Professor Alfred Thayer

The mouth across the table fascinated me. If something was not coming out of it, something was going into it. Torrents of words and puffs of cigarette smoke blasted out of the mouth; forkfuls of food, great gulps of water, and the filter-tipped ends of cigarettes went into it. The owner of the mouth was Professor Alfred Thayer, heavy weight champion of the Philosophy Department, a master of verbal combat who knocked his colleagues out of the ring with an unending stream of counterarguments, logical paradoxes, and obscure quotations from German philosophers. Instead of winning a jewel-studded, silver belt, Professor Thayer captured the title Henry Ford Distinguished Professor of Humanities.

When I look back on that afternoon at the Faculty Club, it was extraordinary that the celebrated Professor Thayer, world-renowned expert on ethics, invited me, a first semester freshman at the University of Michigan, to lunch. I enrolled at Michigan with the naive expectation that my quest for answers to the fundamental questions about life would be quickly found. I presumed that at a great university all the fundamental questions are asked, discussed, and answered. I took my quest seriously. The first day at the university, I began looking for a Master with an answer or two. One event led to another, and I found myself sitting across the table from Professor Thayer. I noticed that his fair, thin hair was combed directly back to reveal a massive forehead. Rimless eyeglasses rested on his thin Anglo-Saxon nose. His Midwestern speech bore traces of Oxbridge, no doubt a cherished reminder of his post-graduate study.

“So, you’re studying mathematics.” Professor Thayer waited for me to reply through the billows of smoke that he had ejected from his mouth.

“Yes.” I couldn’t think of anything else to add. A simple, direct answer seemed best. I had never been in the presence of a Master before.

“It’s all tautological, you know.”

I didn’t know. I had no idea what he was talking about. “Huh?”

“Tautological. A equals A. That’s all of mathematics. It’s good, clean fun. But don’t expect too much out of it.”

After ten minutes of taking direct hits from Professor Thayer’s verbal machine gun, I finally got what he was telling me. He asserted that all mathematics was like algebra, just the endless moving about of symbols. He claimed some German professor of logic had essentially proven this, although there may be one or two gaps in the proof.

Professor Thayer asked me, “Why are you studying mathematics? Philosophy is more to the point for you.”

“I’m studying mathematics for two reasons.”

“Good, good,” interjected Professor Thayer. “I like a systematic thinker. Two reasons. Good, good. What are they?”

I was reluctant to tell him my first reason, but I gathered up courage and charged ahead. “The only knowledge I have ever encountered in my life is mathematical. For me mathematics is the model of knowledge. I hope . . .”

“Cartesian, Cartesian. No good, no good. I already told you mathematics has no content. Just the idiotic, endless moving about of meaningless symbols.”

He looked me straight in the eyes, and shouted, “Second reason!”

I blurted out, “It’s beautiful.”

He took an enormously deep drag on his cigarette, and I braced myself for the blast of words I anticipated. Instead, Professor Thayer paused, appeared to relax, and actually stared off into space dreamily. I had no idea what was going on.

“Very interesting. Beauty. I was once seduced by that bitch goddess. Do you know what beauty is?”

“No. Truthfully, I’ve never thought about it.”

“Let me tell you. Beauty is a subjective feeling, not an objective fact. When you say mathematics is beautiful, you are describing your emotional state, not any quality of mathematics.”

I attempted to argue otherwise by pointing to Euclid’s demonstration that the prime numbers are infinite. But the torrent of words began again; my ears began to buzz, and I grew dizzy. A cyclone of words knocked me out of the ring.

“It’s all cheap emotions. Aesthetics is no different than ethics. The presence of an ethical symbol adds nothing to the factual content.”

“Huh?”

Professor Thayer seemed to speak his own private language.

“Suppose you stole some money, and I said, ‘You acted wrongly in stealing the money.’ Then, I am not stating any more than if I simply said, ‘You stole the money.’ My moral disapproval of your action is merely an expression of my feelings.”

I decided to make sure he picked up the check, even if I had to beat it out the door. “Do you mean that nothing can be proven true or false about aesthetics and ethics?”

“Absolutely. Mathematics is tautological. Nothing can be proven about anything. There are no philosophical propositions. Philosophy cannot speak about the world; all it can do is analyze statements.”

“You mean one way of life is just as good as any other way of life?”

“I know of no way of rationally deciding that life A is better than life B.”

I was stunned by this unexpected turn in our conversation. The first Master I encountered told me that my quest to understand human existence was pointless, and that I would never know what to seek in life and what to avoid.

“What do you believe, then?” I asked.

“It’s not a question of belief. I’m a rationalist.”

“How did you decide how to live?”

“Nietzsche says . . .” Professor Thayer then harangued me in German.

The modern Master paused to take a deep drag on a cigarette. On the edge of desperation, I spoke with a forcefulness that startled me: “I don’t understand a word of German, except for auf wiedersehen. I don’t care what Nietzsche says; he’s not here. I want to know what you believe. Please tell me what Professor Thayer says.”

“Philosophy is universal. It has nothing to do with personal opinion. Heidegger once said . . . “

It was my turn to play the loony. I covered up my face with both of my hands and wished I would disappear. I moaned, “Please, please tell me what you are.”

An arrogant, self-satisfied voice replied, “Why, a nihilist. I don’t believe in anything. How can I? The world makes no sense.”

I groaned; despair enveloped me. Professor Thayer confirmed my deepest fear. Someplace in the back of my mind, submerged beneath the hope I invested in mathematics and science, lay the thought that the whole show made no sense.

I stood up from the table and headed for the door. Before going through it, I turned around to get one last look at the modern Master. He looked triumphant; pleased no doubt that he had destroyed my hope.

For a week after my conversation with Professor Thayer, I was truly crazed, behaving much like a character in a novel by Dostoevsky. I would walk around the university grounds at four o’clock in the morning with Professor Thayer’s words running through my mind, as I searched for loopholes in his arguments. At the beginning of the second week of madness, I saw that I was looking in the wrong place — the arguments were irrelevant — all smoke and mirrors.

Professor Thayer held an endowed chair, was married, sent his children to private schools, paid his taxes, voted liberal, wore expensive English three-piece suits, and wanted to be known as the smartest man who ever lived. He was less of a nihilist than I was. Professor Alfred Thayer, Henry Ford Distinguished Professor of Humanities, was a nihilist in the fantasy world in his head; in his real life he believed in what everyone else did — the shallow middle-class values of material prosperity and career advancement, values that no self-respecting Romanian Gypsy could embrace. Only in his office or when talking with a student like me was Professor Thayer a nihilist!