21 June 2012
Discussed text: D.F. Wallace's Graduation Speech at Kenyon College
David Foster Wallace, in talking about the benefits of a liberal arts education, distinguished between two kinds of thinking. The first is the thinking that solely concerns the self: the I, me, and mine of everyday life, and the second is that which recognizes that all of us belong to one home. While the first is a sort of thoughtlessness, a kind of thinking that is selfish, the second is that which is thoughtful, mindful of the existence of the other and how it is related with the self.
It is on the second kind of thinking that reflection arises. To reflect is always to reflect on something outside, and while we are aware of it as a spectacle before ous, there is also a recognition of "I am here," of being part of that which we reflect upon. This tells us that to be thoughtful is to precisely get out of our minds.
The same goes with experience. Normally, we think of experience as "taking it in" (like the way we talk about experiencing food, experiencing a place, or experiencing some form of vice), but the deeper meaning of experience is to have gone out of yourself. It is going beyond our own thoughts and concerns and seeing, listening, and hearing the other. One cannot experience if we just think of our own selves, our own values, our own comfort zones. What is needed is for us to de-center, to travel outside ourselves, and pay attention to the fact that the world is not all about you.
This basic realization about experience breaks the notion that the philosopher is a person who is elsewhere and is not in the world. The person who does philosophy, who reflects on experience, is he who thinks of what goes beyond himself, who thinks of the whole humanity. The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins says that indeed, the mind hates fences, and always searches that lies outside it, which leads us to the conclusion that it is a certain passion in the life of the mind to get out of itself, a passion that should fuel us in our experiencing and reflecting.
That is why the philosopher necessarily takes time, having a certain urgency that, given that he will soon die, he strives to be truly alive by going out of himself, and to not take for granted that we are alive. D.F. Wallace tells us that we must live, in the same way that there is the imperative for us to seize the day: Carpe diem!
To be truly alive is to get out of ourselves and take time for things that we take for granted, the things that are obviously essential but, as Antoine de Saint-Exupery says, invisible to the eye. To waste time in important issues and things in our lives is to actually not waste time, time which the pettifogger would prefer to use for the "important" things.
The philosopher, therefore, is one who is rooted to the earth, aware of what he encounters in everyday life, thinks about it ("sieves it" in his intellect"), and says something about it. The one who is truly rooted in the earth is one who is not, in Wallace's words, "unconscious" of the life that they live; rather, they are the ones who are conscious of their own selves alongside others, conscious that we are conscious, and to be conscious is to rid ourselves of prejudices about ourselves in the world and to learn to look and look again in order to discover the world, ask questions, arrive at answers, and ask more questions.
In that respect, what separates the philosopher from the pettifogger in terms of the use of their freedom? While the pettifogger's life is pretty much programmed and dictated by his affirs, the philosopher, on the other hand is spontaneous, that is he is aware of the things that might surprise him, amaze him, and eventually allow him to engage in philosophical thinking towards action. The philosopher also needs some order in his life, but he is no "control freak." He is that which recognizes the true meaning of ex-perience ("going out of ourselves") as a surprise (from the French sur prise, "that which cannot be controlled"). This is precisely what makes us human: to be surprised with what is the unexpected, that which draws us to philosophical thinking and further action.
Given these, how then do we characterize the philosopher as a man of thought and action? We have already shown that he should be reflective as well as truly free, and the last and most important thing that he must be is that he recognizes that he is part of the whole, a member in the community of human beings who are equal and must enjoy the same fundamental rights and privileges. Doing philosophy is necessary because it is that which helps us realize that we are persons for others, knowing that life, thought, and action is not about the self, but it is about being social, acknowledging that he is fundamentally bound to others, responsible for them in every way possible. Yet it is also to be noted that philosophy is not a discipline that is based on authority. The philosopher does not certainly take for granted authority, inherited privilege, or established knowledge and procedures, for he/she thinks on his/her own, using his/her mind in order to think and communicate, not blindly following anyone who says "this is so and so."
All of these have been articulated by Wallace in his speech, and he in fact speaks about being reflective, aware, free, and critical as that which makes us human. But most of all, the true meaning of being human is to be truly compassionate, which involves attention, awareness effort, and true care about other people and being able to sacrifice for them for their own and not the self's sake, but for humanity. To be a philosopher, as a person of culture, does not mean becoming too engaged with books, art, films, and poetry. Rather, the real cultured person is able to be moved by the other towards compassion and love, to have a sense of responsibility and concern for the other, in contrast to the old, "sophisticated" person who has grown tired of life and sees nothing new in it.. That is why the philosopher recognizes that the gift of his very self is that which has to be given out precisely as it is, as a gift for the well-being of others. It is to recognize by something that we experience as the same as ourselves, but radically different from our very own selves. And the only thing that is necessary for realizing this gift is to recognize an determine the meaning of things that he puts within and outside it.
Greek mythology speaks of the carpenter Procrustes, who cut off the legs of men and women who are too tall to fit in the beds that he made. This goes the same for the pettifoggers and those who are not aware of their own selves. Instead of actually adjusting in order to fully experience things, they merely limit themselves and refuse to move on with life with new ways of looking at it. Are we those who repair our beds or cut out the legs of those who lie in it? Remember that as persons doing philosophy, the challenge is for us to fully experience things and reflect seriously upon them, in order for us to face the most important questions (and perhaps the most important answers) in our lives, and it is necessary for us to question, to think, and to act continuously in our pursuit of meaning and fulfillment as human persons.
And for this to happen, it is necessary that we remain to be filled with wonder and amazement with the things before us, and most importantly, to the other, for the very measure with which we will be measured does not lie on the things that we have done for ourselves, but that which we have done out of compassion for the other.
So far, what have we done to the other?
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