Hans-Ulrich Obrist: For my first question, I was wondering if you could tell me about what you are working on at the moment.

Arne Naess: I am currently working on the new edition of my history of philosophy. I have gone through the old edition and have made a considerable number of small alterations in addition to some more significant changes. That takes time, especially as I am not a historian but rather a systematician who struggles against the history of ideas being confused with philosophy. We have to find a truth. I encourage my students to explore what 'truth' is for themselves, and place less emphasis on studying the work of prominent philosophers.

HUO And what changes are you making in this new edition?

AN Essentially it is more neutral than before. I have created a greater distance between my personal opinions and the material itself. I have also become more interested in notions of 'progressiveness', in the time just before Kant, and in the perfectibility of human beings. The perfectibility of human beings is an idea that has often been ridiculed. In this instance I think it is important to adopt a revisionist approach. We are human beings and we can perfect ourselves in really significant ways. Ethics mean that human beings have possibilities. Ultimately, a hundred years is not a long time: I think that even in the next century there is a real possibility that we could do more to improve the planet, or at least not to destroy it further.

HUO So you are talking about long distance running and not the sprint?

AN Yes, a hundred years is not a long time. I had considered pursuing paleontology instead of philosophy, and in the field of paleontology, one million years is not a very long time.

HUO What were your beginnings in philosophy, how did you start?

AN I started reading philosophy at the age of sixteen, and was keen to continue my studies in that area. As a young man I convinced myself that I could somehow be a philosopher in my behaviour, in the way that I lived. When asked by my headmaster what career I wanted, I replied that I wanted to be a philosopher and he was silent for a long time. He asked me about what I would do if I wanted a family, and how I would be able to support this family. I remember suggesting that as a philosopher, these were matters I would have to negotiate. So from that time I have been a philosopher. Perhaps it was my difficult years as a child that drew me into philosophy: I wanted to address the fundamental questions of life. The first text I wrote was 'Where am I, what is it to be a human?', and 'Where am I, what am I, what should I do?'. That demonstrates of course that one is in the domain of philosophy. But I also had a very high regard for science and the natural sciences in particular. I wished that philosophers would discuss more in the manner of what one might describe as 'research'; not necessarily as scientists but as researchers - the infinite research. That is my favourite term: infinite, going on indefinitely. Not stopping anywhere because everything is interdependent. Holding such views gained me a reputation as a positivist. I spoke at length about physics, mathematics and all the sciences, even chemistry.

HUO Your definition of a philosopher as a generalist goes beyond boundaries of disciplines.

AN Yes, it is very interdisciplinary. But that does not mean that I find that science takes over. This is not the case at all. The further you explore science, the more philosophy you discover, and that of course is demonstrated by Einstein and quantum physics. Deeper science means more philosophy.

HUO So you really try to bridge the gap ?

AN Yes absolutely. I've taught many seminars together with mathematicians and physicists and so on. It is so simple to ask 'why?' and then to veer towards philosophy. And they enjoy this approach. I think among the natural scientists there are many who understand the benefits of philosophy. They are clearly not intrinsically anti-philosophical.

HUO So do you always have dialogues with different scientists?

AN Yes, they invite me to seminars where I am not always versed in all the science but they like to connect with what I call 'the deepest questions of philosophy'. You ask 'why' and you get an answer and when you ask them why they hold this view you get another answer and so on. This is a process without an end.

HUO One very important moment which I read in the book is where you describe this bridging of a gap in 1938 when you conducted the rat experiment in California, when you basically went to watch the behaviour of the rats but you ended up more and more actually watching the behaviour of the scientists. This anticipated a sociology of the laboratory such as Bruno Latour practiced in the late '70s.

AN Yes, that began the transition from being a philosopher to being an observer of a philosopher. When asserting something in philosophy this approach means that you can see it from both the outside and the inside simultaneously. And then there are meta-sciences. That is to say you make a proposition in science and then you constantly reassess that proposition, which for me is a central presupposition. Whatever the hypothesis might be, you start investigating the presuppositions that have worked within physics or elsewhere in history and you question them - you destabilize that which is often assumed to be correct and consider the implications of doing so. If when researching in the humanities you take several presuppositions, you can deny one or more and in doing so you open up many more possibilities. By denying one or two or three or ten approaches you get a large number of other approaches that are theoretically possible. I enjoy this pluralism which I compare to the act of climbing, in which you need to be careful. In climbing you know that just a little mistake can make the whole body very unsafe and it is similar with pluralism where you know that everything you say can be negated. And this should be taken as a wonderful opportunity and not as a bad thing. It is important to avoid reducing the number of views we have of the world - personal world views - in order to avoid movements such as Nazism, Fascism, Soviet Communism or Maoism.

HUO So does this rule out any kind of ideology?

AN Ideologies should be out, definitely out. But otherwise I am very much in favour of enhancing the diversity of attitudes.

HUO And coming back to this laboratory research of yours in Berkeley in '38, can you please tell me how this worked exactly? I understand you arrived there as a philosopher but you found yourself in a scientific lab, which is very exceptional.

AN What we call genuine philosophy contains a large number of empirical assumptions. My favourite example is the introduction to Kant's most famous work, 'Critique of Pure Reason'. The introduction is psychological because pure reason is a kind of reason and reason itself is an empirical subject. If you really take a sentence from the introduction to the 'Critique of Pure Reason', you see that there are a lot of empirical assumptions, and I think that this is unavoidable in philosophy. Therefore, I was very much against a philosophy of logical empiricism because, as I said at the time, 'logical empiricism contains not a single empirical statement', which in hindsight was perhaps not the best way of approaching the subject. Mostly my colleagues in philosophy do not like this position. But then you cannot avoid making empirical assumptions.

HUO Who is observing whom?

AN I thought that what we call philosophy of science must contain descriptions of typical scientific behaviour. But there is always somebody standing behind me again, observing my behaviour while I observe the scientists.

HUO Is it like a Russian matriuschka doll where you have a doll within a doll?

AN Yes, that's right. I am not concerned that most of my colleagues do not like this. You go on and on, but there will never be any ultimate end as far as I can see. It is not like in a thousand or two thousand or five thousand years - you always have ongoing convergence.

HUO And then when you came back from Berkeley to Norway as a professor, as I also read in your writings and in interviews, you basically introduced these interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary ideas into the university. How did this work and how do you see these attempts now if you look at universities in 2001?

AN Well, it is certainly a good thing that we have a semester of philosophy which serves as a form of introduction. It is here that I try to introduce a way of making students ask philosophical questions. These should be less a matter of memory and more about making the students ask questions. This means that even in the exam it should be accepted that they present their own philosophy and not just Kant and Plato. But, of course, I insist that you should remember some of these names. I also call it activism.

HUO Philosophical activism?

AN Yes and the result is that these young people, who are often only twenty years old, really start asking questions. They are so fast in understanding things. By twenty-five they are already fixed in their ways of thinking, but twenty year old students, they can do fabulously well if they get the opportunity and support to take seriously what they themselves think about the world: if you encourage them to risk to think.

HUO And so your method of teaching was related more to questions rather than answers?

AN It is about making the students find their own way.

HUO How do you see this notion of interdisciplinarity now in universities?

AN Well, it is not enough. Most universities talk about the fact that we should have more interdisciplinary studies. Actually they have been talking about it since I was a student, but in order to get on and become a professor or to progress, they then propose that you must specialize, that the areas are all so vast that you must specialize. If you take the Cartesian diagram with the x and y coordinate and the y coordinate is death, you would be quite moderate along the y axis but at a certain point you go deep down, far down... You should never be a specialist; it is perfectly acceptable to have opinions in many fields, and the notion of being 'amateur ' is to miss the point. I have studied mathematics all my life but not because of any brilliance. I can look at the same questions again and again. It is all about play, to play mathematics. I am not sure if it is the same in French but in my language we have terms for both 'game' and for 'free play'. Free play is essentially a game without fixed rules. For example, tennis is a game but free play is just as it suggests.

HUO There is a very famous sentence about art and play by the author Robert Louis Stevenson, who once asserted that the definition of art is that art is like children playing but is played with the seriousness of playing children.

AN They use the term play as we use it in the sense of having no fixed rules. People behave in certain ways, but can constantly change. The others either accept the change or they do not. It is admissible to change all the time and that is very different from a game like tennis. Let us consider for a moment a game of tennis in the sense we are using here, as free play. You run for the ball, wherever the ball is, you have to run for it and there are no spatial restrictions. Then, say, you don't pick up balls. Then you decide to play with thirty balls. This process of constantly changing the rules and criteria is not only of great interest, it is also really good fun.

HUO Do you play tennis?

AN Oh yes, I continue playing tennis but of this free play kind, and we have such fun. And if somebody plays a remarkable shot or makes an interesting change, they are congratulated, but we don't count, and nobody wins.

HUO Talking about playing games, there was another one in terms of the generalist idea of philosophy that you have also raised in previous interviews - language games. I wanted to ask you, apart from sports games, about language games.

AN Yes, I know them quite well in a sense, originating from a very famous philosopher. You play with your words and like children, you should also be there playing. As a child you are not yet aware of strict rules, so you can play with language without being ambitious in this way, and can form very new things through what might be described as playfulness, the playful use of language. I believe there is more of that in France than in Norway. The relationship between a person and their native language is of a particular kind. When I was studying in Paris, the students played a little with the language. I didn't like it at that time though I have grown to appreciate it since. That is to say that humans should not stop playing in this way. They shouldn't stop when they reach thirty years old. They should go on like children. Some games for children can be quite amusing even if you are eighty years old. Anyway, while I am convinced that there should be much more playfulness in human life, it is important to be able, in one or two seconds, to switch from the playful to the serious. Something funny happens and then suddenly there is a transition to complete seriousness, and then back again.

HUO That also makes me think of your text on Deep Ecology when you talk of the German notion of 'gestalt' and unexpected perspectives - this idea of unexpected perspectives.

AN Yes, we are living in a 'gestalt' world. That is to say that there are never singular things that we mean when we speak, but rather we live in structures which are called 'gestalts'. It is important to introduce this into schools and universities, that separate things, in a sense, do not exist. For instance, this thing you have here: to me it looks like a human being - these are the arms, this is the face and it is looking attentively. I could use a half an hour to explain the mood of this human being; very attentive and quite benevolent; asking more things of me than telling me. I think human beings, whether you are a psychologist or anti-psychology, whatever you are, you can see humans everywhere, human features. Many people do not think in this way.

HUO So, is this related to Bruno Latour, in his 'active network theory', where he describes an 'interconnectedness'? Does this also imply that the boundary between objects and beings is somehow blurred?

AN It is an artificially constructed position when one analyses people as objects that can be differentiated.

HUO And how do you see the internet in the context of this interconnectivity? Do you use the internet?

AN No, but my wife uses it all the time. But it is enough that she uses it because she is assisting me in my work, not as a secretary but really assisting in my work and fulfils the role of an editor and advisor. She is critical and that is very useful.

HUO The implications of the internet? How would you see it in the context of your 'gestalt' idea?

AN If you are able and willing to form this 'gestalt', but if you just use the internet as a million or ten million pieces of information then nothing is gained. It depends very much on how you see it or how you have understood what the internet is doing. If not, you add to the information pressure of our time which is already very heavy. Information pressure is making it more difficult to be a student today than in my time. There are so many disparate sources of information that it is becoming increasingly difficult to filter the good from the weak.

HUO One other whole block of questions I wanted to ask you is about the presentation of your work, about how a philosopher in Paris like Bruno Latour feels that your work has anticipated current practice. Not only in relation to the network but in the way you were already using questionnaires in the thirties and working on participatory notions of philosophy. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the beginnings of this and if you could tell me the way in which with your truth research, you used the questionnaire for the first time.

AN I asked the head of a certain school whether I could, for one hour, talk about truths with the students, and what is meant by truths. It turned out that among thirty pupils, there were two who had splendid answers. When I asked if they had considered the question previously, they had not. Certainly one finds Aristotelians and Platonists, though I would consider these embryonic states. They are at the beginnings of the process. I could sometimes prompt the students in such a way that they would form sentences, marvelous sentences without even knowing it. So I was so eager to find out more about the potentialities in what we call completely ordinary people, people who have, indirectly, a kind of philosophy of life and philosophy which they can only articulate in a very bad way. I selected points in it. They had a kind of personal philosophy and that, I thought, we should make use of in schools and universities. To make them think, or what I call 'feel to make them feel' - to feel aspects and to take them seriously, very seriously.

HUO And you mentioned in a previous interview some views of yours from the time, very new views of empirical social sciences in a philosophy context. Did that create a lot of resistance?

AN Oh yes, a terrible amount. It was as if there was no such methodology in the world.

HUO It was a taboo?

AN A taboo. Some would say "What is Naess doing? He's using questionnaires! He's out, he's out!". Whereas I felt the opposite. I think that you cannot force things, but you can help people to get to their priorities of value, to better articulate that which is important, the process and the reasoning. Sometimes I could interview somebody for sixteen hours within a week. They are able to say such good things and so they are then helped to what I call 'find their way' - what is their way in life. And then they would deny being philosophers although they have a way of life. When I was a boy I thought that peasants had a certain awareness of life; they had very clear ways of life. If you were to ask them, they would not say anything. They were not able to articulate that they have a priority of values and so on. 'No' to that, 'yes' to that and such a marvelous integrity to life; integrity as a whole lifestyle. That is much more difficult today. There is such information pressure today. They have the TV and many forms of information dissemination. And you get certain standards, certain things you should like and certain things you should dislike. We cannot turn the clock back, of course, but we can see to it that imagination is not quelled, that imagination is not cut out, and slowly in schools they are starting to talk about it. You could say that it is not the usual way we talk about these things, but that it is your way.

HUO And you used this basically empirical social scientific method for your book on truth and about a decade later, you used it again for the 'democracy ' project. At the moment, there is another democracy project and it is very interesting because there are some similarities between your book and the research. Especially in terms of South Africa, where there is this whole discussion about truth and reconciliation and about democracy: 'is democracy realized, is democracy un-realized?' This question pops up, for example, in the recent Documenta discussion, so I was curious to know how you see these
issues.

AN There is such a wide variety of issues. I would say that we don't get very far if we don't distinguish word from concept or, the words from their meanings. But if you try to be precise then you see that there are so many different concepts that could be of interest using a specific word. 'Democracy' is not the concept it is a word. By saying that it is a word, you can create more openings. But it has meanings, so we can then classify what a good definition might be and then you really important differences become apparent. Norwegian democracy is a democracy where you have a lot of power located in large organizations, so I call it 'organization democracy'. There is a democracy among those organizations, but not 'individual democracy' because either you belong in it or you belong somewhere else and as such you are not really a democratic person in your personal life. You may get certain distinctions between different people because of racial discrimination and so on, but within a democracy you may have a high degree of consistency. So for me it involves taking democracy as a word and then trying to describe different uses of that word. If several of those uses are made fairly precise, then you have concepts and I talk about concepts.

HUO At that time, whom did you talk with about 'democracy', because it was made in the context of UNESCO in 1948? UNESO had asked you for 'democracy' so whom did you ask about the different notions of democracy?

AN We had UNESO. I had a marvelous assistant. We asked about the meaning of democracy. We asked about 450 people, mostly professors, I am sorry to say, in various fields, specialists in various fields, so 450 well-known people. There were Marxists and anti-Marxists and we sent the Marxists' answers to the questions to the anti-Marxists and vice versa. So, we created a discussion between Marxists and anti-Marxists. I must say that they understood each other better after some time.

HUO And was this published?

AN Yes, in 'Democracy, Ideology'. You have probably never seen it.

HUO No, I could find your book on truth, but I never found the democracy book.

AN I think we had a little impact; we had some impact on the level of discussion between Marxists and anti-Marxists.

HUO Was the outcome a kind of third way?

AN No, I wouldn't say that. I would say that the anti-Marxists continued in their way, and the Marxists too, but they didn't interpret each other in an undignified way. It sold out immediately but UNESCO seemed to think that the topic of democracy was in some way dangerous and so they felt they couldn't make further copies.

HUO So, it is completely out of print?

AN Completely. Almost as soon as it was in print.

HUO How about your own definition of democracy today in 2001?

AN I had a careful list of a little more than 300 definitions. I could then class the different definitions. If I were to use it I wouldn't find an ideal one, but I think that in Norway some people have difficulty admitting to that; with us we talk about one person or country being more democratic than another and so you have a certain level of preciseness there but it all breaks down if you really get into looking for clear answers. I don't have any. No, no, no. In my opinion, politicians should take up a discussion about what it means to say 'no'.

HUO Do you have a favourite definition?

AN No, no.

HUO There is one question I wanted to ask you that I ask in all my interviews with architects and scientists. It is the only question which always pops up, and is whether you could tell me about an unrealized project of yours, either one which hasn't been realized yet or one that will never be realized - an unwritten book or a project that is too big to be realized or has not happened for one reason or another.

AN Yes, well, I would say that I could try to investigate the necessary conditions for an increase of playfulness in society. That you admit what I am saying now was meant playfully. And stick to it. It is well said, but I cannot communicate this in a way that you find very serious, that is to say, so many people have wonderful. what do you call it in psychoanalysis, something verbalized, something that has occurred to you but you can't utter it because it must be understood playfully? People are often too serious.

HUO In order to increase playfulness?

AN In order to increase instances such as when you say something in a very serious way but with a kind of body language that shows that it is playfulness. With your body language you can, even with just a tiny change, convey that it is intended playfully.

HUO That leads me to another question because, at the moment, there is an ever-growing conversation on globalization and the economy. For example, the recent events in Seattle and then in Prague, and more demonstrations planned elsewhere. There is a considerable amount of pressure on the World Trade Organization and I was wondering how you perceive these forms of action because there is very often a violent form of resistance. How you see the situation at the moment, or to split it into two parts, how do you see at the present time the threat of globalization and the liberal economy?

AN You have a world market or a tremendously powerful market and that makes for ten times as much trade and that can be very, very dangerous. And when considered alongside ecological issues, I am very much against this globalization but you cannot fight it directly. We must just try to defend local markets as well as we can. A little trade is very good, more trade still is good, even more trade than that is bad. It is like eating porridge: one portion is good, a second portion can't be bad, but a third portion? It is the same with trade.

HUO Do you think that it would need a peaceful form of resistance?

AN Oh, yes. Peaceful protest: Ghandian activism. If somebody speaks against your point of view and they become violent towards you, you should approach this human being as a fellow human, completely accepting the dignity of that fellow human. Then it is a matter of being able to let them know that you think what they are doing is wrong, but to do so in a constructive manner and with friendly body language - to be approachable and not to be hostile. In these central questions today, we should have that Ghandian attitude to address them. It is quintessential that people discuss and that people listen to one another, and body language can play a very important role in this process.

HUO How would you define Deep Ecology now in 2001? How would you define Deep Ecology in the context of this notion of peaceful resistance?

AN I would define it by the 'eight points', but I would stress that this activism in favour of Deep Ecology should follow the Ghandian rules. The more you detest the opinions of somebody, the more important it is to make contact with them, to invite them to lunch and to try to get along with them, and then the outcome will not necessarily be an agreement but a different way of fighting. You do not make the other person look more silly than they are and so on. You try to interpret them in the best way possible. Even if there are matters where you do not quite agree. What is mostly said is not usually exactly what is meant, and that is the Ghandian approach.

HUO There was one more question although that is a wonderful ending in itself. There was one more question from the part before - two small things I wanted to ask you. When we talked about laboratories and your work in the scientific laboratory in Berkeley, I wanted to ask you about your own laboratory when you came back to Norway, about your hut in the mountain - it has been so beautifully described. Somehow, one usually talks about artists' studios and scientists' laboratories but your creation of this place seems to be like a philosophical laboratory, so I wanted to ask if you could tell me about the ecological laboratory conditions of your hut in the mountains.

AN Whenever we were there, if there was anything to eat around us, we would eat it so that we didn't need to go to the market. But there were very few things around, and because of the very high altitude you cannot do that, but what you can do is to live in the most simple but deeply felt way. When you look through the window, there are 50,000 square kilometers of nature in front of you, and then you know that you cannot do any polemical thinking. It is impossible to make any kind of polemic against other philosophers when you look up from the paper and that is what you see. It is impossible, so I called myself a 'cottage being' or a 'hut being'. Even when simply sitting down, everything is within reach and then you have this fantastic outside. You can go outside and you can look at a square metre of land, with tiny flowers because of the wind, measuring only around five or ten centimeters high. Then you can see that within one square metre there are unending marvelous creatures and also you might see a flower that is dead, ar at least it appears to be dead and you know that just beneath the surface there is something still alive for next year. The richness of your life depends on your sensitivity. You need not go outside your country. You need not leave, in extreme cases, this very special area where we are and you see so much diversity and of a more or less infinite kind. Human beings you meet as your neighbour, they are also, basically, infinitely complex. Ordinary people are infinitely complex but they cannot articulate, of course they articulate certain things, but.

HUO The very last thing I would like to ask is about art. When you talked about interdisciplinarity, we talked about different fields. The only thing we haven't talked about is art so, I wanted to ask you about your relation to art and artists and also about museums, I wanted to ask you which is your favourite museum?

AN In music, when I was four years old (and I was sitting under a marvelous grand piano listening to Beethoven at the time), I found that speech couldn't possibly convey the meaning that was so evident in music. At the very moment you heard it there was meaning. I sometimes get a little anti-language, for even as a small boy I was anti-language by just listening and playing music. As far as I can see it, as to the arts, it is something of the same. You have deep feelings about definite practice. In a way it is all-embracing, the meaning is there, completely, and when you start writing a book about art, there is practically nothing which can convey the meaning. There is a contrast for me, between treatises about art and art itself.

HUO Do you have a favourite museum?

AN It's in London.

HUO The British Museum?

AN I can go there for a couple of hours, and the National Gallery of course, and there you can stay and look at one or one hundred percent of it and after a couple of hours you go home. But you can never return home with the museum finished, you can always go back for more.

HUO So, it is infinite?

AN Infinite, completely infinite. After a year, you can go back and begin again and then you are a different human being.