They Care Not a Rap

Once, I was looking for a document that I believed I had stored in a chest of drawers in the living room of my former home in Philadelphia. The chest of drawers was an old-fashioned piece of furniture that I had acquired from a Salvation Army Thrift Store. It was not an antique, just old, but I liked the look of it. It was all wood, fronted by two vertical panels that opened to reveal several rows of drawers.

When I tried to open the drawer where I thought the document was, it was stuck, not like wooden ones, which can sometimes be swollen by moisture or when they have come off their rollers. Something inside the drawer prevented me from opening it. I tried to shake it in the hope that the contents might settle, but there was little wiggle room. After several attempts, I became frustrated, then angry. I struck the drawer sharply several times with the palm of my hand. The drawer broke and shattered into several pieces. No sooner did I remove what I had been looking for than I regretted what I had done. I was embarrassed and ashamed of my stupidity and anger. I even felt that, in some sense, I had sinned against the chest. It had no intention to thwart me.

This past week, I read an essay by the French essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592) titled “How the Soul Vents Its Emoions on False Objects When True Ones Are Lacking.” Translated by George B. Ives, the piece addressed the very point of my failure with the chest of drawers. Montaigne wrote the essay in the last quarter of the 16th century; I read it in the first quarter of the 21st century. Many of the examples he used to illustrate his point were drawn from ancient history, from Persia, Greece, and Rome. Clearly, the problem of misplaced emotion has a long history. Let me share just a couple of examples drawn from Montaigne’s essay with you.

After Cyrus’s death, Xerxes (519-465 BCE), the King of Persia, continued his father’s struggle against the Greeks. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus (484?-425?) records a story about Xerxes venting his anger against the Hellespont (now known as the Dardanelles, a strait in northwest Turkey). According to Herodotus, Xerxes had ordered a bridge to be built across the Hellespont to facilitate his invasion of Greece during the Persian Wars. However, a storm destroyed the bridge, causing Xerxes to become enraged. In his anger, he ordered that the Hellespont be whipped and had shackles thrown into the water as a symbolic punishment for its defiance.

Sound familiar, kind of like striking one’s palm against a drawer? My behavior with the drawer places me in a somewhat illustrious crowd. Here’s another one. This story is from Roman history.

In 9 CE, the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus (46 BCE-9 CE) led three Roman army legions (the XVII, XVIII, and XIX) into the Teutoburg Forest in Germania (modern-day Germany). They were ambushed by an alliance of Germanic tribes led by Arminius, a former Roman auxiliary commander who had turned against the Romans. The legions were caught by surprise and sustained heavy losses in the dense forest terrain. According to the Roman biographer Suetonius (c.69-c.140), upon hearing the news of Varus’ defeat, Emperor Augustus was distraught. He repeatedly beat his head against the walls of his palace, crying out, “Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!” Augustus’ head, except perhaps in its role in selecting Varus as Commander, had nothing to do with it. And walls tend not to be moved by butting heads.

One morning, when I was working in the computer industry, I arrived at the office to find a man I knew hitting his computer terminal with his fists. When his anger had spent itself, I approached to ask what was wrong and if he was OK. It turned out that the Operations Center had failed to run an important job he had requested. He took his anger out on an assemblage of steel and glass. Of course, we have to count our blessings. It could have been much worse had he gone to the Operations Center.

There is an ongoing debate among psychologists and philosophers concerning whether or not all emotions have identifiable objects. For example, being angry at someone or in love with someone is often labeled subject-directed emotions or object-related emotions. However, not all emotions seem to have a clear external object. Some emotions, like free-floating anxiety or existential angst, appear to lack a specific object or are directed toward abstract concepts or unknown sources. These types of emotions are sometimes described as non-object-directed or objectless emotions. Some thinkers have argued that objectless emotions are just those for which the object has not yet been identified.

In graduate school, I did a lot of research on the border between psychology and philosophy in the area of emotion. In the end, I tended to agree with those who argued that all emotions have objects and that those that appear objectless are simply those for which the object has not yet been identified.

Montaigne closes his essay with a quote attributed to “that poet of old” by Plutarch. [George B. Ives, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne, The Heritage Press, 1946, p. 24].

That makes sense, rationally. But, I like the answer that the late philosopher Monroe C. Beardsley, OBM, once gave to a question I put to him. I had been struggling for many days with some work by Heidegger. I was reading it in translation and having an extremely difficult time making any headway. I explained my problem to Professor Beardsley. He listened patiently, as he always did, and said to me, “If you’ve truly wrestled with the text and after diligent effort have made no progress in understanding it, you have earned to the right to throw the book against the wall.” Unlike the feeling I experienced after breaking the drawer, I can honestly say I’ve never regretted chucking Heidegger against the wall.

All the best,
Gershon