Despite my long involvement with politics, my eleemosynary
efforts through University Scholarships for South African Students, my
administrative term of office as Graduate Program Director of the W. EM. B.
DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies, I am at heart a man of the
book. I am never happier than when
reading the Critique of Pure Reason, A Treatise
of Human Nature, The Gorgias, or the
Philosophical Fragments. This
morning, deeply distressed by the election results and exasperated with my
fellow Americans, I turned away from affairs of the public arena and began my
long-planned re-reading of Volume One of Capital. As I began the series of Prefaces and
Afterwards written by Marx himself or Engels to the first, second, third, and
fourth German editions, the English edition, and the French edition, my mood
lightened and I found that I could again take deep, satisfying breaths. Escapism?
Absolutely. An ascent into the
ideological superstructure? No
doubt. But how pleasant to spend time
with Marx rather than with Ted Cruz, or Thom Tillis, or Mitch McConnell -- or,
for that matter, with Chris Matthews, or even with the estimable Rachel Maddow.
When I have worked hard on a book and have eventually
written an essay or a book about it, I tend to forget all the passages that do
not play a central role in my interpretation.
Re-reading Capital, my copy of
which is filled with underlinings and marginal comments in red ink, I have repeatedly
come upon paragraphs that had totally slipped my mind. It was a delight to revisit them, although
rather troubling to realize that even a semester-long course is too little time
to mention them all.
Perhaps I should propose that the department make this a year-long
seminar.
What is the first passage that does play a central role?
ReplyDeleteThe first sentence of chapter one, as it happens.
ReplyDeleteI can see the ontological with the highlighting of appearance or presentation, and the political economy in the focus on wealth and commodities, but should I also be seeing some sign of irony?
ReplyDeleteIt's great to hear you (a professional philosopher) say that you tend to forget the passages that don't play a role in your interpretation in your essay/book.
ReplyDeleteI'm a mathematician, but I take a philosophy class each semester in the liberal arts college where I'm a faculty member. Three years of coursework, and the only stuff I remember (somewhat) well is what went in my term paper.
I also find that reading philosophy serves as a great escape. In the class I'm taking this semester, we finished reading Plato's Phaedrus and are now reading Philosophical Fragments (the theme is epistemology and the divine).
The Philosophical Fragments is one of my all-time favorite books. Enjoy!
ReplyDelete