“Whoever knows he is deep tries to be clear, but whoever wants to seem deep to the crowd tries to be obscure. For the crowd suppose s that anything it cannot see to the bottom must be deep: it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
“People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being.
No one was shallow. Not really.”
― Mary Balogh, A Secret Affair
“Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche
There is an ancient Latin saying, Aqua profunda est quieta—“Still waters run deep”—whose implied corollary is Aqua turbida est vada—“Turbulent waters run shallow”. Referent to the intellect in consideration of knowledge and wisdom, depth is ideal while shallowness is flawed. The same positive spirit in praise of quiet profundity is metaphorically captured in Lao Tzu´s Taoism: “He who speaks doesn´t know; he who knows doesn´t speak.” This is characteristic though of typical oriental thought systems in general which value silent reflection as “more philosophical” than argumentative discourse. Pursuing further this line of thought in distinguishing between depth and shallowness leads us to the point where reflective and/or meditative individuals are commonly considered to be more profound than the discursive ones.
In a much more straightforward way of viewing the issue from and appropriating the same problematique in an occidental perspective, we say that “thinkers” (of the philosophical type) are across-the-board considered as more profound than the common practical individuals on the street. Such a perception doesn´t however connote that the so-called “man-on-the street” doesn´t use his grey matter at all; rather, his way of dealing with life´s problems is basically superficial and in most cases reactive. This mindset creates a stereotypical impression that only the thinker (who is supposed to be profound) especially occupies the more distinguished place in the human community over and above the practical individual whose ways of dealing with life´s problems are more characterized by instant decisions and spur-of-the-moment actions largely determined by events as they actually happen here and now and hence lack the temporal leeway that could have facilitated anticipatory assessment and meticulous planning.
But couldn´t this perception of the proverbial “man-on-the-street” be a reckless generalization and is thus itself a shallow judgment slapped on the ordinary human being? Isn´t it more realistic to realize and accept the fact that in normal circumstances, we humans have at some point in time light and shallow moments and at others pensive and profound ones? Couldn´t it be a too idealistic abstraction to put a definitive imaginary line of demarcation between the more intellectual philosopher-type of individuals and the more ordinary less-articulate ones? Could it be a more realistic consideration to view the less-articulates to be much more profound than the former? Remember the adages, Aqua profunda est quieta and “He who knows doesn´t talk . . .”
Striking a balance at this point is of the essence. To call someone an “intellectual” and another a “non-intellectual” is a socially assigned description and hence arbitrary. To call the former “deep” and the latter “shallow” is not only naïve but ridiculous. What is more precise even without getting profound about it is the fact that both types are human whose complex network of conscious mental power may swing from deep rumination to light-hearted playfulness to inattentive silliness. Regardless of being an intellectual or not, we humans are deep and shallow, formal and casual, serious and playful, reflective and discursive, sharp and dull, bright and stupid, wise and foolish.
Where and how do we actually draw the line between individuals who are profound on the one side and shallow on the other when the truth of the matter is, even within the ranks of the so-called generally “profound philosophers” there are bickerings and controversies as one camp brands another as shallow and irresponsible and vice versa? On the one side we have the so-called “continental” philosophers who are heirs to the magnanimous tradition of classical western philosophical lineage that goes back to the ancient Greeks whose classic “profundity” is defined in their lofty metaphysical discourses and treatises. On the other side are the “linguistic analytic” thinkers who basically trace their philosophical pedigree from the philosophy of language and the analytic philosophizing of Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others.
In the early 1900s, a group of philosophers who called themselves “the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists¨ inaugurated a new philosophical paradigm distant from the “ineffable” issues and concerns of the continentals and even openly declaring that the metaphysical way is pseudo-philosophical and seriously treading on it is one worthless involvement, i.e., an exercise in futility (cf., Schlick, Carnap, Neurath, etc.). The continentals accuse the latter of being “shallow” while the analyticals accuse the former of irrelevant profundity and rubbish philosophizing by trying to make sense of the nonsense.
Yet, from within the same linguistic analytic tradition emerged in the mid-20th century a new breed of thinkers transcending both the continentals and the early analyticals without necessarily vehemently antagonizing any of them. These new analytic philosophers have done away with the issue of distinguishing between the categories of “deep” and “shallow” philosophizing. Their most fundamental focal point is on the clarification of meanings to facilitate understanding. With this in mind, they have advanced the notion that the more worthwhile and positive concerns of contemporary philosophizing should rather be the issues of sensibility, meaningfulness, insightfulness, practicability and relevance rather than being uniquely and unilaterally profound or ineffable or complex.
The challenges of real life in this world are in themselves so complex, intricate and profound enough and oft-times even require a Herculean energy to cope with, so that a philosophy coining and using complicated and nebulous language to perpetuate the impression that philosophy is deep and “heavy” is more of a burden than a channel of thought-facilitation. Philosophy should therefore be neither deep nor shallow but facilitatively—and thus excitingly—insightful, sensible, realistic and pragmatic. Philosophy is not tasked to deepen the shallow but to “unearth” and describe in understandable/sensible terms what real-life has “buried” in the complex and convoluted labyrinths of human experiences. Neither does this philosophical way lead to the trivialization (or “shallowing,” if you will) of the significant, the serious and the critical but rather to a comprehensible and lucid perspective that possibilizes fresh insights and triggers meaningful pragmatic acts.
From the continental tradition has likewise emerged an innovative philosophical direction via the post-structuralists, one of whose more important thinkers was Michel Foucault. This trend from the other side of the philosophical divide has spontaneously converged with the new analytical path to inaugurate a higher level of philosophizing that values both lebensphilosophie (life-philosophy, which is the fundamental point of departure of classical (continental) philosophy) and language criticism and analysis. Foucault called his philosophizing an “archaeological exhumation” of the significances of socio-cultural and politico-economic practices and traditions long deeply hibernating under the complex networks of undisturbed habits and dominant historical rehearsals. In the context of this new way of philosophizing, the more important contrasting categories are “being insightful” versus “being thoughtless or imprudent”.
Profundity is not philosophy but life itself while shallowness is actually one´s attitude towards life. Shallowness may be construed as stupidity, naíveté or folly. Nevertheless, not all shallowness is naïve and simplistic. It could be simple and ordinary but may also be sensible, practical and hence insightful. In this sense, “insightful shallowness” is not an oxymoron but an uncomplicated understanding of real occurrences in the human condition sans the trappings of abstruse technicalities and/or metaphysical goobledygook. After Foucault´s “archaeological exhumation” and the new analytic philosophers´ “meaning-clarification-facilitative-of-understanding,” the “ineffable” and the complex captured in the obscure jargons of speculative metaphysics are exposed under the bright sunlight of understanding which could be construed at this point in time as the newer and more positive meaning of “shallowness”—sensible, insightful and practicable.
The naive and simplistic variety of shallowness and the insignificant kind of profundity or pseudo-profundity in our original agenda are not, however, automatically dismissed in the light of what we have so far hitherto discussed. Even as late as in the present post-modern dispensation, religion and politics have not waned in their influential clout over the inhabitants of planet Earth. These are also the spheres where so much of naïve shallowness and pseudo-profundity are witnessed and flaunted shamelessly. As a case in point in the area of geopolitics, it is naïve and simplistic shallowness to swallow hook-line-and-sinker the globally widespread deceptive tactics of the U.S. government as it unceasingly peddles to the world the blatant lies that through their spearheading efforts, (1) weapons of mass destruction should be dismantled in Iraq; (2) Al-Qaeda terrorists should be extracted and annihilated in various ultra-fundamentalist Muslim countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan; (3) “genuine democracy” should be instituted in “repressive” governments of countries like Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Within US and EU, discourses and treatises of pseudo-profound magnitude have been issued out to take advantage of the naïve shallowness of the ordinary people by making them believe that all these efforts concocted and cooked by the CIA in Langley and the US Department of Defense at the Pentagon are well-meant and purposefully implemented for the preservation and strengthening of democracy and freedom in the whole world.
More of this type of simplistic shallowness and pseudo-profundity may be discussed in the religious domain more specifically in Christianity of the FUNDAMENTALIST variety where priests and pastors (most of whom haven´t even seen a theological seminary, much less trained therein, and were ordained by their equally non-seminary-trained superiors) unrelentingly spew blatant lies concealed in pseudo-profound sermons Sunday in and Sunday out behind the church pulpits. The entire scenario is typified by the presence of a manipulative religious leader who holds his audience in a mesmerized state as false promises of abundance and heaven are uttered in sugar-coated language and the severity of “god´s punishment in hell” is sown in the terror-stricken hearts of the docile parishioners who in their naïve and simplistic shallowness have allowed themselves with total submission to be ensnared by the pseudo-profundity of their “bishops/pastors/priests” who are only after the parishioners ”tithes and offerings”.
© Ruel F. Pepa, 07 May 2014
ZETETIKOS 