Borges on philosophy

OSVALDO FERRARI. Just as in literature you regard the fantastic as real, Borges, so in philosophy I believe that, for you, idealism is reality.

JORGE LUIS BORGES. Yes, that is, the conception of life as one long dream, perhaps without a dreamer, no? A dream that dreams itself, a dream without a subject. In the same way that one says, ‘It snows, it rains,’ one could say that, ‘It thinks, it imagines, it feels,’ without there necessarily being a subject behind those verbs.

FERRARI. Yes. Alicia Jurado observes that your stories are frequently inspired by philosophical doctrine, that they frequently spring from a metaphysical concept.

BORGES. Yes, in certain cases, especially in the case of ‘The Aleph’ which is perhaps the most famous of all. There I thought that in the same way that one arrives at the concept of eternity, that is, all the yesterdays, all the presents, all the futures—all that in just one instant—so one could arrive. . . . We can apply that idea to a more modest category, the category of space, and imagine all the points of space in a single point. And from that abstract thought a concrete story emerged, in any case, a story that I tried to imagine coherently. Another obvious example would be ‘The Circular Ruins’—the idea of the dreamer dreamed. After having written that, I forgot about it and went on to write two sonnets about chess, which is the same theme—the pieces assume that they enjoy free will, the player who moves them assumes that he enjoys free will. The god who moves the player assumes that he enjoys free will. And then, I imagine—for literary reasons, clearly, without thinking about verisimilitude—a chain with infinite links, and each link is a god who moves the next one, or a man who moves the pieces. I use that idea many times, which is perhaps not rationally plausible but which offers the writer pleasing, momentary possibilities.

FERRARI. Of course. But with idealist philosophy, it seems to me that the philosophers who have been closest to you over the years are George Berkeley, David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer . . .

BORGES. Precisely. I will also have had India in mind, since I read Paul Deussen’s three volumes about Indian philosophy, Max Müller’s The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. And I came to the conclusion that everything has already been thought in India, as far as philosophical thought is concerned, of course. Yes, everything has been thought of, but it has been worked out in a way that corresponds to a mentality fundamentally different from our own. So I don’t know how much that philosophy can help us, even though it may be interesting to study, since we come, perhaps belatedly, to the same conclusions but by means of simpler routes, or routes that appear simpler to us. Perhaps they’re more complicated for somebody from Asia.

FERRARI. Well, we have, for example, the Hindu idea that the universe is almost a cosmic illusion.

BORGES. A cosmic illusion, yes, and then we come to the idea of cycles. Now, strangely, during those eclipses that occur between the end of one universe and the beginning of another, there are periods, well, that last for what the Hindus call ‘kalpas’, that last . . . eternities. But during all that time, although I don’t know how, the Vedas persist, and they become archetypes for the creation of the following cycle.
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FERRARI. Now, with regard to idealist philosophy, Borges, I think that an essential work for you was The World as Will and Representation by Schopenhauer.

BORGES. Yes, I taught myself German precisely so that I could read that book, and also because I’d read, when I was a boy, the poem ‘The Light of Asia’ by Sir Edwin Arnold, a poem about the legend of Buddha. Well, that reading . . . one could call it childish . . . no, I would have been ten years old, and the discovery of The World as Will and Representation, those two things led me to study Buddhism. And, oddly, I got hold of a copy in Buenos Aires of the book that Schopenhauer read and which made him declare himself a Buddhist— the two volumes by Karl Friedrich Köppen, a German orientalist who studied all those things but studied them ironically, as if he were studying the Christian faith. He makes comparisons between the doctrine of Buddha and the Christian faith. It’s an attractively written book which I got hold of here, in Buenos Aires, and it’s one of the many books that I read and used for a project in collaboration with Alicia Jurado, called What is Buddhism? for the guides published by Columba.

FERRARI. And that book, written by you and Alicia Jurado, was translated into Japanese.

BORGES. Yes, oddly, given that the translator must have known more than we did.
FERRARI. About Buddhism.

BORGES. It’s one of the two official religions of Japan. The emperor is Shinto and also observes Buddhist doctrine. I say Buddhist doctrine because the word ‘Buddhism’ isn’t used. One says ‘Buddhist doctrine’, and that’s consistent with what Buddha wanted, because when he dies his disciples weep, but he doesn’t tell them, like Christ, that they will meet in the future. He tells them, rather, that he has left them his doctrine. He doesn’t ask them to see him personally, because personality and the self are illusory. Now, Macedonio Fernández, of course, partly through the work of Hume and Schopenhauer, but more than anything through his own meditation, had reached the same conclusion, which I expressed, repeating Hume and Macedonio’s concepts, in an article called ‘The Insignificance of the Self’. I think it was published in the magazine Nosotros, but I’m not sure—all that belongs to a fairly distant past. Unfortunately for me, I make use of a distant past—after 85 years one makes use of a distant past or, rather, that past makes use of one, no? Because one is controlled by those yesterdays which are now forgotten but which still have an effect, which still project their karma onto our life.

FERRARI. Certainly, and with regard to your interest in the idealism of Berkeley and Hume?

BORGES. Well, in Berkeley’s case, he was a devout idealist, since he supposed that God was a continuous dreamer. Someone asked him: ‘But if a room is closed, what happens to forms and colours?’ And he replied that God perceived them.

FERRARI. That God was there?

BORGES. Perceiving them, yes, that is, an eternal and ubiquitous spectator of everything from every angle. Because one wouldn’t miss many things. But, in the end, those infinite attributes don’t trouble God. Now, in Hume’s case, no—Hume came to the conclusion that materialism and idealism are equally flawed, and that led him to a form of idealism beyond the various orthodoxies, even beyond religion.

FERRARI. Yes, well, he was also the philosopher . . .

BORGES. He denied the self, because he said: ‘Each time that I want to examine my self, it turns out that nobody is at home’ (both laugh). Of course. ‘Nobody is at home,’ he said. That’s to say, there’s no self beyond emotion and perception, but a self that exists outside those activities that are attributed to it . . .

FERRARI. . . . He didn’t believe in that.

BORGES. It doesn’t exist, or Hume couldn’t find it. I don’t know if he found it later on ... possibly not.
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FERRARI. In any case, Borges, we can see that your work has benefited from your contact with philosophy.

BORGES. Yes, it has been beneficial, and I owe all that to my father, who taught me the form of doubt that we call philosophy, but without using the word ‘philosophy’. He asked me straightforward questions, he invited me to share perplexities with him. In the beginning I didn’t realize what he was doing, but he was teaching me philosophy, metaphysics, psychology, and all those things orally, affectionately, without my suspecting a didactic intention at any time. The most intelligent way of doing things. Of course, my father was a psychology teacher and he knew how to do that, how to get people interested in the subject without them thinking that they were learning a discipline.

*FERRARI. One of the strangest things in philosophy is Plato’s idea that to learn to philosophize is, in some way, to learn how to die.

BORGES. To gradually perfect ourselves towards death.

FERRARI. Yes, and that was a form of wisdom, well, the wisdom of philosophy, let’s say.

BORGES. Yes. On the other hand, Spinoza said that he didn’t teach an Ars moriendi but its opposite.

FERRARI. An Ars vivendi?

BORGES. Yes, he taught how to live—his philosophy wasn’t directed towards a future life but towards, let’s say, using life ascetically, at least, and enjoying the pleasures of thought, which are perhaps the most intense, or no less intense than other pleasures.
FERRARI. He would perhaps have agreed with Epicurus.

BORGES. He would perhaps have agreed with Epicurus, except that his practice would be different, no?

FERRARI. Of course, and talking of Epicurus: Santayana says that in spite of what is generally believed, Epicurus was a saint . . .

BORGES. I didn’t know that Santayana had said that. . . . Of course, as Epicurus has been so denigrated. But how sad to think that we know about so many philosophers through their adversaries’ refutations. For example, in the case of the pre-Socratics, we generally know them through Aristotle who was hostile to them. In Zeno of Elea’s case, we know what his detractors said about him. So all that comes down to us, well, rather like the historical vision we have. I think that we’ve talked about this before, of Carthage, which we know from the Romans who were their enemies, so much so that they destroyed them. Who knows what vision we’d have of Rome if the Carthaginians had won the Punic Wars? We would have a partial and probably unjust vision.

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