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.)Â 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.
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