Juan Villoro
“Man thinks because he has hands.” Aristotle quoted this attractive phrase of Anaxagoras with the enthusiasm of one who is about to refute it. For the author of Ethics, ideas are not a consequence of what is done with the hands; on the contrary, manual skill exists to put thought into practice.
Since its origin, the species has depended on the relationship between the brain and the fingers, the way in which the inner life becomes material.
It is easier to study the mind’s results than the projects incubated there. Regarding this mystery, Nietzsche wrote: “We can feel how our heart beats, how our lungs expand, how our stomach works, but we have no sign of the activity of our brain. The source of our consciousness is inaccessible to our consciousness.”
From Egyptian hieroglyphs to social networks, writing is a manual work that has not always been done in the same way. To what extent do instruments determine discourse? Does creativity depend on the medium in which it is exercised?
Nietzsche himself reflected on the matter in his final years, when he became the first mechanized philosopher. Burdened by insomnia, chronic fatigue, and poor eyesight, he sought a desperate remedy to keep writing. In 1881 he learned of an invention designed for the blind, the typewriter, which depended not on sight but on touch. Years later, the poet Gerardo Diego would summarize the rare magic of pressing keys under a cosmic dictation: “The stars are sensitive to touch/ I do not know how to type without them”.
To alleviate his diminished physical condition, Nietzsche sought the warm climate of Italy. In 1882 he received in Genoa a spherical typewriter created by the Dane Rasmus Malling-Hansen. Although the trip somewhat damaged the keyboard, the philosopher was enthusiastic about the invention to the extent of dedicating to it an ode that begins: “The writing sphere is a thing like me/ Although it is made of the iron it is easily damaged by travel”.
It is possible that that instrument reinforced the aphoristic style of the late Nietzsche; similarly, we can suppose that the widely read Byung-Chul Han owes his epigrammatic style to digital technologies; his brief and intense books seem the successful result of someone who uses his thumbs to philosophize over a wide-range telephone.
Handwriting has had notable advocates. Heidegger considered that mechanical mediation altered the natural rhythm of ideas. He was alarmed that, after millennia devoted to calligraphy, human beings were turning to a speedy contraption that suppressed the physical elaboration of letters, and commented in his lectures on Parmenides: “The typewriter separates writing from the domain of the hand, that is, from the domain of the word. The word itself becomes something typed.”
Anyone who expresses himself in writing is influenced by the medium he uses. The fountain pen that moves silkily smoothly over the paper seems to carry surprising adjectives inside it, and a keyboard that resists invites us to tap on it. Can we imagine In Search of Lost Time without the existence of the fountain pen?
Unfortunately, that beautiful utensil must be refilled; it leaves stains and lends itself more to the signing of a war treaty or a nuptial contract than to the writing of circumstance. Modern hectic life demanded a battle tool, and in 1943 Ladislao Biro patented the ballpoint pen, which became popular in Mexico when the United States was dropping nuclear bombs and was called the “atomic pen”.
Juan Forn recalled that the different ways of writing are inseparable from evolution: “Darwin explained, scandalized, and put an end to the Victorian era when he said that the repetition of an act creates habit, and that habit becomes instinct”. In breakneck fashion, those of us born in the mid-20th century moved from the pen and typewriter to the electric typewriter and from there to the computer and telephone, which means that we acquired successive instincts.
Today, the index finger is essential for the tablet and the thumb for texting. The history of hands is the history of words.
We think to use our fingers to turn ideas into acts, i.e., writing.
This was published in Spanish by Reforma on January 20, 2023.
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