Byways of Thought

To whom are we supposed to pass the flame?

Our students.

Do you think they can read this stuff? Every generation is worse than the one before. Lower. How long before total illiteracy sets in?

Not long now.

People will always want intellectual stimulation. They’ll always need an intellectual workout.

They’ll have podcasts for that. There’ll be documentaries. Profiles of thinkers, domesticating thinkers. They’ve got it all worked out.

 

There be introductory books to introductory books in the future. And introductions to those in turn. Textbooks explaining textbooks. Idiots guides to idiot’s guides. How low do we have to sink?

 

All of Blanchot condensed into a sidebar. Rosenzweig summed up in a sentence. All of twentieth century European thought summed up in a chapter.

 

And the world, falling apart around us. And none of these thinkers being of any help in understanding how the world is falling apart around us. None of the old European philosophical culture bearing up this particular phase of the world falling apart around us.

 

The only thing they’ll study is advanced technocracy. Is technical solutions. Pre-prepared! Pro-forma!

And they’ll know nothing of study, not really. Of the time of study. Of study’s unfolding. Of study’s gradualism. Of the slow coming-to-understanding.

They’ll know nothing of patient thought-ascent. Of thought-climbs, slow and steady. Of cumulative work. Of thought-labours day after day.

And they’ll know nothing of sudden illumination. Of thought-fireworks, lighting up our idiots’ skies. Of Catherine’s wheels that spin, even for us.

Our dimness doesn’t have to be dim, not always. We can look upwards. We can honour what needs to be honoured. The song of the humanities reaches even us.

 

Our byways of thought – each with their own. The path through books, through articles, that is our own. Our thinker’s autobiography told through the ideas of others.

Ideas that drew us. That we wanted to string together on our own bracelet. That we want to pin to our fridge door.

Dresser crabs: that’s what we are. Made of bits of philosophies and ideas and  biographies.

 

Secret passageways from book to book. Slipways. Tunnels. Sinkholes to other, deeper levels. Windings. Reading-paths taken and untaken. Drop-shafts. Cavings-in. Reading-collapses.

 

Books behind us. Books before us. Books on the left side, and books on the right side.

 

Our favourite books. Our portals. Our doorways.

 

We’re not entirely lost. We’re not completely forsaken. We have … instincts. We have an orientation. We know what’s wrong, which is something.

 

We’ve experienced our fallenness. We know it. That’s what sets us apart. It’s the way an academic can admit that their work is average. There was some scientific study. Academics always rate their work as better than average or much better than average. It’s never just average or, heaven forefend, not very good.