Esoteric Writing

I really liked Arthur Melzer’s book, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing, on how philosophers in the past concealed their thoughts through careful writing, why and how they did so, and why it fell out of favor. If you have doubts about the thesis, there’s a freely accessible appendix that includes testimonial evidence from Homer to Wittgenstein. For example, Tocqueville has written

The books that have made men reflect the most and have had the most influence on their opinions and actions are not those in which the author has sought to tell them dogmatically what is suitable to think, but those in which he has set their minds on the road leading to truths and has made them find these truths for themselves.

The book was fundamentally interesting to me because of how often we speak esoterically with our closest friends in ways that are almost unintelligible to outisders. Going back to Tocqueville’s quote, surely when we try to change the minds of our close friends we do not speak to them as if to a stranger, instead we begin from their viewpoint and speak in a language imbued with our shared ideas and experiences.

So we create inside jokes and references with friends not necessarily to exclude others from understanding, but perhaps because they describe shared ideas and experiences that ordinary language cannot.

As Tolstoy articulates in his depiction of Natásha and Pierre, only a husband and wife can converse “with extraordinary clearness and rapidity, understanding and expressing each other’s thoughts in ways contrary to all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions.” Tolstoy even emphasizes that, for Natásha, “it was the surest sign of something being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical reasoning”. Deviation from obscure communication signaled discord.

Turning this the other way round, befriending someone is ultimately an exercise to develop a form of shared esoteric writing. It requires intellectual commitment from both sides to deeply understand each other and come up with clever and subtle things to say.

All in all, if you believe that philosophers did write esoterically, it seems like there’s a lot to learn from them on this art.

Hiking

Hiking with friends is awesome! This year, I’ve hiked Wilson Trail sections 1 and 2 as well as Ngau Kwu Leng Hiking Trail and Wu Tip Shan Path. I’d recommend Wilson Trail Section 2! You will see the quarry of Quarry Bay as well as great open views of Hong Kong Island.