Why do I always bring Hello! with me on our train journeys?, W. wonders. Why do I insist on leaving it in his study when I come to stay?
'Who are all these people?', he wants to ask me, when he sees me reading. 'Why do they matter to you?' Because they do matter to me, that much is clear, W. says. The way I read. The way I nod my head over its glossy pages, like a Jew over the Talmud. He sees, as never before, a look of absolute seriousness on my face. He sees it there: an intensity of focus that only the Husserl archives would warrant.
‘What are you looking for?’, W. says, as I turn the pages. What, in Oscar dresses and airbrushed actresses? What in the photospreads of Queen Rania of Jordan?
'That look on your face … That raptness …', W. says. He's seen it before, when, in the early hours, we pore in wonder over the pages of Rosenzweig, Weil and Kierkegaard. — 'How is it possible that a human being could have such thoughts?', one of us will exclaim. ‘How is it possible …?’
In the end, I admire Rosenzweig, Weil and Kierkegaard only as I admire the celebrities in the gossip magazines I buy. Their brilliance is only the equivalent of a celebrity's beauty; their integrity the fervour of that of an ingénue’s rise to fame. But this means I admire them only because of what I lack. My stupidity places them at an infinite and glamorous remove.
It's different with W., he says. He's that little bit cleverer than me, that little bit farther ahead, and it's enough that his non-intelligence, unlike mine, is commensurable with real intelligence, his non-integrity with real integrity. At least he has the glimmerings of the faith of Rosenzweig, Weil and Kierkegaard, W. says. At least he has an idea of belief.
He, when he writes of them, leaves his thinkers intact in their greatness, their distance. They remain remote and brilliant in the sky of thought. But when I write of them? I make others doubt, W. says. I make others despair. Are Rosenzweig, Weil and Kierkegaard really so worthwhile if Lars is writing on them?, they ask themselves, looking at me. Were we wrong all along if Lars thinks they're right?
Lars Iyer's Blog 