ironic truth
May 9, 2008 by elberry
Taken far enough, irony becomes a spiritual position. At this point, however, it is serious.
Kierkegaard’s odd and often formidable marriage of wit and severity is to do with his extreme irony. Perhaps it began as ‘an adult coping mechanism’; but it ended as a way of approaching infinity as a finite, mortal man. It is not surprising that he is often misunderstood. His difficult prose is a by-product of his fundamentally ironic standpoint: that is, he would not be easily understood, for that would be to misunderstand him. It is not, as with Theorist scum, that the difficult prose hides an intellectual void - it is rather that in order to really understand his philosophy, one must understand the man and the profound irony of his life and mind, and the effort of kenning his prose encourages this deeper understanding. Like Nietzsche, to seize an isolated aphorism is dangerous. For Kierkegaard, the truth is a difficult matter and one must be committed; as he wrote, faith is plunging into water 70,000 fathoms deep. His prose demands a heightened concentration; and in doing so is faithful to the exigence of truth.
To go to the other extreme, New Age books represent potboiler ‘wisdom’ that must be easy to understand, because its readership are appalled by difficulty of any kind. My mother, bless her, bought me just such a book for my birthday. i glanced through it, dutifully. It was full of things that were true but, somehow, too easy to apprehend; they slid through the mind without friction, without transformation.
i think here of Wallace Stevens’ “poetry must resist the intelligence almost successfully”, and conclude that New Age pseudo-insights like “we often create our own unhappiness, but blame others” or “if we could learn to love others others would love us” are useless truths, because one need not work for them. It is only when a saying arrests the reader, and he must strive to become equal to the thought, to transform himself, that he may become wise, or, at least, a little less foolish.
Wisdom literature need not be difficult and forbidding; but if it is easily read and easily forgotten, if the reader need not work to understand it, then it is useless; in much the same way that utterly undemanding exercise has negligible health benefits. If you want to be healthy, seek out hills & mountains. If you want to understand something of your life, seek out difficulty.
Good post. And so easy to apprehend!
Shit. i should have used more semi-colons.
enjoyed reading this, thank you.
New Age beliefs tend to become dogmas, maybe because their truths are simple ? but then, Hobbes e.g. stated he had founded the true political philosophy, and Aristoteles said just philosophers could be leaders, resp. leaders should be philosophers. it’s such a thin line between standing for what you believe in and opressing others.
it’s a pleasure to read Kierkegaard.
In defence of cheap new-agey insights and trite clichés of all kinds, they often do require work, and many (not all - I decline to defend those related to self-esteem) are worthy of respect if engaged seriously. Talk of, e.g., loving one another, the need for a caring society, not blaming others if your life sucks, is not inherently cheap and easy; it seems thus only because of its frequent disconnect from any actual action. The sin of 3×3″ Little Books of Newageyness is in turning potentially transformative precepts into disposable, nicely-packaged throwaway wisdom; and even then, the real problem is in the general audience which doesn’t expect the reader to make much effort implementing the wisdom he receives.
(1 John 2:7: “I am not writing you a new commandment, but an old one, which you have had since the beginning… yet, I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you” - the precepts are old ["He has showed you, O man, what is good - to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God"], but made new and transformative by being lived.)
“they often do require work (just of a different, nonintellectual kind)”, that is - difficult and transformative on levels other than the intellectual.
Also, my bookstore still hasn’t acquired the copy of Fear and Trembling I ordered a while back. I’ll have to go bother them about it.