Lars Iyer's Blog

Really, the thinker is only ever the servant of thought, W. says.

Really, the thinker can only sink to his knees before thought, he says.

In the end, thought is a kind of assault, W. says. To think, really think, is to be struck a blow from without.

The real philosopher has philosophical dreams, W. says. Leibniz dreamt of monads, and Spinoza of infinite substance. Heidegger dreamt of the Being of beings, and Levinas of the face of the Other.

He only dreams of me, W. says. What does that mean?

We think with our tears, without our sadnesses, W. says. We think with our strangenesses and idiosyncrasies. We think from our stubbornness and pride. We think from our humiliations and compromises. In the end, only we could have our thoughts.

Sometimes, W. believes an idea is lying in wait for him. Sometimes, he believes it's out there, his idea, the idea that will let his life make sense at last.

What is the opposite of philosophy?, W. wonders. Schwarmerei – enthusiasm? Fanaticism or fundamentalism? W. ponders for a moment. – 'You', he says. 'You are the opposite of philosophy'.

W. dreams that one day thought will ennoble him, that it will touch him on both shoulders with its sword. Arise, Sir W., thought will say. Arise, philosopher.

W. dreams of a kind of group thought, he says. To think as a shoal might, or a flock of birds. To be part of a scintillation of thought, like light spreading itself across the water. To bow one's head with others …

In the end, thought is shy, W. says. You mustn't disturb it with your din.

We must stalk our ideas like a hunter of old, W. says. A hunter who becomes what he hunts. Who dresses in its skin, who moves like it and thinks like it. Who becomes-buffalo, or becomes-auroch. A hunter who asks permission of the beast to hunt it, and offers it to the heavens when he slits its thought.

To think is to stray. To think is to err greatly: who was it who said that?, W. wonders. Well, there's erring and erring. There's straying and straying.

In the end, thought will run you through with its sword, W. says.

Thought is the hangman, your hangman, W. says. Thought has its noose ready, just for you.

His dream of thought, his thought, calling him home, W. says.

In a sense, the thought precedes the thinker, waiting for him, W. says. In a sense …

W. dreams of the thought that he might habve, which awaits him at the end of his Denkweg, his thought-path.

But he knows that the path to thought is never linear. That you never come to thought through some kind of methodical process.

Thought comes from without, W. says. Thought reaches you from outside.

It is oinly when you wander from the path, that thought comes. Only when a vista suddenly opens, when your thought-path opens into a glade, that thought becomes possible.

If only we could sleep, really sleep, W. says. If only we could rest.

W. dreams of the profound slumber from which we would rise reborn, ready for the morning, ready for work. He dreams of the great day that would follow our night of rest, and of the great ideas that would flash above us like diurnal stars.

How is it still alive in him, the belief that he might wake into genius, W. says. How is it that he still believes, despite everything, that he is a man of thought?

If he were just to work hard enough, W. tells himself. If he were just to wake early enough, study enough and read enough … What, what then?

Thought might be possible, W. says. He might be able to overcome his idiocy.

What is philosophy?, that is W.'s question. It's the question every philosopher has to ask, late in life.

What is philosophy? What have I been doing all along?: To answer these questions is to try to make sense of your struggles at last. To redeem them.

Ah, the life of a philosopher. Was it all worth it? Where has it led him? W. thinks of Rutger Hauer's great speech in Bladerunner:

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears, in rain. Time to die …

Well, he's seen things too, W. says. Great things. That's what you can never explain to anyone.

The word, philosopher, is an honorific, W. says. It's a title that can only be bestowed by others. No one should ever call himself a philosopher. No one has the right.

It's like having a laurel wreath placed on your head, being called a philosopher. It's like having a garland of flowers placed round your neck. Who would ever crown himself a philosopher? Who would ever hang flowers around his own neck?

In the end, thought is dread, W. says. It is indistinguishable from dread.

In the end, thought is only the absence of all hope placed in the possibility of thought, W. says.

In the end, the thinker is only an obstacle to thought. The thinker is only a hindrance to thinking, W. says.

In the end, we think only when we abandon thinking, all efforts at thinking, W. says. When we've been abandoned by thinking in turn.

We think only when thought has turned its back on us, just as we have turned our backs on thought.

Who thinks?, W. says. No one thinks. The thinker become no one, that no one who is there thinking instead of you …

The passion of thinking, W. says. The experience of thinking. That's what he wants to think.

To double up the act of thinking. To think thinking in turn. To give the act (the passion) of thinking some kind of solidity, some kind of density …

Ah, but how to catch thinking unawares? How to surprise thinking at its thinking?

We must experience our thinking, which is to say, the impossibility of thinking, W. says.

Do I know, really know, what the word experience means?, he asks. It means to suffer, to undergo. It means to be passive with respect to what is undergone. It means an alteration, a kind of passion. At its heart, the word experience means the same as miracle, only that. It means the impossible, which is to say, the imexperienceable. Nothing but that!

We can only experience what we cannot possibly experience, W. says. We can only think the impossibility of thinking.

We must think against ourselves, W. says, that first of all. We must, as thinkers, despise ourselves and calumny ourselves.

We must think from our shortcomings, and think only of our shortcomings, he says. We must think from the impossibility of thinking, and think only of the impossibility of thinking.

We must think from our failure, from our finitude, and think of nothing but our failure, of our finitude, W. says.

The last thought concerns the impossiblity of thinking, of ever thinking, W. says.

The last thought marks the uncrossable distance between thought and its object, and the impossibility of correspondence or corelation, he says. The last thought concerns the failure of our thinking and the fatuousness of our ambitions.

The last thought is really a thought against thinking, W. says, against the imposture of every thought, and the whole tradition of thinking. It is a thought against the imposture of the thinker, and the very effort of thought.

But is it not, for that reason, the truest of thoughts, the thought that all thoughts aim at?

That there is thinking: how many times has W. meditated on that phrase? That there is thinking at all, that we have been permitted some leeway, some chance to lift ourselves from the life of the animal – isn't that the great surprise?, W. says. Isn't that the miracle?

Sometimes, he believes thinking to be a kind of curse, he says. Sometimes, the desire to think, the drive to think, seems like sheer perversity, sheer waywardness, and W. envies the base stupidity of animals, the silence of grass, the quiet growth of mushrooms in the forest glade.

But at other times, he knows that these same animals, these plants, are redeemed by thinking, that it is their only chance.

We think when we cannot think, W. says, aphoristically. When it's quite impossible for us to think.

We think only when we've reached the end of all our attempts to think, when we've exhausted thinking. Only then – in the final hour, right before the end – might thought be possible.

It's only when you've entirely given up the possibility of thinking that you can think, W. says.

We think when we no longer believe in our power to think, and we no longer believe in thinking. We think when we've forgotten what thinking is, and what ambition we might once have had as thinkers.