The philosopher is always a not-yet philosopher. A not even philosopher.
The philosopher can never coincide with herself. Philosophy is the ache – the desire for philosophy. Philosophy is the full knowledge that being a philosophy is impossible. That you’ll never become what you seek to become.
Philosophy is the perpetual as not. You never philosophise as a philosopher. And we knew that.
Which is why idiocy is so important. The experience of idiocy.
Idiocy belongs to philosophy. It’s the most intimate part of philosophy. It’s the core of the philosophy. And weren’t we the truest proof of that?
Always experiencing ourselves as having nothing to say. As having no ideas. No means by which to express them. As never being entitled to philosophise.
Never wanting to pass ourselves off as philosophers. Never playing the part of the philosophical master.
The point is to affirm idiocy. Not to see it as a deficiency. Not to see ourselves as lacking anything.
The completeness of our stupidity: that’s what we expressed in our best moments. In our joy. Stupidity without apology: that’s what we became. The happiness of idiocy: it is possible to speak of that? Stupidity attained. Lived.
Dwelling in idiocy. A whole ethos of idiocy, a way of perceiving and engaging with the world, with ourselves, with others …
Perfect idiots. Beautiful idiots. Beautiful in our idiocy and because of it.
You have to know how to read idiocy. There’s a whole idiocy’s hermeneutics.
Perhaps it takes a non-idiot to understand it. A non idiot standing outside it. Who’s not part of it. Who doesn’t dwell within it.
Which is why Cicero never let herself reach the plane of total drunkenness. Why she held herself back. Why she never entered idiocy’s immanence. Idiocy’s completeness. She could never disappear into idiocy without remainder. As we could! As we did, almost nightly!
Weeping idiocy. With tears of joy. With tears if idiot-joy, running down our cheeks.
Idiocy’s the answer.
Idiocy’s the question. A duh. A scratching the head.
Great is erring, that’s what Heidegger wrote. Great is the uh-ing of the perfect idiot. Great is the duh-ring of the truly stupid.
Work in Progress 