Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy

by Josef Steiff

  The Essence of Perception: Holmes’s Intention and Objects Intended

  So, we have seen the intentions and intuition cultivated by Holmes in his study. Now we must come to an understanding that the observable world is subject to our intentions, yet contains intentions of its own. And that objects possess various meanings.

  In Edmund Husserl’s book, The Crisis of European Sciences, he states “Things ‘seen’ are always more than what we ‘really and actually’ see of them” (p. 51). Take this chair for instance. There is nothing out-of-the-ordinary about it—a medical chair in a medical laboratory. For a detective searching for who stole the corpse, this chair offers little to no epistemological value. That is unless you’ve studied coasters made in the late 1800s—how they lock up once frozen. Yes, you say, the coasters are locked up, what of it? Well, what of it is that this chair just went from being nothing in relation to our investigation into being something. We observed this chair; we saw it—took note of it. Before we knew what to look for—that the coasters could tell the story of the chair’s past—we didn’t see all of it. There was more to the object than met the eye. We see this chair now as more than a place to sit—we see it as an object which has recently been in the deepfreeze; the same place the corpses are kept. According to our knowledge of coasters, that is; and according to the intentions of the chair. Edmund Husserl’s famous slogan comes to mind: Knowledge is the grasp of an object that is simultaneously gripping us. Until the phenomenon of coasters is understood by the subject, the chair remains an object seamlessly stitched into the room.

  A crime scene is a place where impact reverberates. A criminal’s presence remains. Intention and execution are imprinted upon the physical world. But the detective must understand the properties of the physical world, how objects take in the presence of the criminal, how they shift in meaning according to what has occurred in the room. Cigar ashes, mud tracks, blood stains are no longer innocent bystanders.

  Besides Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger is the other major philosopher to shape phenomenology. And it is helpful to turn to him to understand how an object has intentions of its own. Heidegger differentiates between the objects and meanings present at the scene of a crime, or anywhere, as being either “merely present” (Vorhandenheit) or “usefully present” (Zuhandenheit). In other words, a tablecloth across the dining table at the scene of a crime is something a detective would probably not spend too much time investigating—it is merely present; whereas, a wineglass stained with red lipstick would be taken into consideration—it is useful for solving the case.

  The rooms Sherlock Holmes enters become abuzz with activity—the life of these objects in all their perceived, conceived, and actual manifestations is observable to him.4

  Mysterious and powerful—a thick fog rolling across Baker Street slips into the room through the open window. Curtains billowing and stained with blood. An armchair and its view. A bureau drawer open, past crimes spilling out. Leaned against the closet door, a neck broken and limbs contorted. Hand-carved mannequins marked with entry and exit wounds. A trunk of curiosities from distant lands. A mirror’s shattered pieces across the hardwoods. Glass tubes filled with a bubbling liquid above a burner. A revolver, six empty chambers, six bullets on deck. The feminine screech from the doorway. Across the floor, a Persian rug, ornate labyrinthine patterns stitched by hand. On the mantel, a candlestick heightened by all its cousins, its properties, its dense blow. One vial full, another rolling empty across the rug. On the desk, a letter to an heir interrupted mid-sentence. A wardrobe filled with books. A syringe stuck into an arm. This is neither study nor scene of the crime—this is Sherlock Holmes’s Field of Consciousness.

  Chapter 25

  Boredom on Baker Street

  Daniel P. Malloy

  Sherlock Holmes’s greatest danger? His true nemesis?

  It’s not Professor Moriarty nor his associate Colonel Moran. It’s not the interference of the company he keeps: the plodding Watson or the unimaginative Lestrade. It’s not even Holmes himself—his tendency to self-destructive pursuits.

  These are all perilous. But they pale in comparison to Holmes’s only true nemesis: boredom.

  Boredom plays a central role in making Holmes who he is. It’s why he takes occasional refuge in cocaine and morphine when he has no interesting work to do. It’s why he accepts certain cases and avoids others. His decision is not based on the urgency of the case or the potential monetary reward, but on the difficulty it presents. What attracts Holmes is the chance to fend off boredom for a little while.

  At first glance it may not seem that boredom is an especially philosophical topic. Philosophical discussion of boredom is indeed quite limited—aside from an extended discussion by Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and two books published in the last decade (Elizabeth Goodstein’s Experience without Qualities and Lars Svensden’s The Philosophy of Boredom), there are only a few short references in the works of Pascal, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and a few others. But boredom offers the philosopher an attraction not dissimilar from Holmes’s attraction to his cases: it provides us the chance to exercise our faculties, and, perhaps, to stave it off for a bit.

  When thinking about boredom, we’re confronted with three related questions:

  What is it?

  Where does it come from?

  And what do we do about it?

  Unwelcome Social Summonses

  It may seem odd to think of boredom as modern, but the evidence suggests that it is. None of Holmes’s pre-modern predecessors struggled with boredom. It didn’t motivate them. In fact, to all appearances, they never seem to have encountered it. Homer never mentions that Ulysses became bored. Likewise, it’s hard to imagine Beowulf or King Arthur just passing the time. And yet that’s often what we see Holmes doing. Boredom, in spite of its seeming universality, is a distinctly modern phenomenon. The word itself only appeared in the English language in the eighteenth century. It did, however, spread quickly. By the middle of the nineteenth century, it took on epidemic proportions. The turn of the century, where we find our hero, brought no abatement. Boredom continued to bore.

  Boredom happens to us, we don’t choose it. If Holmes had a choice, he would always have some new puzzle to work on, some case to solve or experiment to run. As he says, “My mind rebels at stagnation” (The Sign of the Four). This comment gives us some clue as to what boredom might be.

  “What boredom might be? What are you talking about? We know what boredom is!” True. We’ve all experienced boredom at one time or another. But still, we may not have a good idea of what boredom is.

  Suppose you met someone who had, somehow, never been bored. Could you explain it to them? We might say, with Holmes, that boredom means having nothing to do. But that isn’t boredom; it’s idleness. There may be a connection between the two, particularly for someone with an energetic disposition like Holmes. But it’s possible to be idle and not be bored. Idleness can be quite pleasant, which boredom never is. And, it’s possible to be bored and not idle. Many of us are both bored and busy. Someone doing chores around the house, for instance, is certainly busy, but could very easily be bored. For that matter, Holmes could, if he so chose, have more work than he could handle anytime he wished. Remember, he turns away cases that don’t spark his interest.

  Perhaps that’s the key, then: interest. We get bored when nothing interests us. Thus we’re bored when there’s nothing to do, but also when there’s plenty to do, but nothing that intrigues us. And herein lies boredom’s connection to modern life. In pre-modern times, we considered ourselves as being here for the world—we were a part of it, and each of us had his or her own place in it. A serf working the land for his lord didn’t have to wonder what was next. Either the next task presented itself naturally, or someone would tell him. In modern times, things are different. In part, perhaps, because of the degree of freedom we have achieved—from each other, from the state, from the church—we now have a different relation to the worl
d around us. It’s here for us. And we get bored when the things in it don’t interest us. It’s their responsibility to serve us, not the other way around.

  Trifles, Our World, and Black Moods

  So now we have a rough genealogy and definition of boredom; let’s explore the phenomenon a bit more. At first glance, it seems that boredom is all the same, but on closer inspection (a MUST for Holmes) it appears that there are actually several distinct types of boredom, at least according to Heidegger. Each type is defined by the distinct way that it forces us to experience the world and the things in it.

  The first type of boredom is the one we encounter most in the Holmes stories, and in our own lives. It’s when we are bored by something. It may be a task or an object that bores us. But there’s nothing inherently boring about the things that bore us, even though they cause our boredom. Being boring is not a property a thing might have, like being red or round. You can see this by thinking about the distinct reactions we often see coming from Holmes and Watson in relation to a single problem. For instance, when Holmes “reads” Watson’s mind, demonstrating the ease with which one might ape the parlor trick of Poe’s Dupin, the two characters plainly display how one and the same thing can be boring and not boring (“The Adventure of the Cardboard Box”). The demonstration, like many demonstrations, bores Holmes—it’s a trifle, a gas, a thing hardly worth thinking about. But it astounds Watson (many things astound Watson).

  Nevertheless, it won’t do to say that it’s entirely subjective whether one is bored by something. In this type of boredom, there is a very definite, though not easily definable, level of participation on the part of the object. The object is somehow attuning us to boredom. Some other object in its place would not be boring. Once again, think of Holmes. A case that initially bores him can have a peculiar twist in it that will suddenly change the face of matters in such a way that he is now quite interested. As in the case of the Red Circle, a single turn makes Holmes remark that “the case certainly grows in interest.” Nothing about Holmes has changed—he remains as he ever was. But something in the nature of the case has gone from being the cause of boredom to the cause of excitement. Boredom, then, is neither subjective nor objective, but has to do with how those two spheres interact. When we’re bored by something, there is a failure to engage the two spheres in an interesting way.

  Sometimes, though, we are not bored by any particular thing—we are simply bored. Nothing engages us. This is what Heidegger calls being bored with . . .

  Being bored with . . . is a strange mood, but a common enough one. Heidegger gives the example of being at a dinner party, engaging in usual small talk, having a nice meal, and only later realizing that we were bored out of our minds. Holmes, ever the astute observer, knows beforehand that he will experience this type of boredom. Upon receiving a note from his wouldbe client in “The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor,” Holmes comments that it appears to be “one of those unwelcome social summonses which call upon a man either to be bored or to lie.” There was nothing particularly boring about the party or the company. It is something about ourselves—we carry our boredom with us.

  According to Heidegger, this second type of boredom is a deeper level of boredom, one that tells us more about our way of being-in-the-world. Because it’s not simply about how we relate to individual objects, but about how we relate to our world as a whole (note: our world is not the same thing as the world). This deeper level of boredom tells us more about the kinds of beings we are, largely because of its connection to time. In truth, all forms of boredom have intimate connections to time. When we’re bored by . . ., time moves slowly, sometimes incredibly so. We glance at our watches or clocks constantly, and despair of the end ever arriving. When we are bored with . . ., on the other hand, time does not seem to move at all. It is only in retrospect that we realize how fast time has gone by—not because we were enjoying ourselves, but because nothing really pinned us down. Time may fly when we’re having fun, but we still have the sensation of time passing. When we are bored with . . . time simply does not pass. It has passed, and we wonder where it went.

  To give a more modern example of this type of boredom, think about checking your e-mail. You sit down to accomplish a task that should take five minutes at the outside. And yet, often when we go to perform this simple task, entire hours pass while we complete it. One minute, I am just trying to send off a brief message or see if so-and-so has gotten back to me. The next minute, several hours have passed in which I’ve been watching Youtube videos of no real interest and getting angry at inaccurate articles on Wikipedia.

  A further sort of boredom is well exemplified in the early Holmes stories. We can see it in Holmes’s “black moods”. This is the mood that Heidegger calls “profound boredom.” Heidegger held that our moods reveal fundamental truths to us, truths about ourselves and our world. In this respect, profound boredom is second only to Angst (roughly, the fear of death)—some scholars, in fact, have argued that in Heidegger’s writings after Being and Time, boredom overtakes Angst as the fundamental attunement of Dasein (or for Heidegger, human entity).

  “Profound boredom,” he says in his essay “What is Metaphysics?”, “removes all things and human beings and oneself along with them into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals beings as a whole.” In our normal lives, our predominant moods, everything is dictated by our temporal nature. We are creatures grounded in the past and rushing headlong into the future. This fact colors our experience of the world.

  As I type this chapter, I experience the computer as a useful part of my world—I don’t experience the computer itself. In a certain sense, I don’t even notice it. I could notice it, if it suddenly froze. But then I experience it only as a hindrance—it would be getting in the way of my rush to the future. In profound boredom, however, that rush is suspended. I remain a temporal being but my connections to the past and the future are cut off. I am suspended in the present, forced to confront things as they are, as separated from my projects. Indeed, it is one of the few times when I am forced to confront myself and the world, with nothing in between. Given Holmes’s energetic nature, and his laser-like focus on his projects, it’s small wonder that he should find the mood of profound boredom intolerable.

  Three Times the Solution, or . . .

  We now have three problems, not one:

  1. boredom by . . .

  2. boredom with . . .

  3. profound boredom

  It’s not simply a matter of overcoming or avoiding boredom—we have to figure out how to deal with each type of boredom. What works for one might not work for another. Our guide so far is of no help. Heidegger’s analysis of boredom includes no clues as to how to avoid or escape it. Some have even gone so far as to claim that boredom is inescapable. Arthur Schopenhauer argued that life was a constant oscillation between pain and boredom. Later, in “The Antichrist,” Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.” In the short philosophical tradition dealing with boredom, only three solutions have been offered for this problem: amusement, work, and religion.

  When we’re bored by something, the answer is relatively simple: find something else. We can see this in the way Holmes passes on cases. The ones that will bore him he passes by in favor of the ones that interest him. In the same way we can cure ourselves from being bored by things—it is a matter of diversion. Immanuel Kant recommended work as the cure for boredom (Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, pp. 133–36). In this case, he was talking about the boredom caused by amusements of various sorts. One can see his point—a sustained burst of focused effort is often a welcome antidote to the monotony of repetitious amusements. But Kant never tells us how to overcome the boredom of work. Still, either work or various forms of amusement will be effective in helping us overcome being bored by . . .

  The second case is a bit more complex. First, it is difficult to tell when we are being bored with . . . in the way Heidegger describes. Once we realiz
e that we have been bored in this way, we are no longer bored. None of Holmes’s typical escapes from boredom seem to apply to this type. Escape requires an act of will which itself requires some sort of desire. If you don’t know you’re bored when you’re bored then the unpleasantness of boredom is not disturbing. At least, not until afterwards. That’s when you have that terrible revelation that you have just wasted several hours of precious time.

  Perhaps, on second thought, we can relate this type of boredom to some of Holmes’s activities—particularly to his non-work and non-narcotic amusements. Holmes is a Victorian gentleman in almost every way, including his status as an amateur scientist. He has published a variety of monographs, including the fruition of his retirement years, a manual on beekeeping. Some of these are directly related to his work as a detective, but others, like the “Practical Handbook of Bee Culture,” reflect Holmes’s straightforward passion for learning. These monographs, along with the hobbies they often reflect, represent a way of warding off this second type of boredom. Unlike being bored by . . ., being bored with . . . cannot be fought against or escaped from; it must be evaded.

  Profound boredom is the most difficult kind to shake. This may be why Heidegger recommends that we simply embrace it. It may also be why Holmes turns to narcotics to avoid it.

  But why worry about it at all? Sure, boredom isn’t pleasant, but there are worse things in the world, right? But boredom, while not especially distressing in itself, may be the source of many problems. At least two modern philosophers have argued that most of our self-inflicted problems are caused by boredom. Blaise Pascal says that “All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room” (Pensées, p. 47). More recently, Søren Kierkegaard goes even further and states on that “Boredom is the root of all evil” (Either/Or, Volume 1, p. 289).