My non-intelligence. My non-integrity. My non-belief. The non- in each case is not merely privative, W. says. Not merely a lack of intelligence, or a lack of integrity. My non-belief is a desecration of belief, he says, my non-integrity a desecration of integrity. My intelligence a desecration of everything intelligence means.
'How stupid you are!', W. says. 'How measurelessly, infinitely stupid. How corrupt!' W. shakes his head. My non-belief is far beyond his. It's fallen into itself, collapsed, like a black hole. And it threatens to draw everything along with it. My non-integrity threatens to draw his into its abyss; my non-intelligence is the black sun around which W.'s revolves in a decaying orbit.
And if there are those we admire for their intelligence, integrity and belief, it is with the risk that they, too, despite their same intelligence, integrity and belief, will be dragged across the event-horizon of my non-intelligence, non-integrity and non-belief. Must he really fear for the oeuvres of Kierkegaard, Rosenzweig and Weil? Must he really fear for their reputation as I, like an idiot, begin to write on them?
Lars Iyer's Blog 