Lars Iyer - Dogma

How could I understand what I’ve unleashed? W. wonders. Does the storm understand that it is a storm? Does the earthquake know that it is an earthquake? I will never understand, says W.; that’s my always appealing innocence.

It’s time for the reckoning, W. says. It’s reached that point. But with whom can he reckon? How to tackle an enemy who has no idea he’s an enemy?

We ought to be content to write ragged books, W. says on the phone. Ragged books for a ragged world. Oh, he forgot, W. says. I already do.

W.’s learning ancient Greek for his new book, he says. It’s going to be on religion. He was going to do a book on time , but he’s decided against that. Religion, he says, that’s his topic, and for that he needs Greek. And maths! If he’s going to write about Cohen and God, as he intends to, he’ll have to understand the infinitesimal calculus.

He’s reading The Logic of Pure Knowledge , W. says. In German! It’s taken him a year so far, and he’s only on page 50. He sends me his notes:

Leibniz: the differential. The ground of the finite is the infinitely small. It is the infinite that founds the finite, and not the finite the infinite — this is why the infinite is not a negative concept .

Don’t I see? W. says, with great excitement. The infinite founds the finite. The infinite is not a negative concept, according to Cohen, W. says. It is an originary positivity , prior to both affirmation and negation. The infinite is the condition of the finite, and not the other way round, W. says.

Of course, it’s all in Aristotle, W. says. Indefinite judgement, that’s what Aristotle calls it. Infinite judgement: that’s what Boethius called it, in his commentary on Aristotle. But it’s all lost in Kant, that’s what Cohen shows, W. says. Kant collapses the difference between kinds of privative judgement. But Cohen remembers! W. says. Cohen knows!

Ah, but what would I understand of any of this? W. says.

In a way, W. learned about originary positivity from me, he says. From my example. I’ve taught him a lot, despite myself. In a strange way, he’s been my student, my protégé.

He was inspired to follow my example the other night, W. says. — ‘Oh, it was nothing to do with your thought ’. What then? He bought a bottle of wine and went home and drank it all. Then he got beneath his bed covers and moaned. — ‘Oh, my troubles! Oh, my life! They’re out to get me! I’m going to be next!’—‘That’s how you live, isn’t it?’

And shouldn’t I inspire others, too? W. would like to exhibit me, he says. He’d like to put me on display before a learned society as a living example.

‘Don’t you see?’, W. would tell our audience, pointing at me with his stick. ‘Isn’t it clear?’ ‘Think!’, he would command, and I would exhibit my non-thinking. ‘Pray’, he would command, I would exhibit my non -religiosity. ‘Dance!’, he would command, and I would exhibit my non -dancing, my chicken dancing, and our audience would gasp in awe and horror …

We’re dead men, W. says, the walking dead. Oh God, the burden of disgust, of absolute disgust! We’re disgusted with ourselves, we’ll tell anyone who asks us. We’ve become terrible bores, speaking only of our disgust and our self-disgust.

Exiled and wretched, Solomon Maimon — the ever-neglected Maimon — is said to have given accounts of his disgrace for the price of a drink. And us? Who will listen to the story of our disgrace? We will have to buy them drinks, that’s the terrible thing, W. says. We will have to pay them to listen to us . Even our disgrace is uninteresting.

Adam, says the Talmud, was originally made a golem; only afterwards did God give him human life. The latter is an act no human creator can imitate, says W., but the former — merely animating shapeless clay — lies in the power of the great rabbis.

Perhaps I am his golem, W. says. Perhaps he conjured me up from a sense of his own failure. Perhaps I am only the way in which W. is in the wrong, the incessant embodiment of his error.

Martinis at the Plymouth Gin Cocktail Bar . This is the way to spend Saturday afternoon, W. says.

His entrance key to the cocktail bar is his proudest possession. Only the most select Plymouthians are given one, he says. Only those people the bar staff personally like .

It’s an especial honour to one, like W., who is not a native son of the city, W. says. It means the Plymouthians regard him as one of their own.

‘Do you think the Geordies regard you as one of their own?’, W. says. Do they see me as a man of the toon ? He remembers our afternoon in The Crown Pasada , when W. fell into football conversation with the people at the next table.

I was silent, as usual, W. says. I said nothing. My inability to talk about football is a major flaw, W. says. My inability to talk about anything. — ‘Do you consider yourself a man of conversational range?’, W. asks. ‘What can you talk about? What topics do you feel comfortable with? Go on, say something interesting’.

I begin to tell him about my troubles at work, but W. stops me. He’s heard it all before, he says. Too many times! And besides, W.’s work troubles are much greater than mine. I begin to talk of my romantic troubles, but W. says he’s heard too much about them, too. — ‘You bring them on yourself’.

I begin to tell him about my general life troubles, but W.’s never really believed that I am genuinely troubled, he says. I’m a petty man, yes; a troubled man, no. A man who wails and moans at the slightest thing: obviously; a man who knows the meaning of suffering: obviously not.

I begin to tell him of the troubles of my past. This is potentially interesting, W. says. He likes to stare with me into the plague pit of my memories . Sometimes he thinks of me as a kind of martyr —to what, he doesn’t know.

Anyway, I’m boring him now, W. says, and reads out a passage from Rosenzweig:

Nature and revelation: the same material, but opposite ways of being exposed to the light. The more everyday the material, the more revealing and revealed can it become .

Religion is only ever about the everyday, W. says with great firmness. That’s what Rosenzweig saw in rejecting mysticism. Revelation is a public affair! It’s about ritual, about ceremony as it is lived between people. And above all, it is about speech .

That’s why Rosenzweig abandoned academia, W. says. He was looking for another kind of speech. He was looking to be interrupted. Henceforward, he vowed only to inquire when he found himself inquired of , that’s what he said. And inquired of by people, ordinary people rather than scholars.

Ah, have we ever been inquired of ? W. says. Would we know what it meant? — ‘Interrupt me!’, he cries. ‘Go on, say something!’ But he knows I’ll only arse about, he says. He knows I’ll make the wrong kind of interruption.

Smashed glass on the cobblestones, vomit on the Mayflower Steps: Plymouth quayside, Saturday night.

We’re among the people, W. says as we drink our pints of Bass in The Dolphin . We’re in the midst of everyday life. Didn’t Rosenzweig say that theological problems must be translated into everyday terms, and everyday problems brought into the pale of theology ? W. says. Didn’t he say that philosophical problems must be translated into those of everyday life, and everyday life brought into the pale of philosophy ?