What was European philosophy for us but a way of seeking to be crushed? What was it but the dark planet toward which we wanted to be drawn. To be crushed by its gravity! To be pulverised against it!
To be drawn into the dark orbit of Phenomenology of Spirit. Of the Science of Logic. Of the complete works of Edmund Husserl. Sublimely great. Inescapably great. Vast – unimaginably so. And who were we, by comparison?
The chance of our destruction: that’s what we sensed in philosophy? Lured by it, like those weird creatures of the sea-depths, with their dangling lights. We were drawn to Kant-fish and Feuerbach-fish and Husserl-fish. To be swallowed by them!
And didn’t we love the strangest fish? Weren’t we drawn to the deepest, darkest fish of all?
The dream of being swallowed by some creature of the deeps. As they’d swallow up krill. Plankton. Totally unnoticed. Totally unimportant.
Dying as irrelevancies. As incidentals. As no ones and nothings. As flies or fleas. As infusoria in the water. We’d bother no one in our dying. We wouldn’t cry out. Wouldn’t raise our voices. Because we weren’t worthy of their attention, the great books to which we were drawn. Because they shouldn’t be disturbed, the great tomes that lay like wrecks on the seafloor …
Work in Progress 