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Philosophy Shorts

Philosophers on Smiles

by Matt Qvortrup

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce’s 1976 hit ‘Car Wash’ are the exception.

Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle). This series of Shorts is about these unfamiliar themes; about the things philosophers also write about.

“The old man may look down with a smile upon all false notions”, wrote Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) in his Essays. The philosopher of pessimism did not earn this epithet without reason. He went on to say that in times of adversity “the ordinary so-called friend will find it hard to suppress the signs of a slight smile of pleasure. There are few ways by which you can make more certain of putting people into a good humor than by telling them of some trouble that has recently befallen you” (Essays, 33). Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) had precious little in common with his cynical German colleague, but the Wiltshireman famous for warning of nature’s ‘war of all against all’, was equally pessimistic about smiles. “A smile”, he wrote, was a “signe of undervalue”; a condescending signal of superiority (Hobbes, Leviathan, 8).

It seems that these philosophers – whatever else they disagreed on – had a rather similar (and negative) take on smiling. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), not a cheerful chap at the best of times, took the view that “we [are] perhaps over-hasty in our assumption that the smile of an unweaned infant is not a pretence” (Philosophical Investigations, 249). His protegee Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) agreed with him. She believed that “a man might try to appear what he is not, and not succeed in doing anything – e.g., a very sick man, trying to seem cheerful and too weak even to smile, would have only tried to pretend” (Philosophy of Mind, p.86). Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) took a dim view too, noting that, “once more we look at men…with a sorrowful smile” (Daybreak, 115)

That this cynicism also extends to authors of fiction is perhaps more surprising. The libertarian firebrand novelist and occasional philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982), wrote of one of her characters in Atlas Shrugged that “His smile had an attractive quality, the smile of a man of the world who used it, not to cover his words, but to stress the audacity of expressing a sincere emotion.” (Atlas Shrugged, 406).

Others were more, well, philosophical, Herman Hesse (1877-1962), for one, wrote, that, “[the] smile of Siddartha was exactly the same, was exactly the even, tranquil, subtle, impenetrable, perhaps kind, perhaps mocking, wise, thousandfold smile of Gotama, the Buddha" (Siddartha, 732). Still, it is hardly a ringing endorsement of this facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) sounded a note of caution with, “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5). At other times he was perhaps sunnier about smiles, for the quote, “A smile cures the wounding of a frown”, is also attributed to the Bard. Whether he really said it or not is dubious, but it strikes a more positive note. Maybe in this matter we should not take our cue from the great minds but from a popular proverb.

Matt Qvortrup’s book Great Minds on Small Things is published by Duckworth.