Monday, April 04, 2005
(3:33 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
How much do you forgive?
I just wrote jokingly on moral formation, but I still can't help but think it's an important thing. I heard a lecture this weekend about how at least some philosophy -- primarily the Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations -- is replacing the functions of religious meditation, that is, insofar as it concerns itself with forming the reader rather than with transmitting some kind of information. Such philosophy concerns itself with bringing the subject to acknowledgement rather than to knowledge. (Psychoanalysis came up as an aside here, and much of the reason I find that body of literature attractive is because I see in it a certain degree of moral formation.)To some degree, this is of course absurd because much of what passes for "philosophy" is just a series of formulaic exercises that demonstrate their belonging to a particular discipline -- a certain writing style, a certain approach to authoritative figures, etc. Most "philosophers" are far more formed by some idea of professionalism than by the texts themselves, and I suspect that a genuine formation by those texts would not comport well with the goals of the university, which is to produce a particular class of workers who fit well within a rubric of professionalism. And as I think of taking a meditative approach to texts, I think: I don't have time for this. I need to make these texts into something, turn them toward the goal of producing my own piece of writing so that I will continue to meet the requirements of scholarly productivity which graduate study is socializing into me.
The professionalistic approach -- which, for many of us lovers of texts, is initially the necessary evil that will allow us to live "the life of the mind" -- quickly becomes the primary consideration; public standing in a particular type of game trumps all other possible standards of value in the final analysis. So a philosopher is someone who has written a large number of erudite commentaries on other philosophers, for example (or who has written rigorous little essays that definitively clear out some corner of a "problem"). Meanwhile, the problem of, for instance, "How much do you forgive?" becomes, at best, a scholarly issue of how to bring together what is said by Derrida, Arendt, etc., in a sufficiently unique way that publishing the results will be at least minimally justifiable.
When I started reading these texts, the passion initially came partly from an intellectual machismo, but more than that, from a feeling that these people were going to teach me how to live. Kierkegaard, for instance -- I thought he knew something I didn't, or could in some way lead me to see life differently. The same with Lacan, or Nietzsche, or Heidegger, or Derrida, or Barth, or Pynchon -- something was happening in those texts that needed to be happening in me, in my life. Now, I'm trying to figure out some way to squeeze out a paper on Zizek's use of Kierkegaard, so that I can send it off and people will publish it, so that I can write down on a piece of paper that it has been published.
I have the game of academia down, in its basic points; at this point, it's a matter of building up a sufficient resume that people will believe I am good at it. I have no doubt whatsoever that I could make a career out of it, even if accidental factors may keep that from becoming a reality (which would be a shame, but not the worst thing in the world). But -- for example -- how much do you forgive? I don't know. I really don't even know what it would look like to forgive. I know how to manipulate social circumstances so that on a certain level, there appears to be no problem, so that things function smoothly -- but.... Yeah, I don't know. This day-to-day life thing, this relationship thing, this habit of sabotaging myself on the things that are most important to me -- I don't know a damn thing about that, I don't think.
And dissecting yet another text in order to produce a text of my own that will conform with the canons of professionality within certain circles of "philosophical" and "theological" discourse doesn't seem like any kind of answer -- it doesn't seem like it would help anything, anything at all, even a little bit. Not when I'm trying to figure out some way to walk down the street, to be with people, to do right by them, to experience some kind of peace.
I met a student after that lecture, obviously a very bright guy, who had hit the jackpot and been accepted to DePaul. We got to talking about various things, and I think that in essence, he treated me like shit. He had to have his little pissing match with the kid from Nowhere Theological Seminary, who came to the lecture with his overeager undergrad friends. I wonder how much different I would really be, even if I had gotten into a program that would make it so that I won't have to worry for a few years -- maybe part of the reason it's so grating is that this gnawing sense of insufficiency keeps getting grilled into me, such that even when I'd "arrived," I would still feel like I constantly need to prove myself, just like him. Because I wouldn't feel like I deserve it, because there is no deserving -- there is no available way to determine deserving. And so, prove yourself -- for nothing, to no one, to no end.
