Perfume and the Pre-Socratics 4: Pluralism and Primordial Scents 2012

The Pluralist Response to Parmenides

The time has arrived at last to return to our History of Philosophy Refracted through Perfume. For those new to this series, we have so far covered the thought of pre-Socratic thinkers Thales, Heraclitus, Anaximander and Anaximenes, and we last left off with Parmenides. According to Parmenides, only Being is real, and it is unitary, eternal, and immobile. All of the different things which we take ourselves to perceive in what Parmenides terms the realm of “becoming” are but illusions, including all of the empty perfume bottles which we believe ourselves to have drained.

I imagine that the philosophers who immediately succeeded Parmenides were a bit daunted. How to respond to a theory—All is one—according to which nothing can truly be said? Instead of simply capitulating or wasting precious time sulking in silence, the next group of pre-Socratic philosophers leapt out of the Parmenidean monism box and boldly proclaimed the truth of pluralism. Essentially these critics' position appears to have been that their convictions in the soundness of the Parmenidean arguments against change and motion were less strong than their convictions that things really do change, motion is in fact possible, and perfume bottles can indeed be drained.

Why did the pluralists believe in the reality of motion and change? For the usual reasons: they observed them with their own eyes. Change seemed undeniable to the pluralists, so Parmenides' picture was incomplete, and there must have been something wrong with his arguments, even if they could not pinpoint exactly what it was.

This handy little skeptical parry can always be whipped out when faced with a seemingly insurmountable argument to an unwanted conclusion. At the end of the day, the plausibility of first premises is a matter of subjective intuition. From first premises everything else follows—or not.

“All is one” is certainly true under some possible interpretation—everything is connected in one way or another to everything else, even Versace Blonde and Balmain Balmain—but it does indeed seem as though divisions made and distinctions drawn have much more relevance to the way people actually lead their lives than does an intangible realm of Being. Perhaps we are meandering about in a fog of delusion in the realm of becoming, but that is, in fact, where we are, where we have found ourselves, deeply mired in ignorance. For the time being, then, why not attempt to understand the realm of becoming, the fine distinctions between fine perfumes, and embrace the concepts of change and motion rejected by Parmenides? Even if he is right about the True Nature of Ultimate Reality, what relevance does that have to any person's life?

Moreover, would not a strict adherence in practice to Parmenides' theory lead naturally to one's ruin? If there is no difference between scentedness and unscentedness, or an empty bottle and a full one, then why bother to wear perfume? Why bother even to drink water? Why bother even to budge? While sitting inert, basking in the beatific light of Being, one would simply starve to death. Clearly, following Parmenidean logic consistently would be a short-term endeavor. Perhaps Parmenides is right about pristine Being, but our bodies are firmly ensconced in the gunky goo of becoming, as regrettable as that may be—or not.

These sorts of arguments may sound familiar to readers who have wrestled with the conundrum of the God hypothesis. Many self-proclaimed free-thinking nonbelievers simply deny the relevance of God to their life from day to day. “Nonbelievers” is of course a category which comprises both atheists, who religiously deny the existence of God, and mild-mannered agnostics such as sherapop, who simply withhold judgment on the question, unsure as they are as to what would constitute evidence either way. The music of J.S. Bach? The Holocaust?

I recall that when I was in college a woman living in my dormitory did not study for her final examinations because, she maintained in what appeared to be complete sincerity, if God wanted her to pass, then she would. This is precisely the stance rejected by those who scoff at petty requests directed toward the Almighty for assistance during times of need. Will God really help you with your mortgage?

Even if you find out that you are dying of cancer, is praying actually supposed to help? Well, then why did God let you get cancer in the first place? The answers to such questions offered by believers invariably cast an unflattering light upon the Almighty, and sometimes attain the level of high conspiracy. In fact, the God hypothesis itself may be the most conspiratorial of all possible conspiracy theories! God may have His inscrutable reasons, but of what relevance are they to me?

These sorts of arguments of course go on and on and on, and some smart people end up as atheists in a sort of pendulum effect. Bill Maher's film Religulous (2008) offers a clear illustration of this position, but I must say that I felt that he painted religious people in a crude and derogatory way. In my experience, not all religious people are imbeciles or (vel) ignoramuses. On the contrary, plenty of very smart people have believed in God, including some of the most esteemed Dead White Men in the history of philosophy: Kierkegaard, Leibniz, Kant, Descartes, Pascal, why even Socrates appears to have spoken of “the gods” now and then—though it's never clear with him whether he is speaking ironically or not... My suspicion is that the “voice” to which Socrates alluded was probably his conscience, not the man with the beard. George W. Bush, on the other hand, invoked “voices” to explain some of his more dubious policy decisions, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq in violation of international law—but that's another story.

Empedocles: Love and Strife and the Four Root Elements

The pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles accepted the Parmenidean arguments about motion and change, but he rejected monism. Empedocles concurred with the monist to end all monists that reality was indeed a plenum, but he maintained that motion and change are possible because things trade places with one another. Rather than there being only one ultimate substrate, Empedocles posited six: four roots—earth, air, fire, and water—and two motions: Love and Strife. Love brings things together; Strife divides them apart.

According to Empedocles, in the beginning of what he called the “world cycle,” the four roots, earth, air, fire, and water, were interwoven together under the action of Love. This harmonic mesh was rent asunder through the motion of Strife, which seems to be related to the proverbial Fall from grace described in a number of religious traditions. Applying this idea to the contemporary world, we see these divisions exacerbated in contemporary wars, which seem to go on and on... Rather than focus on what connects us to one another, we tend to focus upon what divides us, to such an extent that a reunion may often seem beyond our means.

Left to my own devices, I'm not sure how I would have been able to apply Empedocles' theory directly to the case of perfume. However, I have been happily rescued on this front by Monica Miller, Perfume Pharmer, and Primordial Scents 2012, a contemporary perfume project currently underway, which commences precisely from the picture of reality painted by pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles!

In this project, a group of distinguished independent and all-natural perfumers have come together to create new perfumes based on or inspired by one or more of the basic roots of reality posited by Empedocles: air, earth, fire, and water.

Primordial Scents 2012 affirms the interconnectedness not only of all of the elements serving as the foundation of perfumic creations but also of perfume writers and perfumers. Described as “a salon of scented artists and perfumers,” Primordial Scents 2012 is essentially a celebration of first things, of which we may lose sight in the busy, chaotic jumble of the world of becoming in which we interact day to day.

The inspired creations of the perfumers participating in Primordial Scents 2012 include entire sets of perfumes which focus on one of the basic roots: air, fire, earth, and water. A fifth root, metal, has also been explored, and some of the perfumers have commenced from the concept of ether or space. For those who wish to experience these new creations, sample sets are available at the etsy website. Now that the weather has finally cooled off, I'll be posting reviews of the air and the fire series scents at Il Mondo di Odore.

Here at the salon de parfum, we'll continue to progress through the History of Philosophy Refracted through Perfume and see what the other pre-Socratic pluralists would have had to say about the object of our fascination—or perhaps did, but the content of which has been suppressed by olfactorily benighted scholars in a misguided effort to deny the philosophical importance of perfume and how it can help us better to apprehend the true nature of Reality.

In the meantime, I encourage you to explore some of the sources of perfumic enlightenment which await you at these fine ateliers:

• Amanda Feeley (Escentual Alchemy) - AIR & EARTH
• Ane Walsh (Ane Walsh) - BEACH/WATER
• Anita Kalnay (Flying Colors Natural Perfumes) - SPACE/ETHER
• Anu Prestonia (Anu Essentials)- WATER
• Bruce Bolmes (SMK Fragrances) - METAL
• Dabney Rose (Dabney Rose) - FIRE
• Dawn Spencer Hurwitz (DSH Perfumes / Essence Studio)- ETHER/SPACE
• Emma Leah (Fleurage Perfume Atelier)  - METAL
• Jane Cate (A Wing & A Prayer) - FIRE
• Juan M. Perez (Exotic Island Aromatics)- FIRE& EARTH
• Justine Crane (The Scented Djinn) - EARTH
• Katlyn Breene (Mermade Magickal Arts) -FIRE
• Kedra Hart (Opus Oils) - EARTH
• Kirsten Schilling (Arabesque Aromas) - ETHER/Space
• Laurie Stern (Velvet and Sweet Pea) - AIR
• Lisa Abdul-Quddus (Blossoming Tree Bodycare) - METAL
• Lyn Ayre (Coeur d’Esprit Natural Perfumes ) - ETHER
• Mandy Aftel (Aftelier Perfumes) - WATER
• Maria Mcelroy (Aroma M) and Alexis Karl - FIRE
• Marian Del Vecchio - FIRE 
• Michael Storer (Michael Storer Perfumes)- AIR & EARTH
• Neil Morris (Neil Morris Fragrances) - AIR
• Shelley Waddington (En Voyage Perfumes) - ETHER/SPACE,FIRE & WATER 
• Suzy Larsen (Naked Leaf Perfumes) - AIR
• Tanja Bochnig (April Aromatics) - AIR, EARTH, ETHER

Happy Sniffing!

The Profound Philosophical Significance of Perfume: A Reconsideration of the Historical Record

Perfume and the Pre-Socratics, Part I

Perfume has been sorely neglected, entirely omitted from the history of Western philosophy. One reason for such a glaring omission no doubt derives from the simple fact that the history of Western philosophy was written by men. White men, to be more exact.

Perfume has often been regarded as a woman's weapon for attracting men—what remains true in some circles today—and until rather recently in human history, a woman's intellectual energies appear to have been largely directed toward finding a husband to support her. Once married, many women throughout thousands of years of human society all over the world and up to the present day devoted nearly all of their time and energy to raising children. Who has time for philosophy when toddlers are scurrying about the floor attempting to turn every available object into an implement of self-mutilation, poisoning, or even death?

Times have changed, but not all that much, I'm afraid. Most philosophers still today are men, and although it has become socially acceptable for men to wear perfume and for both men and women to discuss perfume, such exchanges have yet to make it into the hallowed halls of philosophy, where the ideas of men and men alone continue to dominate. Philosophical women dissatisfied with those topics tend to end up ghettoized, talking amongst themselves about what has come to be termed “Feminist philosophy.”

Plato

Someone once said (I believe it was Alfred North Whitehead—a man, of course) that all of Western philosophy is but footnotes to Plato. Well, Plato was a man, so it's not that surprising that the same old ideas and concepts keep getting hashed and rehashed with a few epicyclic curlicues added on here and there. It is very difficult for anyone to say anything very new and be taken very seriously in philosophy. Why is that? Because the people who judge what are good ideas in philosophy were selected by people who were selected by other people who wrote footnotes to Plato. QED.

In some ways, this is just the nature of institutions, of which academia is obviously one. They are intrinsically conservative, because the individuals currently occupying the administrative posts of an institution, including the institution of professional philosophy, are interested first and foremost in institutional preservation. They defend, in other words, the status quo.

Revisionist History: Writing Perfume into the Narrative

I think that it's time that we struck out on our own, my fellow fragrant travelers, having now seen the reasons for the total neglect of perfume throughout the lengthy history of philosophy. Better yet, let us consider how the history of philosophy might be rewritten more insightfully, had only the earliest recorded philosophers grasped the supreme importance of perfume.

Let us back up to a bit before Plato, or even Socrates, and begin with the pre-Socratic philosophers. I have made a few passing allusions here at the salon to a couple of these thinkers before, Heraclitus and Parmenides, but there were others as well. Since my earlier remarks met with silence from readers, it might be a good idea to provide a bit more background on the pre-Socratics more generally.

These philosophers lived in ancient Greece and, logically enough, preceded Socrates, who arrived on the scene more than two thousand years ago in about 500BC. It is a bit misleading to talk as though the philosophers before Socrates formed a well-defined school or group, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, because the individual thinkers lumped together under this label appear to have had very different theories of reality. The monists were united in their belief that reality comprised one ultimate substance, but they did not agree about what that substance was. Other pre-Socratic philosophers, the pluralists, rejected monism, maintaining that there were multiple primary substances in reality.

Of course, similar conflations occur in perfumery as well. Consider the different types of chypre: a classic fruity chypre (YSL Yvresse, Nina Ricci Deci Dela) is very different from a classic floral chypre (Jean Patou Sublime, Sisley Eau du Soir).

Adding leather imparts to such perfumes a very distinctive demeanor (Robert Piguet Bandit), yet they are all united by their chypre quality no matter how different any two of them might be from one another. 

Modern sweet patchouli floral chypres (Chanel Coco Mademoiselle, Van Cleef & Arpels Oriens) bear very little resemblance to the oakmoss and galbanum-rich chypres of the classical era in perfumery, pre-Y2K. I would say that the single feature uniting all of these very different perfumes is a texture which makes all chypres closer to one another than they are, say, to citrus aromatic fragrances.

What was it that united the pre-Socratic philosophers, aside from the fact that they preceded Socrates? They shared a desire to explain the phenomena of empirical reality by appeal to simplifying metaphysical theories. In some ways, it would be accurate to say that they were reductionists, who looked for the fundamental principles or substances or substrates, as they are sometimes called, of reality.

What is everything else made up of? 
What is really real, behind all appearances?

Socrates

These were pressing questions to the philosophers grouped together under the label Pre-Socratics. Socrates' skeptical stance may have been, in part, a reaction to what he regarded as the metaphysical excesses or the epistemological pretenses of those who would claim to have at last grasped the True Nature of Reality.

 

Metaphysical theories are, by definition, not susceptible of empirical confirmation or refutation, so philosophers who posit such ultimate substrata are necessarily speculating as to the true nature of reality. Whose theory is right? seems to have been Socrates' response to the flurry of substantive philosophical assertions made by the philosophers who preceded him. But it's not just metaphysicians who feel threatened by critics such as Socrates, as his own history clearly reveals.

In any case, the theories of the pre-Socratics are worth considering, especially in the light cast by the sun as refracted through perfume.

Perfume as the True Source of the Wisdom of Heraclitus

We've been experiencing a lot of very hot weather in Boston over the past couple of weeks. It is perhaps natural, then, that lately I've found the thought of Heraclitus rather persuasive. For this pre-Socratic philosopher, the ultimate substance or principle of reality was fire. Heraclitus left behind very cryptic, aphoristic texts such as

“One never steps into the same river twice.”

The idea for which Heraclitus is most famous is that of change as the basis of everything:

Everything is in flux, everything is change.

Let us consider these two statements in turn. I wonder, first, whether Heraclitus in making the statement about the essentially changing nature of a river, into which one can never step twice, was not also making a statement about perfume perception. I have laid out this idea in more detail in Everything You've Heard and Read About Perfume is true, and I explicitly brought Heraclitus into the sequel to that lively discussion, which however ended as a monologue, since no one ever replied. Silence usually signifies complete agreement, so I cannot really claim to have been surprised.

Heraclitus

My hunch is that Heraclitus, too, if asked a direct question about the nature of perfume perception would subscribe to more or less the same theory, which, after all, is a version of his own! The idea, essentially, is that each time we wear a perfume, our experience of it will be different. This implies, does it not, that we never wear the same perfume twice?

To those who will object that the evidence points only to the changeable nature of the perfume wearer, I rejoinder: can a person be mistaken about what she herself perceives? I am not talking about the object of the perception. I am talking about the perception itself. It seems to me that, just as a person cannot be wrong about being in a state of pain—whether or not there is a documentable physical basis for that pain—if a person claims to smell roses, cat pee, rubber, jasmine, leather, oakmoss, patchouli, vanilla or whatever, then she does.

If she thinks that is what she smells, then that is the nature of her perception. In other words, she cannot be wrong about what she thinks that she smells. This is a very different claim from saying that if a person smells dung, then dung is there. But if dung is what the person perceives, then that is what she smells, in the sense that that is the content of her perception.

But wait, there's more. This would seem to imply that the object of perception is capable of presenting itself to different noses and even the same nose in very different ways. Yes, those ways depend to some extent upon the wearer and the circumstances, but a person cannot be wrong, it seems to me, about what he or she smells.

Different notes are salient at different times and to different degrees, which implies that perfume itself is inherently mercurial, presenting itself, as it does, to different wearers under various guises. This is the primary reason why it does not make a lot of sense to me for people to base their purchases of perfume upon someone else's perceptions of them, perceptions with which they may or may not agree. The “same” perfume has many different appearances, if you will, and not only do different people attend to different facets, even the same person attends to different facets at different times, affected by not only temperature and humidity, but also the wearer's state of mind.

Now, turning to Heraclitus' second idea, that Everything is in flux, it seems equally clear to me that the wise philosopher was actually reflecting upon the undeniable fact that perfumes metamorphose over time. They change. Not only do perfume wearers change, but perfumes do, too. They do not remain the same, as much as we may wish for them to. Even when perfumes are not reformulated, they are bound to change as the ingredients used to create them depend upon the source from which they derive, and as they age, they metamorphose over time, all of which raises in a dramatic way the Question of Vintage.

Are these sorts of insights about perfume ever attributed to or said to have derived from Heraclitus? Of course not. He was a man, who could not have thought that perfume had any philosophical significance, or so have presumed perfume-ignorant scholars over the more than two millennia since Heraclitus wrote. It is time, at last, that we set the historical record straight about what Heraclitus really meant and wrote. Could stepping into a river have inspired such profound thoughts alone? I frankly doubt it. Only the joys of perfume could have created the conditions for such an epiphany.

A neo-Thalesian Theory of Reality

Thank goodness rain finally came to our rescue, and with it a swift drop in temperature of more than twenty degrees Fahrenheit! As I watched the sheets of water pour down all around me, and the heat began to dissipate, I felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from my shoulders. A clamp holding my brain in a fixed configuration was suddenly loosened, allowing the cells of my cortex to breathe freely and my thoughts to expand. Suddenly my ways of thinking about reality began to change. Questions began to arise and circulate through my mind once again. I wondered whether Heraclitus was really right after all that fire could be the basis of everything else. Is not water, at the very least, the source of life?

It turns out that there was a pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales, who believed precisely that, and indeed that rather than fire, water was the basis of everything else. I am quite big on hydration, so it makes a lot of sense that I should always have found a lot to like in the theory ascribed by historians to Thales. According to the skimpy extant fragments of texts said to be penned by this philosopher:

All is water

or, in French:

Tout est l'eau

What does this mean? you may with good reason ask. Thales of Miletus was struck by the importance of water and hypothesized that water is the source and first principle of everything else. Or did he?

I would no doubt have been kicked out of graduate school for making such a bold, brash, insolent, and self-indulgent conjecture, but here, protected within the free-thinker haven which is the salon de parfum, I am able to express my true beliefs and propose what may seem initially to be provocative or even outlandish theories.

Thales

I wonder, for example, whether a couple of words may have been missing from the key fragment allegedly establishing the philosophical position of Thales. What if the fragment, if found with the words immediately following it, actually said this:

Tout est l'eau [de parfum]

or, in English:

All is eau [de parfum]

Now, since eau de parfum is a dilute solution of perfume, this would seem to imply that Thales was in fact asserting a rather different theory of reality:

All is perfume

To those who wonder why Thales would have insisted upon “eau de parfum” rather than making the more straightforward claim, “All is perfume,” I reply: where did Thales live? It was indeed a warm climate, and this makes it doubtful that pure perfumes or extraits would have been the preferred concentration in such weather conditions. I know that I've been wearing a lot of light colognes throughout this scorching summer. I do of course recognize that Thales' first stab at a comprehensive theory of reality may well have been

All is eau de toilette

But let us not decant drops. It seems clear to me that Thales' theory of reality has suffered at the hands of persons all too eager to find in his words a theory appealing to themselves, reflecting as it does what they themselves wish to believe. Yes, it easy to see how in reconstructing Thales' thought, historians of philosophy have been tripped up over and over again by their inability to think out of the male cranium. If men were not wearing perfume for most of human history, then why would they ever even have considered the eminently worthy theory above? I rest my case.