녹색이란 무엇인가?

녹색이란 무엇일까요? 내가 여러분에게 논쟁의 여지가 없는 녹색의 물체를 보여주고 "이것이 녹색으로 보이나요?"라고 물었다고 생각해 보십시오.

당연히, 여러분은 물체의 색이 "녹색"으로 보이는 것을 인식하게 되었기 때문에 그렇다고 말할 겁니다. 하지만 나의 "녹색"에 대한 이해가 여러분과 완전히 다를 수도 있을까요? 만약 여러분이 내 마음을 들여다볼 수 있다면요? 여러분은 아마 내가 "녹색"이라고 이름 붙인 모든 것들이 사실 여러분이 알고 있는 "빨간색"이라는 사실을 깨달을지도 모릅니다.

아아, 객관적인 진실의 계류 없이는, 우리는 자신만의 경험의 바다에 떠내려가게 됩니다.

—철학자이자 시인, 카스텐 그뢰크가 올레이 대학에서 펼친 강의의 흥미로운 도입부. 강의의 질은 이 시점 이후 현저하게 떨어졌고, 그뢰크가 수강생들에게 엉성하게 지은 "연두색을 위한 서정시"를 낭송하면서 빠르게 끝났다. 그는 지나치게 익은 "빨간" 토마토로 무장한 학생들의 공격을 받고 강당에서 도망쳤다.

 

What is Green?

What is green? Imagine I should present to you an object which, to my mind, is of indisputable greenness and ask, "Does this thing appear to you to be green?"

Naturally, you might say that it does, for you have come to recognize the appearance of the color of the object to be "green," associating the word with what your eyes see. But could it be my understanding of "green" differs entirely from yours? What if, perchance, you could see into my mind? You might realize that all things that I name "green" are actually "red" in your understanding.

Ah, without the moorings of objective truth, we are set adrift in oceans of solitary experience.

—The promising opening to a lecture given by Karsten Groeke, philosopher-poet at the University of Orlais. The lecture's quality dropped significantly after this point, and ended quickly when Groeke subjected audience members to a poorly constructed Ode to Chartreuse. He fled from the auditorium under fire from students armed with overripe "red" tomatoes.