艾米·奥尔伯丁《杀光那些鸡》客座文章：死亡刚从那辆卡车里下来

一篇谈悲伤身体的客座文章

Daily Nous 刊出俄克拉何马大学哲学教授艾米·奥尔伯丁的客座文章，内容摘自她上月出版的新书《杀光那些鸡》。文章从家中办丧事时邻居不断送来炖菜、派、午餐肉和饼干写起：哀悼的一家人站在堆满食物的农桌前，她问母亲要不要干脆跳过中间步骤直接倒进马桶。她写道，自己家族的人肠胃都不太好，曾在急诊室陪叔伯表亲等候祖父中风般晕倒的消息时，把一瓶 TUMS 抗酸药像传酒瓶一样传着吃。

奥尔伯丁借此指出，给哀悼者送食物就像给狗一支铅笔——不是没用，而是不知能拿来做什么。她认为悲伤是身体性的、物质性的：搅动肠胃、夺走睡眠、让四肢发抖、声音发颤、膝盖发软、呼吸难以接续、目光空洞。人盯着食物却不吃，因为身体想要的是已经不能再有的声音与触感。

哲学为何漏掉了身体

她原本打算写一本关于死亡的书，其中一章专谈身体，但最终没有写。在她看来，哲学谈悲伤时总在讲失去意味着什么、悲伤让人想到什么，谈心灵与感受，却不谈停滞空洞的心和颤抖的心，不谈那个本能的、疼痛的动物。她并不认为这是哲学的新问题——哲学家长期忽视思想赖以发生的粗糙物质性——但她希望让哲学回应那托住一切的原始材料，让失去在纸面上更像生活中那样令人作呕：先有肠胃，才有推理和意义。

她的结论带着限度：有些事她希望哲学去做，但哲学做不到，或者她无法借哲学做到。思考本身没有错，寻求意义也没有错，但能被说清意义的很少是全部，总留下太多剩余；更糟的是，即便良好的判断也可能误导人。把想法整理得井井有条、根除错误、用训练有素的方式去读经验中的烦恼，仍可能让人对真正到来之事毫无准备。身体不是监狱，但思想也逃不开它有血有肉的束缚。

黄卡车与拳头

文章后半段讲祖父经营奶牛场时雇的一名挤奶工。此人爱喝酒，有时因宿醉旷工，但还算可靠。一天他开农场的黄卡车进城拉饲料，在四向停车标志处被一个开好车的体面人抢行。挤奶工一路紧跟数英里，直到对方在停车场停下。那人叉开腿大声警告：我得提醒你，我刚从空手道班出来！挤奶工毫不迟疑地轻声回答：嗯，我刚从这辆黄卡车里出来。话音未落，拳头已把对方打倒在地。

奥尔伯丁用这个故事收束全文：空手道课不错，哲学也不错，但别搞错，你没法真正抢先于它——丧失像拳头一样迎面打来。

“There are, I find, things I want philosophy to do that it cannot. Or that I cannot do with it.”

That’s Amy Olberding, professor of philosophy at the University of Oklahoma, on the limits of philosophy that life sometimes makes vivid.

The guest post by her, below, is an excerpt from her truly remarkable book, Kill All The Chickens, which was published last month, and which you should all buy today (Amazon, Bookshop).

The book is a beautiful example of an academic philosopher breaking free of the standard publishing conventions of the profession (at which she was perfectly adept) to produce writing that is full of wisdom and personality, and that, even as it confronts us with an exploration of life’s difficulties, is nonetheless a pleasure to read.

Death Just Got Out of This Truck
by Amy Olberding

Maybe we should just skip the middle step and throw it all straight in the toilet?  This is what I ask my mother as we together stand and consider the overburdened farm table.  We are bereaved and so a steady stream of neighbors has come by to deliver casseroles and pies, lunch meats and cookies, chicken and potato salad.  If death were an appetite, we’d have the means to satisfy and send him off by now.  But he is not an appetite, nor have we any of our own. 

Mine are a people of uneasy stomachs.  I remember one night spent in the ER alongside some uncles and cousins, waiting to hear what the doctors would make of my grandfather’s alarming stroke-like swoon.  That night we shared the TUMS bottle the way others might pass a flask.  Bringing food to us bereaved is like giving a dog a pencil.  There’s just not much that we can do with it, at least not much that anyone could count useful. 

Grief is an affliction physical and material.  It roils the gut and stops the sleep.  It can put a tremble in the limbs, a quiver in the voice, a restless agitation run all through.  It makes the knees want to let go, the body just to sink.  It is tired but cannot ever really rest, a breath you cannot really catch.  It can make the gaze go vacant, blank.  Grief is eyes that see too much, make sense of little.  How long have I now stared out the window into nothing, seeing nothing?  Grief sets the body all awry.  The body wants, but what?  Something it can now no longer have, a voice in the ear gone mute, a touch tactile, now but memory.  We stare at food; we do not eat it.

My book on death, the one I will not write, was originally going to have a chapter on the body.  It seemed to me that one of the troubles with philosophy on grief is that it misses out on bodies.  The philosopher’s talk is all of what loss means, what grief can make you think.  It speaks to what the mind and heart may feel, but not the stalling, empty mind or trembling heart.  It speaks to one who speaks and thinks, not the instinctive, aching animal, not the raw creature all sensation without sense.  This is not a novelty where philosophy is concerned—philosophers have long neglected the cruder materiality from which thought transpires.  But still, I wanted some way to make philosophy answer not to thought or feeling or meaning, but to the brute stuff upon which all the rest is set.  I wanted some way to make loss less like an experience of the mind and thought, to make loss on the page more like itself in life, an experience altogether nauseating.  Before the reasoning or meaning, first the gut. 

There are, I find, things I want philosophy to do that it cannot.  Or that I cannot do with it.  There is nothing wrong with thought, with seeking out some sense.  But what can be made sense is rarely all there is; it leaves in remainder much, too much.  Worse still, even good sense can be misleading.  You can get your thoughts in careful order, root out all mistake, prepare to read the vexations of experience with well-honed training pitched to make vexations yield.  But all that practiced thought and careful habits of the mind can leave you unready for what comes.  Don’t trust them more than they can bear.  The body is not a prison, but neither can thought escape its meaty and substantial bonds.  I cannot make philosophy bend to this, I think, not in a way that is not all false and false confidence.

Many years ago now, when the farm was still a working dairy and the place was hectic with cows and work, my grandfather hired a milker to come in and help.  The milker had a love of the drink and would sometimes cry off work for a hangover, but he was, I suppose, reliable enough that they kept him on.  One day, he’d taken the farm’s yellow truck into town to retrieve some feed.  At a four-way stop sign, he was briefly bested by a fancy man in a fancy car, the kind of man who didn’t want to wait on a beater truck that got there first and instead just blew the stop sign so he’d get ahead.  The milker would have none of this, so he drove that yellow truck right up to and behind the man’s bumper for blocks that soon turned into miles.  Finally, the fancy man pulled over in a parking lot, the milker close behind.  Both men got out of their vehicles.  The fancy man planted his feet wide and bellowed out a caution meant to be severe:  I have to warn you that I just got out of karate!  The milker didn’t even pause before he answered quietly, Well, I just got out of this yellow truck.  Before aught else could happen, the milker’s fist had found that fancy man and laid him flat. 

Karate class is fine and so, too, is philosophy.  But make no mistake, you can’t really get ahead of it.  Loss comes at you like a fist.

“Death Just Got Out of This Truck,” from Kill All The Chickens by Amy Olberding.

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