Infinte regress8/18/2023 ![]() They can be read as a twenty-first century analogue to Herman Broch’s three generation masterpiece, The Sleepwalkers. To be or not to be, that is the question.Įach male Yourrick grapples deeply not only with the meaning of human existence, but with existence itself. The name Yourrick (i.e., “Yorick,” Shakespeare’s “fellow of infinite jest” from Hamlet) ought to give a hint of what Hren is up to. Hren meditates on this question at length through three generations of male Yourricks: Grandpa Gene Yourrick, Father Garrett Yourrick, and Son Blake Yourrick. We might ask ourselves, is life a gift to be handed on? Or an incomprehensible calamity to be avoided? Real or imagined, the general consensus is that the world is getting worse. ![]() But now? Twenty percent of the way through the twenty-first century, something seems to have gone wrong. Americans were “winners” of WWII, fat, prosperous, and content. Americans in the 50s would have perhaps scratched their heads at Marcel. I was reminded of Marcel’s words recently reading Joshua Hren’s new novel Infinite Regress. ![]() A century that began with unfettered promise was, only fifty years later, littered with millions of corpses.īut Marcel cautioned that this view could only end in despair, for if life is not a gift, but a burden, then how “could death appear as anything else than the flinging on the scrap heap of a being that has ceased to be of service-and that no longer is anything, the moment it is no longer of any use?” Two very general questions guided this work: How are infinite regresses generated in infinite regress arguments? How do infinite regresses logically function as premises in an argument? In answering these questions I clarify the notion of an infinite regress identify different logical forms of infinite regresses describe different kinds of infinite regress arguments distinguish the rhetoric from the logic in infinite regress arguments and suggest ways of improving our discussion and our practice of constructing and evaluating these arguments.Writing in the early 1950’s in Man Against Mass Society, philosopher and playwright Gabriel Marcel proclaimed, “If we want to understand the kind of crisis which has overtaken the relationship between the older and the younger generation, we have to take note of the fact that life is being less and less felt as a gift to be handed on, and more and more felt as a kind of incomprehensible calamity, like a flood, against which we ought to build dykes.” Such a view-from a Frenchman no less-was perhaps understandable considering Europe’s experience of the first half of the twentieth century. My general approach to contribute to such a theory, consists of collecting and evaluating as many infinite regress arguments as possible, comparing and contrasting many of the formal and non-formal properties, looking for recurring patterns, and identifying the properties that appeared essential to those patterns. These consequences of our customary way of using this tool indicate that there is a need for a theory to re-orient our practice. ![]() But how sharp or strong is this tool? How effectively is it used? The typical presentation of infinite regress arguments throughout history is so succinct and has so many gaps that it is often unclear how an infinite regress is derived, and why an infinite regress is logically problematic, and as a result, it is often difficult to evaluate infinite regress arguments. Infinite regress arguments are part of a philosopher's tool kit of argumentation.
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