Parentheses

It has been quite a while since I made a new post here, but my excuse is that school has been really busy.  I don’t really have anything earth-shattering (although that’s probably true every time  I post), but I thought I would put this quote up that I ran across while feeling a bit of nostalgia for one of the few things I have read.

If God held all truth enclosed in his right hand, and in his left hand the one and only ever-striving drive for truth, even with the corollary of erring forever and ever, and iff he were to say to me: Choose! – I would humble fall down at his left hand and say: Father, give! Pure truth is indeed only for you alone!

That is, as you may have guessed, from Kierkegaard – Concluding Unscientific Postscripts, but it is a quote from Lessing (wikipedia), whom the author of C.U.P. has a great deal of respect for.

The following is a quote from Kierkegaard, except not really.  It’s from “Either/Or” which was ‘edited’ by Victor Eremita, and he (the editor) claims to have found this manuscript.  Thus, Kierkegaard’s pseudonym (Victor) does not even claim to have written it, so in a way it’s 2 steps removed from Kierkegaard.  Anyway, on to the quote.

Let others complain that the times are evil.  I complain that they are wretched, for they are without passion.  People’s thoughts are as thin and fragile as lace, and they themselves as pitiable as lace-making girls.  The thoughts of their hearts are too wretched to be sinful.  It is perhaps possible to regard it as sin for a worm to noursich such thoughts, but not for a human being, who is created in thhe image of God.  Their desires are staid and dull, their passions drowsy.  They perform their duties, these mercenary souls, but just like Jews, they indulge in trimming the coins a little; they think that, even though our Lord keeps ever so orderly an account book, they can still manage to trick him a little.  Fie on them!  That is why my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare.  There one still feels that those who speak are human beings; there they hate, there they love, there they murder the enemy, curse his descendants through all generations — there they sin.

I really don’t have anything to add or a conclusion to draw, I just  thought somebody might like the quote.

Often, I like to think that the truth somehow ‘calls’ to people, and that if the truth is presented to them and they truly understand it, that they would accept it as truth.  In my more lucid moments, however, I realize that this is a rather overly-optimistic view of the world and mankind.  Kierkegaard, in The Sickness Unto Death, formulates it this way:

“It is far from being the case that men regard the relationship to truth, relating themselves to the truth, as the highest good, and it is very far from being the case that they Socratically regard being in error in this manner as the worrst misfortune – the sensate in them usually far outweighs their intellectuality.   For example, if a man is presumably happy, imagines himself to be happy, although considered in the light of truth he is unhappy, he is usually far from wanting to be wrenched out of his error . . . Imagine a house with a basement, first floor, and second floor planned so that there is or is supposed to be a social distinction between the occupants according to floor.  Now, if what it means to be human is compared with such a house, then all too regrettably the sad and ludicrous truth about the majority of people is that in their own house they prefer to live in the basement.  Every human being is a psychical-physical synthesis intended to be spirit; this is the building, but he prefers to live in the basement, that is, in sensate categories.  Moreover, he not only prefers to live in the basement – no, he loves it so much that he is indignant if anyone suggests that he move to the superb upper floor that stands vacant and at his disposal, for he is, after all, living in his own house.”

It seems fairly obvious, to me at least, that Kierkegaard is correct in his estimation of people  in general, and if I was honest with myself, I’m sure that, at times, I have chosen to ignore the truth and instead dwell in that which made me think I was happy.  Perhaps instead of desiring truth, it would be more accurate of people to say that they desire ease and comfort.  That, however, is too large a claim to substantiate right now.

Leo Strauss, in his article “Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed,” writes: “May not a statement assume a different shade of meaning by being cast in the form of a conditional sentence?  And is it not possible to hide the conditional nature of such a sentence by turning it into a very long sentence and, in particular, by inserting into it a parenthesis of some length?”

In that article, and also “Persecution and the Art of Writing,” Strauss claims that authors who wish to write a truth, but also conceal the truth from some, have to write in a certain way, so as to only allow the ones who are able to find the truth to discover it.  The Guide for the Perplexed was written by Moses Maimonides, and he himself claims that this is what he is seeking to do.  “For my purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed.”  His purpose in this is to communicate the “mysteries of the Torah” without communicating them to the masses.

Kierkegaard also touches upon this issue, and forgive the long quotation, but why should I write something when it was already written better?  “Suppose, then, that someone wanted to communicate the following conviction: truth is inwardness; objectively there is no truth, but the appropriation is thee truth.  Suppose he had enough zeal and enthusiasm to get it said, because when people heard it they would be saved.  Suppose he said it on every occasion and moved not only those who sweat easily but also the tough people – what then?  Then there would certainly be some laborers who had been standing idle in the marketplace and only upon hearing this call would go forth to work in the vineyard – to proclaim this teaching to all people.  And what then? Then he would have contradicted himself even more, just as he had from the beginning, because the zeal and enthusiasm for getting it said and getting it heard were already a misunderstanding.  The main point was indeed to become understood, and the inwardness of the understanding would indeed be that the single individual would understand this by himself.  Now he had even gone so far as to obtain barkers, and a barker of inwardness is a creature worth seeing.”

In that section, Kierkegaard (or, more accurately, Johannes Climacus) is discussing the fact that, for at least some ideas, indirect communication is the only true means of communicating them, because if they are communicated directly, the whole essence of what is communicated has been lost.

It would seem then, that perhaps the most important of  things to be communicated are those communicated in the parentheses, the footnotes, and the passing remarks.  Life, as well as simply communicating can also be seen this way.  Perhaps the most important things in life are those small parentheses, the seemingly insignificant moments and those things that one does not even think about when they happen.