Forthcoming on my Substack: A comparison of Adam Smith's theory of the Invisible Hand with Heidegger's concept of Vorhandensein ("Readiness to hand"), both metaphors for tacit knowledge.
The motif of hands is under explored in the history of philosophy.
The motif of hands is under explored in the history of philosophy.
https://twitter.com/krishnanrohit/status/1452951234881654793
Consider this a handout for a PhD dissertation 👋
Here's another one: Comparing the motif of hands in Western thought to that of Talmudic thought.
The Mishna's tractate on the laws of shabbat begins with the image of people moving their hands across domains, e.g., a beggar extending his hand to a home owner or vice versa...
The Mishna's tractate on the laws of shabbat begins with the image of people moving their hands across domains, e.g., a beggar extending his hand to a home owner or vice versa...
In a particularly controversial essay, Heidegger (who, btw, according to Jaspers, admired Hitler's hands), defines the difference between man and animal in terms of hands. Animals can have paws, but only beings with language can have hands. Strange.
Derrida and Merleau-Ponty also write about hands as definitive of human existence. For Derrida, the hand I use to gesture or point is fundamentally different than the hand of anatomy.
For Merleau-Ponty, my ability to hold my own hand, left in right or right in left, is the best way to experience a kind of internal intersubjectivity, a relationship with myself as other to myself.
In meditation, the use of gently interlocked hands is one of the core mudras, a pose of balance and equanimity. For yogis and sitters, there is knowledge in the pose that cannot be had in any other way.
And why did we personify the clock of the clock tower as having "hands"? A minute hand and an hour hand. The hand is everywhere, yet concealed. Since the development of opposable thumbs we have seen ourselves as distinct by virtue of our invisible helpers.
From the hand of God to the hand of the market to the hands of the clock, from the hands of the handyman to the open hands of the psalmist, we have no handle on what we are talking about, for the hands are always a priori, before thought.
The hand reminds us, like land and soil, like time and tradition, like language and the body, of the strangeness of consciousness, neither material nor spiritual, but a composite.
In his critique of Strong AI, Bert Dreyfus argued that bots would not replace humans so long as they couldn't defeat us in ping pong. His example singled out a skill requiring hands, specifically. And it's true, Deep Blue can win at chess, because it doesn't need hands to move.
The connection between hands and tacit knowledge is also evident in the word "tradition," which means passing on or giving over. Can there be tradition without transfer? The defense of tradition is the defense of tacit knowledge, gained not through books, but witness.
In Jewish tradition, the word for ordination is semikha, which literally means a laying on of hands. (The original meaning of the term connects it to animal sacrifice.)
Paging Girardians (e.g., @lukeburgis) who can help explain why the word for making someone a rabbi derives from the word for sacrifice? Are community leaders themselves elevated beyond the human so that they can then, bear the sins and disappointments of a community?
The hand is to philosophy what the foot is to poetry. The Bed of Procrustes is any mode of expression that reduces itself to “content” or “information.”
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