Philosophical Adventures in the Lands of Oz and Ev

Charles Dodgson, using the pen name “Lewis Carroll,” was the first author in English to write philosophical fantasy for children. In naming his first Alice book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,¹ Lewis Carroll may have been inspired by the famous saying of Aristotle that philosophy begins in wonder. More exactly, what Aristotle said was this: “For it is owing to their wonder (thaumazein) that people both now begin, and first began to philosophize (philosophein)” (Metaphysics I, 1982b12-13). Plato expresses a similar idea in his dialogue Theatetus: “This is an experience characteristic of philosophy,” Plato has Socrates say, “this wondering: this is where philosophy begins and nowhere else” (155d).

A reader might suppose that the wonder Plato and Aristotle thought could stimulate us to do philosophy was a Kantian awe at “the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”² But, in fact, the wonder Plato and Aristotle allude to is a surprised recognition that something we thought we understood perfectly well actually presents a challenging perplexity (aporia). So for both Plato and Aristotle, philosophy begins in the wonder at a philosophically interesting perplexity.³ And, indeed, Alice’s adventures in Wonderland are adventures in philosophical perplexity.

The first American writer of philosophical fantasy for children was L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz⁴ and a number of other Oz books. For Baum philosophical fantasy took a rather different form from the fantasy of Lewis Carroll. This should hardly be surprising. After all, Carroll was a philosopher and an Oxford don whose specialty was logic. The hallmark of his fantasy is clever and thought- provoking repartee, such as one might hope to hear at high table in an Oxford college. Consider this passage from chapter 7 (“A Mad Tea-Party”) of Alice in Wonderland:

“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”

“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”⁵

As this passage helps us realize, “A has had more tea than B” is normally taken to imply that, although both A and B have had some tea, the amount that A has had is more than the amount that B has had. However, it can also be taken to mean simply that the amount A has had is more than the amount B has had, even where, in the case of B, that amount is zero. Or consider this exchange from chapter 6 (“Humpty-Dumpty”) of Through the Looking-Glass:

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’” Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously, “Of course you don’t—till I tell you.

I meant ‘There’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,

“it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”⁶

This characteristically clever and amusing exchange forces readers to make a distinction between lexical meaning and speaker meaning. Of course the word “glory” does not mean “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you,” but what a speaker might mean to communicate by using the word “glory” is another issue. Moreover, the relationship between lexical meaning and speaker meaning is a very interesting issue in linguistics and the philosophy of language.

Nothing like this clever repartee is to be found in the Oz books. Nor should that fact be very surprising. Frank Baum never took a philosophy course; he never even went to college. He was a theater producer and journalist. Yet, despite this lack of academic background, perhaps the most striking feature⁷ of Baum’s writing—something almost universally ignored in the scholarly literature on Baum...