In Defence of Heresy

I have for some time had an interest in heretics, as I suspect any readers I have might have noticed already. You may not have noticed that I nonetheless have little interest in heresy itself, at least not insofar as it is heresy. The position or condition of being a heretic is interesting irrespective of the heresy any given heretic believes—though of course a certain heresy might be more interesting than any given heretic who believes it, but that would vary from person to person and belief to belief. But this does not mean I am uninterested in heresy; it’s just that I would say that heresy is far more ubiquitous than heretics are, and so it is hardly worth spending many words on.

But I am here equivocating, because in order for heresy to be more ubiquitous than heretics, I would have to be understanding them rather differently. And, indeed, I observe two different meanings to the word heretic and to the word heresy; indeed, I think there are two entirely different dynamics caught by the heresy/orthodoxy dichotomy, however much they tend to be conflated. The purpose of this post is to outline these two different meanings.

1. We’re All Heretics Here

God, being unconditional, cannot be contained by any description or symbol. Thus no doctrine is accurate about the nature of God. Every statement of God’s nature, every symbol for God, and indeed any attempt to address God, is false. Each and every one of them is an idol of a reduced image of God. But they are all we have; the way of via negative is not going to work for most of us, and I think we should feel no shame about that fact. We must simply acknowledge that our attempts to understand God are always faulty and will ultimately be in need of correction.

Thus, in one meaningful sense, we are all heretics: we all believe things that are not true. Or, I should say, we all have the choice between heresy and agnosticism; those who choose heresy have a further choice between heresies. The second part is important, because there are better and worse heresies. But the first part is also important to consider, too. Most of us probably cannot sustain agnosticism, or at least cannot do it in enough areas for very long. (Indeed, no one can sustain agnosticism about moral or political beliefs without giving up on any moral or political action.) And those of us who do not choose agnosticism choose heresy. Many people do not know that they are choosing heresy, since they believe they are choosing truth. But what they believe is incomplete, and does not do justice to the whole of the world, and so it is heresy that they choose.

Now, before anyone accuses me of some radical relativism, I’m going to point out that David Deutsch agrees with me, at least as far as scientific matters are concerned. In The Beginning of Infinity Deutsch defines fallibalism as “The recognition that there are no authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying knowledge as true or probable,” and argues that scientific theories are good or bad based on how well they explain phenomena, and how many phenomena they explain. The interesting consequence is that all scientific knowledge is at least a little bit wrong or potentially wrong. This does not end up in relativism simply because a positive statement can still be made that a given theory might be wrong, but it is the best we have. Similarly, I am not saying that all theological claims are equal; all theology might be heresy, but that does not let us off the hook of figuring out what might be the best heresy we have.

Why care about any of this? Well, that’s simple: whenever I want to write someone off as a heretic, I am best served if I remember that I am a heretic, too. We’re all heretics, here. If I want to say someone is doing something blame-worthy, I better look elsewhere.

2. The Outcast Who Wasn’t

The first definition of heresy is not what most interests me, though it is probably most relevant to my life. The heretics who interest me are the outcasts who refuse to be cast out.

Heresy, as generally used, does not refer so much to the fact that all beliefs contain error but, rather, to beliefs that contradict those endorsed by the community which is using the word heresy. Or, to put it more pointedly, a heresy is a belief which gives a community sufficient warrant to exclude anyone who happens to hold it. Of course the community frames the definition in terms of truth and error, but practically speaking heresy in this sense—the sense of excommunication—is not about truth but is instead about boundary-marking.

A heretic, then, is a person who holds such a belief. But a heretic is not an apostate. An apostate, because of differences of belief, repudiates the whole community. Heretics do not repudiate the community. Rather, heretics maintain that they are still part of the community even while the community gate-keepers deny that they are. Heretics insist (perhaps implicitly) that their own beliefs do not contradict those beliefs which define the community; they maybe argue that a different set of beliefs define the community than the gate-keepers think. Whichever it is, heretics have been shown the door, but refuse to leave.

I find the heretic’s faithfulness and commitment to be quite touching, rather than (just) their status as underdog or outcast. That commitment might strike the orthodox as tremendously annoying, but, hey, lots of people are annoyed when they try to severe a relationship with someone and that someone refuses to let the relationship end. Of course, many heretics have acknowledged have had to give up on the community, due to some threat or another. Eventually you cannot fulfill your commitment to the community except by stepping out of the door (or fleeing the country) and trying to build a new community in the name of the one from which you were driven. So it is in this sense that I am charmed by heretics. Whether or not the heretic is in error is not at all relevant to the description, and I think over history heretics have probably broken even on whether or not their beliefs were better or worse than those of the community with which they argued.

Of course there are some disagreements which would warrant exclusion; if a community is defined by belief, a total repudiation of all of those beliefs probably does warrant exclusion. My sympathies tend to be for those fringe cases, and of course for those whose expulsion is especially hostile or violent, or indeed whose expulsion from a certain name (ie. “Christian”) results in expulsion from a community and its events and spaces (ie. a church). Surely communities can manage to acknowledge that someone is no longer a member in one sense but allow them to be a member in another. At the very least the heretic is far more likely to become orthodox again if they are allowed to remain in the church!

Note: I am not signing off on everything in The Beginning of Infinity—of what I've read so far, I find Deutsch’s argument mixed, both in terms of his overall position and his presentation of it—but I do wholeheartedly agree with his fallibilism (though I disagree with his characterization of justificationism, which I don’t think is actually at odds with fallibilism if construed in a particular legitimate way).
Note: I am aware of Kathleen Mulhern’s “What Makes a Heretic?” (link), and this post was written with her post—and the whole series from which it comes—in the back of my mind.

(EDIT: Rachel Held Evans has an interview about heresy on her blog which discusses the overuse of the word. The distinctions between kinds of deviation from orthodoxy is probably more helpful than my discussion here, which is probably worth my thought.)

The Sky Does Not Speak

Warning: unapologetic religion, of the Christian existentialist variety. You have been warned.

In his short essay “Pascal’s Sphere,” Jorge Luis Borges traces the history of the sphere from Xenophanes’s declaration that God was an eternal sphere to Plato’s insistence that the sphere is the most perfect shape, from Bruno’s description of the Copernican universe as an infinite sphere—its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere—and finally to Pascal’s very modern despair in such a view:

In that dejected century, the absolute space that inspired the hexameters of Lucretius, the absolute space that had been a liberation for Bruno was a labyrinth and an abyss for Pascal. He hated the universe and yearned to adore God, but God was less real to him than the hated universe. He lamented that the firmament did not speak; he compared our lives to the shipwrecked on a desert island. He felt the incessant weight of the physical world; he felt confusion, fear, and solitude; and he expressed it in other words: “Nature is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.”

I do not know how accurate a description of Pascal this is; I do know that much of this description is fairly accurate when applied to me. I too yearn to adore God, but God is less real to me than the universe; I too consider our lives to be like those shipwrecked on a desert island; I too feel the incessant weight of the physical world, and respond with confusion, fear, and loneliness. I find myself alienated from that to which I declare allegiance, and I see this alienation—acknowledged or not—in all of us. A labyrinth and an abyss indeed.

But there is one way in which this description is inaccurate: I do not hate the world and I do not lament the silence of the firmament. Oh, there are many things about the world which I find deserving of hatred: the world is filled with limitless suffering, more than I can imagine or bear, and my scant incomplete knowledge of this unremitting suffering sits like a hole in my chest. But I cannot bring myself to hate the world, and its speechlessness in particular I find lovely. I look at the mountains piled above Vancouver, distant and stony; I look at the hummingbird flitting about my feeder, dependent on the sugarwater my neighbours and I provide but thoroughly indifferent to us; I look at the toiling ants on the pavement and the silverfish swimming across my bathroom floor, incapable of even perceiving me; and I am enchanted by them. Their indifference to me is the twin of my incomprehension of them, my inability to imagine myself in their place. They are wholly other to me, and in this they free me from my suffocating self-concern. In this they also remind me of the distance of other people, people with whom I am tempted to exaggerate my empathy and affinity. And they also remind me of God, the distance and self-sufficiency and ineffability of God. I am not sure why, but these reminders calm my soul. I bask in their otherness and at least feel connected, in this way, to the otherness of God. God may feel distant, but at least God's distance is near to me. The firmament does not speak, and for that I love it.

This is my reminder to myself: I can try to cross the silence of the sky, but I shall never truly know it; I can try to read the silence and the speech of friends and strangers, but I shall never fully understand them; I can reach out into the absence I perceive God to be, but I will never totally plumb those depths. And yet my failure to succeed perfectly does not encourage a failure to try. There is a beauty in trying.

The sky does not speak, and I shall listen.

Rereading, Not Reading, Is What Counts: My Top 25 Borges Stories

Jorge Luis Borges (Source: Wikipedia.)

Partly in response to a request for Borges recommendations, and partly because it woud make it easier when I recommend Borges in other people's comboxes (which I do with what I'm sure is annoying regularity), I have decided to compile a list of what I feel are Jorge Luis Borges's twenty-five best short stories, "best" here being the totally objective measure of how much I liked remembering them when reading Wikipedia's list of Borges's work. Before I begin, I think it is best to place Borges: you'll likely get a sense of his style just from these selections, but each of his stories appreciates the better you know his style and the different things he writes. For this reason, I suggest you read the Wikipedia page, or a similar source, before diving into his work. (I would have liked to recommend the introductions to some of his collections, but I do not have my copy of Collected Fictions on hand, so I cannot identify which collection has an introduction I would like to recommend. This is a shame, as in one of them he writes some very thoughtful things about translation. And as far as non-fiction goes, I would also like to recommend his The Book of Imaginary Beings, which is a bestiary of imaginary creatures.)

These are ordered roughly as you'd find them in a chronological collection of his work; at any rate, they are ranked as you would find them ordered within his short story collections, and the collections themselves chronologically by publication. In order to make your reading decisions easier, however, I've arranged them again below according to themes.

My summaries are deliberately incomplete because many of them are spoilable and I would never want to diminish a person's experience with Borges. Of course I won't mark which ones are the most incomplete because I don't want you starting the story expecting their to be a twist or something.

1. "The Widow Ching--Pirate" is part of The Book of Iniquities, which is famously half-plagairized. It follows the career of the eponymous women, a real historical figure whose depiction here is as much hagiography as it is biography. At the beginning of his career Borges was writing stories about ne'er-do-wells, outlaws, and thoroughly amoral people, but his interest in such characters remained throughout his life.
2. "On Exactitude in Science" is Borges's take on the map/territory problem. It is about a group of cartographers who make a map that exactly fits the empire. Baudrillard later addressed the story in Simulacra and Simulation. It looks like it is a citation, but Borges actually wrote it himself.
3. "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" is a review of a fictional novel of the same name. I consider it a deeply touching story; it involves a young man trying to find an ever-receding spiritual leader. I understand that it meant something different to Borges than it does to me; to be honest, I haven't read enough of Borges's essays on personality to be quite sure what it meant to Borges (or, anyway, to be as sure as one can be).
4. "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is also a review of a fictional novel; this time, the novel is Don Quixote, except written by Pierre Menard rather than Cervantes. It is about how to read texts in light of their authors, among other things. Recall that, in the Spanish literary tradition, Cervantes holds much the same role as Shakespeare holds in the English literary tradition, and that Borges loved classical literature.
5. "A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain" is maybe the least interesting of the reviews of fictional works that I've included, but it is still interesting. As with the others, Borges suggests books that are interesting in conception but might be tedious to read in full, and I am grateful to Borges that I can think about these books without feeling bad about not having read them, since they don't exist.
6. "The Library of Babel" is one of Borges's fantasies. It is about an enormous and self-contained (ie. microcosmic) library that contains all possible books of 410-page books (of a certain format), and the philosophical consequences of this situation. It is one of Borges's many meditations on infinity. (If you like philosophy, I suggest you read the Wikipedia page on this story once you've read the original, as Wikipedia summarizes what philosophers have said about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel.)
7. "Death and the Compass" is a short detective story, one of Borges's oft-referenced genres. It is not like most mystery stories. It was the first Borges story that I read in full; it was assigned to a class in which I was the TA, and I had to teach it. Expect considerations of mirrors, a labyrinth, and one of the names of God.
8. "Three Versions of Judas" is about a fictional theologian who considers, in three different and increasingly heretical works, what the Incarnation meant and what role Judas played in it.
9. "The Dead Man" is one of Borges's gaucho stories. I have not included many of them and wanted to be sure I had a few. This one is pretty classically Borges.
10. "The Theologians" is about a rivalry between two theologians. It is also about heresy and orthodoxy. It, more than "Pierre Menard," is about how all people are one/the same, or whatever it is that I don't quite grasp about Borges.*
11. "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden" is, in way, about conversions, and about finding things worth sacrificing oneself for, though I don't know if Borges would summarize it in the same way. It is not about damsels in distress at all. Like much of Borges work, it is both neo-classical and concerned with South American history and politics.
12. "The House of Asterion" is about Asterion, who is a shut-in. Don't be put off by the beginning; by the end of the story I felt much more sympathy for the narrator, not because he becomes less oblivious but because his obliviousness becomes more, well, sympathetic.
13. "The Zahir" is another fantasy or magic realist piece. It is about a fictional object, the zahir, which makes anyone who sees it become obsessed with it. Someone somewhere says it is about unrequited love, which I think is a horribly diminishing interpretation. It is in many ways the partner and opposite of "The Aleph," which I actually liked less than "The Zahir" and did not include in this list.
14. "The Maker" is about memory and poetry and what kind of life (and psychology) is necessary for art; to this end, it follows a man whose life at least begins in a way that does not predispose him to poetry. I think it is easily one of Borges's most beautiful stories.
15. "Dreamtigers" is quite short (as is "The Maker," but even that isn't so short as "Dreamtigers"). It deals entirely with Borges's obsession with tigers. It also deals with the limits of art. Borges considered it his most personal piece. Some people consider it a poem.
16. "Argumentum Ornithologicum" is a tongue-in-cheek apologetics for the existence of God based on counting birds. At least, I think it's tongue-in-cheek. It's cute and very very short, but it nearly didn't make this list.
17. "Everything and Nothing" is about identity, and Shakespeare, and art, and maybe God.
18. "Borges and I", maybe one of Borges's most well-read pieces (that's wild speculation, you should likely ignore it), is about what it's like to be an author...or, anyway, an author who strongly believes that personality doesn't exist and that identity isn't as coherent or discrete as well mostly pretend. It is not magic realist at all, by the way; it's strictly realist.
19. "The Intruder" is about a love triangle. If you've read Eve Sedgwick's Between Men, you'll realize how badly this can go. It is most interesting to read in light of Between Men, especially once you know that Borges based it on a true story, but changed two of the characters from friends to brothers specifically to prevent any homoerotic undertones. It is also one of Borges's gaucho stories.
20. "The Duel" is about a rivalry between two society ladies who take up painting. I maybe include it because I share Borges's obsession with rivalries. It's unusual for Borges in that all of the primary characters are women.
21. "The Gospel According to Mark" is a sort of surrealist take on the Gospel of Mark. A man stays with a family of illiterate labourers isolated in the pampas and introduces them to the Bible. Events take an unexpected (but in retrospect unsurprising) turn.
22. "Guayaquil" has Borges, or a near-Borges, as a protagonist. It is about some letters of Bolivar; it is also about Spanish American history, and who writes about it.
23. "There Are More Things" probably would not make this list if it was about merit, but since this list is really about which I like the best, it is here. Borges wrote it as an homage to H. P. Lovecraft, and I think in reading it I learned that Borges would likely have made a better Lovecraft than Lovecraft did. (That's maybe unfair. He'd have made a more eloquent and more patient Lovecraft, but maybe not a better Lovecraft. Unless being a less racist Lovecraft is enough to make him better, in which case...)
24. "The Book of Sand" probably would not make this list if it was about which ones I liked best, but since I am kind of pretending this list is at least sometimes about merit, it is here. Like "The Library of Babel," "The Zahir," "The Aleph," and some others, it is about infinity. It is also magic realist/fantasy.
25. "Blue Tigers" could have exactly the same description as "The Book of Sand." Please note that it is not about tigers at all, actually, but having read "Dreamtigers" is probably a prerequisite to really appreciating this story and why Borges named it "Blue Tigers."

Ones I almost included but did not: "The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell," "The Man on Pink Corner," "The South," and "A Yellow Rose."

Below I have organized the stories thematically. Feel free to ignore all of the headings you find boring.

Magic Realism and Fantasy Stories:
"The Library of Babel," "The Zahir," "There Are More Things," "The Book of Sand," "Blue Tigers."

Iniquity Stories (including guacho stories):
"The Widow Ching--Pirate," "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim," "Three Versions of Judas," "The Dead Man," "The Intruder."

South and Latin America Stories (including gaucho stories):
"The Dead Man," "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden," "The Intruder," "The Duel," "Guayaquil."

More Personal Stories:
"The Maker," "Dreamtigers," "Borges and I," "Guayaquil."

Stories with Overtly Religious Themes:
"The Approach to Al-Mu'Tasim," "Death and the Compass," "Three Versions of Judas," "The Theologians," "Argumentum Ornithologicum," "The Gospel According to Mark," "The Book of Sand."

Stories with Infinity as a Theme:
"A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain," "The Library of Babel," "The Zahir," "The Book of Sand," "Blue Tigers."

Stories about Literature:
"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim," "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," "A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain," "Death and the Compass," "The House of Asterion" (perhaps), "The Maker," "The Dreamtigers," "Everything and Nothing," "Borges and I," "There Are More Things," "The Book of Sand." (Huh. I wonder what particular theme interest me the most...)

Stories about Art:
All of those in "Stories about Literature," and "The Duel."

Stories with Mathematics or Science as a Theme:
"On Exactitude in Science," "A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain" (maybe), "Argumentum Ornithologicum," "Blue Tigers."

Stories with Identity as a Theme:
"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim," "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," "Three Versions of Judas," "The Theologians," "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden," "Everything and Nothing," "Borges and I."

Stories that are Quests, especially for Knowledge, kind of but not really:
"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim," "Death and the Compass," "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden," "There Are More Things," "Blue Tigers."

Stories in which Female Characters Play an Important Role:
"The Widow Ching--Pirate," "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden," "The Intruder," "The Duel." (This is maybe one of Borges's weaknesses; he writes mainly about men. Thank goodness they are not all white, able-bodied men.)

Stories which have a Plot, as Traditionally Conceived, or anyway as Traditionally as Borges will Write:
"The Widow Ching--Pirate," "Death and the Compass," "The Dead Man," "The Theologians," "The Zahir," "The Intruder," "The Gospel According to Mark," "There Are More Things," "The Book of Sand," "Blue Tigers."

Stories which might not even be Stories but Some Unnamed Genre, maybe "Fictional Essay"**:
"On Exactitude in Science," "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," "A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain," "Argumentum Ornithologicum," "Borges and I."

Stories, of this list, that are easily my favourites:
"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim," "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," "Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden," "The Maker," "Dreamtigers."

*The trouble is more that I don't know how to articulate what Borges is getting at than that I don't have any idea. It is much less willowy-sounding than I've made it out to be, though perhaps still less intellectually rigourous than some might care for.
**If you notice that not all of the stories are included in one of "has a traditional plot" and "might not even be a story," be assured that it's because a lot of what Borges writes is on the border between the two. "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" contains a story, for instance, but also contains a fictional review of that story. Others have events but not in some sort of linear plot way.