From The Philosopher, Volume 101
No. 2
Special Donkey Edition
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DONKEY
(L’Âne
Philosophe*)
By Jean-Michel Henny
What is it about donkeys? For whether
it is the Metamorphoses
of Apuleius (better known under
the title The
Golden Ass); the fables of Jean
de la Fontaine, such as the famous tale of the miller, his son and their
donkey, or the misfortunes of the mischievous Cadichon, donkey of the
countess of Ségur (Memoirs of a Donkey), let alone the adventures of Eeyore in
Winnie the Pooh, the equus asinus has always enjoyed great popularity in
literary culture. His presence in philosophical texts is, though
more discrete, not less significant.
An ambiguous character
In the Middle Ages, the name of the scholastic doctor Jean Buridan
(Joannes Buridanus, 1292-1363) became forever famous through association
with a thought experiment that depicts a donkey faced with a cruel
dilemma: how to choose between two equally attractive options.
Confronted with a pail of oats and a bucket of water, he doesn’t know
with which to begin and so it seems must perish of hunger and
thurst. It is an example of an absurd dilemma, that posterity will
call 'Buridan's Ass', a paradoxical injunction or a double constraint
(double bind). For the fulfillment of either one of the
constraints indeed implies the neglect of the other.
Curiously, Buridan himself never used the example of the donkey. The
original example of a man equally placed between food and water is from
Aristotle (in
On the Heavens,
295b32), and it is this that Buridan discusses, using at various points
the example of a traveller who must choose between a choice of two
routes and the case of a dog offered two equally tempting portions of
food. It was rather critics of Buridan who intend to ridicule his
position in the long-running debate over free will and determinism who
created the famous donkey.
And so, over the period of the Renaissance, the donkey figures multiply
and become evidence of an ambiguous symbolism. Yet, as it happens,
our donkey hasn't always had the reputation of narrow-mindedness and
stupidity that certain idiomatic expressions lend him today: ( 'stubborn
as a mule', 'stupid as an ass', 'donkey job' and 'to talk the hind legs
off a donkey'. Far from it, in Antiquity comparing a man to an ass
was rather flattering. That is why, Homer praises Ajax in battle
in the following terms:
Just as
when some donkey taken past a cornfield - a stubborn beast on whose
sides many sticks are broken - bolts from boys tending it and goes on to
munch deep corn, even as the boys beat it with sticks, so, although
their strength is small, evenually they will drive it out once it's had
its fill. That is how proud Trojans and allies from many lands pushed
back great Ajax, son of Telamon,their spears always prodding at the
centre of his shield.
In the story of
The Golden Ass,
said to be the only Latin novel to survive in its entirety, the figure
of our animal will take a decisive turn. The novel tells the story of a
young man, Lucius, transformed into a donkey, who experiences many
adventures before finally regaining his human form. The text has
given rise to many interpretations and speculations. One of the most
faithful to the likely intentions of its author, Lucius Apuleius; (who
lived around 125 –180 C.E.) seems to be the one by Jacques Annequin, an
historian who assumes that one of the best-known passages of the story
of Apuleius – the tale of Eros and Psyche – is in fact, a
mise en abyme (a smaller version of
the whole, the phrase means, in the terminology of heraldry, 'put in the
center') of the entire novel, and as one of its main interpretation
keys. Jacques Annequin compares the donkey condition of the hero Lucius
to the slave condition imposed on Psyche. Psyche, the most beautiful
woman in the world, is thus punished to atone for her curiosity.
Through the loss of a free form of humanity and through the test
of submission, both the beautiful Psyche as well as the donkey Lucius
experience their dual nature, discover their dark side and learn the
virtues of patience. Eventually, after all his tribulations, when the
hero recovers his form (after eating sacred roses) he declares: 'I
myself, I will always keep my donkey personality in grateful
remembrance, hidden under this facade, tried and tested by mixed
fortunes. I owe to him if not more wisdom, at least more
knowledge.'
This positive attitude of the donkey, constructed out of humility and
endurance, is also to be found in the context of the Holy Scriptures. To
grasp the full significance of this though, we must recall the
importance of animals in rural societies around the Mediterranean.
Valued for their patient toil in the fields, as a means of transport,
and - even before the horse - as a war horse! This is why, in the
Bible, the donkey is associated with royalty, as recalled this verse of
the prophet Zechariah: 'Behold, your king is coming, humble and riding
on a donkey.'
When, Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, shortly before
suffering his Passion (that is, his arrest and public execution by
crucifixion) he rides a donkey too. This is how Jesus fulfills the
prophecy of Zechariah as well as how he demonstrates to the crowd that
comes to cheer him the peaceful nature of his reign.
Thus nourished by these references from Antiquity and the Bible,
numerous authors of the Renaissance sought regular resort to the figure
of the donkey. In a beautiful essay entitled
Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the
Ass, Nuccio Ordine makes of them an erudite inventory that I
will try here to evoke briefly.
It is the man of letters and politician, Giovanni Pontano (1429-1503),
who first takes up the theme of the donkey again, in a bitter dialogue
simply entitled
Asinus
(1486-1490). This text recounts the misadventures of the author, who,
after having quit active life, has retired to the countryside with a
donkey and then tries to establish with him a form of 'friendly'
relationship. It goes badly, and he quickly becomes the victim of
kicks and bites by his companion. Giovanni Pontano then concludes that
any attempt to have a friendly relationship with a wild animal is bound
to be unsuccessful:
This is what most often happens to those
who want to wash the head of a donkey: in addition to wasting their
trouble, they lose the soap!
He who admires a donkey will end up as a donkey. In contrast to this
negative view, Nicolas Machiavelli (1469-1527) deals with the donkey in
a little poem in triplets, probably written around 1517 and left
unfinished, called
dell'Asino d'oro
(
The Golden Ass). Renewing the
theme of Apuleius, he gives this time a positive meaning to asinity
(seen as an essential part of the animal nature, with all its
wildness, savagery, and brutality
feritas),
providing the opportunity to distance oneself from humanist values seen
as too rigid. The richness of man actually lies in his ability to move,
in accordance with the opportunities and setbacks of Fortune, between
the top and bottom, the serious style and the comic style. The poet and
philosopher will therefore praise the variety of modes of existence and
this human ability to change, in the face of the instability of
the world and its forms of government.
Giovan Battista Pino, diplomat and man of letters of the mid-sixteenth
century, ambassador of the people of Naples to Charles V, publishes in
his turn, in 1550, a
Ragionamento
sovra de l'asino (
A Discourse on
the Donkey). Very
au fait
with the asinine literature, Pino features a truculent character, Padre
Arculano, who delights his audience - guests at a banquet - develops a
donkey panegyric, demonstrating its universal character and superiority
over all other animals. Pino's
Discours
is not homogeneous at all but rather resembles a sort of compilation of
all the good stories and proverbs known to the author about his
favourite animal. Inventing the most unbridled puns and etymologies, he
closely links the word
asino to
the one for man,
omo, in old
Italian, seeking, in the tradition of Machiavelli, to show that there
cannot be a donkey without a man nor a man without a donkey, and that
these two 'somehow correspond to each other'. It is in the assumption of
this dual nature - half-man, half-beast - that Pino believes that we can
'achieve a temperament of life such that we can be thankful for.'
However, paradoxically, it is through the theme of ignorance that many
authors will come to honour the donkey. Giulio Landi in his
Orazione della ignoranza (1551)
(literally '
Prayer of ignorance')
finds in the lack of knowledge a dynamic principle, 'a very vigorous
and very powerful spur to the will to understand and know'. He
vituperates, on the contrary, against the arrogance of the pedants and
false scholars, too quickly inclined to denounce the ignorance of others
and ignore their own shortcomings. In another text of this period
Meglio che è esser ignorante che
dotto (
Better to be ignorant
than learned) Ortensio Lando defends similar views but this time
grants knowledge a negative value. He even encourages readers to abandon
their studies, declaring, 'whoever adds to science, adds to pain.'
In 1587, in a novella,
Orazione in
lode dell'ignoranza (
Oration in
praise of ignorance), the man of letters, Cesare Rao, returns to
the paradox by defining two types of scholars: the ignorant scholar and
the scholarly ignoramus. The first represents a certain type of arrogant
humanist, uptight about their knowledge, while the second, aware of
their shortcomings, is willing to recognise the infinite and unfinished
quest for knowledge. In his introduction, Rao explains to his readers
that he does not, of course, intend to disparage all the scholars, but
only to condemn those who 'abuse their art', likewise, he does not wish
to encourage ignorance but to introduce us to a 'new concept'.It is up
to an author of genius to draw the full potential of this 'new concept'
- Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). From the ambiguous virtues of the donkey,
he will ferment a system of thought considered so subversive by his
contemporaries that it will cost him his life.
Asinus ad lyram
Born and brought up in the Italian countryside near the village of
Nola, not far of Naples, Giordano Bruno is one of history's great,
original thinkers, a slayer of the Aristotelian tradition and forerunner
of modern science, especially with his theories on the infinity of
worlds. These views, very audacious for his time, brought him, however,
after eight years of trial, condemnation by the Inquisition and the fate
of being burned in public. A master of the arts of memory, he nourishes
his works with multiple references and allusions that make them
difficult to understand. According to the stimulating
interpretation of Nuccio Ordine, that which many consider the
'obscurity' of writings such as
The
Ash Wednesday Supper actually derives from a form of thinking in
which movement and the union of opposites occupy an essential place. And
so, the question of the donkey and its features (the 'asinity') are, to
Nuccio Ordine, privileged keys to enter the Brunean universe. Together,
they help to understand two of Bruno's major works:
The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast,
1584) and
Cabal of the Cheval Pegasus
1585).
In these two treatises, published a year apart, Bruno attempts an
extensive reform of human understanding and fights superstition of all
kinds. He also attacks certain categories of scholars who, in his
eyes, embody the negative side of the asinine figure. Such
pedants, imbued with their knowledge, are
asses in the most common and
negative sense of the word. First of all they sin by laziness. The
discovery of the New World and the simple manners of indigenous peoples,
on the one hand, the cruelty of wars of religion, on the other, shake
their faith in civilization. The first fault of such people is
that they have come to believe in the myth of the golden age and to rent
a 'natural' lifestyle, contemplative and empty, while their second flaw
is arrogance.
Sceptics or Aristotelians, their attitude is the same. They are too
convinced of their own cleverness. Convinced either that they know
everything (in the case of the disciples of Aristotle) or nothing (in
the case of the sceptics). But their most serious sin, in the eyes of
Giordano Bruno, consists in their immobility, in their one-dimensional
conception of science and the world. Eternal, immutable, simple,
consistent, always identical, and identical everywhere, this is the
ideal of knowledge that our philosopher denounces as a 'tautology of
knowledge'. In contrast to this vision of science, the design of Bruno
is pluralistic and dynamic. All his cosmology and metaphysics presuppose
the existence of an infinite universe, decentralised, eminently varied
and variable, constantly changing and in perpetual transformation. In
this context, the figure of the donkey takes on a positive significance
because it embodies several useful virtues in the adventure of the
pursuit of knowledge. The meaning of work and endurance is
precious to him as he faces the setbacks of existence as well as
allowing him to persevere in his conquest of civilization.
'Whoever wants to unlock the
secrets and penetrate into the hidden refuges of wisdom must necessarily
… be sober and patient, and have the muzzle, the head and the back of a
donkey: he must have a humble, reserved and modest disposition, and
senses that do not make a difference between thistles and lettuce.'
The donkey, instead, 'presents himself as an example of humility and
tolerance, essential virtues in science and wisdom'.
But the feature that above all makes our donkey the symbol of the wise
man is his ability to adapt to unexpected movements of reality. As
Machiavelli well understood, Fortune is a fickle goddess. Under
its action the wheel turns, and he who finds himself at the top, may
soon find himself at the bottom. Giordano Bruno is well placed to
know this, he who, after having been the King of France's
protégé for five
years, must wander throughout Europe until his arrest by the
Inquisition. To follow the 'swings and roundabouts of the world' (
le branle du monde, according to
the famous expression of Bruno's contemporary, Michel de Montaigne), to
cope with the vicissitudes and the many faces of existence, or to
accept, finally, the changes in ones own personality, nothing beats the
perseverance of the donkey and his intelligence to deal with
reality. This virtue, so musical, capable of discerning the
dissonant from the consonant of life, can be subsumed under the Latin
phrase
Asinus ad lyram ('an ass
at the lyre', a donkey trying to play a harp). The phrase, so
pejorative in the writings of Erasmus, aquires a positive meaning with
Bruno, through the reconciliation he brings about between the animal
with the long ears and the god Mercury, master of the metamorphosis and
supposed inventor of the musical instrument.
Ears' stories
Nearly three hundred years later, the figure of the donkey reappears
with an author who, by the vivacity of his intellect and his polemic
nature, is reminiscent of Giordano Bruno: Friedrich Nietzsche.
This time again we are dealing with an asinity that is essentially
negative and satirical. As explained by François
Brémondy in his
Bestiary of
Friedrich Nietzsche, Zarathustra describes the donkeys as
'illustrious sages' who, unlike the free spirits, support and flatter
people. Nietzsche is probably here taking aim at the great intellectual
figures of his time, such as the philosopher and economist Karl Eugen
Dühring (1833-1921) or, also, the novelist Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
who the poet Charles Baudelaire himself had qualified as the
âne de génie , the
'donkey genius'. Nietzsche will take over this expression to
comment as follows:
He, the
plebeian, is at the command of his excessive sensuality. I mean,
at the orders of his ears and eyes and his mind also is made submissive
- this in effect forms the basis of French romanticism, this plebeian
reaction of taste ...
It is only very exceptionally that the figure of the donkey takes a
positive turn with the German philosopher, as in this passage from
Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
You say to
me: Life is hard to bear... But do not act so tenderly! We
are all of us fair beasts of burden, male and female asses. What
do we have in common with the rosebud, which trembles because a drop of
dew lies on it?
However, unlike Bruno's ass, the ability of the Nietzschean animal to
endure not only the weight of life, but more importantly, the negative
side of reality, quickly made him despicable. Because, just like
the camel in
Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
the Nietzschean donkey represents the stadium of the mind that bears
and supports the values of nihilism. When the donkey says 'no',
it's under the influence of resentment, and his 'yes'
(ja, ja, I-aaa) is not a 'yes' to
life but merely acceptance of the reality, 'what he is', without other
form of criticism or imagination. As Gilles Deleuze notes, with
reference to a Nietzschean interpretation in which Dionysius represent
excess and love for life:
... the
donkey is the caricature and the betrayal of the Dionysian Yes : it asserts but only asserts
the products of nihilism. In this way too, his long ears oppose to
the small, round and labyrinthine ears of Dionysus and Ariane.
In the Twentieth century, the donkey-philosopher is curiously
absent. His literary, moral, and satirical dimension seem strange
to the principal currents of thought of this century. Nevertheless, the
genre of this philosophical tale and fable is not yet finished.
Quite recently the Flemish author, Frank Adam, has brought into being a
new Donkey-avatar with his
Confessions
into a Donkey's Ear, a collection of short stories in which he
delivers us a delightful character half way between philosopher and
therapist. For, after having escaped the stable of Bethlehem, the
donkey has installed himself at the borders of the desert. There
he receives the visit of strange characters: a woman therapist in need
of therapy herself, a foundling, a funeral director, an ox, an old
friend, a clown-philosopher who kills hyperintelligent children, a
clumsy woman-suicide bomber… even God in person! These encounters
provide an opportunity to show the fickleness of the human soul.
In the manner of a somewhat wacky, but likable, Socrates, the donkey
lends one ear to his confessors while asking questions which allow them
to explore to the end of their obsessions (and maybe also of ours).
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