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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:03.786)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host PJ Weary and I'm here today with Dr. Christopher Hamilton. He is the author of Rapture, the book we'll be discussing today, and he is professor of philosophy at King's College London. Dr. Hamilton, wonderful to have you.
Christopher Hamilton (00:19.077)
Thank you very much for the invitation, I'm really delighted to be here.
PJ (00:23.018)
So Dr. Hamilton, why this book? What led you to start studying Rapture to begin with?
Christopher Hamilton (00:30.021)
Well, I think there were lots of reasons actually. One was that a few years ago in 2016 actually, I had been doing some research for quite some time on the concept of tragedy and the philosophy of tragedy. And I published a book in 2016 on that topic, just entitled The Philosophy of Tragedy. And towards the end of that book, I had a thought about, well,
if the view of life that I was developing was basically a tragic view of life, and if you like, we can go into that in more detail a bit later. But of course, I also thought that a very important thing was that one keeps going, even if one has that kind of view and one has the sense that life is worth living in and through its tragedy and through the difficult things that we experience and so on. And I tried to write in the final chapter of that book, a chapter explaining
that aspect of the thing and I didn't feel it was very successful. So I was left with a kind of sense of there's something here not fully worked through that I needed to look at further. Some years later somebody asked me to write about the notion of hope in philosophy and in religion and I linked that to the idea of rapture.
So that was another thing that came through. And then in fact, on one funny occasion, a student of mine came to see me and he had read my book on tragedy. And he came to see me and he said, really thinking along the same lines I'd been thinking, he said, the thing is, Chris, if you have a tragic view of life, why are you still here? Why are you carrying on?
And I thought, yeah, there really is something I need to explore here. So that was one idea. I wanted to explore those kinds of moments in life, the rapturous moments. So at that time, I wasn't using that term. In the context, really, as I say, of this idea of the tragic sense of life. The other thing was a kind of dissatisfaction with a lot of philosophy, particularly perhaps contemporary English speaking philosophy. I mean, a lot of philosophy is about analysis,
Christopher Hamilton (02:45.413)
dissection of arguments, going very, very slowly, making distinctions and so on and so forth. And it doesn't have much of a sense of these rapturous, deeply emotional moments in life where one might lose oneself completely. And so that came through to me as well, this sense of something missing in philosophy, which I was also very much aware of.
was there in many religious traditions. Many religious traditions have that sense of rapturous moments, not just Christianity, certainly. And so that came out as well as a motivating factor. And it all kind of came together as I started to think. In fact, I came across an essay. In fact, I'd read the essay quite some time ago and then reread it. A really interesting essay by Virginia Woolf.
in which she talks about what she calls the cotton wool of life or the cotton wool of existence. This sense that most of life is lived kind of in a routine manner in the sense that we go shopping, we cook the dinner, if we've got kids we look after the kids, we cut the grass, we...
get our hair cut, we have a shower, you know, really, really boring, necessary but boring and uninteresting and we forget most of them and she calls this the cotton wool of life and she says but there are what she calls moments of being and she actually describes one of these in terms of her own writing practice where she talks about things coming together in a very particular way and she says this is the most...
you know, when she gets things on paper and it really works and she knows it's right and she can leave it. And that's, and she describes that using those terms. She says, this is one of the most rapturous experiences that I know. And so I began to think in those terms and I thought, okay, so what I want to do really is to try and explore these moments of being, these rapturous moments, these moments in life that stand out as...
Christopher Hamilton (05:03.237)
experiences that really give us a sense of the variety, the interest of life, that keep us going, that excite us. So that was really where it all came from, it was a kind of mixture of partly philosophical, partly personal things, partly my reading. So yeah.
PJ (05:22.762)
When you were first work kind of like formulating this idea through tragedy through hope You said that you weren't thinking about it in those terms Do you mind saying kind of like what terms were you thinking of it in kind of what was the Genesis like before? Rapture what were some of the terms that were coming to mind as you're working on this?
Christopher Hamilton (05:41.381)
Well, as I say, I mean, hope, hope was one of them. Somebody had asked me to write a piece for an academic journal, actually. The journal was a special number and the theme, I think, was hope. And this person kindly asked me to contribute to this. So I think hope was one of the things. I think in the back of my mind, there was also a sense of...
A worry I've long had in philosophy about the notion of happiness, my own view is that the emphasis that there is a lot, and a great deal at the moment too, in English speaking philosophy on the notion of happiness is largely misguided in the sense that much more important in my view are things like peace of mind, tranquility, contentment. These things seem to be much more realistic, not necessarily goals, but they're certainly...
PJ (06:23.306)
Cough
Christopher Hamilton (06:36.037)
features of life that I think are more readily available. The whole history of thinking about the notion of happiness strikes me as showing actually that nobody really knows what it is and all the philosophical discussions peter out in a way. So I was thinking of happiness, I was thinking of contentment, I was thinking of peace of mind, tranquillity, I was thinking of hope. And I had also done some work around that time on the philosophy of
of Albert Camus, who of course grew up in Algeria, in Algiers. And I was rereading some of his early essays that he wrote as a very young man, describing his experience of the sea and the sun and the incredible sensuality of North Africa, which comes through very, very strongly in his early work. So I was thinking about that too. I was thinking about notions of...
of sensuality, which of course meant also I was thinking about questions about sexuality and the place that sex has, the important place that sex has in rapturous experience. So lots of those things about pleasure, about contentment, they were the kinds of terms in which I was thinking of these things. And then rapture, I think, came through from thinking about Virginia Woolf, as I say, and also the English
novelist and art critic, John Berger, because in some of his writings there was a sort of sense of rapturous experience. So this thing about hope and contentment and so on, this started to move for me more in that direction of rapture and that was when I took the term and started to try and work with it a bit more.
PJ (08:25.514)
One thing I really appreciated was that as you were writing about happiness here in the introduction, I had described in talking with my friends a similar, like I said, every time people seem to pursue happiness, like I live in America and it's like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And like, it seems to be, yeah, but the pursuit, like if you pursue happiness, you do not find it. It's almost always seems to be the secondary effect of pursuing something else meaningful.
Christopher Hamilton (08:44.773)
Absolutely, yeah.
PJ (08:55.274)
And I loved your, I just felt a lot of kinship and I'd spoken very similar ways about the, you know, as you talk about the happiness is always on the edge of things. And it's something you can catch out of the ephemeral. It's kind of like something catch out of the corner of your eye.
Christopher Hamilton (09:11.941)
Yes, no, that's right. I really do think that. One of my favourite writers is Samuel Johnson, the 18th century man of letters and writer of one of the very earliest English dictionaries and many, many essays and a critical edition of Shakespeare. And he's famous for saying there's nothing so foolish as a scheme of merriment. This idea that, I mean, we're all familiar with it. Tonight, I'm going to set things up and I'm going to have a wonderful time.
PJ (09:40.97)
Hahaha!
Christopher Hamilton (09:42.149)
What happens invariably is that one is disappointed and so on. But actually, certainly for me, when I look back across my life, I see that those moments that were the best moments was often a surprise. I didn't really anticipate them, they just happened. Unfortunately, I was able to take them and live with them and run with them. And I do think that's about happiness. I think that trying to seek it will make it flee in general.
and that the best thing one can do is to be open to it, open to that possibility that this day might bring something. And I actually, and I should emphasise, I think it's the same about with the notion of rapture. You know, my book is not in the slightest about suggesting that people should go in search of rapture or anything like that. It's rather, I want to think of the book,
I hope it is anyway, a kind of book of reminders, reminding people of those moments in their life that are already there, but that gets submerged or missed, or we rush over them quickly. We hardly notice them. And so I sort of think of it, as I say, as a book of reminders and a book about slowing down a bit and just saying,
if we can take our time somewhat. And of course, we all of us, all of us rush too much. That's just what life is about. But if we can slow down a little bit, that's my hope. So again, as you say, this idea of seeing happiness out of the corner of one's eye, for me, it's the same thing with rapture. It's a question of being aware that it might be there if anyone can look. And one experience of that that I've had, if I may say this is,
is it working in my garden? You know, until a few years ago, I'm very, very lucky to have a small garden here in London where I live. Until a few years ago, I didn't really take any interest in the garden. And then I started to get some plants and stuff. And I'm not in any sense a talented gardener. But I do love that sense sometimes that I just lose myself in such simple things of putting plants into the...
Christopher Hamilton (12:01.413)
into the ground, into the earth and seeing if they grow or not usually being disappointed that they don't. But occasionally there's some amazing colour that comes out and I think, God, you know, that's just wonderful. So, yeah, from that point of view, that's been one of the things for me that's been about slowing down. Excuse me. And I do have a chapter partly on that in the book, this idea of a...
you know, a meditative gardening, just trying to be attentive to these things.
PJ (12:37.482)
So I had the direction I was going to go, but you mentioned the gardening and so I Partly as you know air quotes Education for the kids, but it's definitely been better for me. We started gardening in the in the back and I'd started watching YouTube videos on it because you know, that's how I learned to do just about anything at this point and It
One of the best pieces of advice I got was to let nature do its thing and so because I started out by doing like rows and stuff like that and like you said you're like, oh This is not working. Well, and but as we talked about like the surprise of rapture And I think a year or two ago I would have like cut them down because they weren't doing what they were supposed to per se but we had a compost heap, you know, you make your own compost like we're taking, you know,
Christopher Hamilton (13:21.605)
Yeah.
PJ (13:38.154)
things that are okay for plants and like dumping it in the corner. And we threw away some tomatoes and this year we had about 12 to 15 tomatoes plants come up. We literally got.
Christopher Hamilton (13:49.829)
They had just come out from where you'd thrown them away. Fantastic.
PJ (13:52.682)
Yes. And we probably got, yeah, two and a half pounds of tomatoes from, yeah, no, I know what you have to understand is that I had actually tried to grow tomatoes in my garden and I failed miserably. It's Florida. They wilted. I got nothing. And then with absolutely no effort on myself outside of the growing season, I got two and a half pounds out of tomatoes and they tasted amazing. And it was just a surprise, this gift. And, uh, I, it was very humbling.
Christopher Hamilton (13:57.861)
Gosh, that's pretty good.
PJ (14:21.098)
Right? Like, um, and it was the, you know, I don't know that it was like one single rapturous experience, but that kind of, uh, there was an ex there has been kind of an extended period of awe there of like, I'm not, I'm not sure. Yeah. Like I'm constantly brought back to, to gratitude. And even as you're talking here, you know, you can't, if you seek rapture, even as you talk about like sex being a central, uh, experience of rapture, I'm well,
Maybe this is too personal, but I'm sure people are like, sex isn't always rapturous, right? Like that's, yeah. And so it's one of those things where it's not something that you can seek out, but what it feels like in some ways, instead of being a meditation on gratitude, because of your love for life writing, this is a meditation for gratitude. Would that be, is gratitude kind of a major component of that?
Christopher Hamilton (14:57.477)
Cool.
Christopher Hamilton (15:20.709)
Well, I certainly, yeah, I definitely think so. I mean, I think that, I mean, on the issue of gardening, I mean, the chapter that I have in the book is partly about, because once a year I go to a place and I do a week of meditation. It's got vaguely Buddhist background, but really it's not doctrinal in any way. It's really just about slowing down. Excuse me. And part of that is gardening.
So the centre where I go, the people who go to meditate also work in the garden and that's also about planting and growing stuff. And it's fantastic because then we make meals from the stuff that has been grown in previous months or whatever. So there's this sort of sense of a bit of a cycle and there is that sense of gratitude.
PJ (16:06.762)
Mm.
Christopher Hamilton (16:22.021)
which comes through, I think, as you quite rightly say, with the experience of, one of the experiences is in the experience of gardening. And I think that the thing that you said about surprise, I think is also important because part of what I have in mind with this notion of slowing down is the sense that a great deal of the good things in life come...
less from ones trying to force them to come, a more sense of sort of waiting for them to come. You know, they, and they just, you have to do your bit, of course, but then they come along and you just wait for them. You just wait for them to come and then they come. And I think that's, I think that's absolutely right with the, with the, in the issue of gardening. On the issue of sex, I mean, sex is obviously, no doubt many people have already thought of this listening to our conversation. It is of course one of the,
PJ (17:00.362)
Mm.
Christopher Hamilton (17:17.701)
the deepest, most rapturous experiences of human beings, though of course you're quite right that it certainly isn't always. But the reason I was taking that as a kind of starting point, or one of the starting points in the book, is because of what I see as its basic structure, the sense that in the rapturous experience of sex, you know, when sex, as it were, really works,
PJ (17:37.834)
Hmm.
Christopher Hamilton (17:45.061)
there's this sense of being lost, you know, you're lost in the other person, this sense of being completely attentive to the other person. And I think the notion of tenderness is very important here from that point of view. But also, one is very aware of oneself in that dynamic, you know. So that sense of being lost to oneself, being outside oneself, but also being returned to oneself.
That's what really interested me in the experience of sex in the sense that I mean it rapturous sex, if you like. And in fact, actually, although I don't quote it in the book, there's a novel by John Berger just called G, that's just the title, I mentioned John Berger earlier. And in that book, the central character G is described as having sex with somebody at one point. And I was...
Although I'd thought of this idea about being lost to oneself and then returned to oneself, I was really pleased then to read that, exactly described in that way by Berger in the book. And it made me think, okay, maybe this is right, you know. So it's that. And then I was thinking also about the Virginia Woolf experience. And it's a similar thing. There's this sense of she's fully, she's completely lost in the material she's trying to get right.
PJ (18:52.778)
Yeah.
Christopher Hamilton (19:08.293)
and yet she's aware of her own powers as a thinker, as an author, when she does it. So that was my point of departure, the sense that rapturous experiences have this two -sided thing, there's a sort of loss of self which is at the same time a return to oneself. And part of that is a sense of freedom, is a sense of kind of liberation. Perhaps one could say liberation from that cotton wool.
that I was talking about in the context of Virginia Woolf, you know, the sense of just the ordinary travails and boringness and dullness of everyday life. But I do want to stress it was just a point of departure. You know, I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to do perhaps what some philosophers might try and want to do, which I understand, but I wasn't trying to do, to try and find, provide a definition. I'm just taking that as a point of departure, which I then elaborate using a number of different examples in the course of the book.
But I do think that the issue of gardening is like this, the sense of being out there, lost in the earth, the plants, the tomato plants, whatever, but also returned to oneself, this sort of sense of, wow, this amazing thing happened to me, it was lovely, and the sense of gratitude. So yeah, that's kind of how early on in the book I try and develop some of these ideas and then end up with gardening, as it were, as one of these arms.
PJ (20:32.874)
And I think this goes to one of your main points in the introduction I really wanted to ask you about because it's something I really appreciate about what you do in the book, that your focus, and I think sometimes there is a use for discussion, but your goal, you said, was conversation, not discussion, following Hannah Arendt. Do you mind talking about the distinction that you draw there following Hannah Arendt between...
Christopher Hamilton (20:54.597)
Yeah.
PJ (21:00.746)
discussion and conversation.
Christopher Hamilton (21:03.653)
No, no, I'm more than happy to do that. So, I mean, this is a thing that's, to be honest, has bothered me a great deal in thinking, you know, I've spent most of my life reading philosophical texts and other texts as well. And one of the things that's peculiar about a great deal of philosophical writing is the desire, as it were, to have the last word. The sense that, you know, philosophers would put this in terms of, you know, if I'm reasoning correctly,
then anyone looking over my shoulder and watching my process of reasoning will reason in exactly the same way and therefore will come to the same conclusion. And that is a model of reasoning which certainly does apply in some areas. In my view, it applies in mathematics. You know, you can't say seven plus five is, you know, 25 because I like the number 25. You know, either the definitive rights and wrongs and so on and so forth. And I think a lot of philosophers have
had the ambition of philosophy that would work in that way, that the argument would be such that anyone reasoning with me could see that I'm reasoning correctly. And then so we arrive at the truth, end of the discussion. And that seems to me just false to what really goes on in philosophy, because even if philosophers like to present themselves as doing that, the fact is that philosophy consists of interminable discussion, interminable disagreement.
So one of the things I've tried to do in my work including in this book is to write less in terms of the notion of a discussion which ends in a conclusion and then we go home as it were there's nothing more to say we've got the truth you know you and I now agree I've done the reasoning you've done the reasoning or whatever and more in terms of the notion of conversation where conversation is open -ended
It's undogmatic. One can of course present one's views and give reasons for those views, but it has to be done, I think, I think here, crucial is the manner or the style in which it's done, i .e. in such a way as to make it clear to whoever's listening or reading that things are open, things are open -ended, things aren't definitive, I don't have the answers. I may have had...
Christopher Hamilton (23:30.917)
a chance to think about the issue a bit more than somebody else. People's time is obviously limited in various ways. But that's what one can offer as a philosopher. Hannah Arendt says in this distinction that one of the lovely things about conversation is that it's not just about the ideas, it's also taking pleasure in the presence of the other person. So there's a kind of gesture of friendship. And that's...
partly what I mean by being undogmatic and so on. So that's how I've tried to write this book and I tried to write a lot of what I write with this sense of, as it were, not trying to reach the conclusion which ends the discussion and solves things. And...
I mean, that's a thing that one just tries to do in different ways depending on the thing that one is writing about. But that's what I aim for in this book. So if somebody said to me in reading my book, oh, you know, there are lots of other examples you could have brought in or people you could think as you could bring in or experiences, or I don't really agree because there's this or that, I'd say, well, great. In a sense, that's fine. I want to open it up so that people come back and say, you know...
Good, let's continue the conversation. That at any rate is a kind of ideal I have for a certain way of doing philosophy. You know, and Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, often thought of as the founding father of existentialism, talked in this context about philosophy in the subjunctive, the sort of sense of, you know, you offer it, but at the same time you do it in a manner that gives the sense, not claiming to have the art.
And when I look back in the history of philosophy and I see people so much better than I am as thinkers and so on who didn't have the answers, how could I suppose I have the answers all of a sudden? That strikes me as absurd. So it's just entering the conversation and that's what I hope to do.
PJ (25:43.498)
I have this, just this idea that's like, well, if you want the definitive book on Rapture, 2499, you know, Christopher Hamilton, right? It's like, in 140 pages, everything you'll ever need to know about Rapture. And it's like.
Christopher Hamilton (25:54.373)
Thank you.
Christopher Hamilton (26:01.701)
Well, exactly, exactly, exactly. And you've got it exactly right. I mean, that would be such a ludicrous ambition. But yeah, exactly. So it's just pointers. It's just suggestions with a bit of luck. I hope useful, but there we are. Just, you know, it's for the reader to take it and do something with it.
PJ (26:21.77)
I really appreciated that notion. I mean, in a lot of ways, the name chasing Leviathan, I take Leviathan from the Job passage where it says, can you capture Leviathan? Like, no, you can't. And so this idea of we can pursue truth and it's worth pursuing, but we can't like truth is never caught. Truth is the giant beast that can be like, it's beautiful to behold, but never fully caught. And that comes from my own background. You came to philosophy, it sounds like a lot.
Christopher Hamilton (26:32.389)
Yeah.
PJ (26:51.37)
from your love of literature. And that's actually how I came to it. Because I was in English class, and I was like, we were talking about how something felt true in a novel, and I didn't like the answers I was getting in English class. So then I went from my love of literature to philosophy, and did not find myself in the analytics side. I found myself in philosophical hermeneutics precisely because it's an ongoing dialogue. And so that really struck a chord with me. So.
Christopher Hamilton (27:05.829)
Yeah.
Christopher Hamilton (27:16.037)
Yeah.
PJ (27:19.466)
Thank you. I really appreciate you sharing that.
Christopher Hamilton (27:21.701)
I mean, I'll just add on that. I mean, I think, you know, Pascal, the great 17th century French thinker, has this wonderful, I'm paraphrasing of course, but this wonderful idea that it's just what we are as human beings that we can't give up the striving to find the truth. But it's also what we are as human beings that we know will never have it. And we just, we have to live with that tension.
And of course he's not talking about ordinary banal empirical truths, you know, such as that we're speaking now on the 2nd of April, 2024 and so on. But that sense of having, you know, the answer to how human life makes sense or adds up or its meaning or something like that. That sense, I think, to me is absolutely right. We can't give up the longing for truth. We can't give up the striving to arrive at the truth. But we need to do it knowing that we're not going to arrive there. That's just part of the...
tension in my view in the human condition and perhaps even part of, as I was saying earlier, part of our tragic condition that we long for something that we know we can't have, but we can't just give up the desire for it as if we could just not care anymore. I think that's part of something really important in human beings and living with that instability to my mind is part of what it is to try and lead.
reasonably sensible life and perhaps even a life that could be a bit open to these, sceptical in a way that allows one to be open to moments of rapture perhaps. I'm not sure, but maybe.
PJ (29:00.682)
I think that idea of living with instability meshes well with what you're talking about. If we recognize we live with instability, I'm not sure what the metaphor would be here, but that we should live a little slower and with a little bit more care if we live in recognition of our instability. Is that a natural kind of meshing there?
Christopher Hamilton (29:22.245)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. The sense of going slowly, not being sure, being willing to say I don't know. You know, we live in a world full of people who are sure that they have the answers about everything, you know, political matters, moral matters, cultural matters. And, you know, all I can say is that, well, perhaps not all I can say, but one thing I can certainly say is that from all of the stuff that I've
you know, read over the years, the sense of the immense variety and richness of human life and the sense of people not knowing and being confused. And my own view is that we're all confused and probably especially those who claim not to be, you know, they're fighting something in themselves. So yes, slowing down. I mean, I guess in a way that one metaphor, one image I would use is,
along with this question of slowing down, is that we all hanker in a way for a place to stand in life, you know, as if I stand from this viewpoint and so I know. And I think life is more about falling, you know, you fall and you fall with a bit of decorum through, if you can, through the fact that life is confusing, doesn't fully make sense.
There were some things you might be very attached to, but other things you're not sure about. That very much for me is what philosophy is about, is about learning to live with that kind of instability. And of course, we all of us fail, including me, I don't want to pretend any kind of special wisdom, but trying to remind oneself of that, I think it's really, really important. Because I think it is.
how we live, you know, we live pretending that we know lots of things we don't really know. And the realm of what we know is much, much more limited than the realm of what we don't know. And trying to remind oneself of that from time to time is probably a sobering exercise.
PJ (31:38.282)
Even as you're talking about slowing down in life, as you're talking about this falling through life, perhaps as gracefully as we can, I feel like I'd be remiss if we didn't at least talk about a few of your studies that you kind of go through the book. We've talked a little bit about the gardening, but your first one that you do is on Nietzsche, and it's a focus on his illness on Italy, but also that kind of theme of small things and the
Observing the small things and how that matters Can you speak to a little bit because I think you know when we talk about rapturous, especially like, you know If you get those religious overtones, it's like I was taken up into the you know The third or the seventh heaven right and it's like seems like a big deal, right? But what you first focus on in your study is kind of this Even as we talked about the gardening just like the little things
Christopher Hamilton (32:20.485)
Yeah.
Christopher Hamilton (32:34.725)
Yes, that's right, and it's probably been, well it has been implicit in everything that we're saying, and I should make this clear, that the book is written deliberately without much attention, except in one chapter maybe, two religious notions of rapture. I really wanted it to be a book that could appeal across people, so that both religious and non -religious people could, you know, might be able to find something in it that would speak to them.
And so, yes, I start off with one of the early chapters talking about Nietzsche, because Nietzsche was, as many people will know, he was a very sick man. He suffered from chronic migraines and stomach cramps. He was often laid out in bed for days and days. In fact, he had to retire early from his teaching at the University of Basel and live on a small university pension because he was too ill to go on. And...
That's for one reason why he spent most of his adult life sort of tramping around in the south of France and north of Italy, parts of Switzerland, you know, looking for the right climate in which to feel freer, to feel more at one with his body. And so I discuss a moment that he explores himself in the second, the preface to the second edition of his book, The Gay Science.
where he talks about coming out of a period of illness and the intense surprise of this, but the incredible joy of it, the rapture of it, it's not a word he uses, but he has this sense of the world being new again. Suddenly he's able to see things, he's open to things, he describes himself as being a newborn.
which I think is a really powerful image of the novelty, the freshness of the world. And although Nietzsche is of course very well known as a philosopher, you know, he himself said in his later work that he philosophised with a hammer and, you know, his later work is full of lots of fireworks and so on and so forth. In large parts of his work, particularly in the early and middle work, perhaps particularly in the middle works,
Christopher Hamilton (34:57.445)
he's really focused on this sense of, as you say, the small things of life, the way in which a great deal of happiness or a great deal of contentment, a great deal of peace of mind, comes through an attention to the small things of life. So he says at one point, I think I quoted him in the book saying this, that one should wake up in the morning.
And the first thought should be, what can I do that will make today a pleasanter, more agreeable day than if I don't do it? So, you know, it could be, and there he's got in mind something very, very simple, like perhaps going out into the garden or looking at the sunshine or thinking, I'm going to make myself a particularly nice breakfast or, you know, instead of, you know, rushing to get the...
train to work or whatever, maybe I'll walk a bit further and enjoy the sunshine or whatever. So he's... And questions of diet, food were very important to him because he was... There was a lot that he couldn't eat, it would make him very unwell. So again, and also in a jokey way. So at one point he says, you must never eat...
you must never eat German sausages because they're so heavy on the stomach. Which actually I'm not in danger of doing since I'm a vegetarian, but you know, one sees the point. I have lived in Germany and it's true that the country runs on sausages. So that sense that Nietzsche has of paying attention to the small things of life,
PJ (36:24.938)
Hahaha.
PJ (36:30.634)
Oh.
Christopher Hamilton (36:51.301)
what one eats and so on and so forth, the things one looks at and so on. This is really, really important in large parts of Nietzsche's philosophy and I think it was something that his experience of illness, which as I said was very, very bad at times, including making him despair, I mean there's no question about it, that experience of illness opened him up to those moments of suddenly
being aware of the world and seeing the world. And I don't think it's coincidental that he's talking there in that particular preface that I mentioned. He's talking about a time when he was in Italy and the sense that one can have of the beauty of the place, being attentive to the materials with which cities are constructed and so on.
Things we don't really notice except maybe when we go on holiday when we're on vacation, but actually they're tremendously important At any rate, that's what Nietzsche is trying to and they can give these moments of rapture where you just open up open up to that experience So yeah, there's small things in life And and I think that's I think that's part of what I wanted to do with the book Of course rapture can give the sense as we've already suggested of you know rapturous sexual
engagement. It can also, and I do talk about other examples that are much more intense, but the sense of gardening as we were talking about, the sense of attention to small things, this is rapture in a very quiet way, but I think nonetheless genuinely rapturous. That sense of being taken out of oneself and returned to oneself, the sense of freedom or liberation.
And so I think that's an important part of what I was trying to do in the book that to say these things look very different in many ways they are, but actually those intense extreme experiences, maybe you want to talk about this a little bit more, but also those calm, meditative, gentle, tender moments, I think they're both different forms of rapture and connect us with the world and with ourselves in similar ways despite the
Christopher Hamilton (39:15.493)
very different phenomenology of the experiences.
PJ (39:18.986)
Even as you're talking there, I'm reminded, repeat listeners are probably familiar with that I've recently had several children join our house. And one of the ways that that has shown up is that I've had several sleepless nights. That's a common thing with children. And...
There have been several times waking up at four in the morning where I have, I'm not an easy sleeper anyways, and so it's hard for me to get back to sleep. And there's a real frustration there. You know, like, look at that, like, oh my gosh, today is going to suck, right? And, but even in the middle of that, there have been a few moments, you know, where there was a nightmare or we had an infant and where one of the kids scoots over and puts their head.
Christopher Hamilton (39:58.021)
Yeah.
PJ (40:14.058)
in the crook of my arm at four o 'clock in the morning and all of a sudden it didn't matter. All of a sudden the moment opened up. And I mean, you want to talk about the smallest thing ever. Just that little movement of their head when they just wanted to be there with you. And there's 100 % that feeling of I have lost myself to them and I have fully regained myself through them.
Christopher Hamilton (40:24.869)
Hmm.
Christopher Hamilton (40:41.925)
Hmm.
PJ (40:43.018)
And so, I mean, as we talk about the small moments, like, I think we all have access to those in different ways. You know, I definitely want to ask you about Philippe Petit, but I don't think I'm not interested in tightrope walking. I don't think I have the natural talent for it. But before we get to perhaps the more intense experiences, one, I wanted to...
Christopher Hamilton (41:03.236)
Hmm.
PJ (41:12.426)
Thank you for reminding me to be grateful for those small moments. And then it definitely feels intentional. You start with Nietzsche because part of your goal is that you talk about how philosophy often feels exclusive to moralizing. And even as you're talking about what Nietzsche's focused on, it's like, what makes my day more pleasant, more agreeable? Instead of focusing on doing what's right,
probably made him a better person to think about, what can I do that would be more agreeable, which sounds like such a more modest goal. Can you talk a little bit about that more? Go ahead, sorry.
Christopher Hamilton (41:48.069)
Yeah.
Oh yeah, no, no, no, I think that's absolutely right and I mean Nietzsche himself said about philosophy or philosophers that philosophers had always come to a halt before morality and of course he didn't mean by that that morality isn't important, you know, despite the fact that he's very polemical about morality. In fact he was a deeply moral man in the sense that, you know, he took life extremely seriously and...
staked his all on a certain kind of integrity, I think. But, you know, there's a thing that, I don't mention it in the book, but I think it is relevant. There's D .H. Lawrence and Bertrand Russell had a very old friendship for a while, and they're very, very different men, of course. And at one point they fell out, and they fell out in part because, if my memory serves me correctly, they had agreed to give a series of lectures together.
And when Russell sent his lectures to Lawrence, Lawrence's lectures were on the topic of morality, or the good life, I don't know exactly. And Lawrence said to Russell, why are you talking about morality? Because in fact, what you're talking about is being well behaved. And I think actually a great deal of philosophy when it talks about morality is,
is talking about being well behaved, which is essentially being nice to other people, taking their interests into account and so on. And of course all that's important, but there's a whole other dimension, which is how I relate to myself, how I get on with myself. And my own view, which I mentioned very briefly in the book, is that though the history of philosophy, through the history of philosophy, many, many philosophers have sought to show that if you're morally good,
Christopher Hamilton (43:48.101)
then you'll be happy. I actually think it's probably the other way around, that if you're happy, you're likely to be morally good. I know, if I'm honest about myself, that I'm in general more patient, kinder to those around me when I feel good, when I feel at ease with myself, when, for example, I've slept well like you, I tend to have rather short and disrupted nights, though not on account of children, it's just me.
PJ (44:08.522)
Hahaha
Christopher Hamilton (44:15.749)
And then that sense that actually there's this whole dimension of how I look after myself. I don't really like that phrase. It's very fashionable, but there is that sense of, you know, what Foucault called care of the self, care for the self. That sense of that seems to me extremely important. And, you know, either it's not a moral matter, it's just how I, or in the broadest and largest sense of moral, it is also a moral matter. You know, how each of us,
thinks of ourselves, gets through the day with a certain amount of dignity and decorum and elegance, to use your word I think from earlier. These are really, really important things and they're very subtle things and they're very difficult things. And I think that's partly what Lawrence wanted to say to Russell when he said, you know, really you're talking about being well behaved. You know, what about all this other dimension, the rest of the dimension of life where...
you know, for example, when I think what I really, really need now is to listen to some music, you know, some just, you know, to take an hour and just calm down, listen to something, you know, or maybe I need something tremendously exciting. And so, you know, I put on another piece of music that's tremendously, you know, full of energy and so on. And these aren't...
You know, as I say, I'm not sure. You could say they're not really moral matters, or you could say they are in the broadest sense, if morality includes how I relate to myself, how I think about how I structure and organise my day, how I try and make the best of my life. I mean, at one level, I think of those as moral matters. But I think all of it is non -moralising. And I think, you know, Nietzsche says, he's famous, of course, for saying...
God is dead and we have killed him. But he also says at another point, when God is dead, morality will step in to take his place. And he means by that the tendency that probably we all have to a greater illustrious and to moralise, to make judgements, to think that we are virtuous, that we have the answer, that we can tell other people how to behave and we know what's good for them. And he's deeply, deeply opposed to that sense of.
Christopher Hamilton (46:35.557)
morality and I hope that my book is trying to fit in that space that says look there's just so much more to life than that kind of thing which can take up so much of our energy, the sense of relating to oneself and also to the extent that one can do it leaving other people alone. I don't know how you feel but I certainly feel the older I get.
one of the things I like most is that people just leave me alone to do my thing. And that's also part of what Nietzsche means, leaving people alone. In a way, it's a very, from a political point of view, it's a very, very good old fashioned liberal idea. Leaving alone to do my thing and I'll leave you alone. And as I say, it's a classic 19th century liberal view, but...
PJ (47:06.538)
Hahaha!
Christopher Hamilton (47:31.013)
To my mind it's still very powerful, though unfortunately probably less fashionable now than it should be.
PJ (47:40.458)
I feel like if I comment on that, we'll go straight from your book. So I don't know. Yes, I know. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. I just don't think I could. Yes. Yes. No, I definitely I hear you on that. I do. You start with Nietzsche and small things and then you end with and I should have looked up how to say his name before I got on the podcast. But you you end with the tightrope walker. And so I.
Christopher Hamilton (47:44.069)
I apologize.
Christopher Hamilton (48:08.581)
Yeah, Philip Poutine, yeah. You do take it perfectly correctly. You underestimate yourself.
PJ (48:10.378)
Oh, I said it like somewhat correct. Okay. Yeah. So talk about those more intense. I mean, even as we talk about well behaved, right, like these kinds of more intense experiences are often the sort of thing that are not socially acceptable. Why did you pick Philippe Petit?
Christopher Hamilton (48:38.245)
Well, before coming to him, if I can just mention that I do have a chapter also on the films of Werner Herzog, the German film director who I believe has been living in the United States for many, many years now, and I think generally makes English language films. But a theme in his films has been, I think, the theme of rapture, the sense of kind of intense...
PJ (48:40.714)
Mm -hmm.
Christopher Hamilton (49:07.173)
experiences. So I discuss an early film of his which is about a ski jumper or as it's sometimes called a ski flyer because he would go this incredible distances, you know, risking death and so on and he was clearly, you know, lost in a state of rapture in this. Or much later, that was a film from early on in Herzog's career, a later film is...
from the film Grizzly Man about Timothy Treadwell who lived with bears for I think 13 summers up in Alaska and made his own kind of home movie films of himself with the bears and which Herzog partly used in the documentary. And again, this extraordinary experience of this rapturous life with these bears.
which led of course in the end to his own death actually. He was attacked and eaten by one of the bears during a period I think of shortage of food for the bears at the time. So I mean, I'm also interested in those intense experiences which again have the dimension of being completely taken out of oneself and returned to that. I mean, I'm not a ski jumper and I don't intend to try and become one. It's too late in life.
PJ (50:25.13)
Heheheheh
Christopher Hamilton (50:29.285)
But I imagine that that sense of absolute loss in the total focus on the activity, but also the intense awareness, because you get something wrong of oneself. Because if one gets something, one is dead. And of course, one aspect of that that's really interesting is as you say, although in certain ways these kinds of experiences are socially sanctioned, we have ski jumping and...
Winter Olympics or whatever. There is also the sense that they are suspect because they're possibly dangerous, they might lead people to do things which are not well behaved, to use that term. And I think all one can say about those is, well, that's life. You know, that's life. Do we really want to live in a world where everything is made safe?
PJ (51:14.538)
Yeah.
Christopher Hamilton (51:27.045)
where that kind of possibility no longer exists. And...
I'm very, very doubtful that we do want to live in that kind of world. But of course, in the Western world, in which we are lucky in many ways to live, that emphasis on safety and security is so much to the fore that I think we've lost, in many ways, a sense of the edge of life. And these kinds of characters remind us of that. And I think that's one reason why Herzl is interested in his film. So...
you know, as a man and as a philosopher, I wouldn't want to make a judgment about, you know, this kind of thing should stop. We have to live, perhaps, with a certain sense of the riskiness of this. And part of that is people who, like Lawrence, and to come to him, Philippe Petit, who, as it were, live a whole life, as I put it, in the spirit of rapture, or a life that's coloured by the sense of rapture.
I don't mean by that of course that they're in a state of rapture the whole time, they're certainly not, but there's a kind of immense energy, an immense sort of grasping of life that these people have, possess. And Philippe Petit of course is very famous for this walk that he did between the obviously now destroyed Twin Towers in...
in the World Trade Center in New York, which he did in 1974, entirely illegal. I mean, that's the other thing that one has to say. The whole thing was not acceptable in any way, you know, totally illegal. It took him years to plan this thing with the team. You know, had anyone known that he was doing this, of course, it would have immediately been shut down and so on. And yet, it was a kind of moment of breathtaking rapture for him and for everyone else.
PJ (53:06.474)
Right. Not acceptable. Yes.
Christopher Hamilton (53:29.605)
And there's a film that I mentioned in the book I draw on it called Man on Wire, which is a marvelous documentary about him and about this kind of rapturous, obsessive thing. So I'm, of course, as you said, you're not really interested in becoming a tightrope walker, neither am I. But the sense of living with that kind of energy, that rapturous energy.
seems to me something that we need again need to remind ourselves is a possibility and as I try and put it in you know you sort of can try and catch the spirit a little bit of of what Philippe Petit is doing. So
He describes himself as being an amazingly egotistical man. And it's completely clear that in the film Man on Wire, his girlfriend at the time says that when she met him, it was clear that he demanded to fall in line completely with his project. That what she wanted to do with her life just didn't come into it.
PJ (54:20.17)
Ha ha ha!
Christopher Hamilton (54:42.949)
And she also knew that once the walk across the Twin Towers had been completed, she knew that her relationship with him would end. Indeed, many of his friendships collapsed because it had been so intensely grouped around that experience, that thing that he did. And you could take two attitudes to that, or at least two. You could say, well, that's an egotistical man who didn't care about enough.
Or you could say, well, that's just what life is. She chose to go for that and it gave her something. And if you watch the film, I think that it's clear. She absolutely lost herself in him and in his project, but at the same time, through that, obtained something unbelievably valuable. So these people can no doubt be difficult to come across at times. I'm sure that other examples I've...
briefly mentioned in the book like D .H. Lawrence for example were, you know, probably wanted sometimes to run a mile, but I think that sense of that life, of a life lived with that kind of intensity is something, again, we can remind ourselves and perhaps find a little bit of space for it in our lives a little bit more. And I think sometimes it will be no bad thing.
PJ (56:09.962)
I want to be respectful of your time, but I have two more questions for you and if you don't mind and the first one would be And you say it's the beginning like these are ones that these are examples that touched you that you have been Inspirational for you and that you hope to provide a space for other people to start to appreciate Rapture
Christopher Hamilton (56:18.373)
Oh, sorry.
PJ (56:36.682)
If you had more space or you'd had more time or as you've, you know, after you finished the book, what are some other examples that you would want to include or you feel like maybe instead the world, maybe not you personally, maybe the world needs to see as examples of Rapture?
Christopher Hamilton (56:54.469)
Gosh, that's a really difficult question. To be perfectly honest, I don't know. I don't have a sense of... I mean, one of the things that was important in the book was that at various points I talk about some of my own experiences. So for example, in the chapter on nature and illness, I talk also about a period of illness I went through and a similar moment of coming out of the...
the illness and experiencing the world in the kind of way that that Nitra did. So one thing I probably would like to do more is simply to explore some of my own experiences from that point of view. So I also mentioned the meditation that I do. What those experiences will be, I'm not quite sure at the moment, but I think if I were to take the thing further.
I would probably try to explore those experiences a bit more. I mean, one thing that comes to mind is that I mentioned earlier that I had been asked to write a piece on hope and philosophy and religion. And as I was writing that piece, it was very, very cold and it was snowing here in London on that particular day. And I looked out of the window and I saw...
some boys coming home from school, you know, probably 14, 15 year olds, and they were throwing snowballs at each other. It was a Friday afternoon and I had the vision of them, you know, larking around like this and then just going home and knowing they had the whole weekend, no school, you know, just, you know, that wonderful feeling, you know, you can lie around in bed on a Saturday morning, just...
PJ (58:52.298)
Yeah.
Christopher Hamilton (58:54.501)
and I imagine them then the next day going out and meeting their friends and hanging around in a cafe and that kind of thing. So I think probably I would quite like to explore some of those and I actually put that into the essay that I wrote. So I think I would like to explore perhaps some of my own experiences like all seeing other people in ordinary everyday context. I think the other thing that does come to mind is we mentioned the religious thing.
probably quite interested if I were to take it further to explore these notions in the context of religious thinking. Because as I mentioned at the beginning, and as I suppose is obvious, lots of religious traditions have that sense of, for example, mystical rapture, the sense of being taken out of the ones, taken out of oneself. And I do refer...
in one of the chapters at some length to the work of Simone Weil, the French philosopher who actually died here in this country in England in 1943. And she actually, although I don't discuss this in the book, she did have some experiences in Italy in which she said Christ came down and took hold of me. Funnily enough, I was discussing that the other day with some of my students in a course I was teaching and...
they will say to me, what does that mean? And I said, well, not sure. And actually, so that's in part the answer to, what do these mystical experiences in the religious tradition and also in parts of Islam with Sufism and that kind of thing, I think that would interest me enormously. And a source of that would certainly be William James's,
PJ (01:00:22.666)
Yeah, right.
Christopher Hamilton (01:00:47.333)
great book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, which has one or two chapters on mysticism and explores some of that. So that will probably be the way that I would, partly my personal experiences, partly just looking at people around me a bit more, and partly the religious thing. And I do want to emphasise that, though in some ways, you know, I refer in the book to thinkers from, let's say, for the sake of argument, high culture.
my emphasis isn't really on that, it's on ordinary everyday experiences. So as you know in the book, I also have a chapter on a short story by Russian writer Chekhov, which is just called The Kiss, and just this simple moment of the kiss that obsesses this rapturous moment that obsesses this central character. So I...
Those kinds of everyday experiences, probably explore those a little bit more and maybe outside of literature a bit more. Those will be maybe some possibilities.
PJ (01:01:52.106)
Those all sound fascinating. The one that sticks out to me though is the kind of, even as we talk about philosophy being really focused on making people perhaps not so much moral as well -behaved. I think you could say the same for theology. And what's really interesting is that when you look at sacred texts and you look at even why people choose religion, it's so rarely actually because they want to be well -behaved. It actually has more to do with these moments of rapture. And I think that's...
Christopher Hamilton (01:02:09.029)
Thank you.
PJ (01:02:22.026)
You know, you have way more in terms of resources from sacred scriptures on moments of rapture than even perhaps well -behaved. So I think that's a fascinating direction.
Christopher Hamilton (01:02:31.333)
Oh, yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. And I think maybe it's a thing we've lost sight of a little bit. And of course, yeah, so I think you're right, I'm sure you're right that there were those resources within religious thought and that people, that sense of being taken out of oneself and all of that, I mean, these are...
enormously important experiences in religious life and probably worth exploring much, much more than I've done, certainly more than I have done in this book.
PJ (01:03:13.45)
Though this is the definitive work on, sorry, okay, I'll let it go. The joke is old. Okay, yes. Well, let me, so besides reading your excellent book, and we only get to talk for an hour, we did not get to go through all the studies that you did. One, thank you for your work, and it is a great example of that kind of conversational.
Christopher Hamilton (01:03:17.253)
Of course, yes. There is nothing else you need to know.
PJ (01:03:42.698)
philosophy that you're aiming for. But besides reading your book, what is something that the audience can take away this week? What is something you ask them to meditate on or to think about as they finish listening to this episode?
Christopher Hamilton (01:03:59.045)
Well, I think, as I say, probably the thing we were talking about, this notion of small things, you know, just being attentive, just trying to slow down a little, trying to notice things more in ordinary everyday life. You know, I remember years and years ago reading a book about depression and somebody said, you know, good way to start to overcome depression.
is to take an orange, I happen to have one here at this very moment, and, you know, re -take five minutes over peeling it, eating it, and actually this was a piece of wisdom saying the same thing, actually, you know, how many of us, I do it all the time, I just cut an orange, eat it, and then that's it, you know, it's gone. We do it all the time, so I think that,
PJ (01:04:31.146)
Oh, okay.
PJ (01:04:45.322)
Hmm.
Christopher Hamilton (01:04:57.157)
that thing about slowing down, looking at those things, that will be one really important thing. And I think the other thing, perhaps this says more about me than other people I don't know, is the idea of leaving people alone. I have a very, very good friend and one reason we're such close friends is because it's an utterly non -judgmental.
friendship, you know, we don't tell each other what to say, what to think. When we talk about foolish or idiotic things we've done, we just listen. And there's actually, there was an English philosopher called Richard Vollheim, who in the book of his, I think it's called The Thread of Life, and Vollheim said that, that the ideal of friendship is that we all live with so many internal demands on ourselves.
that the point of a friend is that the friend makes no extra demands and just lets you be. And that to me is a very, very powerful thought. So, and I think of that as in line with this notion of slowing down, kind of attention to rapturous moments and just being who one is as free from moralizing as possible. So I guess that will be the other thing that.
that has come out. It's a surprising thing. I didn't imagine that would come out in this conversation, but it's thanks to you that it has. So, yeah.
PJ (01:06:27.242)
Well, it's been a tremendous conversation. Dr. Hamilton, thank you so much.
Christopher Hamilton (01:06:32.261)
Thank you very much, it's been a tremendous pleasure. Thank you.