We may be convinced that the wind of the night | Borges

∞ Borges Talk, 2014

Borges at Eighty

Conversations，1982

Translated × Borges Nishikawa

The Republic of China | Guangxi Normal University Press

We may be convinced of the wind at night

10. Excerpt from "I Always Have Fear in the Mirror"

The Nightmare，That Tiger of the Dream

Indiana University, April 1980

Indiana University，April 1980

Kofa: Your interest in idealism led you to think about solipsism, which you actually mentioned last time when you talked about poetry.

Borges: At the heart of solipsism is that there is only one individual in the world. I am an individual, and so is each of you. All the rest were what he had seen in his dreams.

For example, we say that the sky, the stars, the earth, the whole history, all this is a dream. Of course, if you accept solipsism thoroughly, then I can be the beginning of the world by tapping the table like this. No, that's not how the world began, because the world began long ago, at the moment of a snapping finger a long, long time ago, or the second I slapped the table. The world is running, endlessly, endlessly.

In my opinion, if we were true solipsists, we would see the present as existence and not think about the past and the future. But since we want to flow now, we have to accept a little bit of the past and a little bit of the future. We should accept them, so that we are led, ah, to the history of the universe, to the whole past and future of the world, and so on.

KOFAR: As I was preparing for this conversation, I thought that I would have to explain to the audience what solipsism is before I asked questions about solipsism, but I found that it was a very serious question.

Borges: I think solipsism was discovered by Descartes, and he refuted it. No one seems to have accepted solipsism. I've at least read Bradley and Bertrand Russell's refutation of solipsism. I've never read anything that approves of or accepts solipsism. All I read was refutation.

KOFA: Yes, the vast majority of people who refute it say it cannot be refuted.

Borges: Yes, they can't be convinced at the same time that they can't be refuted. Isn't that exactly what Hume had to Say about Berkeley? "His arguments are irrefutable but unconvincing." This is the original words of David Hume.

KOFA: This is true of most philosophical debates.

Borges: I think so. But I remember Emerson writing that arguments cannot convince anyone. Walter Whitman also felt that controversy was of little benefit.

Yet we may be convinced by the wind and the air at night, with the stars we look up at, but the controversy will not convince us.

We may be convinced of the wind and air of the night, the stars we look up at, but the controversy will not convince us.

—Translated by Borges | Nishikawa

—Reading and Rereading—

The Republic

Caption: Borges, 1981

Bettmann/CORBIS