Nobody has posted since before Christmas? C'mon, people, we're slacking! (Myself included.) But maybe this pensée that I composed last night in my journal will get the fire crackling a bit again:
I am beginning to realize that the related questions of religion, philosophy and political theory are not going to let go of me anytime soon. The more I see and hear and read and think on these things, the more I realize how little I truly know. PLS lit the fire under me and gave me the foundational habits of critical thinking, but more and more now I realize that it was only the beginning—one three-year long intro to what should be a lifelong project. I cannot make ultimate decisions now; I am only now starting out on a lifelong voyage of exploration (if you will excuse the cliché. It was good enough for T. S. Eliot, anyhow. If "Old men should be explorers," how much more so should young men be explorers?). While PLS gave me what can be seen as the operating system, the apparatus for thinking, more and more I feel my lack of particular, concrete, fact-based knowledge, especially historical knowledge—the material to be run through the apparatus, the actual data to be processed. While it is probably true that no such particular, historically-based knowledge can by itself decide any of the ultimate questions of theology and philosophy, it still seems helpful and even necessary to have this kind of knowledge. It is essential when formulating a worldview that it at least make honest use of all the facts, although of course the facts might be inserted into a variety of different frameworks of interpretation. At any rate, for the time being I will make my decisions as I must, in the messy, half-rational, half-emotional/intuitive/unconscious way in which important decisions are almost always (if not always) made. But what I'm trying to say here is this: I'M NOT FINISHED YET. What this means in practical terms, I haven't quite worked out yet. Just one thing is certain: THIS IS NOT OVER YET. In fact, it may be just beginning. And I would invite anyone of good will and good faith to take my hand and join me in this exploratory quest, which perhaps never ends until the day we die. Just do this one thing for me: Avoid the foregone conclusion like the plague. We're too young yet to finalize, to solidify, to ossify (if there ever really is an age when that's okay). Stay fluid, PLS. Keep it loose; keep it tight.
-JMK
I am beginning to realize that the related questions of religion, philosophy and political theory are not going to let go of me anytime soon. The more I see and hear and read and think on these things, the more I realize how little I truly know. PLS lit the fire under me and gave me the foundational habits of critical thinking, but more and more now I realize that it was only the beginning—one three-year long intro to what should be a lifelong project. I cannot make ultimate decisions now; I am only now starting out on a lifelong voyage of exploration (if you will excuse the cliché. It was good enough for T. S. Eliot, anyhow. If "Old men should be explorers," how much more so should young men be explorers?). While PLS gave me what can be seen as the operating system, the apparatus for thinking, more and more I feel my lack of particular, concrete, fact-based knowledge, especially historical knowledge—the material to be run through the apparatus, the actual data to be processed. While it is probably true that no such particular, historically-based knowledge can by itself decide any of the ultimate questions of theology and philosophy, it still seems helpful and even necessary to have this kind of knowledge. It is essential when formulating a worldview that it at least make honest use of all the facts, although of course the facts might be inserted into a variety of different frameworks of interpretation. At any rate, for the time being I will make my decisions as I must, in the messy, half-rational, half-emotional/intuitive/unconscious way in which important decisions are almost always (if not always) made. But what I'm trying to say here is this: I'M NOT FINISHED YET. What this means in practical terms, I haven't quite worked out yet. Just one thing is certain: THIS IS NOT OVER YET. In fact, it may be just beginning. And I would invite anyone of good will and good faith to take my hand and join me in this exploratory quest, which perhaps never ends until the day we die. Just do this one thing for me: Avoid the foregone conclusion like the plague. We're too young yet to finalize, to solidify, to ossify (if there ever really is an age when that's okay). Stay fluid, PLS. Keep it loose; keep it tight.
-JMK
RSS Feed