Philosophy: The creation of mental problems, the solution to which is forbidden unless it is seen that the solution gives birth to a new problem.
As a vaguely justified extension of this, a scintillating summation of the free-will arguments follows:
"What do you think, do we have free will?"
"I dunno. What do you think?"
"Ehh....I dunno. What do you think?"
"I dunno..." etc
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Kierkegaard would have liked that. He wrote, half-ironically, that he was born when all the problems had been solved, so he decided to create new ones.
I've only heard good things about Kierkegaard but I admit my one foray into his territory was a bit of a let-down; a piece on the biblical story of Abraham(I think) ordred to kill his son. WHat I read seemed so interminable & repititious...maybe twas just an unlucky piece for me to choose but I wonder to an extent is Western philosophy as a rule stylistically awful. The one philosopher I have read being Nietzsche says something about wanting to say in an aphorism what everyone else would say in a book....or what they don't say in a book. I have to admit my almost complete position of ignorance, though. A recent work I got half-way or so in was Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West, & for all its interesting subject matter & ideas, its stodginess as a work of art in terms of the lucid clarity of its expression of its ideas kills my enthusiasm.
It all reminds me of a book, Zen & the Art of Archery, where some Westerner of an academic philosophical background was in Japan studying archery under some Zen master. This where disciplines like calligraphy, painting etc are indistinguishable from the religious/philosophical discipline of Zen & its goal of enlightenment. Anyway, the Western author was doing particularly badly in his efforts of advancement, & unusually the Zen master decided to read some of his philosophical reading matter to gain some insight into his background to see if that might help. The Zen mster's judgement after studying some of his stuff was that with a mind befuddled with such entangling madness, it was no wonder that he couldn't get anyhwhere with the archery & Zen.
Kierkegaard is indeed very difficult, and not for everyone; his Journals are probably a better place to start, as when he wrote for himself he was much clearer than in his public stuff. There's a one-volume edition of his journals edited by A Hannay that is very good indeed.
Thanks for teh tip.
a line of his (from his Journal) that stuck in my memory:
"oh the sins of passion and the heart; how much nearer to redemption than the sins of reason"
Great line.
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