Welcome to a look inside David E. Johnson's book, _Kant's Dog: Philosophy of Borges_. This book sets out to explore the deep connections between the acclaimed writer Jorge Luis Borges and the vast world of philosophy. It suggests that trying to separate Borges's writing from philosophical thought is a bit tricky, and perhaps even impossible. #### What's the Big Idea? Borges, Philosophy, and That Fuzzy Border One of the central puzzles the book tackles is the relationship between literature and philosophy, using Borges as a prime example. It points out that many critics and even Borges himself have claimed he wasn't really a philosopher. Borges described himself as a "man of letters" who used philosophy for its "literary possibilities". Some argue he treated philosophical concepts like objects or situations in his stories, rather than engaging with them philosophically. However, _Kant's Dog_ pushes back against this idea. It asks, how can someone deeply explore the literary potential of philosophy without, in some way, _doing_ philosophy? The book questions the very lines we draw between these two fields and wonders what makes someone a philosopher in the first place. Perhaps, like Paul de Man suggested about some works, Borges's writing is one of those cases that "straddles" both literature and philosophy, existing in the space between them. A key point the book raises is about translation. Some philosophical ideas are seen as detachable from the specific language they are written in, making them fully translatable without loss of meaning. Literary works, on the other hand, are often considered tied to their original language, their unique "idiom," making them untranslatable in a pure sense. Borges's work, being art and not reducible to simple ideas, is seen by some as untranslatable and tied to Spanish. But here's where it gets interesting: the book points out that even a philosopher like Kant, whose work is supposedly all about ideas separate from language, is sometimes said to be better read in translation (like English) than in his original German. This suggests that the language, the idiom, _does_ affect the philosophical ideas, which, according to the distinction mentioned earlier, is supposed to be a characteristic of _literature_, not philosophy. This leads to the intriguing thought that perhaps it's impossible to read or write philosophy as anything _other_ than literature. The idiom makes a difference, not just in the text, but in the whole "work" itself. Borges himself adds a twist by saying that German is the language of philosophy, yet suggests Kant should be read in _any_ language but German because even Germans found him perplexing. If the original German text of Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_ is hard to read or understand, does that mean it's not really philosophy in its original form? Perhaps, at best, it's literature in its original German articulation. The book argues that this idea of translation – its possibility and its impossibility – is central to Borges's work and blurs the lines between necessity and accident, the transcendental and the empirical, and yes, philosophy and literature. #### Exploring Key Themes: Time, Identity, and the Accidental _Kant's Dog_ delves into several core themes that preoccupy Borges, often showing how they relate to philosophical problems. One of the most important is the "contradiction of time that passes and the identity that endures". Borges was consistently interested in this problem: how can we have a sense of a stable "self" or identity when time is constantly moving and changing? The book explains that Borges often repeated classical philosophical definitions of time but also embedded ideas in his texts that push against those definitions. Related to this is the concept of the **accidental**. In traditional philosophy, going back to Aristotle, the accidental is excluded from the study of "being" because it's not necessary or essential; it's what "just happens to be together" with something else and could be otherwise. The accidental is seen as being in the order of "nonbeing". _Kant's Dog_ suggests that the logic of translation, which involves both universal demand and singular impossibility, "corrupts" the distinction between necessity and accidentality. The book also explores the idea of **inscription** or writing. Borges uses the Spanish word _borronear_, which means both to scrawl or scribble and to erase. This suggests that writing is a process of both making a mark and erasing at the same time. Whatever is written appears "under erasure," meaning it appears but is also marked as erased. This relates to the idea of a "trace," which leaves a mark not of something that was, but of something that never fully _was_ in the first place because its appearance involves erasure. The imagination, which names inscription, constitutes and ruins possibility simultaneously. The **imagination** is crucial in the book's analysis. It's seen as mediating between sensibility (our senses) and the understanding (our concepts). In philosophy, particularly for Hume and Kant, the imagination plays a vital role in how we process experience and form ideas or concepts. However, the imagination is also often seen as spontaneous and potentially unruly. _Kant's Dog_ argues that the imagination marks or singularizes the transcendental aspects of thought, thereby unsettling their pure, universal nature. The concept of **belief** is also examined, particularly in relation to Hume. Hume's understanding of causality, which depends on temporal succession and habit (belief), is seen as challenging the idea of a fixed origin or original. Borges, in his "A New Refutation of Time," engages with Hume and Berkeley, suggesting that his refutation is an inevitable consequence of their ideas, even though he himself doesn't "believe" it. The book suggests that Hume's empiricism, which is supposed to be based on sense impressions, ultimately relies on a non-empirical "belief". Belief becomes this "impossible ground" for any possible experience. #### Philosophical Encounters: Kant's Dog and Schopenhauer's Cat The title _Kant's Dog_ comes from a moment in Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_ where he uses the example of a dog to explain how our imagination forms concepts from sense perceptions. He explains that the concept of a dog is a rule that helps our imagination shape the idea of a four-footed animal without being limited to any single image. But, as the book notes, Kant seems anxious about the imagination running wild and needs to keep it on a "tight leash". The book wittily calls this a "philosophical leash law". Borges's story, "Funes the Memorious," provides a perfect counterpoint. Funes has an absolute memory; he can't forget anything and perceives every single detail as unique. For Funes, the dog seen at 3:14 from one angle is different from the dog seen at 3:15 from another. He struggles to see how the general concept "dog" can apply to all the different individual dogs he experiences. This suggests that Funes lacks the ability to synthesize or abstract in the way Kant describes, or rather, his absolute memory highlights the difficulty or impossibility of doing so perfectly. He lacks the ability to rein in the synthesis of temporality, the "leash" that Kant uses (transcendental apperception). Funes describes his memory as a "garbage heap", which the book connects to philosophical discussions about heaps as lacking order or rule, being accidental rather than necessary. Another animal reference comes from Borges's story "The South," where the protagonist pets a cat and thinks that humans live in time and succession, while the "magical animal lives in the present, in the eternity of the instant". The book identifies this cat as a reference to Schopenhauer's idea that animals live entirely in the present. _Kant's Dog_ suggests that despite their apparent differences, Schopenhauer's cat and Kant's dog point to a similar problem: the difficulty of thinking experience based solely on an immediate "present". This implies that empiricism and transcendentalism, despite their differences, share a fundamental reliance on the imagination. #### More Concepts: Language, Decision, and the Name of God The book also touches upon Borges's ideas about **language**. Borges suggests that language is fundamentally successive and temporal. It's also a tradition, a shared heritage. He explores the idea of a perfectly empirical language where every thing has its own name, as explored by Locke and critiqued by Borges through Funes. Such a language would be impossible because language relies on generality and abstraction, not singular names for everything. A radically particular language, where each word defines only itself (like "cat" just meaning "cat" with no possibility of further explanation), would ultimately be meaningless, like a tautology. Paradoxically, an absolutely particular language might be the same as an absolutely universal one, both lacking the referentiality that makes language temporal and meaningful. The idea of **decision** is explored, particularly in Chapter 4. Decisions are often necessary in situations that are not governed by strict necessity, but by chance or alternative possibilities. This places decision in the realm of rhetoric and appearance rather than pure philosophical truth. The book asks if a decision is truly possible if it is always tied to this realm of chance. Borges's stories, like "The Garden of Forking Paths," "The Secret Miracle," and "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero," show that decisions _are_ made, sometimes with fatal consequences, even if the underlying reality involves contradictions or undecidability. The concept of "hostis" (which can mean both host and enemy) is used to illustrate the difficulty of drawing clear lines, suggesting that deciding between friends and enemies might involve reducing complexity or presupposing a stable position that doesn't exist. The book argues that decision involves calculating with the incalculable, exposing the decider to the future and making sovereignty impossible even as it requires it. Finally, the book examines Borges's interest in the **name of God** (Chapter 5). This ties into ideas of language, identity, and the limits of understanding. Borges explores the difficulty of narrating or describing something infinite and absolute like the Aleph. He suggests that any attempt to capture such presence in language inevitably involves "literature," meaning falseness or conventionality. The name of God is seen as a metaphor for what is incomprehensible. Borges plays with the idea of God's name ("I am that I am") and its translation, suggesting it might be an "evasion" or that, in its articulation, it reveals an "idiocy" or a necessary forgetfulness on God's part. To create the world, God must foresee its end and write it down, but writing involves absence and futurity, meaning God isn't fully present to himself at the moment of creation. God must forget humanity to be fully God, but in forgetting humanity, he also forgets himself. This suggests God, too, is temporally determined and finite, not purely eternal. #### The Book's "Accidental" Reading Strategy _Kant's Dog_ doesn't just explain these ideas; it tries to enact them. It uses what it calls an "accidental" reading strategy. This means it doesn't follow a strict, predetermined plan but often starts with a small detail, a minor reference, or an "accident" in Borges's text to open up a philosophical discussion. It demonstrates how Borges's work is inscribed within philosophical questions and how philosophy, in turn, is found within Borges's literature. The goal is to show that literature and philosophy are mutually inscribed at each other's limits. #### Ideas for Further Exploration Reading about _Kant's Dog_ might spark some interesting questions and ideas for you to ponder: 1. **Literature vs. Philosophy:** Where do _you_ think the line is between literature and philosophy? Can a work of literature truly _do_ philosophy, or does it just _use_ philosophical ideas? What makes a text "philosophical"? 2. **The Power of Translation:** If, as the book suggests, translation impacts even philosophical ideas, what does that tell us about the nature of knowledge and understanding across languages and cultures? Does anything truly universal exist, or is everything always filtered through a specific idiom? 3. **Time and Identity:** How does Borges's fascination with the passing of time and the endurance of identity relate to your own experience? Can you find examples in your own life or other texts where this "contradiction" plays out? 4. **The Accidental in Life:** The book connects the philosophical concept of the accidental to chance and decision. How much of our lives is shaped by necessary rules, and how much by accidents and things that "just happen"? Does recognizing the role of accident change how we think about responsibility or planning? 5. **The Imagination's Role:** The imagination is presented as both necessary for cognition and potentially unruly. How do you see the imagination functioning in creative works, in problem-solving, or even in everyday perception? Is it a reliable tool or something to be kept on a "leash"? 6. **Names and Meaning:** Borges and the book discuss the challenge of naming and the possibility of language without nouns or reference. How does naming work in your own experience? Are names arbitrary labels, or do they capture something essential about a thing? What about proper names – do they define us? 7. **Undecidability and Decision:** The book argues that decisions are necessary even in the face of undecidability. Can you think of situations where a decision had to be made even though there was no clear "right" answer? What does this tell us about the nature of choice and responsibility? This briefing only scratches the surface, but hopefully, it gives you a solid understanding of the intricate arguments and connections that _Kant's Dog_ explores between Borges's captivating stories and fundamental philosophical questions. It's a book that suggests thinking about Borges inevitably leads us back to the core perplexities of metaphysics and existence, often in unexpected and challenging ways.