There are real reasons why VN/Shade’s so-called ‘syllogism’ cannot be analysed formally as with, say, Russell’s Barbara template: ALL X are Y; W is an X; therefore W is a Y.
Unlike the initial (major) premise “All men die (are mortal),” the statement “OTHER men die (are mortal)” does not qualify as a premise for syllogistic deductions unless “OTHER” is carefully disambiguated
(although I realize that ‘other’ has acquired some LitCrit reifications beyond the range of formal logic ;=))
Similarly, the VN/JS minor premise & conclusion also need work (as the teacher would say!). Those negations (“I am NOT an X”; “I will NOT die”) always toll a warning bell, and the clang is positively, Hemingwavianly painful (ask not for whom ... !) when coupled with “OTHER.”
We take ‘another’ as shorthand for ‘an [Instantiation of] “OTHER men”; we next take “I” as the proposer [author] of the three statements and then must add the supplementary premise that this “I/me” belongs to the class “Men!” The class “Men” can then be viewed as the UNION of the two non-intersecting classes “I” and “Other men.” (Gender need not distract us here, although elsewhere on the list several contributors continue to confuse biological and grammatical ‘genders.’)
Under this intense (Nabokovian!) scrutiny, the ‘syllogism’ collapses as an example of formal logical reasoning. The major premise tells us nothing about the mortality of the “I.” The minor premise is tautological (“I” cannot be “another” by definition)! The conclusion (“I am not mortal”) may or may not be true — or to MIS-use the nice Scottish legal phrase, the VERDICT is NOT-PROVEN. (In fact, this verdict means “not fully tested [Latin probare] — neither innocent nor guilty but open to possible RE-trial.)
As a literary construction, though, the lines can be enjoyably deconstructed as Jansy and others have shown. Busily buried in VN’s EO commentaries, I am ready to believe in VN’s omniscient (and omnivorous) precision — that there’s a reason for every word & allusion in PF! (Is this verging an a ‘personality cult’ in my studies that VN would rush to discourage? Discuss)
Pseudo-syllogisms abound in the mathematical literature I was (and am) exposed to:
God is love
Love is blind
Therefore, God is blind.
No cat has five tails
I am no cat
Therefore, I have five tails.
A GENUINE syllogism that deserves your attention has two (factually) false premises, unimpeachable logic, and a (factually) true conclusion.
Every body made of green cheese orbits the Earth
The Moon is made of green cheese
Therefore, the Moon orbits the Earth.
This is a VITAL reminder that (i) the validity of a syllogism is divorced from the factual (“real”) content of its premises (ii) folks continue to assume wrongly that the truth of a deduction implies the truth of its premises.
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 10/2/07 12:06, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
JS: A syllogism: other men die; but I
Am not another; therefore I’ll not die. (l.213-4)
SK:This could be a reference to Leo Tolstoy’s “Death of Ivan Ilyich” (1886): All men die. Kay is a man. Therefore, Kay will die. But, thinks Ivan Ilyich, I’m not Kay; therefore, that doesn’t apply to me... The first part (about Kay) is an example of the type of syllogism called “Barbara” and Tolstoy probably took it from some textbook on logic ...
JM: That's exactly what I was looking for: John Shade's aside was a quotation, not a sentence derived from some text-book on Logic. The "subjective twist" was maintained. In the case of Duchamp's epitaph, "therefore, I won't die", a fresh distortion created his particular brand of irony.
I enjoyed a similar logic play in Arthur Schnitzler but he used the infinite regress ( If all drowning men see their lifes flash in front of them, then this moment must be also included and in the next flash it will also be included... u.s.w ). I often get the impression that some of his short-stories with alpine scenes ( I have "Fräulein Elsa" in mind now) are alluded in VN's later works, such as "Transparent Things".
//snip