Infinite Judgement

W. confides that he thinks he's on the brink of an idea. He's never had an idea before, so he doesn't quite know what it's like. But he thinks this is it: he's on the brink of an idea; a new horizon is opening before him. Have I ever had an idea?, he asks. Of course not, he says, why is he asking. Have you ever thought you were on the brink of an idea, and that people would haul you up on their shoulders and carry you around, cheering? 

Of you course I never thought I'd have an idea for a moment, did I?, W. says. I actually repel ideas and intelligent thought, W. says. Never for a moment would I be capable of thinking, W. says. Not for one moment!

When he was young, W. was sure that one day, if he worked hard enough, he'd have an idea. He lived in only one room of a house, in which there was only a bed and a work table. A bed and desk, W. emphasises. He rarely left it, his room, W. says. He worked night and day. Reading and writing were all that mattered.

What happened? He discovered drinking, says W., and smoking. He came late to both, but when he discovered drinking and smoking that was it. But he also wonders whether he began drinking and smoking from a sense of disappointment, from the knowledge he'd never have an idea and that there was no point in going on, he says. Yes, that's what happened, W. says: disappointment, and then drinking.

Since then, he's lived in the ruins of his impression of himself as someone capable of having ideas. He's felt ill for years, says W., which on top of his drinking and general disappointment may have prevented him from having an idea (until now), or be the result of him having an idea (until now). But W. thinks he may be at the beginnings of an idea. At its rudiments, he says.

W. points out a strip of trees from the window, which looks towards Plymouth and the sea. It's ancient woodland, he tells me. That's all that's left of it, that strip, he says, which runs right up to Dartmoor. There's a species of tree unique to the area that grows there: the Plym pear, he says. You can't eat the pears, though, they're like crabapples.

Why has he brought me up here? Why this vista from the staffroom window all the way towards the glistening sea? Infinite judgement, he says, mysteriously. That's my idea. Infinite – judgement. It's from Cohen, he says. Well, it's from Cohen's reading of Kant.

W. has been sending me his notes on Cohen for months. He barely understands a word of Cohen, W. has always admitted. In fact, he is singularly unqualified to read Cohen, lacking any understanding of mathematics, which is essential, or any real religious feeling.

Infinite judgement. Whatever does it mean? W.'s not sure, but nevertheless, he feels he's on to something. He's not sure, he says, whether he has made a genuine breakthrough, or whether it is all nonsense. Is he at the summit of his creativity or the peak of his idiocy?