her colleagues and graduate students who attended my 2009 guest lecture for the Program in Visual Culture at Oliver Goldsmith College, University of London.
I also thank several cohorts of philosophy majors at Hamline University who heard and commented on various stages of this project, as well as my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy there: Lisa Bergin, Duane Cady, Samuel Imbo, and Stephen Kellert. Hamline University facilitated my research on this project with a sabbatical leave in the spring term of 2010.
In addition, I am grateful for the helpful comments of two anonymous readers for SUNY Press and for the support and encouragement of my editor, Andrew Kenyon, and his predecessor, Jane Bunker.
Finally, I have to acknowledge two people without whom this work literally would not have been possible: my husband, Jeffrey Koon, who patiently read and commented on every chapter (the Heidegger chapter twice), and of course, J. K. Rowling, who created Harry Potter and his world.
Prologue

Defining Ontological Humility

In the Beginning
… [I]t would be strange to think that the art of politics is the best knowledge, since man is not the best thing in the world.
—Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
This book explores the concept of “ontological humility,” as developed from the work of twentieth-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger, and traces its role in philosophical thought from the seventeenth century to contemporary gender and race theory. While some recent scholarship in both philosophy and feminism points indirectly to this concept, it has not yet been named or systematically explored for its potential value in a range of fields, from epistemology and ethics to the protection of our environment and the understanding of oppression. The goal of this book is to demonstrate how ontological humility not only generates better philosophy, but might also show us how to lead better lives and how to live in a way that allows others to lead better lives as well.
The initial argument is that the moral worth of Harry, Dumbledore, and others in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter stories is due to their humility in the face of the magic that was given to them and which enables them to be the witches and wizards that they are. Voldemort and his “Death Eaters,” conversely, are marked by their arrogance, their certainty that they deserve the power they have and that those who lack it are inferior. Voldemort, moreover, is motivated by what Rowling suggests is the ultimate arrogance, the desire to conquer death, while it is Harry and Dumbledore's willingness to die that finally defeats the Dark Lord.
The key to ontological humility lies in understanding that the same life options are open to “muggles,” too, and that many philosophers over the last four centuries have shared that belief. We are where we are, with the resources and liabilities we have, surrounded by a particular group of others like ourselves, because these things have been “given” to us by what Heidegger calls “Being,” in the same way that magic has been given to Harry Potter. We can believe that we deserve them because of some inherent or achieved virtue of our own, but whatever we might have done to merit our success in any endeavor owes far more to chance, or fate—this being “given”—than it does to our own efforts. Once one is convinced of this, a whole set of ethical imperatives is revealed that greatly narrows the range of morally valid options with regard to many of the major social and political issues of the day.
As we will see, I find this theme throughout Heidegger's work, but will focus for now on the connection he makes between the German words for “to send” ( schicken ), “history” ( Geschichte ), and “destiny” ( Geschick ). Heidegger relates this linguistic triad to how the world we live in and our place in that world is shaped, if not determined, by forces we can neither control nor completely understand. In his “Letter on Humanism,” he also links history and destiny to the “ es gibt ” (literally, “it gives,” but the German equivalent of “there is”), and to the world as “given” to us, rather than of our own making. One can, thus, see his criticisms of Jean-Paul Sartre's version of existentialism in the “Letter” as based, among other things, on Sartre's disregard for the contingencies of human life and the limits of human understanding. As opposed to Sartre's assertion of human defiance in the face of Being, Heidegger, I will argue, champions ontological humility.
The concept of ontological humility also offered an unexpected insight into why the work of some figures in twentieth-century European philosophy (Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida) held my interest, while that of their close intellectual allies (Sartre, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault) did not. And the same held true for philosophers in the so-called modern period (1600–1800). What provided the immediate catalyst for this book, however, was the realization that the Harry Potter saga, which I had been reading to and with my children almost since its inception, embodied the same kind of “ontological humility” that I found in Heidegger and others. Convinced that the theoretical and practical implications of the concept for living well and creating a better world were worth exploring more fully, I knew I could not pass up the gift J. K. Rowling had unintentionally given me. This book is the result of the destiny that links Lord Voldemort to the philosophers.

Lord Voldemort and the Philosophers
“Trivial hurts, tiny human accidents,” said Firenze, as his hooves thudded over the mossy floor. “These are of no more significance than the scurrying of ants to the wide universe. …”
— Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I
As is well known, the British edition of the first of Rowling's Harry Potter books is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone . The U.S. publishers changed the title to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone , perhaps because they thought American readers wouldn't know what the philosopher's stone was, or perhaps because they feared the word philosopher would scare readers away. It is, in any case, an interesting alchemy to turn philosophers into sorcerers. In this section, I will go back along the path created by this alchemy from sorcerers to philosophers.
First, however, it is necessary to acknowledge the existing body of philosophical literature on the Harry Potter books, including significant critiques from the perspectives of class, race, gender, and postcolonial thought, as well as critiques that highlight the relative invisibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (GLBTI) characters and the author's reliance on violence to resolve conflict. I won't duplicate any of that thinking, but will use the Harry Potter saga to illustrate a different kind of philosophical thought, so different that it lacks a commonly recognized name. Still, its roots spread across a wide range of the philosophical literature, from eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume's “mitigated skepticism” 1 to nineteenth-century theologian Søren Kierkegaard's “infinite resignation” 2 to contemporary feminist Marilyn Frye's “loving eye.” 3
I have labeled this way of thinking “ontological humility.” Why “ontological”? Since philosophers talk about the kind of questions addressed here much more often than most people, they have developed their own vocabulary for doing that. The literal meaning of “ontology,” from ancient Greek, is “the science or study of Being,” of what it means to exist. This field of philosophy examines questions such as what it means to say that something (a unicorn, for instance, or democracy) does or doesn't exist, either in general or at a specific time and place. It also looks at whether all the things we commonly assume do exist—from humans and n