This is day one indeed.
Everything branches from here. Levinas wrote "The phenomenological theory of being" when he was 24 years old. I'm 26, going on 27, and I have serious difficulty understanding him at all, even though I've been studying all my life. I'm getting my M.A. in English this summer, and I suppose that I could have told Levinas a lot of things he wouldn't understand, had he still lived, but when I compare my master thesis with his early works, my thoughts seem so utterly inferior. Reading his work stretches my mental faculties to the limit, and sometimes beyond. It's a humbling experience, but also a valuable one. I can recommend it, but I must warn you that it can be hard on the ego.
But I don't have the same passion for my thesis that Levinas obviously had for his work, and neither do I share his background in hardcore philosophy (not to mention the fact that he was a genius and I'm not
). This is important. I believe the lesson is that I must just do the best I can now, and then find my proper place in life as I go along. I honestly used to think that I was designed for the kind of academic thinking that the University revels in, but I feel that my mind is dying in there sometimes. I feel like there's too much information rattling around in my skull, and my own voice has been lost somewhere in the philosophical maelstrom. On days like this I feel like screaming that I don't understand and I don't give a damn about it. But it's over soon. Come August I will graduate and get on with my life. And then I'll see if my brain still works. I suspect it does. And I still believe there's something forming in there, that will eventually be written down.Writing a master thesis is hard, hard work. Those who think that I'm slacking off should try it. I dare them. But it's also a privilege, a learning experience, and a milestone achievement that I will cherish when it's done. Right now I have trouble looking forward at all, though.
But then, paradoxically, Levinas, my tormentor, saves me. The concept of potential consciousness amazes me and comforts me right now. Like the existential discussion of whether falling trees in the forest make sounds when nobody is there to hear them, Levinas has his thoughts about consciousness and perception. "The object which we do not have actually in sight does not disappear from consciousness," Levinas says. "It is given potentially as the object of a possible actual consciousness." This means that even the things we have encountered and don't understand at present, or things that are not presently within our active field of consciousness, still have the possibility of entering into our consciousness later and then become understood. And the marginal and implicit contents of our potential consciousness still exist on our mental horizons, as Husserl called them. All we need to do is to find a way to turn our gaze towards them and illuminate them. This also gives us the opportunity, as Levinas says, of "going back to the same thing and reidentifying it." Both Husserl and Levinas agree that consciousness is thus not simply a case of the mind perceiving and relating to the actual, but to actuality surrounded by a sphere of inactuality on the verge of becoming actual. That is exactly how I feel at the moment. All I need is the power to reach out, and to look upon different parts of the horizon.
Be ready
I'm taking my seat
O lucky me
