How I Met Your Mother and Philosophy (14 page)

¹
Barney Stinson and Matt Kuhn,
The Bro Code
(Simon and Schuster, 2009), p. 1.

²
“Friendship as a Way of Life” in
Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth
(Penguin, 1997).

³
Barney Stinson and Matt Kuhn,
The Playbook: Suit Up, Score Chicks, Be Awesome
(Simon and Schuster, 2010), p. xiii.

⁴
For amazing insight into this community, see Neil Strauss,
The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of the Pickup Artists
(Regan, 2005).

⁵
The Broman version of ‘Quid Pro Quo', meaning ‘this for that'.

⁶
This chapter is dedicated to the amazing brothers in my life, most especially those who helped with this chapter (Ron, Dan, and Dorian), and my father, grandfather, and Pappou—the men who showed me what it means to be a good man.

7

Ted's Cockamouse Flies at Dusk

M. C
HRIS
S
ARDO

K
ids, in the opening scene of Season Three, “Future-Ted” tells his children, “Kids, there's more than one story of how I met your mother. You know the short version, the thing with your mom's yellow umbrella, but there's a bigger story, the story of how I became who I had to become in order to meet her.”

Ted is not simply telling a linear narrative detailing the events prior to meeting and falling in love with his wife, but a story that has a progressive logic to it. For Ted the episodes of
How I Met Your Mother
do not depict random events but necessary events, without which he never would have met his wife. Ted, then, is not only telling his children the story of how he met their mother, but is also attempting to teach them a lesson on Georg Hegel's philosophy of history.

For Hegel, history has a universal, guiding principle, or idea, that directs historical events towards some final purpose. Thus, history is not a series of random or haphazard happenings organized chronologically, but follows a rational design. As Hegel writes, this rational purpose of history can be discovered in a “final end” which “governs and alone consummates itself in the events that occur to peoples, and that therefore there is
reason in world history
.”
¹
In other words, we can and should judge history by looking at its final results, and not the particular events that lead to the eventual purpose of history. If this final end can be justified, then the events leading to this end are
justified, regardless of whether their functions are understood as leading to this end at the time of their happening.

For Hegel, the movement of history is governed by the development of human freedom, which he views as “the way in which the idea brings itself forth” (p. 146). In his lecture courses on the philosophy of world history, Hegel traces this development throughout world history. He begins with what he calls “Oriental World,” in which only the tyrant is free, and ends with the “Germanic World,” or nineteenth-century northern Europe, where all human beings are free in virtue of their being human. Between these extreme, Hegel traces various stages of historical and human development.

No less laudable, Ted's organizing principle of history is the development of his love life leading to his eventual marriage. Like world history, Ted's dating life similarly goes through various stages. In the first episode, he is happily single with no thought of marriage until Marshall's proposal to Lily pushes him to start seriously looking for the woman of his dreams. In “No Tomorrow,” Ted tells his children that their mother was at the same St. Patrick's Day party but they didn't meet, and “it's a good thing I didn't, because if I had met her I don't think she would have liked me.” Though actively looking for “the one,” Ted had not yet reached an appropriate level of emotional maturity to meet her.

In Season Seven, after another Robin-relapse that leads to her moving out of his apartment, Ted tells his children that “in my own crazy way, I was kind of happy. For the first time in years there was no little part of me clinging to the dream of being with Robin, which meant for the first time in years the world was wide open.” This closure with Robin was another key step in the development of Ted's emotional being that brings him closer to meeting his kids' mother. Ted's love life is not simply a parade of, in Robin's words “dubious conquests,” but a series of relationships, each of which developed him in ways that were necessary for him to become the man he needed to be to meet, woo, and marry his future wife.

For both Hegel and Ted, the events that constitute history are not merely haphazard occurrences. Instead, they are necessary elements in the development of an idea, whether human freedom, in Hegel's view, or that Ted's true love is out there. Though some of these events may seem terrible at the time,
whether the numerous deadly wars throughout history or the litany of heartbreaks Ted suffers, they all serve the advancement of history. They are then in a sense redeemed by the achievement of the final end of history, as each event serves a particular purpose and are necessary to reach the final end. Ted and Hegel are not merely relating a series of events in chronological order, but showing how these events are necessary for the development of a given history. Their goal is to show that every event in history, no matter how minute contributes to the progression of history and is a necessary prerequisite for history's final purpose.

Ted Mosby's Reflective Logic

While Ted's and Hegel's shared understanding of history has both a rational purpose and a guiding organizing principle, this idea of a “guiding principle” must be clarified. As Hegel famously wrote:

Philosophy . . . always comes too late to perform this function. As the thought of the world, it appears only at a time when actuality has gone through its formative process and attained its completed state. . . . When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a shape of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated, but only recognized, by the grey in grey of philosophy; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk. (
Elements of the Philosophy of Right
, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 23).

While this argument may seem difficult to grasp, once the Hegelese is translated, its main claim is very clear: we can only know the organizing principle of history
after
history has reached its culmination. Philosophy cannot know ahead of time what the final end of history will be, and therefore it cannot know what the guiding logic of historical progress is. It's only after the end has been achieved, that philosophers, and philosophically inclined architects, can reflect back upon history and see how the various events fit together in a series of necessary relationships. Only reflection can transcend the various particularities of history, the myriad wars, revolutions, elections, cultural changes, blind dates, one night stands, and broken hearts and see how they fit together in service of a higher goal.

This Hegelian insight—necessity can only be achieved through reflection—forces us to think with more nuance about necessity and the unfolding of history. It's tempting to read Hegel's philosophy of history as claiming that history has built-in rules and functions on auto-pilot until it reaches its destination. Such a view of history would deny any meaning to human action; all actions would be predetermined, leaving no room for human freedom. If Hegel's argument is that history is essentially the development of human freedom, then this account of necessity is ultimately unsatisfying. However, such an account of history fails to take into account Hegel's claim about the untimeliness of philosophical reflection. When the philosophy of history is read in context of this logic of reflection, it becomes clear that the necessity Hegel is talking about is always a belated necessity.

By reflecting on history, and not simply narrating a series of events in time, one can attribute necessary relationships to these events. This is because, according to Hegel, the rules and concepts that are required to claim that events are necessarily related are not given in advance but emerge only through the development of some system, whether a history, a logic, or a philosophy. As Hegel says, “Logic, therefore, cannot say what it is in advance, rather does this knowledge of itself only emerge as the final result and completion of its whole treatment.”
²

Similarly, history does not announce its final end in advance, but we can look back at history and trace how certain events form a coherent logical whole. At any given moment I cannot know in advance what effects my actions will have for my future development, but years from now I can reflect on how these actions have brought me to where I am. This is because I can connect where I am now to where I came from, in effect reading back into a history the final end that it has achieved. “Reflection,” according to the Hegelian inspired philosopher Markus Gabriel, “retroactively creates its own starting point, and this starting point is thereby always already related to what follows from it.”
³

While Ted begins his story with Marshall and Lily's engagement, he could have begun his story with his first day of college,
and the causal relationships, and unfolding logic, between the events leading to his marriage would have taken a different form. The sequence of history does follow an inherently necessary relationship but this necessity is imposed on these events after their culmination. Hegel can read history as the development of human freedom only after human freedom has been realized universally; Ted can tell us the story of how the events of his life led him to his wife only after he has met her.

Deciding What the Universe Decides

Lily and Marshall must have not listened carefully to Ted's overly-enthusiastic explanation of Hegel's philosophy of history, as their views of history represent an example of the first reading I have described. Viewing history as completely pre-ordained, Marshall and Lily often simply “let the universe decide.” In the episode “Doppelgangers,” they base their decision on whether or not to start a family on the universe's signal. Lily tells Marshall, “When we finally see Barney's doppelganger, that's the universe telling us its go time.” When Marshall expresses some concern that having a baby shouldn't be left up to the universe's whims, Lily retorts that “it's so much easier to let the universe decide.” Upon believing that they had seen Barney's doppelganger driving a cab, they decide that the universe has approved their decision to start a family. When Marshall discovers that Barney's doppelganger was in fact Barney, he refuses to tell Lily, as she is still waiting for the right signal from the universe.

Similarly, in the Season Seven episode “Rebound Girl,” when deciding on whether or not to move to Long Island, they judge that Lily's pregnancy precludes them from making a decision, and instead choose to let the universe decide. Immediately upon being challenged by Robin, a man with a “For Sale” sign offers to purchase their apartment. Just as their decision to have children was governed by a sign from the universe, they rely on a signal to make another life-changing decision. Marshall and Lily recognize that they must reach a certain level of development in their relationship, but they believe that the universe has also built in certain road signs that exist purely to guide the development of history. Marshall and Lily believe in a logic of history, but believe that the universe will inform them of this logic before its culmination.

Ted, who studied philosophy at Wesleyan before taking up architecture, has a better understanding of Hegel's philosophy of history. While history unfolds according to a rational logic, Ted understands that he is imposing this logic upon history. The entire narrative structure of the show follows this idea. Ted is reflecting back on the events that shaped his life before he met his wife, and narrates this account of his progression to his children. Now that Ted has reached his own end of history, he can organize the events of his life in such a way that every single one is in a necessary relation to others, culminating in his marriage and family. While “Future Ted” clearly understands how these particular events fit together into a coherent whole, he's oblivious to this unfolding narrative while the events themselves transpire.

For example, in “Doppelgangers” Ted's view of the universe's sign stands in strict contrast to Marshall and Lily's. Where Marshall and Lily view the universe as following a rational course of development that can be known in advance, Ted recognizes the reflective nature of such historical judgments. “Future Ted” narrates at the end of the episode, “Kids, you can ask the universe for signs all you want, but ultimately we only see what we want to see when we're ready to see it.” In one sentence, Ted explains the idea of belated necessity.

First, we can't know the course of history in advance, because the universe does not provide signs for us to read. Second, through reflection we impose certain rules that order seemingly happenstance events into a historical narrative of progress, as we “see only what we want to see.” Third, and finally, we can only understand this logic belatedly, after the culmination of the progress of history, or “when we're ready to see it.” Rather than viewing history either as a series of unrelated events or as a book already written with no room for choice, Ted follows a Hegelian approach to history. While this is evident in the general structure of the show, it is made even more explicit in certain episodes.