Losing Face
Or how science proved the human face does not exist
What is a face? The word “face”, etymologically speaking, means “to make”. The face, in other words, is something created, fashioned, made up, and this is apt because, as modern science has shown us, the concept of the face is no more than an abstraction, a dead metaphor – a poetic one, perhaps, but one without scientific validity. It is regrettable that the concept of the face, nevertheless, persists in our language in sayings such as “saving face”, “facing up”, “facing the music” etc. But, as even children know, autumn leaves can cling to the boughs of a tree long into spring. This is not – I must stress – to argue the constituent parts of the face do not exist. Namely the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears. In fact, oracular, olfactory, gustatory and auditory studies are our most popular university subjects, and we have, over the course of centuries, developed sophisticated sciences that have probed deep into the inner workings of these orifices, even to the sub-atomic level. The spectacular wealth of our civilisation owes itself to the application of these findings in industry.
We must acknowledge that our civilisation’s science, philosophy, art, and morality owes itself to the archaic belief in the face. Ancient morality, for example, can be more or less condensed into the following statements: “the existence of the face is the existence of the other” and “to love is to recognise oneself in the face of the other”. Why, according to this dogma, is the existence of the face the existence of the other? Because it is through a supposed encounter with the face of the other that we may perceive that otherness. Ancient philosophers and theologians developed concepts to better understand this otherness, while sculptors and artists crafted depictions of the face. Modern science developed in tandem with philosophy as an effort to apprehend the face. But when scientists began to study the constituent parts, to isolate them from one another in order to better understand them, they arrived at the conclusion that reverberates to this very day. Namely that the face does not actually exist. What followed was a period of religious doubt and confusion. Today, few take the concept of the face seriously, while the artefacts of archaic facial civilisation linger in dusty museums, no more than curios to be blithely gazed upon by tourists.
Though our ancestors earnestly believed in the existence of the face, it is worth adding – by way of digression – that there were some ancient philosophers who disputed its existence. The most famous example is Solus – to whom we owe the philosophical discipline of solipsism – who theorized that the face is an illusion, and went so boldly as to question the very existence of the “other”, before he and his followers were exiled. Today, however, Solus is considered the father of modern behavioural science which has shown conclusively that the constituent parts of the face are separate organs with their separate functions. Indeed, as scientists have conclusively proved using sophisticated modern research techniques, the concept of the face – the so-called holy quaternity – is perhaps no more than a pining after a lost unity that existed only in the womb.
Today, philosophy walks lock-step with behavioural science, and our greatest thinkers – all disciples of Solus – have argued, that, if there is no face, then there is no other. This is a profound conclusion. Having expunged ourselves of the concept of the face and, by implication, the other, we can also liberate ourselves from such dead concepts as “love”, “friend”, “charity”, “community”, “beauty”, “faith”, “festivity”, “salvation” etc. Thanks to modern science and philosophy, each of us is free to fulfil our own wants and needs without carrying the troublesome baggage of the “other”. Nevertheless, our civilisation – as it has often been melancholically noted – has not yet fully reconciled itself to the “death of the other” and the death of that dead metaphor of all dead metaphors: “humanity”. Until then our civilisation will not have fully matured and, to this extent, the ghost of the archaic face still haunts us.
We should note that there do persist peoples who believe in the existence of the face. These include eastern civilisations who, despite their longevity, doggedly hold to faceist customs such as “friendship”, “sacrifice”, and “hospitality”. More remarkably, faceist communities exist within our own borders, as well, whose bearded luminaries teach that the the loss of the “face of the other” is a catastrophe and that the face may be envisioned again through ascetic practice and religious study. Indeed, the mystical literature of these sects even speaks of an encounter with the “face of the other” and even the existence of “The Face” from whom all faces emanate and return. Nevertheless, these sects constitute only a fraction of the population and science has proved their teachings to be as superficial as the concept of the face itself.
Ezekiel David is a writer who lives in Athens