This is nearly three hours late, but hey, it’s still Monday.
Image: It is evening. Sunlight still catches on a lake’s gentle waves. A flock of clouds brushes the deep blue hills that secure the horizon. The clouds are grey-blue, edged in white, and very solid, almost chiselled in marble. A wooden handrail slants across the bottom of the photograph, but no tourists are in evidence.
I
The Dethroning
For a long time now I’ve been envious of the solid certainty of thinkers and philosophers. JS Mill was sure that speech must be free. Plato believed in eternal, unchanging forms. Partha Chatterjee was confident in his distinction between ‘civil society’ and ‘political society’.
How did they know for sure? Did they surreptitiously steal from the tree of knowledge? Were they mutants, born to be people of words and ideas?
The truth is, sometimes they say sensible things, and sometimes they just say whatever. The philosopher could be wrong/absurd/ridiculous. The Emperor may not have looked in the mirror this morning.
II
The War of Succession
Studying for MA entrances this summer, I encountered an unreasonable number of people who felt the need to define ‘politics’. I have never attempted to write my own definitions. Why bother? Anyway, how does one learn enough about a field to sum it up in a hundred words or less?
In Either/Or: A Fragment of Life, Kierkegaard says,
Aren’t people absurd! They never use the freedoms they do have but demand those they don’t have; they have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
Kierkegaard didn’t need to call me out like that. But really, what good is my freedom of speech when I’m burdened with received knowledge, and entirely unable to reach a conclusion independently? I feel inadequate to write real analysis on contemporary politics, incapable of biting commentary, profoundly unworthy of making sweeping statements about the state of society.
Can I even think for myself?
-
Confession time: I was terrified of Immanuel Kant.
I missed a few lectures at the beginning of the semester, and for five months I pretended I knew what everyone meant by the mysterious and inscrutable notion of ‘enlightenment’. And then, just before the final exams, I convinced myself to give him a chance.
In the very first paragraph of ‘What Is Enlightenment?’, he writes:
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
I remember thinking, Is that all? Enlightenment is just…thinking for yourself? Is that what I was so scared to learn about?
III
The Accession
I procrastinated writing this piece for three months, ironically because I doubted my thesis. Last weekend, Yanyi (who writes the wonderful The Reading) wrote,
Imposter syndrome is the reflex of fixing uncertainty with the authority of others. So where do you find certainty when you yourself are asked to be that authority?
And I finally found the words I had been looking for, although I’m putting them to a slightly different use.
So here’s the move I’m making: So far in my life, I have been working with the certainty that I’m not yet good enough (for political analysis, for real research, for cultural criticism). Now I’m taking away that one certainty and replacing it with an uncertainty. I may or may not be good at this. It is possible that I might say something that needs to be said. It is also possible that I am wrong, but I won’t know that until I make a space to speak (hence this blog).
If some theories of famous philosophers are internally inconsistent, and yet generations of scholars fall over their feet to make sense of it all, to order, to rearrange, then it is clear to me that we too can make our own statements, even if only a few are listening.
It is not easy to overturn your instinctive timidity. As Kant says, “the [wo]man who casts [dogmas and formulas] off would make an uncertain leap over the narrowest ditch, because [s]he is not used to such free movement.”
All the same, go lay claim to your right to make statements. Trust in yourself and your reasoning (which may change, but that’s okay). We must have, as a professor of mine once said, the arrogance to have an opinion.
I hope this was not too dramatic. Next week I’ll tell you how to read a book with holes in it (please savour this moment, usually I do not know what I’m going to write until Saturday morning).
Image: Johanna Rabindran
For starters, Apt choice of title. Thinking for yourself is an act in itself. Thank you for writing on topics which seem trivial to many but are enough to cause serious existential crises. This validates the mere feeling of not knowing or reading enough. Reminds me of your earlier piece on 'Everything I read or Write or Hear Slips Through My Fingers'. I share the same fears of even approaching certain topics. Over the time, I have also realized how the most complicated works are comprehensible when read in original. So it is easier (Yes it is!) to read Foucault or Marx in originals than read commentaries or essays written by scholars in this regard. Though this might not be true for other philosophers. Thank you Johanna, for constantly validating those fears and opinions- I honestly don't think anybody can ever know enough but then you are right- we need to trust and put our points ahead. Even philosophers had inconsistencies so what is stopping us from venturing ahead? What is the worst thing that could happen at the end of the day! Thank You once again. Looking forward to your next piece
Hi Johanna, thank you so much for this vulnerability!! I have also been in the place where I've felt like "I'm not yet good enough," and yet, we have done so much to cultivate the knowledge to have an opinion on a topic. Just wanted to to say that you're not alone in learning how to move forward through the doubt. Thanks again for a great piece of writing!