A Time for φιλοσοφία

Picking up where we left off in our series on time, the thought of Erazim Kohák, and my vacation in Northern Michigan, we move from day to dusk. This twilit time between day and night is, for Kohák, the hour of philosophy. He writes:

Dusk is the time of philosophy. Daylight, with its individuating brightness and its pressing demands, is the time of technē. In its light, the beings of this world stand out in insistent individuality. Even the forest comes to seem an aggregate of trees and human life an aggregate of discrete acts. Their intricate kinship, the deep rhyme and reason of their being, recede from view much as the stars pale before the sun in the daylight sky.

Philosophy, the daughter of poverty and plenty, is born of neither [night nor day]. It is, most fundamentally, the art of the intermediate vision, of the transition between daylight and darkness when the failing light mutes the insistent individuality of the day but the darkness of the night has not yet fused all into a unity.

It is, primordially, the act of discerning the moral sense of life suspended between the poles of the speechless wonder of Being and the empirical datum of beings.

That is why dusk is the time of philosophy.

Erazim Kohák, The Embers and The Stars

Kohák’s bringing together of dusk and philosophy naturally brought to mind Hegel’s famous comment about Minerva’s owl:

Philosophy always comes too late to say a word about teaching how the world should be… When philosophy paints its gray in gray, then a figure of life has grown old, and with gray in gray it cannot be rejuvenated, only recognized; Minerva’s owl only begins its flight as dusk falls.

Hegel, Preface to Philosophy of Right

But it seems that Hegel—living far up in a dreary, cold, northern Germany—failed to notice that dusk is not the simple blurring of white day and black night into a gray haze; nor is philosophy the blending of certainty and uncertainty into a ambiguous miasma of reasoning. Philosophy and dusk aren’t gray. They’re gold.

§ 1. Golden Hour: The Transfiguration of Light

Back on Lake Leelanau, day has become afternoon in an almost imperceptible transformation. Just hours before everything was cast in the contrast of direct sunlight bearing down on the world; every branch shone with highlights and outlined itself with shadows. The light of day is clear. In that white light, we climbed dunes, rode pontoons, visited farmers market, and strolled wineries: everything had a clarity and definition. But now as afternoon matures, we find the light has become something else. In fact, everything else has become something else.

By lowering itself and approaching the horizon, the sun now casts each of its rays at an angle. The lake, which moments ago reflected the clear sky in cool blues, now shimmers with tremulous, gilded waves. Trees that stood as verdant sentinels throughout the day now appear cast in precious metal, their leaves glinting like freshly minted coins. The ivory pages of my book have mellowed into a more eternal, more precious tone. Even our skin—no matter which rosy, pale, or tan hue it bore in the daylight—now shines with a effulgent, somewhat godly glow. All is gold. With the arrival of Golden Hour, our world has transformed into a treasury of light—each object appears crafted in gold for this fleeting, luminous exhibition. Since everything catches our eye, we’ve entered a realm of contemplation. The world has become arrayed with wonder, and as the Greeks pointed out: wonder is the beginning of philosophy.

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§ 2. Time for Reflection or Refraction

Dusk is a time for philosophical reflection, because it a time of actual reflection. Or more specifically, refraction. As the sun sinks down toward the woods and the water, its light strikes the world at new angles and in so doing bring out prismatic colors that were absent during the day. Whereas throughout the morning and the afternoon, the direct light of day rendered everything with sheer clarity and contrast. The sun moved unnoticed during that time. It was always generally somewhere above us; the angles of its rays were always bearing down from an almost static position overhead. In this stable light, we exercised our technē with gentle clouds as the only subtle variations during the day.

But now, every movement of sun carries significance. As Wallace Stevens remarks in his Idea of Order at Key West, the sky becomes “acutest at its vanishing.” The last light goes out in a blaze of glory; the sky becomes a fluid canvas of oranges, pinks, and purples. The radiant play of angles is both dramatic and prismatic. One almost wonders if these colors are shy or coy, refusing to let themselves be drawn out by the brutish and blunt light of day. In the end, the full radiance of this earth only comes about when the sun humbles himself and brings himself low.

Our eyes cannot be subjected to such a spectacular variation in light without also causing a shift in our own minds. Just as the light refracts and reveals new colors, our thoughts and conversations take on new angles, bringing out nuances of meaning that might have been overlooked in the harsh light of day. Ideas that seemed clear-cut in the afternoon now reveal hidden depths and unexpected connections. At dusk, we begin to pick up our thoughts and hold them up to the light; we shift and turn them about during our conversations. From these different angles, we notice how the unique shape or qualities of our ideas refract the life of this luminous world in new and vibrant ways.

§ 3. Dinner & Symposia

As dusk deepens, we’re drawn to our final action of the day: firing up the grill and preparing a meal together. Around our table we sit down with our faces illuminated by that gladsome light from the setting of the sun and a few freshly kindled candles. Unlike the utilitarian meals of midday, hastily consumed between swims and hikes, the evening dinner is an end unto itself. Since dusk in Michigan during the summer can begin around 5pm and last until 10pm, no one has plans to go anywhere after this. We spend the whole evening—every evening—on the porch, watching the display of colors in the sky and savoring the passing of time.

Food and drink take on a special significance in this light. A glass of wine seems to glow from within, its color infused with the power and brilliance of the sun’s parting rays. Our bittersweet negronis glow like rubies during this bittersweet end of the day. The sun outlines the contours of dark cherries in gold like kintsugi pottery.

Our conversations, like the polychromatic sky above, become more colorful and nuanced. We find ourselves engaged in an impromptu symposium, with our words flowing even more freely than our luminous wine. The dinner conversations at dusk are not concerned with the flat facts of the day, but with what it all means. It’s fitting that philosophy, the transition between day and night, thrives in the twilight; day moves into night by means of dusk. Here, philosophy isn’t a dry academic exercise—and it certainly isn’t gray. In those evening conversations, philosophy proved itself to be a living, breathing exchange of glowing ideas, as vibrant and varied as the sunset playing upon the clouds and waters of the lake. The reflection and refraction of the light without illumined and transfigured our thoughts within.

§ 4. Modern Distrust of Dusk

Yet, in our modern world, these rich experiences of dusk are often missed. We move seamlessly from the harsh fluorescent lights of our offices to the cool blue glow of our screens at home, never allowing our eyes—or our minds—to adjust to the in-between. Why does the modern world skip out on so many of its sunsets? What are we losing in all of our days without dusks?

In a world that values constant productivity, the fading of the light can feel like a signal to squeeze more work in, rather than an invitation to back away from our work and reflect on what it all means. Instead, we tend to go seamlessly from one artificial light to another artificial light. This allows us to compulsively extend the activities of the day; we continue to work, we continue to scroll, we continue on as we did all day. Whereas the florescent lights of the day stimulate us beyond our fatigue, the blue lights of our screens distract us from our restlessness.

In the end, both collaborate to fashion a perpetual illumination which facilitates the continual exercise of some kind of techē, without modulating into the philosophia of dusk. Maybe it’s in someone else’s best interest that we just keep working (or consuming) seamlessly from day into night, without pausing to reflect. Maybe we simply have a deep fear of stillness or the quiet introspection that dusk invites.

Whatever the reason, by skipping over dusk, we miss out on a crucial period of transition. We lose the opportunity to process the events of the day, to shift gears mentally and emotionally before plunging into the night. Days without dusk mean that we don’t need to change how we live our lives; we can continue the same compulsive habits from the time we wake until the time we pass out.

Our artificial phosphorescence makes this possible. Under this unnatural glow, we’re trapped in a perpetual noon of the mind, never experiencing the subtle shifts that dusk brings to our perception and cognition. We don’t change our actions or habits because we’ve eliminated the very cues that prompt such changes. We don’t pause to wonder because we’ve eradicated the natural prompt for reflection. As we navigate a world lit up by the unchanging glow of headlights, street lamps, and neon signs, we become ourselves static. We become unaware of our need for change.

In the constant flicker of this anxious light, we assume a false sense of permanence: things won’t change, we won’t change, we don’t have to change. Unfortunately, this means many of us are caught in an ersatz adolescence—a parody of dusk—where the frivolous irresponsibility of childhood is blended together with the dreadful toil of adulthood. With the hypnotic glow of screens capturing our attention every evening, many of us fail to conjure up dreams or memories within ourselves anymore; we fail to integrate who have been and cannot aspire to be anyone better. Blinded by this light of endless distractions, we forget our need to deal with these weighty interior realities, such as regret, desires, or our own mortality. Having become neglectful and numb to the ebb and flow of all things, we have fewer chances to drop our fixed and cynical opinions of what goes on in this seemingly static world. Why bother? We already know. Our artificial illumination enables an artificial enlightenment. Without dusk, we miss the chance to see our world and ourselves in a different light.

§ 5. Eyes Hand Off to Imagination

Back on the Lake, we have finished dinner and the sun has hid himself behind the trees on the far shore. If Golden Hour fashioned a lordly crown for the day, then the triumphant sunset yielded all sorts of rubies, amethysts, topazes, and other gems to adorn it. Now, we revel in those final moments where the light stretches itself across the full spectrum of its radiance, almost as if its slowly exhaling after the exertions of the day and the variety of conversations and experiences brought about during dusk. With the final tones of this visual symphony softly fading into the subtle washes of twilight, we have fewer distinct things to look at. Now, our eyes begin to gradually hand the reins of our attention over to imagination. Sight gives way to insight.

Without the abundance of light, we start to rely more on our other senses and our inner vision. With our eyes retiring into to their rest, the lapping of waves against the shore becomes more pronounced. Without seeing the branches sway in the wind, we can smell the scent of pine and earth, hanging heavy in the cooling air. Without the distracting external stimuli of sight, our conversations become more speculative, more creative. The dimming of the outer world lets our inner worlds shine brighter.

There’s something holy about how dusk hands off to night. When the fading light invites us to retreat from the representations of sight, the cultivation of imagination and memory becomes a kind of spiritual exercise. The conversations are no less meaningful, even though there are longer silences held within them. In this final phase of the dying of the light, the glow of the screen seems like a profanity—turning on a porch light, a blasphemy. Like the dusk wherein it thrives, philosophy ought to begin with wonder and end in reverence. Wisdom is ultimately to be found not in reflection or speculation, but in mysticism.

With the passing of the sun and the dimming of his glorious raiment, we begin to see the stars poke through the sky. As the embers of the grill burn away, the embers of the bonfire begin to glow. Our advesperation is complete. Our dusk full of philosophy has come to its own end. Now, night has arrived and we find ourselves somewhere between the embers and the stars