The way we looked upwards at philosophy – that impressed Cicero. The way we held philosophy above everything. As drowning people look upwards to be saved.
You need philosophy more than they do: that’s what she said. And what you want from philosophy is greater, too.
Would-be thinkers are the best thinkers, Cicero said, on another occasion. Thinkers who do not presume they think. For whom thinking itself is a problem, and never straightforward. Thinkers who make a problem of philosophy – of what philosophy is. Of what thought is.
But we’re half mad, we told her. We’re deranged, we told her. Better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion, she said, quoting Kierkegaard. The passion of thought is to discover something that thought itself cannot think, Cicero said, quoting Kierkegaard again.
Work in Progress 