I am glad you have been keeping busy while I have been caring for my wife. A great deal is happening in the world both in the United States and abroad but the circle of my attention has narrowed until it encompasses little more than the apartment in which I live. Oh, I keep up with the news, but it is difficult to believe that my offhand pontificating matters very much when the person closest to me in the world needs me so completely.
Yesterday morning, I was lying in bed awake at 4 AM trying
to resist our cat’s demands that she be fed, and I realized after a bit that I
was engaged in giving a lecture in my head on the financial structure of
Continuing Care Retirement Communities or CCRCs, as they are known. Lord knows,
nobody has ever asked me to explain that little matter to them but there I was,
contentedly sorting the matter out in my head and explaining it to an imaginary
audience.
It was borne in upon me, once again, that for my entire life this has
been what I most enjoy doing: taking something initially puzzling or complex or
confused and thinking it through until it is so clear to me that I can explain
it as simply as I would explain the plot of Jack and the Beanstalk or, for that
matter, The Critique of Pure Reason. I have of course been politically active
and much of my writing is ideologically tendentious but that is not really what
I care about most deeply. What makes me happiest and most fulfilled is to
clarify something in my mind and then explain it to people so they can see, as
I do, its simplicity and conceptual beauty.
I have always thought that it is that desire that makes me a
philosopher, regardless of the discipline or sphere of human behavior from
which I draw the ideas that I think through, clarify, and explain. I have never
much cared whether people agree with me but it has always been enormously
important to me that they find what I say clear and simple.
That is why I love to teach and it is why I am so looking
forward to returning to the classroom, perhaps for the very last time, next
fall. The death of Todd Gitlin somehow brought home to me that I do not have
much time left and I would like to spend at least some of it teaching
4 comments:
It's a pleasure to see you blogging again. I hope that your wife's recovery process is going well.
It is good to hear from you, and like Wallerstein, I trust Suzie's recovery is proceeding apace. I think what is required to be an intellectual in any discipline is the need (compulsion?) to understand something and then to convey that understanding to others.
I hope your home life calms down and everything goes back to something closer to normal.
I really feel like I understand what you mean about the wondrous feeling you get just sorting something out in your head until it's clear, so much so that it can be taught to another with ease. That really struck me, and I don't feel alone in thoughts I've only recently been having on the subject. Thank you for sharing.
I hope you can upload your next teaching venture in YouTube or wherever as we don't all live in America and so would love to be there too.
Thank you and take care please.
NAT p.
Enjoying your opening lecture on ideological critique (from January of 2016) and that's how I found your blog. As fate would have it, you posted this entry just yesterday. As I'm in the process of preparing a lecture for Wednesday, I was struck by this line: "What makes me happiest and most fulfilled is to clarify something in my mind and then explain it to people so they can see, as I do, its simplicity and conceptual beauty." For me, Dr. Wolff, you defined the very heart of the act of teaching. And even though I've been in the classroom for more than 20 years, it was an aha moment for me. So, I simply wanted to comment here to say thank you for the gift of this perspective. But I would be remiss if I didn't also acknowledge the struggle that you and your wife are experiencing. Wishing both of you peace and a way forward. Regards from Austin, Texas.
Post a Comment