Shalom Hanoch’s Paradoxical Inclinations, or: A Poetic Look at Paradoxes (Column 365)

To my dear wife, Dafna

Following the previous two columns that dealt with deriving conclusions from contradictions and with self-reference, I thought it worthwhile to weave in a poetic discussion of this topic. Quite a few paradoxes and contradictions in philosophy arise due to self-reference (self-reference; see column 157 and more). Here I wanted to add a poetic angle to that discussion.

The Liar Paradox and Self-Reference

The most prominent and well-known example of self-reference is the Liar Paradox, which I have discussed several times in the past (see, for example, columns 9, 81, 157–8, 195, 200, and 319). One formulation is the following:

Sentence A: Sentence A is false.

This is a sentence that refers to itself and thus creates a paradoxical loop: if it is true—then it is false; but if it is false—then it is true, and so on ad infinitum. You can see two aspects here: the written sentence, and that very sentence functioning as the subject of itself. Just as in the cogito a person thinks about his own thought, so too this sentence deals with itself. This structure creates a paradoxical configuration, since it is impossible to assign it a defined truth value (true or false), and this contradiction also underlies the cogito’s conclusion. I noted that Ron Aharoni regards the identification of the human being as subject and as object as the fundamental fallacy on which all philosophy is built.

In column 81 I discussed a poetic expression of this paradox by way of Shalom Hanoch’s song “A Man Dwells Within Himself.” I showed there that the song contains a double reference to the person (I distinguished there between the two terms, “I” and “self”), where the person is the object who dwells within himself as subject. Dwelling here is a metaphor for a person’s grasp or cognition of himself (when I know something, it resides within me—that is, within my cognition. See, for example, Tanya, chs. 3–5). This ties naturally to the discussion I conducted about the cogito and the problematic identification it makes between the human being as object and as subject.

“A Song Without a Name”

And then, a few days ago my wife asked me about the title of another wonderful song written and composed by Shalom Hanoch (for a lovely performance of his, see here) that goes in the same direction, “A Song Without a Name,” and here are its lyrics:

For my song is an echo in the wind my dispatched letter the track of my life my longing the echo of my prayers.

For my song is a leaf in the wind

blown away, forgotten

it is the soft light opening

in my nights

it is you who come to me.

Ay, darkness all around

if only you are listening

maybe, maybe, maybe

you come and go to me.

On my ways there walk with me

landscapes and melodies

and faces, faces

you come and go to me.

In my wanderings pass over me

images and souls

and names, names

you come and go to me.

Yah

Silence all around

and should you be listening

maybe, maybe, maybe

you come and go to me

maybe, maybe, maybe

you come and go to me.

For my song is a gust of wind

my open window

the spring of my strength, laughter and tears

the end of my torments

you come and go to me.

My wife asked us all what the title of this song means: why is it called “A Song Without a Name”? Well, that’s practically a lob for a slam dunk, so here is my answer.

“A Song Without a Name”

The subject of this song is the song itself. The object it discusses is itself. The song describes itself as though it were an echo in the wind and an open window, the spring of my strength, laughter and tears, etc., etc. On the one hand, who/what is the song? Seemingly the song is what appears in the lines above, yet those lines describe something existing outside themselves. So if the song is an echo in the wind and laughter and tears, then it is not these written lines, for these lines describe it and deal with it, but they are not it itself. Nor are these lines laughter and tears, nor an echo, nor an open window, but rather words (that describe all of these). There is self-reference here, just like in the Liar Paradox mentioned above.

So in fact there is no song here. Life (the track of his life) is the song, but what describes them is also the song. This is practically a Möbius strip that curls back into itself (see more on this in column 174). But the description of life that is presented here is itself the song. So is there a song or not? Likewise, one can wonder about the sentence presented above as the Liar Paradox: does that sentence really assert anything? Seemingly yes, but in practice it appears not. Exactly which sentence is supposed to be true? What state of affairs in the world does it describe? What should I check in order to determine whether it is true or not? In the song, too, one can ask whether it describes anything. It describes a song, but the song is the sum of the experiences and events described in its words. So is the song those experiences, or the words that describe them?

It seems that the author identifies between himself (the one who experiences) and the experiences he undergoes, and what expresses this is the identification between the song and the things it describes. The song is a representation of the writer, and the writer’s experiences appear in its words. Truly, “a man dwells within himself.” I think Shalom Hanoch called this song “A Song Without a Name,” but in fact he should have said: a song without a song. It is a song that does not exist, and therefore it has no name.

An Association: The Philosophy of Cinema

Once I corresponded with a scholar of cinema and philosophy (Gabi Barzel), who sent me a book he wrote on the subject, Optional Cinema. I read the book and we began discussing the philosophical meanings of cinema. He argued that there are philosophical issues (mainly paradoxes, if I remember correctly) that can be presented only in the cinematic medium. I argued back that this seems impossible to me, and I challenged him to bring an example. In the course of the discussion, I suggested we think about a project in which we would create such a film. In my view, cinema cannot be an exclusive medium for any kind of problem. At most, one can illustrate a philosophical problem via cinema, but I can’t think of a case where the problem could not be presented in ordinary philosophical prose, and certainly discussed within that framework.

A priori, if there is such an issue, it must be one whose verbal-prosaic representation (in a written text, article, or book) cannot be full and accurate, and then perhaps only a film could present it precisely. Note well: I do not mean that the film illustrates the problem or sharpens it. That can certainly be. I mean a problem that cannot be presented at all in any other medium, but only in cinema. In the end I was not persuaded that such a problem exists, and the project never materialized.

What This Has to Do with Shalom Hanoch’s Song

I recall that old debate because Shalom Hanoch’s song does something that I’m not sure an ordinary philosophical text can do. It revives the possibility of that late project.

The common assumption is that paradoxes do not truly exist in reality. Analytic philosophers maintain that paradoxes are a product of imprecise language, and therefore their resolution should proceed through linguistic and conceptual analysis (refining and purifying the language). But even those who hold that not every paradox can be solved by language alone (I myself am undecided about this) generally agree that although the difficulty is not always in language,[1] neither is it in reality itself but in our thinking about it. In reality there cannot be a paradox, because in reality itself any given claim is either true or it is not. Note that this is precisely the assumption underlying ontological arguments from contradictions (non-existence claims) discussed in the previous columns.

If we adopt the assumption that paradoxes are not merely the result of imprecise language but exist in thought (though not in reality), then in principle there may be paradoxes whose accurate presentation cannot be carried out upon reality as such but only upon its descriptions or representations (which contain a cognitive component—that is, something of our own). Take, for example, the sentence above from the Liar Paradox. It does not describe anything in reality itself and asserts nothing about reality. And yet, there is room to regard it as a problem that exists in our thought and not only in language. Self-reference is a cognitive, mental act of ours, which does not depend on language (a language that disallows it simply will not manage to express something of our thoughts), and not something in reality itself. In reality there are things and events. The references to them—self-referential or otherwise—are made only in our thought.

Accordingly, the Liar Paradox is an example of a philosophical problem that is difficult to handle in simple prosaic text. You must present in the text the object that arouses the problem, and that object is not a sentence that describes any facts but a fictive-linguistic, subjective creature (that is, an entity that exists only in our thought and not in reality itself). Thus there may be a philosophical problem whose subject is a form of thinking or a sentence in a language that represents it, and not reality itself. By the same token, there may perhaps be a situation that can only be depicted in a film or in some other artificial human medium.[2]

Returning to Shalom Hanoch’s song, it creates an object that cannot exist in reality itself. If the song were some object—even an abstract one, or an idea—then it would be free of paradoxicality. Even an idea that includes a paradoxical component cannot exist. But the song creates a paradoxical structure of self-reference, despite the fact that it has no referent in reality (not even in the abstract). And yet, the song tells us something—that is, it represents some cognitive element. Hence perhaps we have here a representation of self-reference that cannot be expressed in a philosophical text. The sentence quoted above as a representation of the Liar Paradox is also a “poem” in this sense, for there is no ordinary linguistic claim here. True, it has no rhyme and likely has not yet been set to music (I invite the public to try), and still it is a poetic text (see the series of columns 107–113, which defines what poetry is and what a poem is).

A Difference Between Two Kinds of Self-Reference

There are self-references that do not create a paradoxical loop. For example, consider the following sentence: Every sentence has words. This sentence also concerns itself (it too contains words). But on the face of it, even though this is self-reference, there seems to be no paradox here. We learn from this that not every self-reference is a paradox.[3] Thus, it seems that in principle such a situation could exist also in reality itself (though I cannot think of a real-world example that exists in reality and not only in our thinking about it). In any case, this kind of self-reference can appear in ordinary prosaic text and be discussed within a simple philosophical framework.

By contrast, a looped self-reference, like the Liar Paradox, likely cannot be described in prosaic (philosophical) text, but only in poetic text (like a poem). This may challenge the claim I made to Gabi Barzel. In principle, there may be such looped situations that can be represented only in cinema (or in fiction), and in that sense there may be philosophical problems that can be represented only in film. For example, if the self-reference is visual, this cannot be done even in a book but only in cinema (as in the well-known images of mirrors reflecting themselves to infinity),[4] although I assume that the logical-philosophical discussion of such a visual paradox would not differ from the discussion of paradoxes described in a book or of the Liar Paradox described above. That discussion would indeed be conducted in a philosophical text.[5] In this sense, even in films that present options for reality (representations of the question “what if?”), which is the subject of Barzel’s book, there is indeed something that cannot exist in reality itself, yet it can certainly be described in prosaic text. And certainly the philosophical discussion of these questions can and should be conducted in philosophical texts, not in literature or cinema. Whether there can be a discussion that can be held only in cinema (or in literature) remains, for me, an open challenge.

[1] There is no dispute that some paradoxes stem from imprecise use of language or from imprecision in the language itself. The disputed question is whether all paradoxes are of that sort.

[2] Granted, language too is an artificial medium created by human beings.

[3] This is one of my objections to Bertrand Russell’s solution to paradoxes of self-reference. He proposes his type theory—that is, a hierarchy of sentences (types) and a redefinition of a precise language in which sentences are allowed to refer only to sentences that belong to a lower level than their own. I have several criticisms of this proposal (which in my opinion solves nothing; see column 195), but first and foremost note that it also forbids sentences like the one brought here above that do not lead to any paradox. He throws out many babies with the dirty bathwater he wishes to dispose of.

[4] I believe I once brought such a picture here on the site, but at the moment I cannot find it.

[5] Consider a film that depicts the effort to create a film in which a philosophical problem would be presented that could be presented only in film. That film would be a representation of a philosophical problem but not a discussion or analysis of it. That would be carried out in prosaic-philosophical text—like this column.