Impossible, frustrating, beguiling and iconoclastic, few books in philosophy have challenged my views about so much, so deeply. It would be remiss to downplay the enormous effort required to understand this book, but even more so to diminish its rewards. In sticking with the commonplace and rejecting Parmenides’s conclusion, we are left with a puzzle that cleaves in two: How can I think what is not the case, and how can I, in thinking that something is not the case, think truly? Kimhi argues that it is only by pursuing and dissolving these puzzles that the nature of thought can be made clear. We do it all the time, first when we think what is false-that Antarctica is tropical and second, when we think, truly, that what is not is not-that Antarctica is not tropical. Hold firm to the commonplace: we do think what is not. If that is right, then what seemed to be a thought is, after all, nothing. When I think, however, what is not, that Antarctica is tropical, then there is nothing in the world for me to think: Antarctica is, after all, not tropical. But consider: when I think what is, that Antarctica is frozen, then the world has within it something for me to think, for Antarctica is frozen. It can be difficult to feel the force of this argument, precisely because its conclusion is so repellent. And if one says or thinks nothing, then one does not say or think at all. It is impossible, he argues, to think or say what is not. But in his poem On Nature, the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides presents an argument that purports to contradict this commonplace. It can seem a commonplace to point out that we can think both what is-say, that Antarctica is frozen-and what is not-say, that Antarctica is tropical.
These questions-what is thought, what is nature and what is the difference between them-are as old as philosophy itself, and their first answer holds that thought of what is not is simply impossible. So it seems that thought, which involves what is not as well as what is, may be nowhere in nature. When I entertain a falsehood, or consider how things are not, what I think is not anywhere out there in the world. And while the breeze is warm, I can think, truly now, of many ways that it is not-for instance, chilly-simply by thinking that it is not chilly. Though the weather is fine, I can think of it being grim-I can think what is false. Thinking, however, is not only about how things are-the warm breeze and the buzzing bees-but also about how they aren’t. Why is thought so special? Consider the natural world, which consists just of things and how they are: the breeze is warm, the lawn is lush, the bees buzz. What Kimhi wants to show is that the logical features of thought, and so also the features of those who think them, stand at a far remove from anything we might now call “natural.” And so, he argues, a whole tradition of philosophical thought is wrong, not just in the details, but in the fundamentals. An elusive new book, Thinking and Being, by Irad Kimhi, a heretofore little-known Israeli philosopher, argues that this is the wrong answer. But what is so special about the ability to think? In other words, what is so special about us? Analytic philosophy finds its foundations in an answer: not very much.
Being able to think is, it seems, uniquely characteristic of us. Of all the ways that human beings differ from the rest of what is found in nature, being able to think is most fundamental.
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