philog: philosophie sophiste

Epicurus’ tetrapharmakos: a philosophy of health

Philosophy is reputed to be hardly applicable. Indeed, this particular use of rationality often leads to ideal conclusions, rationally understandable but which seem disconnected from reality and therefore hardly helpful concerning our lives. For instance, how can I experience and live according to Plato’s philosophy? His theory of ideas, his political views are highly logical, rationally understandable but however hardly realistic and therefore may be helpless in everyday life. If philosophy is a craft that concerns the soul (or mind and that helps) like medicine and gymnastic are the crafts concerning the body, as Socrates and/or Plato seemed to affirm in the Gorgias[1] dialogue, therefore it has to cure and cultivate the soul (mind). The study of Epicurus’ philosophy seems particularly appropriate to develop this idea of a curative philosophy, a philosophy of health.

In this paper, we will argue that Epicurus’ philosophy is a philosophy of health, through a specific organisation, the famous tetrapharmakos, or quadruple cure, and we will explore and discuss these specific cures Epicurus proposes. In this respect, we will start with a brief review of Epicurus life and the historical context in which he philosophized. Then, we will present this famous tetrapharmakos, and the philosophical system requested for such a cure. Then, we will discuss Epicurus philosophical solutions. At last, in a brief conclusion, we will summarize the main points of this paper and argue for a curative philosophical method.

Exploring the biography of a philosopher and the environment in which he lived can to some extent help to understand his philosophy. In Epicurus’ case, some facts seem particularly relevant. Epicurus belongs to what we call Hellenistic philosophy, which starts around the fourth century BC, with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and ends with Octavian accession as emperor in 31 BC. This period, and especially Epicurus lifetime, is characterised by the decline of Greek civilization, and therefore a general feeling of doubt, insecurity and anxiety, what as we will see has a great importance in Epicurus’ philosophy. Significantly, Epicurus’ life (341BC-270BC), as far as we know, was characterized by a constant terrible pain, due to his particularly painful disease, stone kidneys.

In this respect, Epicurus leaves a special room in his philosophy for the treatment of pain and anxiety: philosophy, according to him, has to free man from pain and anxiety: he affirms that “we must derive every choice and avoidance from the health of the body and the tranquillity of the soul since it is the end of a blessed life”[2]. Epicurus identifies this anxiety with the fear of death, fear of gods and doubts about morality. Since pain and anxiety are perceived as bad, we have to free ourselves from them and reach ataraxia, which is the absence of trouble. In this respect, Epicurus philosophy takes the form of a cure, and carries on a medical methodology: Epicurus interprets anxiety and pain as diseases and proposes a cure for it, the tetrapharmakos, backed by a self sufficient philosophical thought system. According to these four cures, we ought not to fear death, nor gods, good can be obtained, and pain can be avoided.

Firstly, Epicurus recommends not to fear death. Indeed, according to him, we fear death because we perceive it as bad, especially because we believe in a painful and therefore bad judgement after death. According to Epicurus moral theory, Evil and Good are not in the things themselves which are only temporal collections of atoms, but are perceptions, feelings. Moreover, Epicurus recognizes only one ultimate good: freedom from anxiety, and only one evil: pain. He wrote that”every good and evil is in sense perception”[3]. If evil or pain in death, that is the source of our fear, is in sense perception, therefore it must be felt through sense perception. But death is, according to Epicurus, “deprivation of sense perception”[4]. Thus, without sense perception, there is neither evil nor good, and therefore death is neither good nor bad and thus not to be feared. Paradoxically the mortality of the mind leads to freedom from anxiety concerning death. “Death is nothing to us”[5] Epicurus concludes.  

Then, Epicurus recommends not to believe that gods care about us. Indeed, if we believe that gods care, then we ought to believe that they can punish us after death in case of bad action, and thus this belief adds to the fear of death. Moreover, the belief that gods care about the world is not coherent with atomism. Indeed, if gods exist, they are themselves material, since everything that exists is matter, and therefore can only have a material influence on us. Epicurus’ conception of gods is that they are the perfect beings, “free from destruction and blessed”[6] and “congenial to their own virtues”[7]. According to Epicurus we shall not suppose anything else about the gods because it is necessary in contradiction with this basic knowledge about gods. So, if I suppose that gods care about the world which is imperfect, both subject to destruction and unblessed, therefore I deny the gods their perfection, since caring is a form of affect, and that gods are free from disturbance in their perfection. Epicurus therefore denies any caring from the gods, and thus denies to the fear of god any sensible ground.

At last, the two last cures of Epicurus’ tetrapharmakos that are Good can be obtained and pain (or evil) can be avoided, can be treated as one: maximizing pleasure which is the same, for Epicurus, as minimizing displeasure. As Cicero puts in: (according to Epicurus) ” the removal of all pain is rightly called pleasure”. The evidence brought by sense perception leads Epicurus to consider pleasure as the ultimate good, and pain as the ultimate evil, since the actions of seeking pleasure and of avoiding pain are self-explanatory. In this respect, Epicurus is a hedonist, that is to say that he considers pleasure as the ultimate good. However, being a hedonist does not make the pleasure easy to reach or pain easy to avoid. Here, Epicurus chooses a static pleasure as opposed to a kinetic pleasure. If pleasure is the removal of all disturbance, therefore we ought not to seek more and more pleasure which require more and more resources and therefore more and more anxiety but rather a complete and self-sufficient state of life. In this respect, he makes a difference between desires. According to him, there are natural desires, necessary such as the desires for food, drink, clothes, friendship, and freedom or unnecessary such as sexuality, and vain desires, such as seeking power, recognition or luxury. Doing this distinction, Epicurus shows that we can limit our desires to those that are really necessary, and argue for such a limitation of desires. Indeed, if we have few simple desires, we are more likely to satisfy them and therefore to reach pleasure and happiness than if we have many complex desires that require many resources to be satisfy and therefore anxiety and frustration. Epicurus hedonism therefore leads to a very simple life, completed when we have enough food not to starve, enough drink not to thirst, and enough friends not to feel lonely. And he argues that natural desires are the easier to satisfy: “everything natural is easy to obtain, whereas what is difficult to obtain is empty. And so plain food brings us pleasure equal to a luxurious diet, once all the pain resulting from needs is removed; bread and water produce the highest pleasure when one needs them takes them…”[8]

Epicurus’ philosophy being self-sufficient and a bit circular in its argumentation, it seems very hard to criticize; the only things we ought to criticize are his evident assumptions, the basis of his philosophy. Indeed, Epicurus appeals to a strong empiricism, a belief in the reliability of the senses. He uses this evident appearance brought by the sense to infer that since seeking pleasure and avoiding pain are self-explanatory or rather evident to the sense, pleasure and pain are therefore the ultimate good and evil.  

If Epicurus uses his senses as a basis for his philosophy, we ought to remind the convincing arguments put forward by Protagoras on subjective truth. Protagoras of Abdera claimed the subjectivism of truth, especially truth brought by senses. Thus, we ought to infer that the way Epicurus “feels” pain and pleasure as the ultimate good and evil, may not be the same for everybody; and therefore that Epicurus philosophy may be only valid for Epicurus. Indeed, the fact that Epicurus suffered a terrible disease such as stone kidneys seems important to the way he feels pain and pleasure. Moreover, the fact that he lived in a period of general doubt and anxiety has also an influence on his conception of anxiety and happiness.

A second objection can be made to Epicurus very individualistic ethical philosophy. Indeed, Epicurus does not develop a moral philosophy, that is a universal (that is concerning more than one person) ethical system. In this way, he avoids the difficulty of philosophizing about social relations and moral. It is not hard to understand how social relations may destabilize Epicurus’ ethical system: my pleasure may be incompatible with the pleasure of another person. If we accept Aristotle claim that men are social animals, this lack of altruism in Epicurus philosophy rests on a weak point.

In this paper, we have presented Epicurus’ tetrapharmakos, and we have seen that according to this quadruple cure, we ought not to fear death, not to fear gods, that pleasure is easily reachable and that pain may be easily avoided. We also have seen that Epicurus philosophy is very individualistic and maybe even subjective. 

However this individuality is coherent with the idea of a curative philosophy. Indeed, if in medicine each disease is treated with a specific treatment, it should be the same for the medicine of the soul, philosophy. Epicurus philosophy is a good treatment of Epicurus anxiety and pain, as Epicurus seems really happy, even the last day of his life:”I am writing o you while I pass a blessedly happy day that is also the last day of my life. I am pressed hard by urinary blockages and dysenteric discomforts, unsurpassable in their intensity. But in opposition to all these things stands my soul’s enjoyment in recollecting our past discussions”[9]. We can imagine that Epicurus could have only recommended everybody to find his personal cure, his own philosophy.

 Knowledge is objective, and can be defined as “justified true belief based on sufficient evidence”

Thinking through philosophy needs many qualities; one among them is to define the notions correctly and very precisely. As the aims of every philosopher, truth and knowledge have to be defined in this way, philosophically. That is to say, a good philosopher must keep asking such fundamental things as truth and knowledge whatever has already been said on the topic.  The philosophic field, as huge as it is, always requires an asking mind, a truth seeking goal, and an open-minded approach[1]. The philosophic field which is concerned by these wonderings is the epistemology, derived from the Greek words: episteme, i.e. knowledge, and logos, i.e. rational approach[2]. Thus we must here wonder and think about truth and knowledge with all these qualities: open mind view, accuracy, seeking willingness, and rationality.

In order to philosophy in a good way, we must wonder such things as:

What is belief?

What is Truth?

What is Knowledge?

How one’s get Knowledge?

Is the Truth objective?

Is there just one Truth?

Is truth timeless?

How can we link Truth, Knowledge and belief?

             We will here try to answer and explore all these interesting topics. In order to do this, let’s start with a definition of knowledge as an objective “justified true belief based on sufficient evidence” which is given by Richard E. Creel. We have to seek if this definition of knowledge is accurate, complete, and useful. 

           First, knowledge is defined as a belief what seems to be quite strange. Socrate, in Plato’s Gorgias[3], shows to Gorgias that to believe and to know are not the same, because there can be a false belief but only a true knowledge.  F. Nietzsche, a famous philosopher of the nineteenth century, teaches us that “to believe is to refuse to know”[4] speaking especially of religious belief. Indeed to believe is to think that something is true which is totally subjective: the content of my belief may be true but it also may be false. I believe it is true but it is my subjective point of view. To believe is not to know that it is true what is objective: if I know that something is true, it is true and can not be anything else. It does not depend on my subjective mind. So, a belief seems to be the different from knowledge.  

But there are several kinds of belief, not all of them fit with the notion of knowledge. There are religious beliefs (”I believe in God”), prediction beliefs (“I believe that tomorrow will be sunny”) and many others. But here what is interesting is to make a typology of beliefs according to their background, on what they are based:”I believe because… “. According to these reasons, beliefs will fit more or less with our conception of knowledge. We will work with R.E. Creel’s interesting typology of beliefs[5].

            Firstly, let’s start with belief based on evidence. Is it the same thing as knowledge? Obviously not! The truth of a belief is always subjective. That is to say, a person who has a belief always thinks that his belief is true; it is the definition of belief. But this subjectivity also works with the evidence which justifies the belief. Whatever the evidence, it can be interpreted in many ways, some interpretations can be true but some else can be false, depending on the subjective criteria you take to determine its relevance. For instance, if I believe that Tony Blair is going to be elected in the next British elections because he is a good politician and he is effectively elected, the fact that he has been elected does not prove the evidence <he is a good politician> made him win. Thus my belief upon Tony Blair victory was not knowledge, because it is based on subjective evidences and it could have been different. To sum up, a belief based on evidence can not constitute knowledge because it is always subjective and moreover the truth of a belief can not be established objectively.

            Then, if a belief based on evidence is true, is it knowledge? We have to answer that it is not the case, just for the same reasons. It is still too much subjective. As we have already said, your belief based on evidence can be true but it also can be false. The truth of knowledge is not a probability: it is true!  There are two beliefs upon the election or the defeat of Tony Blair; one may be true and the other not. But it is impossible to determine which one is true yet, because we don’t have any rational proof of the outcome of an election. The two statements are just speculation. And as such, even if one is true, it can definitely not constitute knowledge. 

            Further then, can a justified belief constitute knowledge? A justified belief is a belief that you can justify rationally. Does it mean that it is knowledge? Or in another way, can a justified belief be false? Let us see it together.  For instance, if I believe that life can not exist on other planets because the probability of the chemical creation of DNA is too small, one’s can believe that universe is huge enough for another creation of DNA on an other planet. The two beliefs are both based on rational justification but only one can be true. So a justified belief can be false and as such does not constitute knowledge. 

            Finally, we can define knowledge like Creel does: knowledge is a “justified true belief based on sufficient evidence”[6]. From a true belief totally subjective, we arrive to objective knowledge, in justifying rationally the truth of our belief and in proving by sufficient evidence that the belief is true. It is the so called “justification theory of knowledge”: in order to have knowledge, you must think that your belief is true, that belief must be true and you have to understand how some reasons prove that your belief is true. But what is maybe the most important element is this definition is the notion of truth. What is truth? What makes a belief to be true? 

            In the common sense, truth is naturally objective (that is to say that it is not depending on who is telling the truth), single (that is to say that there is only one truth) and timeless (that is to say that a true statement is always true). In one word truth is transcendent. There are several philosophical positions regarding the concept of truth, mainly three. Not all of them fit with this common sense transcendent conception of truth. 

            Firstly, the correspondence theory of truth is the most widely held conception of truth, perhaps because it fits to the common sense on truth. According to this theory, a statement is true if what it says corresponds to the reality. For instance, if I am saying that it is raining and it is effectively raining outside, my belief is true. And if I’m saying that it is sunny and it is raining outside thus my statement is false. This conception fits with the common sense because reality is objective: reality exist independently from the subjective perception we can have of it. Reality is also single: there is just one reality so there is only one truth; things are in one way and as such can not be in another way. And at least reality is timeless because reality at time T  can not be changed at time T+1. So a true statement upon the reality at time T may be false at time i+1, but it will always be true for time T. 

The main criticisms we can do to this theory are brought by the supporters of another conception of truth: Truth depends on the reality, but how can we know how reality is?  Do we know it with our sensible perception? What about hallucinations? Indeed the weakest point of the correspondence theory of truth is the perception of reality. We can not be sure that what we see, what we hear, what we touch, what we smell and what we taste, is reality. From a sceptic point of view, knowledge is impossible because we can not know how reality is and thus neither what truth is. 

This other theory of knowledge, the coherence theory, avoids this confrontation with reality. In fact, according to this theory truth has nothing to do with reality. A belief is true when it coheres with others former beliefs that are considered true. For example, if I believe that the sun turns around the earth, it is true because it coheres with the religious idea that Earth is the centre of the universe. Nowadays we know that universe has no centre and that Earth turns around the sun in reality, so my statement is not true according to the correspondence theory. But it can be true according to the coherence theory. The coherence truth is disconnected from reality. It just has to cohere with my mainstream ideas and beliefs. Here truth is not objective because it coheres with subjective beliefs. Let’s say that it is an inter-subjective definition of truth. It is not single because there may be several main beliefs at the same time, and neither timeless because main beliefs can change with time. In one word, this conception of truth is immanent.

The pragmatic theory of truth is not as disconnected from the reality sa the coherence theory. According to this theory, a belief is true if it works or if it is useful in our real life. Here the connection with reality is made a posteriori. That is to say that the truth of a belief can be established in testing successfully this belief with an experience. The best example of this conception of truth is given by Creel[7]: a placebo makes physically no effect, but sometimes it can treat an illness only in making the patient to think taking a medicine. Thus according to the pragmatist theory a placebo is medicine because it works treating illnesses. According to the correspondence theory of truth, it is not the case because a placebo has no “real” or physical effect treating the illness of the patient. 

            The most plausible theory of truth is of course the correspondence theory of truth because it fits with a transcendental conception of truth, that is to say objective, single and timeless. Most of human beings trust their senses in order to know how reality is. But as René Descartes has developed in his “Discours de la méthode”[8], our senses can be misleading. That is to say that if we apply the sceptical doubt as a method in order to determine what is knowledge and what is not, we will conclude that we can know nothing of reality through our senses perception. The best proof of the weakness of the utilisation of our senses to know the reality is that there is indeed no sensible difference between hallucination and a “real” perception.

Thus the correspondence theory of truth has to be completed with the two others in order to make sure of the truth of a belief. First, we have to begin with the correspondence theory: a true statement must correspond to the reality. Then, it must cohere with other anterior true beliefs. We can call this stage the confrontation of my belief with other belief. And finally, it must work if we experience it. This method looks like the scientific “hypothesis-argumentation-experimentation” method. So a true statement must fit with the reality, with other true beliefs, and must work a posteriori. 

            With this method we can suppose that we have the most objective truth as far as it is possible. Indeed, objectivity is something hard to reach. Objectivity means that something exists as such, as an object. An objective knowledge means that this knowledge is not subjective that is to say independent from the subject (the person) who knows. We have seen that knowledge as such must be objective. How can we reach this needed objectivity? Can we?

Taking into account our definition of truth, it follows that seeking of truth and objectivity is a process. L.M. de Rijk[9] has shown that facts are very far from reality. People often think that a fact is reality. Indeed, L.M. de Rijk shows that reality is a physical thing, an event is another thing but still physical, the influence of an event creating a thought process is also another thing, and finally fact is the content of this thought process. So fact is a “mental entity” and looks like anything but totally objective. We can do almost the same analysis for the truth: reality is an objective thing, the fact that I think to the reality is another thing. Then the content of my thought is still another thing, a mental entity. And the truth or falsity property of this content is also another thing, still mental and as such far from reality and its objectivity. So knowledge as such cannot be totally objective. But L.M. de Rijk suggests that instead of objectivity which is impossible to reach, we should seek “objectivation”, that is to say to seek the most objectivity one’s can. How our method to establish the truth of a belief can help us in this way? 

            First, reality as such is objective. But, as we have already seen, our perception of reality trough our senses can be misleading. Each of us has a different perception of reality so the observation of reality alone can not lead to an objective knowledge of this reality. Then we have to confront our belief with other former beliefs or belief of other human beings. This confrontation may lead to an agreement between several subjective beliefs trough argumentation. This agreement is inter-subjective which is of course more objective than a subjective belief. At last experience as a return to reality gives us further more objectivity. So objectivity as such is impossible to reach but we can “objectivate” knowledge with the “observation-confrontation-experimentation” method. To sum up truth of knowledge is a good way to objectivate knowledge.

            For instance, if I look at the water when a washbasin is draining, I can observe that the water turn clockwise. I believe that it is always the case. This is a subjective belief. Seeking if it is true, I confront my belief with some of other inhabitants of the north hemisphere. My belief that water always turns clockwise is confirmed and it becomes inter subjective. Then if I confront my belief with some inhabitants of the south hemisphere, they will tell me that water always turns counter-clockwise. So we discuss and arrive to a further more inter-subjective agreement: water always turns clockwise in the north hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the south hemisphere. At last if I test this belief in reality, the experience will confirm the truth of my belief, and objectivate it. From a subjective false belief, I went to an “objectivated” true belief, through observation, confrontation and experience. 

            We have already seen that knowledge has to be an objectivated justified true belief. Is our definition of knowledge complete now? Not yet. Knowledge has to be confirmed by sufficient evidence. As we have already seen, evidences can be interpreted in many ways not all of them are accurate, and are subjective. For instance, the evidence <every social group has its religion> can be interpreted in many ways. For an atheistic person, this evidence will show that every social group needs a religion to regulate its social relationships and to give an explanation for unexplained phenomenon. For a believer, it would be the evidence of God existence. Evidence can lead to two very different subjective beliefs. In fact this evidence does not prove anything. Evidence has to be sufficient in order to lead to knowledge, that is to say that it can not be interpreted in several ways and as such it prove the truth of a belief. For example, if my phone rings, that proves that someone is calling me. The evidence <my phone rings> can only be interpreted in one way: it leads to the (true) belief that someone is calling me. Following is that it is really hard to have sufficient evidence for some phenomenon more complicated than a phone call, like the existence or non existence of God. In these cases, knowledge can not be reached. We can only know that we doubt about it. 

            To conclude, we can have a more dynamic definition of knowledge. We define knowledge as the process of objectivation of a subjective “justified true belief based on sufficient evidence”. Each characteristic of this definition leads to more objectivity of the belief. Justification brings the objectivity of rationalism. Truth, as an already objectivated element through the seeking method” observation-confrontation-experimentation” brings furthermore objectivity. At last, sufficient evidence leads directly to objective knowledge because it can only be interpreted in one way.

             Following is that every philosopher does not seek Truth in itself but tries to objectivate his own subjective belief, more or less successfully. This is why justification, observation, discussion, experience and evidences are so important in philosophy. Thus Philosophy can be considered as a process too. “Philosophising” as a seeking truth and knowledge process seems more appropriated than philosophy as a discipline. 

           Moreover this definition of philosophising as the objectivation of the philosopher subjective beliefs puts the philosopher in a central place. Ideas, theories, beliefs do not exist on their own. Nietzsche says in the preface of the gay science[10] that a philosophy is the autobiography of a philosopher and has written his own autobiography in Ecce Homo[11]. Thus the study of a philosopher’s text should be linked with the study of this philosopher’s life. For example, the fact that Plato has been dramatist and a great wrestler when he was young can explain the fact that in his famous dialogues, there is some staging where all Socrates’ adversaries are knocked out by his arguments.

            Furthermore, this dynamic definition of knowledge leads us to the fundamental question of its transmission. As an objectivated belief, can knowledge be transmitted without lose of objectivity. Do we have to re-objectivate all knowledge we are taught? 

From Plato and the analysis of the influence of writing to Marshall McLuhan with the systemization of an analysis of media, philosophers have always had a great interest in media (even if the use of the word media is itself very recent), and their relationship to culture. Two main positions about a definition of media have been developed. Here, we will quickly present these two philosophical positions about a definition of media, illustrate with examples and try to explain their consequences on media studies.

The first important position upon media is a communication-centered approach. Indeed, for many philosophers, we speak about media as tools allowing communication. In this respect, media would be a “mean of communication” (Briggs and Burke, p.1). Communication, as an etymological analysis seems to imply, is what makes something common in a specific context. Thus, four characteristics seem worthy to focus on in this conception of media as a tool of communication.

First, this focus on communication in media studies implies an interest for the content. It is to be identified with the “what” of mediation. (Briggs and Burke, p.4). In this view, what is important here is the message: whether media carry information, entertainment, fiction, philosophy, or laws is important in media studies. For instance, the fact that the first printed book was the Bible is fundamental for the supporters of this conception of media. Or, as Briggs and Burke show (p.3), the persistence of the theme of a flying superman, whether it is found in nowadays comics, or in Jacopo Tintoretto’s St Mark rescuing a slave shows that the message has a great importance for the media.

Second, in this communication-centered approach of the media, the protagonists of such a communication that is the sender and the audience are also important. It corresponds to the “who” and the “whom” of mediation. For example, we know that in Plato writings, there were a difference between esoteric texts, that is texts which were designed for the little circle of initiated disciples of the Academia, and exoteric texts, that were texts designed for a larger audience. We might infer that this difference was present in Plato intentions, in his manner of writing, the words he used, as well as in the comprehension of his readers. Thus, the fact that a media is designed by a specific sender for a specific audience has certainly a great importance in media.

The third characteristic of media in a communication-centered approach is technology that is the proper mean that carries the content from the sender to the audience. It is to be identified with the “how” of mediation. For instance, the “communication revolution” of the past 30 years, constituted by innovations in television, telephone and networked-computer technologies, has had great influence on our ways of communicating such as “the death of the distance” that is the irrelevance of the distance between the sender and the audience (Bucy, p.3-7).

The fourth and last characteristic of media in a communication-centered approach is the context in which communication is performed. It correspond to the “Where” and “When” of mediation. Indeed, it implies that depending on the context, whether it is historical, cultural, economical or political context, media are not used in the same way, or for the same aims. For instance, during the Second World War, radio has been used for propaganda in , whereas in it has been used for resistance and coded communication between and .

To sum up, the communication-centered approach of the media focus on the content, the protagonists, the technology and the context. Therefore, this conception of media leads to consider every mean of communication as a media: bodily gestures, speech, painting, writing, printing, telegraph, telephone, television, the internet… Moreover, it emphasizes the influence of culture on media.

But some authors, starting with Marshall McLuhan, consider that on the contrary the influence of media on culture has a greater importance, and that media are not just mean of communication but rather culture determinations. Three basic features of this conception of media can be summarized in three catch sentences: “the medium as an extension of the man” (McLuhan, p.4), “the medium is the message” (McLuhan, p.7), and “the medium is the metaphor” (Postman, p.3).

Firstly, according to Marshall McLuhan, a medium is an extension of the man. Indeed, from the use of stone as more effective hands to the use of phone as more effective ears, men have always used things to increase their power, their control, their grasping of the world. Therefore, McLuhan considers everything that extends our “mechanical body” (tools, clothes, bike, car…), our sense perceptions (eyes-glasses, telephone, television…), and our “electrical body” that is consciousness (information technologies: speech, writing, the internet, television, radio…) as media. This conception of media is really striking. Indeed, who could have thought of a stone as a medium?

Secondly, according to McLuhan, the “medium is the message”. In fact, McLuhan considers that if a medium is an extension of ourselves, thus it shapes our conception of ourselves and our conception of the world (McLuhan, p.7). In one word, a medium shapes our culture. Moreover, there is a difference between medium without content (such as electric light, McLuhan, p.8-9), and medium with content (such as writing). For the latter we ought to differentiate the medium and the content, the content being itself another medium and thus another message. For instance, McLuhan considers electric light as a medium (McLuhan, p.8-9). As an extension of our vision during night, the electric light allows us to do some activities that would not be possible otherwise, for instance working in a factory during the night. These activities are themselves the content of electric light as a medium, not its message. But in allowing activities, the electric light is a message that shapes our culture: our conception of time (especially the difference between day and night), our conception of ourselves (allowing us to do some activities during the night)…

At last, Neil Postman has developed a conception of medium as a metaphor (Postman, p.3), in the case of medium with content. Indeed, he shows that there is a close connection between the content and the form in which this content is mediated: “You cannot use smoke to do philosophy” (p.7). But, I would add, you can do a philosophy of smoke, not using smoke but a metaphorical representation of smoke. As a matter of fact, media have a metaphorical functioning: they give a representation of information, not the information itself. Thus, in Postman mind, media shape the users idea of their content. For example, he considers clock as a medium-metaphor: it carries information: time, but also, in giving a representation of time in seconds, minutes and hours, it shapes the user’s conception of time as “moment to moment” (p.11).

In a bit more than 50 years, television has taken a greater and greater importance in our lives, in terms of time (how many hours do we spend behind our TV screen), in terms of communication (the place TV has in our communication with other people), and in terms of culture (the place TV has in our access to culture). It has gone so far that some people thinks that, as Neil Postman (p.78) puts in, “television has achieved the status of a meta-medium”, that is a media that not only partly defines our knowledge, but also determines our ways of knowing, our access to the world. Therefore TV culture may not only be on TV, but also in the approach of reality, and in other media, such as books. Acknowledging such an importance leads to consider as fundamental the questions about television culture, television’s characteristics as a media, about the media itself and its influence on human culture rather than a pure content-centred approach. We will first quickly present Neil Postman theoretical assumptions about television culture, and then in this respect we will discuss whether television ruins a serious and coherent understanding of the world, or not.

First, Neil Postman gives his conception of media that is medium as a metaphor. Indeed, he considers that a specific medium presents content in a certain way, not as such but in a metaphorical way (Postman, p.3). The clock for example presents time in the form of seconds, minutes and hours (Postman, p.7). Thus a medium shapes our own representation of reality. Even if we know that seconds, minutes and hours are conventions, it is hard to conceive time without these representations. So, understanding the metaphors used by television to represent reality may indicates us how it shapes our representation of reality. This conception of media leads Postman to consider “media as epistemology” (p.16), that is to say that different media carry different conceptions of truth. For example, truth in oral societies (often in the form of proverbs) is very different from truth in literate societies (in the form of deductive logic).

This theoretical introduction is indeed very useful to know whether television is ruining a serious and coherent understanding of the world or not. Seriousness and coherence are indeed associated with writing and a written-based epistemology, writing fitting more or less with the laws of deductive (and therefore coherent) logic Aristotle has written about. So here, we will try to see how, in which form television presents reality, especially on the grounds of coherence and seriousness.

According to Postman, television is incoherent by nature. Indeed, knowing in television-based epistemology is knowledge of things, not knowledge about things (Postman, p.70).  So, in a pure television culture you may know a lot of things, but you cannot understand their implications, causes, consequences, and the context in which they take place. Indeed, television presents decontextualized information, and therefore television culture does not allow one to link two events, to think about the causes and consequences. As Postman puts in, with a bit of irony, the only link between two events we have on TV is “Now…This” (Postman, p.99). Television shows a flux of information, that is an inconstant (rather than constant), moving (rather than fixed), flowing (rather than posed), superposed (rather than linear) information. To sum up, coherence is not part of television culture. At the opposite, the richness and plurality of logic links in literate culture, maybe due to the linear format of writing, allows one to draw some coherent links between two different pieces of information.

The other point Postman emphasizes is the lack of seriousness in television, but this point needs a closer attention. Indeed, Postman does not criticize entertainment as such, but rather deplores the fact that everything that is presented on television is naturally presented in the form of entertainment (Postman, p.87). The fact that entertainment is the only way of showing things on television may be due to the audience expectations, the TV directors will or other causes. But the cause are not as important as the fact that it is the case, that even for serious topic such as a nuclear holocaust, the television does not allow reflection but emphasizes entertaining rather than seriousness through its format (Postman, pp 88-91).

We can hardly discuss Postman points about the incoherent and entertaining nature of television format, or his points about how a medium shapes our understanding of the world. Indeed, it seems rather indubitable. But we can argue whether it is better or worse than coherence and seriousness. According to Postman, television-based epistemology is definitely worse than writing-based epistemology (but being himself a book writer, we might doubt his objectivity in that matter…). I think that Postman misses a point. Indeed it does not mention that television is a mass-media and that writing has always been an elite-media, and will probably always be. A television-culture does not replace a literate culture because it does not reach the same audience. Those who are literate watch television with their literate culture and therefore have a very critical view upon it whereas those who have television culture read books with their television culture and are therefore very critical upon it. I do not think that the question whether it is good or bad is a constructive one, but to see that mass-media are based on incoherence and entertaining whereas elite-media are based on coherence and seriousness is, in my opinion far more instructive and constructive. I understand those who say that reading Kant is “boring” and “too complicated”, even if Kant is one of the most coherent and serious writers of all times. And I also understand those who say that television is incoherent and too much entertaining regarding serious topics even if a very well presented information. Neil Postman book format is itself based on this striking idea: it is a book, so rather designated (unintentionally) to a certain elite, but at the same time it is entertaining, and sometimes incoherent (the links between examples and arguments are sometimes very hard to get…). Doing that, Neil Postman undermines the idea of a medium-determinism he tries to argue for in his book. Thus, he perhaps (secretly?) argues for a “literalization” of television culture. If he does not, I would.