Tuesday, February 10, 2004
(11:41 PM) | Anonymous:
Hoping for madness
Today in my Kant class my teacher started to discuss how Kant accepted a certain subjective understanding of the human being but would not deny that there is an objective element to human experience. Kant's understanding of the way the world was ordered was destroyed by Hume's skepticism but Kant couldn't let go of philosophy in the same way Hume did. He had to find a way to affirm, philosophically, the idea that you shouldn't step out in front of a car thinking that there is no certain cause from that effect and my teacher says that we do to or else we wouldn't stop our friend who seems to have gone mad.Something about this discussion allowed little seeds of depression to settle in my spirit. My teacher was right, if my friend decided to take his beliefs seriously and step in front of the car I would pull him back. I can see my frenzied face desperately trying to throw some reason into my friend, to make him see the laws of the world that refuse to budge for small human beings like him or I. At the same time, almost more desperate, is the desire to let him go meaning I would let that little voice of the impossible prove itself, after all strange things do happen all the time but I know I would be letting my friend go to his death and so I don't listen and I repress it. My Kant teacher said that those who listen to this voice are verging on madness and for their safety we often lock them up but my tragedy teacher would tell us something very different and so would the mythology we find in Revelation. The world is fundamentally chaotic and we don't know who we are, who is controlling us or what awaits us around every corner. People who eat right and exercise get cancer. People who lie and cheat rule the world. The world is badly made and so we have our little hopes, our little voice that says the impossible can happen if good people can die then good people can come back from death. Prometheus, thank you for your gift not of fire but of foolish hope.
Hope is a fundamental movement towards madness and if we were truly reasonable we would all kill ourselves now but these two movements happen together and our existence happens in their struggle; words, words, words.
