nietzsche

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Too much wisdom literature.

December 8, 2009 | 3 comments

gracian1208
A few years ago, my friend sent me a copy of Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom. It is, by the way, excellent reading. It calls to mind Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations, and I mean that in a very good way.  I was reading it a bit last night, and of course, I was struck by just how damned smart and relevant the maxims still are today.

I was also struck by how I was reading them: as interesting bits of information.  Not wisdom — interesting paragraphs.  I thought that, perhaps, it was the text.  Maybe it’s not as awesome as I thought.  But I’ve noticed in recent months and years that I seem to gloss over even my favorites like Thoreau, the Buddha, Emerson, Nietzsche, et al. Am I getting dense?  I don’t think so — though that is certainly a possibility, and there are certainly people who would say so.  (Ahem.)  I suspect that this is a result of studying philosophy for my entire adult life.

On the one hand, I think I might be somewhat numb to wisdom literature!  I’ve read so many wise things that other people have written and acted on so little of it that it’s all just a bunch of clever words most of the time.  When Aurelius reminds us that stupid people act stupidly and that we waste time and energy being upset about it, I still get upset when selfish people act that way.  How else do selfish people act?  Selfishly!

On the other hand, my philosophical undertakings have largely been academic ones.  By that I mean that I also read and have read immense amounts of bullshit.  We don’t act on philosophy; we write about it! And then we read about it and then write about that.  And then read that and write about what’s been written about, etc.  I think a part of me suspects that all wisdom and philosophy that we can read or learn from other people is just bullshit.

Am I claiming that a piece of philosophy that no one acts on is bullshit?  Yes.  Read some of my graduate papers that pissed off some of my professors (I was, after all, attacking their profession).  I’ve felt that way for a long time, and that’s a large part of the reason I decided not to pursue a career in academic philosophy. Why, then, did I pursue a doctorate?  I don’t know.  You imagine that you might be a different case, that you can keep your integrity and still gitterdunn.  Maybe I thought I would feel differently or that I might be wrong.  Maybe I was just too stupid and stubborn to stop.  That’s certainly the case now, where I’m finishing my PhD just to finish it and justify my time, energy and debt. (And, for the record, I got offered a spot teaching my own class at the exact school I always dreamed of teaching at just after my dissertation prospectus defense.  So, ahem, for the record, I didn’t simply wimp out of the search for a job.  I might have hurt the feelings of someone I care about who was looking out for me, too. I don’t know if I ever mentioned this.)

What’s my point?  I don’t know.  Maybe that the bullshit that gets forced on people in the academic discipline of philosophy poisons us against actually acting in a wiser fashion because the bullshit gets mixed in with the “real” wisdom (assuming that some of philosophy is actually wisdom literature, which I think is true).  I have known tons and tons of philosophers, and only a scant few of them acted like wiser people for their study of philosophy.  More likely, we just turn into snarky smartasses.  I wish I could count myself among the people who have studied philosophy and thereby act wiser for it.  Maybe it’s not philosophy.  Maybe it’s me.  Maybe it’s a flaw in the “type” of person who chooses to study philosophy for a living, since so few of us do anything about philosophy.  But something’s amiss.

Working in tides.

October 6, 2009 | 3 comments

tide1009
I am not a constant worker. That is, I cannot sit for 8 hours doing the same thing. I never have been able to. Instead, I can usually get done said amount of work in a fraction of the time, with plenty of time for playing/relaxing. (Admitting this just might be why I got accused of being arrogant.) I work in spurts. But I don’t understand why my admitting a weakness (i.e., combination of a short attention span and just plain laziness) leads to charges of arrogance (ahem).

Anyway. School work. It usually happens that I do all my reading. Research. Notes. Outline. Bam, I sit down and write a seminar-length paper in one sitting, that needs minimal editing. My secret is thinking about it for a long time first, so that I really am only going through the formality of typing and composing actual sentences around the cute aphorisms I’m storing in my brain.  Really.  I’m so lazy and have so much trouble paying attention to anything that I have trick myself into working.  No shit.

I tricked myself into cranking out incredible amounts of work today leading to a robust introduction and first chapter of my dissertation.  I found delicious kernels of Pragmatism not only in Emerson, but also in Thoreau.  Textual references that are not bullshit and mis-quoted and taken out of context.  So instead of beefing up the scholarship on my definition of Pragmatism by quoting James scholars, I found a dialogue between Peirce, James, Emerson and Thoreau on the relation of thought and action.  Delicious.

I don’t know why I’m writing this.  I’m exhausted and just enjoyed a nice beer and should be reading a trashy novel before hitting the sack.  I suppose it’s largely because I spent the last few months of 2006 and the first half of 2007 researching and writing the damned thing without ever talking about it with anyone aside from my wife, who was also burdened with writing her own.

What is my dissertation about?

An exploration of the possible usefulness of hate.  Via an exploration of how pervasive hate is and what Pragmatism means to me; a discussion of Nietzsche’s view of hate using all of his published philosophical writing; proposed solutions for how to make hate useful.  Sounds sunny and easy, no?

I will admit for the first time to myself that I spent entirely too much time reading and reflecting on and writing about Nietzsche.  But they want scholarship.  Still, I spent over three months doing nothing but reading and taking notes on Nietzsche.  Do I really get him?  I’m sure some of my colleagues would say that I do not because I am not entirely familiar with the scholarship on him.  Somewhat familiar with it and equally bored by it.  I would, arrogantly, reply that I am familiar with Nietzsche’s work, and I couldn’t give less of a shit what some deconstructionist in a cafe’ thinks about Freddy’s relationship with his mother or how this or that “scholar” had reduced all of the multifarious things Nietzsche said to one principle, phobia or sexual deviance.

That one might posit that another person might not “get” a philosopher because one spent more time reading the primary material than the secondary material is one of the reasons that I am leaving (and in most ways have already left) academic philosophy behind. Behind in an “I’m better than that” sense?  No, don’t get your panties in a bunch.  If reading philosophy journals and going to conferences is your thing, that’s cool.  You do yours, and I’ll do mine.

I can’t help but think that there’s a point where we’re supposed to stop reading about philosophy and reading people who write about it and what other people have written about what these people have written and start, you know, doing it.  Or is it really just an academic discipline and not a mode of living?

Don’t answer that.

Nietzsche notes.

April 3, 2008 | 5 comments


Nietzsche was semi-quoted on “Law and Order: SVU” this year, and I was like, “Nietzsche? Oh, yeah, I remember him. Wrote a dissertation that was largely about him, or, at least, dealing with him.” I mean, Nietzsche is hugely quotable and all.  And I did spend months doing nothing but studying him, hate, and power.

I keep forgetting that I have a dissertation to edit and send to my committee and have since the end of last summer. Honestly, I’ve been putting it off because, once I send it, I’m unemployed. Now, I tell myself, I am a student. Even though, of course, in practice and in my own mind, my student days are effectively over. Still, it will be nice to get this out of my life and over-with. And for everyone to have the “option” of calling me Doctor.  It might have been nice if I had realized that I implied I was still a full-time student on every job application I have sent minus one.  Damn it.

I have a stack of Moleskine Cahiers with Nietzsche notes in them from last year.  Most of them have some of my favorite quotations on them, like these do.  Those notebooks worked well, especially since I spent last fall in a semi-nomadic fashion, much like Herr Nietzsche himself.  Not that I had any great thoughts long the way.

Please do keep any “Nietzsche hated women” and “Nietzsche was an anti-Semite” comments to yourself, lest you reveal that you do not, in fact, understand Nietzsche at all. Or, at least, have not bothered to read any of his books.  And if you feel the need to do it, don’t troll.  Come back and answer for yourself.  Nietzsche would.