Ranking Lives

After a slow start, I am now moving swiftly through R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing trilogy, or as swiftly as can be expected given life's obstacles - that is to say, its means. Sometimes I find a passage I want to underline but a pencil is nowhere within reach, so I sail right ahead to the next one that gives me pause. Here is one such passage only a few pages back from where I just left off in the second book (so I can still find it) in which some characters debate the meaning of a parable:

"It means that these things - courage, honor, even love - are problems, not absolutes. Questions."

Iryssas shook his head vigorously. "Courage, honor, love - these are problems? Then what are the solutions? Cowardice and depravity?"

"No," Kellhus replied. "Cowardice and depravity are problems as well. As for the solutions? You, Iryssas - you're a solution. In fact, we're all solutions. Every life lived sketches a different answer, a different way...." 

"So are all solutions equal?" Achamian blurted. The bitterness of his tone startled him. 

"No. Of course not. Some lives are better lived than others - there can be no doubt. Why do you think we sing the lays we do? Why do you think we revere our scriptures? Or ponder the life of the Latter Prophet?"

Examples, Achamian realized. Examples of lives that enlightened, that solved...." 

Now we can debate the meaning of this passage. But clearly it means that lives are ranked according to their powers of resolution to problems common to all. The size of a problem is measured by the number of solutions competing under a single name - 'courage', 'honor', 'love', whatever - while the leading solution is decided by the totality.

But what is decided by the totality is determinative upon each life: however a life ranks as a solution, it follows inferentially from the nature of the problem. But different problems yield different ranking orders. Therefore, to raise the exemplary status of a life, one need only decide on a new problem for which that life is now the leading solution, and by which a new totality is born.

Kuhn Dogging

Steve Fuller has written what may be the definitive book on Thomas Kuhn, whose reputation surpassed his own sense of propriety even within his lifetime. Definitive, because I can hardly imagine anyone else pursuing to such immoderate lengths the demons that possessed him, both named and unnamed - a veritable legion - bringing him back to earth, making him human again.

Fuller also fends off those demons that took Kuhn from behind and gave him a child that would be his monstrous offspring. But what is left is something even more monstrous. Unscrambling his genetic mutations reveals that he was already a freak.