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Power and Education

I’ve been very busy with teaching related things of late - finishing up a small group project on education, preparing to do workshops, and just talking a lot with the people at the teaching center. As I’ve been thinking about this, I realize that there is a particular feature of my own experience that I’ve been trying to figure out a bit more that might (hopefully) give me some insight into the craft of teaching.

The feature of my experience that I am gnawing on is this. From about third grade until the end of my first bachelor’s degree, I was an immensely lazy and disinterested student. I did all my homework the night before/morning of, I quickly skimmed books that I was supposed to read, and with few exceptions I hardly cared at all about any of what I was taught. I got by as a comfortably mediocre student, always having trouble in mathematics and foreign language (things that are immensely difficult to “fake”). I was the kind of student that now, as an instructor, I find the most disheartening to teach. And yet…

And yet now, my relationship to education is radically different. The very same things that I contemptuously ignored when I was younger I actively seek out. Not simply philosophy (which I was never exposed to), but literature, music, even mathematics. I wish I could find the time and energy to teach myself calculus, become fluent in German, and read all of the things I briefly skimmed in high school. And I look back at the younger me sometimes and regret the time I squandered simply trying to get out of doing work.

But it is at this point that I wonder if the sort of love and appreciation I have for these things that I now have are something that I could have had back then at all. Between my first and second degrees, I had spent some time in the business world, and that experience transformed me in many ways. In being a co-owner of a small business, I came to understand my relationship to the world in a very different way - I saw my own will, my own wishes, my own needs as the determinants of my own destiny. Before then, I had come to accept that the agenda for life was to be set by others - and in education, it was set by instructors, and more broadly, by social expectations and norms. I went to college because that is what people do, which is why I went to high school, to grade school, etc. After I had my time in the business world, and I decided to go back to university, everything was different because for the first time I was pursuing education as a free choice. I was there because I wanted to be.

I think that it was this freedom that dropped the scales from my eyes. It was, and still is the ability to see education free of a spirit of imposition that motivates my love for it. If I am told I must read Shakespeare, the words are dead to me, but if I am told I may (or perhaps even more would be to say that I may not) then the poetry flares with life, and the drama pulls with its own gravity. The challenges are exciting, and the treasures unearthed color the whole world in richer and more subtle shades. And one of my great desires as a teacher is to share that with other people - the immense depth and beauty in the world of ideas which is after all the most human of worlds. Kant, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Dante, Eco - these people (and many others) and their ideas have enhanced my world by unveiling perspectives that transform the world, patterns which add order, irony, beauty, and tragedy, and sharpened my senses to unearth hidden gems in everyday experience that rougher senses ignore. Part of why I teach is because I want to help others share in these treasures, treasures so great that I cannot even describe them.

But then you see my dilemma - as a young student, I too ignored all of these treasures. Perhaps it was because of the power relationship implicit in education up to that time - I railed against it.- I’m not really sure if that was the only factor, nor am I certain that my experience is itself indicative of the larger issue here. But I feel like if I could figure out how I could have reached myself back then - what my instructors could have done to coax and entice me simply to try to take hold of the treasures that they freely offered - then I would have at the very least a powerful tool in my teaching arsenal. The thing is, I can remember them trying - I had a number of good, inspiring teachers who really worked to try and bring these things to life, and who, I am sure, were privy to very much the same inspiration that these topics now bring me. They never reached me in quite this, but they did not fail me - very often they taught me despite my disinterest which is admirable in itself.

But I wonder - could they have reached me? Can I reach them? They could not have done so coercively, through the application of power, that only would have driven me further away. Perhaps the best one can do is offer these things with an open hand, and that is the limitation we have as teachers. But if the problem really is the power structure, then a simple open hand is not sufficient in a structure of closed fists - because they set the enviornment. But then again, perhaps that was only my problem, or more realistically, it is the problem of only a very few. I do not know, but this is my educational Koan now, and for a while, I suspect.

2008 05 14 Introspection
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Kant, Kierkegaard, and the Unconditioned

I went to a reading group meeting last night, where we discussed some parts of Either/Or, and in the course of the discussion, the relationship between despair and “choosing yourself” became a bit clearer to me - and it seems more clearly to be that the point of choosing despair is really in repudiating the notion that meaning can come from anything “out there”. Kierkegaard talks about the aesthetic as a person who attempts to find meaning outside of themselves, and in doing so is always in a state of being conditioned by the outside world. It becomes much clearer for me if I think of this in terms of Kant’s hypothetical imperatives.

A hypothetical imperative is something which I choose to do only in relation to something else, which, as it stands, might be affirmed or denied. So, for example, if I wish to always be on the cutting edge of style, it turns out I have to frequently buy new clothes, look at fashion magazines, and probably associate with a certain portion of society that both cares about and knows about these things. All of those actions become impertatives for me - things I must do, but only insofar as I wish to be on the cutting edge of style. A hypoethetical imperative always has the structure: “If I want x, then I must y” - where y could be a bunch of conditions, perhaps only some subset of which is actually sufficient for x.

For Kant, the problem with hypothetical imperavies is really that it is the hypothetical part of the imperative that “calls the shots” - I am forced to do y because of the condition of wanting x, and in some sense, then, my choices are bound to x, what is right or wrong for me to do is ruled by x. If I want to be on the cutting edge of fashion, it is wrong for me to shop at certain stores and be seen with anything less than designer apparel. For Kant, the desire for designer apparel ends up, in no small way, in charge of you. Hence, you are conditioned by that desire, and according to Kant, this means you are not free - you are not in charge of yourself.

This seems to be very much the view that Kierkegaard’s “Judge” views the life of the aesthete - this person lives for pleasure, and so is forever conditioned by and dominated by the objects of desire - be they love affairs, artistic experiences, etc. Interestingly, the Judge also claims that religion can serve this purpose in some people (interesting, because Kierkegaard ultimately believes that religion is a step above, not a step below the ethical). What is relevant at this stage, however, is really the way one chooses to come to religion - and there is a way of coming to it and expecting from it something very much like the aesthete expects from their lovers, their wining and dining, and their plays. The Judge runs through a number of phases for the aesthete - a person who lives for something like beauty, someone who lives to enjoy their talents, someone who lives simply to fulfill desire in itself, and finally someone who lives in constant relation to despair.

This last individual is, according to  Judge, closest to making the ethical choice - this is someone who has gradually recognized that fulfilling these desires is ultimately not going to bring meaning to one’s life, because it will not bring a person back to themselves. They are always at the mercy of something out in the world - always conditioned by something “other” that is fundamentally arbitrary. The final state aesthete recognizes this condition, and in some sense, revels in the bitterness of despair, but also seizes any opportunity to distract themselves from this despair - any arbitrary amusement whatsoever (something that ‘A’ strongly supports in his own papers). The Judge construes this as “mocking of the spirit” and the eventual punishment for this is depression, the ultimate culmination of which is to become a “Nero”.

I recognized in this moment something from early Nietzsche - where Nietzsche talks, in the Birth of Tragedy, about Hamlet, saying that people have consistently misunderstood Hamlet. The reading that Hamlet cannot decide what to do, that his acts are all merely indecisiveness is to Nietzsche, entirely missing the point. Hamlet, according to Nietzsche, is indecisive not because he simply does not know what to do, but rather because there is a fundamental absurdity in his having to choose anything at all, that the very expectation that he should choose to act, or not act is overwhelming. Everything is pointless for Hamlet, and thus he cannot choose. This, to me, seems to capture the moment of despair.

The Judge claims that at this moment, one must actually choose despair, and in so doing, choose oneself - and here we can see that the meaning behind this is that in despairing, one affirms the emptiness of all of the “things” of the outside world, all merely acquisitive desire is emptiness, and a life lived in pursuit of the fulfillment of desire is a wild goose chase. Nothing that life offers to fill the void is sufficient, but furthermore, nothing in life that might offer to let you be conditioned to it - to be the ‘x’ in the hypothetical imperative, is worthy. It refuses all ‘x’-es whatsoever. One is reminded of the first noble truth - “life is suffering.” but this is a choice of oneself because to choose despair is simply not to allow oneself to be conditioned by anything whatsoever - by refusing all x-es  one chooses oneself. One does not debase oneself by accepting the imperatives of some hypothetical ‘x’. This is freedom.

A further comparison between Kierkegaard and Kant is in order here, because in both cases, it is this moment of refusing to subjugate oneself to any hypothetical imperative whatsoever that freedom is really possible. For Kant, one refuses desire by, in effect, making reason itself one’s law. In cases of hypothetical imperatives, reason is subjugated to desire - I instrumentally reason about what I have to do to get whatever x I have made my condition. “What can I do to stay at the forefront of style… oh, if I go to that fashion show in Milan, I will see what is coming up next… and if I work overtime for the next few months, I’ll be able to afford to take the time off… etc.” I reason about what I will do that can bring about x - so my reason serves x.

The categorical imperative is not to reason with regard to any x whatsoever - the categorical imperative is, for Kant, the pure form of reason itself. Instead of doing y which will, in a lawlike way help to bring about x - I simply always do y in a lawlike way, and I only do y if I do so in a lawlike way - hence the first form of the categorical imperative that one act only in such a way that one can will that the maxim of one’s act become a universal law. I cannot make a lying promise, because I cannot will that everyone make lying promises because in so doing, I would make it that no one believe lying promises at all (because anyone can make lying promises, so no one would trust promises anymore. If I make a lying promise, I am doing so because I am exploiting the fact that “make lying promises” is not a universal law - I am making myself an exception to that law).

Kant takes the categorical imperative (and ultimately, adherence to duty) to stand in for desire in motivating the acts of a truly free person - and it is this role of the categorical imperative that I have always found most difficult to swallow with Kant for a number of reasons - it identifies the “self” and ones own true free will with reason itself, and because the categorical imperative seems to permit many horrible actions, and forbid many good actions - there is a long history of criticism against the categorical imperative. But I always thought that Kant correctly identified a pretty crucial feature of freedom - and that is that one’s life is not dominated by arbitrary desire. This is, of course, also an important theme in Buddhism, and I would argue that is is also prevalent in certain strands of western religious thought. The direction toward a higher will is at the same time a turning away from the selfish pursuit of pleasure.

Kierkegaard’s Judge, on the other hand, doesn’t tie ethical choice to obedience to the categorical imperative - the crucial feature of the ethical choice is the refusal to be conditioned by the external and arbitrary. What the positive feature of this choice really is is still difficult to say - but importantly, the Judge ties this choice to repentance - that one repents of everything, including oneself (in some sense) - and if I understand this correctly, this repentance is really a sorrow over one’s acts and ones life insofar as it has been conditioned by these arbitrary desires (and though this is the ethical, not yet the religious stage, we can see that Kierkegaard seems to blend the two). The Judge then connects the ethical life in relationship to a “calling” - one decides what one is to do in the world - one marries, has children, raises a family - but there are two important changes. One first evaluates one’s decisions with regard to “good” and “evil” (though he is never quite clear about what those are supposed to be), and something else, which he does not explicitly mention, is that one’s life becomes focused around what one can do in the world, rather than what one can experience or take from it.

This is also a hint about the Judge’s claim that the religious choice can occur on the aesthetic level - insofar as one chooses religion in order to get some experience from it (even something as seemingly high minded as closeness to god) one is still choosing to have the experience - one is still being selfish. The higher choice is the choice to act - in acting we are free. The first act (for Kierkegaard) is repentance, where we attempt to untie ourselves from bondage to the merely hypothetical, and then we choose for ourselves a project or multiple projects - we decide to live to do something. This again reminds me of the lord-bondsman dialectic in Hegel, the lord is the one who lives for experience and seems to have everything done at his whim, but is really a slave, conditioned to the objects of their own desire, but the bondsman, seemingly a slave, is really free, because the bondsman creates.

This bit of analysis was really helpful to me, it has tied a whole lot together, and I think I’m really starting to see  the origins of a major theme in early contintental philosophy - this notion of “conditioned / unconditioned” and it’s roots in Kant.

2008 05 08 Philosophy Comments (0) Permalink

Fives

I am currently reading three books - The Thread of Life by Wollheim, the Bible, and The Basic Writings of Freud edited by Brill. These are all, on their own, interesting books, but they are especially interesting to be reading side by side. I’m not all that far into Freud yet - the first work in the collection is The Psychopathology of everyday life - and it gives a pretty decent outline on the method of free association. Thus far, the focus is on forgetting words and especially names in everyday situations, and the explanation for this is grounded in the repression of certain thoughts by the unconscious that are somehow associated with the forgotten name.

The proof for these claims comes through the method of free association, where the repressed contents are sought after when the person in question tries to say everything that was running through their mind, and what those things mean to them, etc. There is, of course, dubious value to these cases as proof - partially because they are quite anecdotal. The other issue is somewhat bigger, and does not itself amount to a problem. Because when I was reading this, I thought of Umberto Eco - both Foucault’s Pendulum, as well as the last “library scene” in In the Name of the Rose. I’ll cut, because there will be some discussion of spolier-ey content for those books below.

Continue reading ›

2008 04 28 Art
Introspection
Literature
Philosophy
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Either/Or Part 2

Well, so much for it “taking a while” before I read Either/Or Part 2. I finished reading it today, and again, it is difficult to describe. Where the first part was a series of seemingly disconnected articles written by A, part 2 is a series of three letters written to A by B, a judge and family man and apparent friend of A (though one wonders about this after some of what is said). The first two are written by B himself, the first titled (by the editor) “On the Esthetic Validity of Marriage”, and the second titled (again by the editor) “The Balance between the Esthetic and the Ethical in the Development of the Personality.” The third letter has a short preface by B to A, but is mostly the text of a sermon written by a pastor and friend of B’s entitled “The Upbuilding That Lies in the Thought that in Relation to God We Are Always in the Wrong.”

Here, too, there are a number of themes that connect this work (though mostly the first two, i still have trouble fitting the third into the mix.) One of the themes has to do with time and eternity, and especially the contrast with which time and eternity are treated by the aesthetic and the ethical - and I think this theme actually links up with the theme of emptiness and distance that was repeated throughout part 1. In the first letter, this comes up in the contrast between the eroticism of the seduction and the ethical-eroticism of marriage. Seduction is grounded in secrecy, in desire, in conquest, and all of these things have a common theme of absence - absence of knowledge and understanding and absence of that which is loved. The “joy” of seduction is in surprise and in novelty, in suddenly coming to have in some small way a taste of that which was missing. Seduction fears familiarity, because, according to A, with familiarity comes boredom. In contrast to this, the joy of marriage is in understanding, in contentment, and in having one another, but all of this comes through a reckoning with time, which, for the seducer, is a great enemy because the seducer seeks meaning in a moment, and once the moment passes, so to does the meaning. In Marriage, meaning is extended through time, the eternal is present in each particular and connects the couple to “the universal” without being that universal. In Marriage, virtues like humility, patience, and openness sharply contrast with the virtues of the seducer, who is focused only on acquisition.

In the second letter, this theme comes out in a somewhat different way. There is an interesting analysis of the aesthetic that B gives us - and which begins with those who simply seek to enjoy things - wealth, beauty, etc. This is a failure because it puts the condition beyond the individual - it is not up to them whether they are or remain wealthy, beautiful, etc. Next is the person who seeks to enjoy life by “living for your desire” whatever it may be - and B takes Nero to be an example of this (and there is a really wonderful picture he paints of Nero as doing just this) - and that the fundamental nature of a person like this is depression which the aesthete constantly attempts to sate with pleasures, but which only makes the depression worse. The next type of aesthete is what B takes A as being - the person who lives for their despair that sees “the vanity in everything” and which A has captured in his use of “Either/Or” - “marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way… etc.” This despair is the emptiness, the distance from life, which sees everything as equally meaningless, which sees itself as equally meaningless, and which denies the importance of any choice, but which itself refuses to really despair, because it will accept anything, mere trivialities as distractions. for B, the solution is to accept despair wholeheartedly and in fact to choose it because it is oneself, and it is freedom.

This latter move is difficult to understand, but it would seem to me to be something like turning one’s back on any expectation that meaning can come from the world itself - that there is anything out there that can satisfy, anything that is not meaningless - but to choose this and to affirm and accept it is to be free, it is to choose oneself. If this is the right way to read this, then this is in a sense very reminiscent of the move I read Kant as making, except Reason stands in the place of despair - but either way it is the renunciation of contingent desire and the affirmation of oneself, first of all, as the agent of choice, and the affirmation of ones own dignity above these other contingent things- where one’s own dignity is identified with the “eternal” self and not the finite self. For B, this choosing of the self is somehow connected with repentance, although that I am even at more of a loss to explain. There are definitely (and unsurprisingly) very heavy Christian themes here.

So interestingly, the ethical seems to be connected to emptiness as much as the aesthetic is, but simply in a very different way - the aesthetic attempts to hold it at a distance, but for the ethical it seems to be something it heads into in order to become closer to everything, including a greater sense of integrity. Through this despair, the very things that the aesthetic fears and seeks to distance itself from come to have meaning - married life, hard work, time, and the particular - because they are given some sort of intrinsic connection with the universal. This movement, too, I couldn’t say that I really understand, but I think I have inklings of what Kierkegaard might be saying here, even if I have issues with the heavily Christian spin he puts on it.

I think that this will definitely be worth looking back over again - I think that having Kant and Nietzsche more clearly in mind would be helpful, as would, I suspect, Spinoza (I take his ethics to have a similar theme of renunciation of contingent desire and also has this peculiar relationship with freedom as exists in both Kant and this version of Kierkegaard.) I’m wondering if the three of them don’t fall pretty squarely into the wider theme of Platonism, all as various expressions of the same sort of ideas Plato expressed. Nietzsche, I think, is still an exception, but I think he sheds light on Platonism in an important way as well.

2008 04 25 Philosophy Comments (0) Permalink

Either/Or Part 1

Yesterday, I finished reading Either/Or Part I. About this, there is so much to say that I don’t quite know where to begin. The whole work is written, as are many of Kierkegaard’s works, from the perspective of fictional characters, rather than his own character, and the first fascinating thing about Either/Or is that the number of characters is ambiguous. On the surface, there are four characters - the “editor” who discovers the papers that compose most of Either/Or hidden in a desk that he purchased, “A” the author of half of the papers found in the desk, “B” or “the Judge”, author of the second half of the papers found in the desk, and “Johann” - author of “Diary of a Seducer” one of the chapters in “A’s” section, which A supposedly found hidden in a desk, and is ostensibly horrified by. However, the Editor points out that the finding of such papers is often a dodge used to distance oneself from something one wants to publish (which, of course, is also the Editor’s own story about the papers of “A” and “B” which he is publishing), and he also suggests that it may be interesting to read “A” and “B” as being two sides of the same person, though he doubts that is the case. If we take all of this together, there seem to be a number of ways of reading Either/Or soley insofar as authorship is concerned. It may be the work of four characters (Editor, A, B, Johann), three (Editor, A, B-who-is-also-Johann), two (Editor and A-who-is-B-who-is-Johann), or one (the Editor is really all characters). and then, of course, there is the question of the relationship of Kierkegaard to all of these character-possibilities.

This, of course, is only the beginning, but it hints at the immense depth of possibility that exists within this work. Part I consists of the introduction, in the voice of the Editor, and a series of papers that are attributed to A, one of which A attributes to someone else (Johann). The character of A is that of an aesthete - a person who lives and finds meaning in aesthetic appreciation, and we come to some sense of what that means throughout the papers. It is very difficult to say what this is supposed to mean - there is not some set of necessary and sufficient conditions that are set out. In some sense, the aesthetic seems to be established on a sort of distance from the world - there are constant references to recollection as being the essential feature of aesthetic appreciation, and part of the importance of recollection is distance from the actual, idealization, and abstraction. Connected to this distance there seems to be a certain relationship to emptiness, to nothingness, and to arbitrariness. Numerous times, A makes reference to these features of the aesthetic, how important it is that the aesthete latch on to arbitrariness, that the aesthetic is ultimately groundless, it must come from nothing (in his discussion of “the occasion” as ultimately groundless). There is also a certain revulsion toward any closeness - friendships and marriage are shunned.

Knowing, as I do, that Kierkegaard is often thought to be one of the founders of existentialism, this relationship to “nothingness” in the aesthete seems important. I think it would be over simple to say that A is somehow “responding” to this nothingness by clinging to the distance of images and recollections, but I think that this might be a good place to start figuring this out, even if it ultimately ends up being quite wrong.

Connected to this theme, however, is the picture at the end of “Johann” the ostensible author of the Diary of a Seducer. I don’t think it was until I read this final chapter of part I that I really even glimpsed at what a work of genius this book really is. Johann, the seducer, seduces and destroys a young girl as an aesthetic experience, as an expression of “erotic” love. The seduction involves insinuating himself into her life so that she slowly makes him the sole focus of all of her passion and energy. However, for Johann, it is only the building up, the seduction itself that is important - it is the focus she comes to have on him, the increasing amounts of energy she is willing to invest in him. Once she has given “everything” - which for him means her virginity - there is nothing left to give and he finds her absolutely repulsive. And therein lies the destruction, he is now the sole focus of her passion, and he wants nothing to do with her.

Reading through this, I though again and again to myself of the archetype of the Vampire, this creature with a deep, insatiable hunger that feeds on the vitality of others, and I have never found a more perfect expression of that archetype than in Johann. I think, for Kierkegaard, that this archetype must be closely connected to the idea of the aesthetic. If we think of the hunger of the vampire seducer as being connected to the vacuous nothingness, the sorrow, the emptiness that A constantly makes reference to - it might be tempting to think that this hunger is both a symptom of and the treatment for lingering only on surfaces, on appearances, and on the qualities of experiences. The seducer wants no more of people than the aesthetic experience of being the focus of their passion, he revels in the various manifestations that this relationship takes over time. Part of his power of seduction comes from a void within - a void that entices poor Cordelia with the promise of depth, and so she chases him down, throws all of her energy at that emptiness, pursues it to the bottom, and then, there is nothing. There are also parts of this that relate very powerfully as a response to Hegel and the “Lord and Bondsman” section of the Phenomenology of Spirit.

I am sure that there are other, more proficient readings than this, I can sense that there are readings which abstract away from issues of character and personality, and drive more to the abstract heart of the issue that Kierkegaard is exploring with A/ Johann. I suspect, also, that a major theme - the “either/or” the notion that one must choose (which is also a response to Hegel), I suspect is embodied at this level, perhaps between nothingness and the aesthetic, but I’m not sure if that’s right, and even less how to give better expression to it.

At any rate, Part 2 is still to come, these are letters from a second character, “B” to A - and B, I am aware, represents the ethical as contrasted with the aesthetic in A. I think all in all, this work is one that would benifit immensely from multiple readings, and perhaps one day, when I have time, I’ll come back to the whole thing, and read it in conjunction with the journals and notes in the back of the book. For now, though, It’s on to Part 2. I suspect it may be a while before I’m done with it, though.

2008 04 22 Literature
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Goodreads

Things have been busy. I’ve sent out a new draft of my ethics paper, hopefully this one fares better. I think it will - all in all, its a good deal more focused and streamlined, though I think that the argument might need work in one part still. I’ve also been grading, which has been a bit faster than last time - perhaps I’m just more comfortable with the material. Though, I’m also doing less comments, given that this is an end of year paper. I should be done today, which will give me tomorrow to go through and do a quick reread of the articles and the papers to make sure all the grades and comments make sense.

In other news, I’ve been wasting far too much time on a new website - goodreads.com. Part of this was inspired by a workshop I took on education technology, which talked about social networks, and how these were really fundamentally important for the new incarnation of the Web - the so called “Semantic Web” which is much more able to understand search requests, etc. All of the aggregate data that comes through these sites is effectively “teaching” the internet what various words in various contexts mean, by showing how they are connected with other words and things. There is something a little creepy about all of that, actually - visions of Hal and Skynet flicker, but of course there is also tremendous potential.

At any rate Goodreads.com is basically a social network which centers on books you have read or are reading. There are similar sites like Librarything.com which allows you to catalog books you own - but I never really got into that because I mostly read books from the library nowadays. So yesterday, when I should have been doing work, I instead looked back through old blog entries, searched my memory of classes and other things, and assembled a list of what is now likely almost all of the books I’ve read since 2002. I was actually surprised at how few books there really are there - 89 in total - although this also doesn’t track the journal articles and single chapters from books that I’ve been reading over the last few years. I’m also probably forgetting a few.

What I found really cool was that I could enter the day I finished reading each book - many are approximations, but I think mostly accurate ones - and as a result I have this long list of my reading history, showing books in the order that I read them. This list is really interesting to look over, its like a history of the things I have been thinking about over the past six years - because what I am reading really influences how I think - and it also shows a bit about how those ideas are connected to one another. It’s sort of a snapshot of some part of who I am, and how I came to be who I am. As a bonus, I can also add books to my “want to read” shelf, which is nice because I almost always forget a few of those books. And finally, there is the “currently reading” shelf, which I have as a feed picking the last two books added as a widget on this very blog. I will also add an RSS feed for book reviews, once I start doing them (I haven’t done any for books I added yesterday).

Its fun stuff, but I need to stop playing and finish up my grading now.

2008 04 21 Introspection
Literature
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On Paradise

I very much wish that I was not busy right now. I’m revising paper number three, slowly and painfully, and I’ve just picked up a stack of papers to grade, and verily, more will be coming soon. I do not want to deal with either of these things. What I want to do is enjoy life - spend time with my wife, with great books, and contending with questions that open me up to wonder. And I want to teach, not to indoctrinate or to shape people, but to share the various paths to wonders and learn about different ones and different perspectives on those wonders. These are the soft contours of paradise, an imaginary world that I reach up to from the hard and unyeilding edges of reality. I live in a world where life, work, and dignity are all measured in coin. I have enough to get by, but the economic reality taints even dreams. One cannot have what one wants if what one wants is freedom from economics. That, no amount of gold can purchase.

But perhaps there is also something quite wrong with my paradise, because in my dreams it is free of the pain of resistance of the world against me, and it is free of the pain of growth. There can be no such thing as strength in a world without weight and substance, and no insight in a world without puzzles and problems.  I am tired of working to achieve what I want, but should I flee this exhaustion? Value is the product of all of this work. Struggle is the feeling of growth, of extending ones abilities beyond where they comfortably operate. If I was not ignorant, if I was not foolish, then there would be no reason to become a philosopher. And what about all of the other stuff - the brewing conflicts about value and the resentment I feel toward the culture of philosophy? That all just adds weight and complexity to the problem. I’m not in a struggle with myself alone, but with (and against) others, who will undermine everything I do, whether it has merit or not. It is unpleasant, but it helps me to be intellectually honest.

The difficulty part, as I am coming to understand it, is that I must accept the challenges against myself that come from the professional standards of my community, but without thereby accepting the conditions for success. This involves the ability to sort between challenges that push me to think more clearly, more deeply, and more critically about my own thought, and challenges which push me to accept the values and norms of the community issuing the challenge. These two things are not always clearly separable, and the rejection of the values and norms of my community leave me adrift without map or constellation to navigate by. It is a small wonder that I frequently feel lost, and worried that I am about to step into a chasm, if I’ve not already done so a long time ago. But the ground seems to meet each uncertain footfall, and sometimes the steps pattern themselves into a dance of blissful disobedience.

2008 04 10 Introspection
Mood
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The Modern Prometheus

Between last night and tonight I read Frankenstein, one of three books I bought yesterday (the other two were they Myth of Sisyphus by Camus, and Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard.) It felt really good to take a brief literary holiday from all of the other reading that I’ve been doing. Frankenstein was quite good - I was reminded a great deal of Lovecraft when reading it (and not because of Herbert West). The theme of the disruption of natural human life by the reckless pursuit of knowledge, and indeed knowledge itself as an evil is probably what drew the closest connection (although the mental deterioration of Doctor Frankenstein was also reminiscent).

I was glad, having read this, that I read Paradise Lost - there was certainly a close connection between the two stories, in particular the relationship of creator to created. Of course, in Frankenstein, this relationship is debased - God creates man, but man creates demon, but Frankenstein’s demon was sympathetic, even moreso than Lucifer in paradise lost (though both say “evil shall become my good”). The nature of evil as an utter privation was also present - the monster desired virtue, kindness, compassion, but was driven to evil when all of those things were systematically denied to him, the only joy that remained for him was vengeance.

The most striking thing about the novel for me was, of course, Dr. Frankenstein himself. His early imagination sparked by reading the alchemists, Agrippa, Magnus, Paracelcius, the young Dr. Frankenstein was driven by a desire to see and understand the mysteries of life - he had a metaphysical yearning which, I think, stayed with him through his investigations, and it was this deeper hunger that made him a greater scientist. He had initially rejected science because of the smallness of its scope, and it was only when the continuity of science and the investigations of alchemy were made clear to him that he could take on the study of “natural philosophy” once again. It seems to me that Frankenstein’s metaphysical hunger - his desire for the elixir of life that was itself transformed - was his real tragic flaw.

I suspect this may be true of anyone who pursues knowledge as their life’s work, but I saw a great deal of myself in Dr. Frankenstein. Of course, I’m studying philosophy, but I do so with that same sort of metaphysical hunger - and in much the same spirit as Frankenstein, I think I am typically unmoved by the investigations within my own field, legitimate or no, that do not somehow connect with that metaphysical yearning. And while no demon shows up in my investigation, I come across questions, and battle with an underlying existential sorrow is the cultivated fruit of my pursuit. Suddenly, a Jungian reading of Frankenstein suggests itself to me, with the monster as Frankensteins own shadow self. But I won’t pursue that here.

I  am not sure what to make of the cautionary element of the story - I do not think it was heartfelt, but rather seemed to be there as a purely dramatic element. There was also the repeated consolation in nature and natural beauty (of which the monster was the antithesis), although I know from the preface that the story was in part inspired by a discussion of Darwin. All in all, good read though.

2008 03 29 Art
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Slowly but Surely Advancing

The third of my comprehensives paper - on moral luck - is finally out for comments. If all goes well with the comments on that paper, and if I can patch the holes in my metaphysics paper over the next few days, I might actually be able to finish up my comprehensives before the summer break. Writing this third paper was a lot less agony than the other two paper - both the metaphysics and the history. This paper, by all rights, should have actually taken me the longest to do, since I wrote it up essentially from scratch. But I think of everything in philosophy, I feel the most grounded when I’m writing about ethics, and I like writing in this area best of all. Of course, I end up doing mostly metaphysics, but that’s primarily because I feel the greatest “assault” coming from that quarter of philosophy.

If my adviser keeps to his opinion of this paper from when I told him about it after reading it, it is also likely that a reworked version of this paper will actually be my first publication, which means, unless I generate some unlikely second publication between now and my dissertation, I will look to the outside world like my specialty is ethics. Jobs in ethics are significantly difficult to find, from what I’ve been hearing, although that has to look better than having an area of specialization in god-knows-what-kinda-metaphysics. I could probably frame my project as fitting into the moral realism-antirealism debate. A bit of background reading (some of which I’ve already been doing), and that starts to look like a plausible AOS. Just to find something non-flaky to write on my C.V. would be wonderful.

I’ve been thinking about how badly I’d like to finish this program, and how people say that one ought to enjoy graduate school and this whole process. Despite my desire to get done with all of that, some of the notin that I ought to enjoy this actually makes sense. Unless I end up with a research position (which seems unlikely, and also undesirable right now), this is probably the last time that professionals that are well integrated in the tradition I am working in will actually be reading my work. And when one works in a field with so much specialization and background knowledge, it is rare that a non-professional will ever be able to read one’s work. After this program is up, I will likely have no more audience for this sort of thing. I will have undergraduate students - but at that point, I will be introducing them to these problems and helping them to get their footing, not engaging them with my own spin on these issues. Unless I commit to trying to remain integrated in the philosophical community (by going for a research job), I will be on the outside after this.  I do not get the sense that there is an in-between position here.

In many ways, I think I’m okay with that - not having to jump through academic and cultural hoops anymore. But then, I think of the sorts of conversations I am able to have with other philosophers - my supervisors, other graduate students - and that I will miss. Perhaps I can still remain in contact with many of these people, but such things require mutual effort, and often do not end up happening. But right now, and for the next year and a half, there are things going on that may be trying, but which one day I may very much miss. So despite feeling exhausted, a bit scared, and a lot uncertain, perhaps I really just ought to try to enjoy it now, and the memory of it when I’m on to the next stage in life is fuller and sweeter.

2008 03 24 Academia
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Surviving

Well, against all odds, I survived this past week. The workshops last weekend went well enough, though I also don’t feel like I was really at my best when it came to facilitating the workshops, but I also wasn’t awful. The lectures I was worried about in the class I TA for went better than I had expected. I put a whole lot of energy into preparation, and I think that the lectures ended up being reasonably helpful for the students, and I don’t think I looked like a fool up there either. So that was nice.

I’m almost there with my third comps paper, I may be done today, if not, then hopefully Monday. I’m at the point now where I have a complete draft where everything fits together, but I don’t think my argument is really all that it could be quite yet. There is a bit of new (good) pressure for this third paper. It’s written on a topic that my supervisor actually works directly on, so he knows a lot about the area - and when I told him what I was doing, he said the position that I was arguing was one he had never heard before, and which seemed quite plausible. He also said it would be the kind of idea that, if written up well, would make for a likely publication. To have a publication on my C.V. before finishing the program wasn’t something I had even really entertained hopes about. I don’t know that it would help me getting a teaching job, but I don’t think it would hurt.

I also received comments on my second paper, and that went about as well as I had expected - there will be some changes required, a few of them structural, a few of them shoring up some of the claims I make in the paper. Getting examined on that one may end up being quite brutal though - it’s the sort of sprawling, big picture philosophy that I love, but that the current climate in english speaking philosophy does not love. It will really surprise me if my examiners do not end up wanting revisions on that one. Que sera sera.

Overall, though, work on this and other stuff has really engulfed my life - I can’t believe that we are drawing near the end of March. I can’t wait to be done with it, though. I’m going to reward myself by buying a few books that I’ve been wanting after I’ve sent out my third paper. I’ve also got tons of library books that I’ve been waiting to read - though most of those are ultimately work related (for my dissertation). I’d love to finish up Hegel, though - now almost entirely because doing so will help me to better read Kierkegaard. But that sort of reading will have to be fit in spare moments - I long for the days when my program is over and I can start doing philosophy again.

2008 03 22 At the University
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