A Requiem for Certainty

                                                A Requiem for Certainty

A central argument I would make is that writing in any form, from argument to literature et al could be said to have a history rather than an essence. Yet when the thematics are exhausted the consensus that there is no such thing as an essence to writing does not put an end to the discussion of what it is that we expect from writing or what its relation, contribution, or relevance for being embedded in our cultural norms. So in this sense, I would argue that every text is in some sense a pretext

And If I wish to write about a particular interest of mine, say ‘Certainty’’ and put forward an argument on the subject it falls on me to delve deeply into the history rather than the supposed essence. Even if I accept the over arching claim that certainty is either the highest form of knowledge, or is the only epistemic property superior to knowledge (one wonders how that can be). So I should not be deterred in offering my view that any communication is a process of transubstantiation. This water into wine process has an allegorical potential i.e. one’s message is absorbed and distilled by the receiver; this might even apply to the mundane ‘I will be back at 6pm’ (Oh really! What’s keeping her...why so late? Etc).

Similarly In more ‘evolved’ communication; say in Argument, Certainty or Literature a process must take place between sender and receiver of the written content for the transformation of something given into something other, that is, non-identical, to the conveyor of the message; outside the grasp of the senders concepts, her categories, her distinctions, not to mention her purposes in her writing of her message. In a transubstanttive note, the appearance of an objective world distinguishable from a subjective self is but the imaginary form in which Consciousness perfectly realises itself.

So as I submit my argument on certainty I am aware that the rules that govern my argument may be too liminal, not elastic or ludic enough to sway the mind of my reader. This kind of thinking leads me on to a writer like Samuel Beckett which might further my argument on certainty. For there is a note of uncertainty that plagues or compliments the whole of the Becket cosmos; dubiety infects his works and it is through this process we can see many thing at once avoiding the lure of teleology, it might be said that Beckett’s  goal is that there is no goal.

By example, at the end of his book, Molloy, Beckett writes, ‘...It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows.’ Then comes the impasse that stalls, (as in Hamlet ‘no delay no play’)’ in what might be termed as a Requiem for Certainty Beckett continues ‘‘...It is midnight. The rain is not beating on the windows.’ In this way of semantic exorbitance, a parody or burlesque of subjectivity takes place which exemplifies Beckett’s  argument, or point of view, that the omniscient narrator of the ‘argument’  is frankly an embarrassment.

I too am of Irish descent  and with Beckett like some saintly icon, looking down on me as my sort of clandestine companion I can rail in that singularly Gaelic fashion on  the  interrogation of certainty. Here I could be seen as the sorcerer's apprentice cohorted into an Irish malady of: 'don't count me in,' ‘I am not one of you lot’ ‘ or ‘I am veering off from the herd’,  this might be viewed as a faintly mad vociferation but my defence is that  I believe certainty lies within the Modernist view of the subject (Descartes) where as I as a contrarian, would view the concept of the self as  a sort of antique, wormed through by age; a porous subject, entirely exposed to and permeated, by alien powers. i.e. the ‘other’; the receiver of my written argument.    

Certainty is such a widely held view that it could be likened to incorrigibility, which is the property a belief has of being such that the subject is incapable of giving it up. A belief I hold as I advance my argument. Yet I am aware that a belief is psychologically certain when the subject who has it is supremely convinced of its truth, I am not convinced of its truth, yet  as I offer my argument I must have a modicum of certainty. 

As I endeavour to shepherd my argument like a pack of Border Collies through the turnstile of approval, I can accept that even in the heat of composition, not to know what I want to say, not to be able to say what I think you want me to say...is no bad thing, for no matter what I say the tumult of the world never stops. So as I put ‘pen to paper’ I am plagued with doubt, but not entirely, fort As Wittgenstein has it, 'If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything.' The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty. So after all this how do I rid myself of certainty well, I await a response to my writing and my waiting   is a salve, for in waiting one attains the absence of certainty.

Article by Dr Peter P. Cheevers