Digressions&Impressions

Covid Diaries: a much fuller glass despite some tricky issues.

It's time for another entry in my Covid Diaries. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here;  here; here; here; here;  here; here;  here; here;  here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, here; here; here, here; here; here; here; here; and here.) If you don't want to read the whole post, here is my executive summary: the glass is much fuller than two months ago, while some tricky issues remain.

About a month ago, I wrote that "I can report some modest, good news. Without any evident explanation, I suddenly improved greatly from the start of August onward." Since then I traveled to Durham for a six week visiting stint at Duke University. (I am exactly at the half-way point now.) Packing, travel, and getting oriented in a new place is pretty stressful. Luckily the trip was uneventful, and Kirun Sankaran (a very talented local postdoc) helpfully picked me up at the airport, and  organized a stop at a supermarket before dropping me off at my new abode. 

Despite the lovely and very organized welcome at the Center for the History of Political Economy, the first week in Durham was pretty challenging due to my jetlag and the really oppressive humidity and heat (as well as some maintenance issues in my rental). I adore warm weather, but dislike having to hide in airconditioned spaces. By the end of the first week I was, in fact, under the weather, and worried that I had overestimated my recovery. I canceled my social schedule, and spend a few days in bed and on the sofa of my rental. By Tuesday I was feeling much better, and able to comment on a fascinating workshop paper by Jennifer Jhun in the Duke philosophy department. Shortly thereafter the humidity disappeared and until Hurricane Ian we've had just lovely, even inspiring. weather. 

As the hurricane arrived on campus -- classes got canceled -- I workshopped a chapter of my Foucault/liberal art of government book in progress in the HOPE Center, and then enjoyed a festive reception and a joyous dinner (in the otherwise deserted campus center). Ian was a serious storm, but not frightening in my location. While I was in bed relatively early, no amount of meditation helped my excited brain relax. I went over the day countless times, and had to pinch myself I had been in a professional academic environment focused on my work. I had a restless sleep, and the next day I just chilled--with the storm raging there were no other options anyway. The dreaded headache did not materialize, but I felt very fatigued.

So, looking back at my first three weeks here: I have had some intense and very good conversations, socialized a few times (a Dim Sum, a BBQ dinner, some lunches and coffee, etc.), and even engaged in non trivial academic work. All of  that is very encouraging. The anti-inflammatory meds I use are excellent  in preventing and treating headaches and other long covid related symptoms. And I have become more willing to experiment with social interactions without taking meds altogether. And while I still struggle in environments with other social stimuli, it's much improved from where I was.

Having said that, I have woken up with random (but sadly familiar) headaches in the middle of the night a few times, and I do bump into my limitations at odd moments. I am currently struggling greatly in my morning work outs, and I need to take more regular breaks while writing/researching.

I have my own cubicle in the library (sadly without windows), and access to the open stacks. It's bewildering that I have more shelve-space for books in the cubicle at a place I am visiting than at my shared office at my home university. I was completely blown away when, during my first day at the HOPE center, the economics department's tech support came by to set me up with local printing (etc.). (I was happy I had brought extra Harrods ginger biscuits from London so I could express my gratitude spontaneously.) 

As an aside, in fact, while I have spent a good chunk of the first few years of my academic life employed at rather wealthy, private US universities (and have visited countless times since), the contrast between life at Duke with my current work conditions at a massive Dutch state university hit me hard. While I may publish in similar outlets as the locals, what one may call the 'phenomenological-geography of our daily academic lives' (e.g., class size, office space, technical support, length of academic year, etc.) is incomprehensibly different. For example, in order to visit here I had to take unpaid leave (and cash in overtime hours) because it will be a while before I am eligible for the very new sabbatical arrangement my department finally instituted. Odds are I will never be eligible for it. (Don't ask, but it's basically a money/funding issue.)

Anyway, I spent mornings writing, and if I socialize at all this starts after lunch. I mostly read secondary literature in the afternoon. I miss my family intensely, but I very much appreciate the lack of responsibilities to others and the general quiet of my life. This week, I have set aside to get on top of some professional obligations to others (letters of recommendation, reviews, revise and resubmits with other authors). All and all, I feel pretty blessed. (And I welcome suggestions for more opportunities to be on paid leave!)

Okay, I should wrap up. Technically speaking I am not on disability anymore since the first of September. But I am obviously relieved I don't have to teach full time this Fall, especially because of the many small cognitive (weird memory issues and odd moments of head fatigue) and physical issues I still encounter. And while I teach a huge lecture course in the spring, It's under seven weeks. So, the real test of my cognitive stamina will occur only a year from now (at the start of next academic year). I am tentatively scheduling academic commitments (talks, workshops) along the way. Because I love undergraduate teaching, I am more optimistic than I have been in close to two years that it's not unreasonable to expect I will be able to return to things I adore about my profession on a regular basis. I am even hopeful I will be able to socialize with friends and family more normally again. So, there, the glass is filling up with the nectar of life; I said it.

Covid Diaries: Attention Deficits

I interrupt my usual Summer blogging break with a new entry in my Covid Diaries. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here, here; here; here, here; here; here; and here). And, as is depressingly familiar, the situation is a mixed bag.

First, the interesting news is that earlier this week I saw a clinical neuro-psychologist through a referral from the NHS long covid clinic. Curiously enough, when my Dutch GP and Dutch occupational physician tried to refer me to one a year ago (!), my Dutch neurologist and the wider group of the occupational physician blocked it! It's against protocol in the Netherlands, where long covid is treated by occupational therapists (unless there are serious lung or heart symptoms). So after the covid induced migraine was diagnosed by my UK neurologist, my Dutch neurologist admitted it had never occurred to him as a possible diagnosis. This was a bit bitter for me because during my first visit with him I had an intolerable headache which he somehow kept discounting. (Mind you I am a male academic with lots of cultural capital in the Netherlands.)

As an aside, I am not entirely convinced I have a real migraine because, as I have noted before, my symptoms are very well managed by anti-inflammatories (basically extra strength Aleve--this is not available over the counter in the UK), and in my view the triptans are less effective against them. I return to this below.

The clinical neuro-psychologist is a young lad, who called me 'Professor' when he looked for me in the corridor outside of his office. (I was not used to that in this context so it took me a while to realize he was calling me.) I later learned he is also getting a PhD in cognitive science with a specialization on frontal lobe functioning. (I hope I have not outed him.) He had a two-volume copy of William James The Principles of Psychology on his shelves which immediately endeared him to me.  Anyway, after the 110 minutes (!) of testing, he could reassure me there is nothing wrong with my frontal lobe or any of my cognitive functioning. However, I do have rather striking attention issues; so, once the information comes in I process it okay, but certain kinds of information (white middle aged male faces, long digits of numbers, and domestic images) are often screened out. Whereas words and geometric objects go in just fine--so I should still manage okay with the Principia!

On the whole the results are not surprising (although I found my inability to manipulate medium length strings of digits really disconcerting) because they chime in with the reasons why I was interested in this referral in the first place. As an aside, I did wonder if I would do better with women's faces. But then I remembered a disconcerting conversation with one of my lecture course students this past Spring, where after polite small talk in the hall way where she studied next to my office (in which I asked her name, who her favorite theorist we discuss is, etc.), I suddenly had the good sense to ask, 'we have had this conversation before, right?' And she said, it's the fourth time.

The really good news lurking here is that the patterns he found are very dissimilar to what they find in early stages of Alzheimer, dementia or stroke. (On the way home I did wonder what I would do with my life if there were signs of the first two.) Anyway, he didn't know what kind of label to put onto me (I think he is leaving that to the neurologist), except to say that I have a weird kind of attention deficit now (but nothing like ADHD he emphasized). Not unlike the neurologist, he emphasized that they seem my symptoms a lot in in the NHS long haul clinic. In addition, he was pleased to note that once in my cognitive functioning is okay, "superb" even. He and I both regretted there is no pre-Covid baseline to compare me with. 

Second, earlier in the month we had a long family holiday on Paros. There I learned that I am still incredibly hyper-sensitive to sound and that social interactions (which exhaust me) have to be planned very carefully. It seems nearly every restaurant plays some background music, and even the kite-surf shack (where my family spent a lot of time without me) on the beach, which does not have running water or a kitchen, does have music playing. I was reminded of my graduate school dog park friend, Matthew Crawford's second book, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. In it he points out that in modern life we're surrounded by music and images that try to attract us or distract us, and that the airport lounges of the very wealthy are very quiet. (But I bet these, too, have a soft background music that barely register unless you are me.) Our public or communal spaces are not allowed to be still.

That's to say, the first week of holiday was a bit of a struggle to find the right balance for the three of us. Somewhat annoyingly, whereas during most of my long covid swimming has been a source of enduring pleasure, on holiday I noticed that I found it exhausting (which had also been true ahead of our trip). The really annoying thing of long covid is that my symptoms keep switching slowly after every three or four months or so (more below). Anyway, I do swim most mornings just to stay active. Even played some pick-up basketball with my son in the (rather warm) Greek evenings, which felt like a precious moment I would not have expected a year ago, but still wasn't wholly pleasant (because my head felt so strange).

Luckily, extra strength Aleve (500mg naproxen) is available and cheap over the counter in Greece, so I stacked up on it.:) And the really good news is that most of my symptoms (weird head fatigue, headaches) are very well managed with anti-inflammatories. I haven't had a real headache day in months. Sometimes I am very aware my body and even my head registers I was socially too active, but because of the Aleve I don't have any pain. So, on the whole I am much better than, say, six months ago because I really suffer less.

The bad news is that I have clearly stagnated; I continue to be hypersensitive to sound if there is more than one source in the area and all my social activities, including with my family, have to be carefully planned. This puts considerable hardship on my family, even on days where I think things are going okay. I have also noticed since I returned from holiday that when I spent hours on end in the library, my head starts to feel fatigued; this has never happened to me before not even during long covid (much to the bewilderment of my occupational therapists who all assume that anything work related must be stressful and exhausting). So, I take more breaks now. (The British Library is actually well designed for that.)

As a total aside, this year I submitted two co-authored papers that originated in my pre-covid days but where completion had to be postponed due to my illness. The first got rejected with decent reports (ref 1 fair; ref 2 a bit silly) and the second a major revise & resubmit, and while neither is tremendous news, it did make me feel almost like a normal academic again. This week I also completed a long draft of my review of Neil Levy's Bad Beliefs (which you should read his book that is, well also my review!:)). 

I should close, but one pet-peeve. There is increasing evidence that weight loss helps manage long covid symptoms. And so lots of folk send me press releases on this and nudge me to 'consider losing weight.' Now, ever since I probably had a mini stroke/TIA a decade ago, I pay attention to my weight. And it is very clear  that because of long covid I have gained weight; not just because I probably exercise less and eat more from stress/emotional need, but also because when I do 'diet' (basically a low carb diet), I don't lose weight as quickly as I used to. It's pretty annoying to be told 'consider doing X' while you are 'doing X.' (Beccy Lucas has a hilarious sketch on that if you are into that kind of thing.) 

Anyway, while I dislike the social norm that we must exude optimism, I do feel very blessed that I have a forthcoming Fall (unpaid) research leave. I feel grateful my family found a way to make it work for them, and lucky that the folks at Duke and Arizona are willing to host me (with some funding). Recently I bought my ticket and found housing, and it's suddenly starting to feel very real. Anyway, with that I return to my customary Summer blogging break. 

RIP: Rob Brouwer 1938-2022

In a few weeks, Neglected Classics of Philosophy 2 (OUP, 2022) will appear. As you can see at books.google, it's dedicated to "Anneke Luger-Veenstra, Jan Stronk, and Rob Brower, my learned high school teachers, who encouraged a love of the classics." Two days ago my high school classmate, Jorine Lamsma, called my attention to an announcement in the newspaper that Rob had died June 1, 2022. The memorial service and funeral are today.

Rob was my high school Latin teacher for four years at Amsterdam's Vossius Gymnasium. My class (1c, 2c, 3c) was known to be 'trouble' and quite a few teachers fought trench warfare with us, as we found ever more creative ways to prank and be disruptive. But not in Rob's classroom. We called him "Mijnheer Brouwer," of course. He was not on first name basis with his charges.

Rob commanded our instant respect not because he was strict (which he was) and unperturbable (which he was), but because he somehow managed to convey that he instantiated the promise of bildung (without having to say so); he wasn't aiming to reach some learning target decomposed in weekly grammar, vocabulary, and syntax acquired. But rather he always made clear that whatever task of memorization and repetition we were assigned was in the service of our introduction to the classics and, without veneration, their wider cultural significance. As another classmate, Max Rosenberg, put it, each class was part of a much broader whole. And as the years passed, I slowly grasped -- hence my use of 'bildung'  --, these classics in turn would be good friends accompanying me in a life-time of imperfect self-cultivation.

Once, I was fourteen or so, a classmate pushed his button, and the unfathomable happened: the boy (no, not me) got sent out of class, with the archaic, 'gaat heen' and Rob, visibly steadying himself, pointing a finger at the door. For years we could get a good laugh trying to mimic that 'gaat heen,' but we had to acknowledge simultaneously that we were in awe of him. 

Not just because of his formal language and dress, Rob seemed like a character from a different age -- his classroom had the surprisingly bittersweet smell of his pipe --, he was the subject of myths: his son had died tragically (which turned out to be true), he suffered from Leukemia (which turned out to be true), he had studied to be a Jesuit (possible), and he was dating the German teacher, Erika Langbroek (which also turned out to be true). 

I had a very checkered high school career; I should have flunked out at the end of my third and fourth years (ninth and tenth grade). Mevrouw Luger played a big role in bending the rules my way each year. But I always passed my Latin, and to this day, I recognize that I have built a scholarly career on the years Rob put into me. (And I often regretted he was not my Greek teacher.) 

I forget if it was my junior or senior year, but I got wind that Rob was doing a reading group in philosophy with some interested class-mates at his home not far from the school in an apartment on the Beethovenstraat. (At this point he wasn't my teacher anymore, but it was before he moved into a different apartment with Erika also on the Beethovenstraat.) I invited myself along for the wine and the mystique. They were reading Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft (in German). I would like to say it got me excited about philosophy, but I suspect the main effect of the reading group was to make me excessively and irresponsibly fearless in the face of any text. 

Some time after college, I got back in touch with Rob. I suspect in order to brag to him that I had been taking philosophy classes with Dan Dennett (he was underwhelmed) and Martha Nussbaum. Rob, it turned out, was a real fan-boy of Nussbaum who, in graduate school, was one of my supervisors of my qualifying paper on the puppet image in Plato's Laws. Alongside E.B. England's commentary, Rob's wisdom became instrumental in helping me figure out the nuances of Plato's Greek and thought.

But perhaps I had simply bumped into him with Erika at the kleine zaal at Concertgebouw. Even long after he was struck by an increasingly visible Parkinson, he was a transfixed presence in the little balcony. I didn't share his love for nineteenth century Lieder, but we often discovered that we (or, in my case, my mum) had acquired season tickets for the same chamber music series.

We started to see other more frequently during my Summer visits back home while I was in graduate school. I am also unsure of the exact sequence of events that led to our first reading group with Martin Claes, then a Jesuit getting a PhD (now a pastor and a scholar), on Augustine's De Magistro. I  never asked Rob if he identified with Augustine's loss of his son. He never spoke of him to me, but he often expressed pride in his daughter (a lawyer). It was the start of numerous partially overlapping, reading groups with Rob in varying combinations with people from his life -- often people who adored Dante or choir (or both) -- or my own circle of Dutch academics and friends. 

Meanwhile, we started corresponding and as I look through our letters, I see that he never stopped trying to broaden my horizon. His letters reflect his curiosity, even an excessive strain of enthusiasm; he offered a never ending stream of suggested novels or works of scholarship. While in his own work, he had an exacting low tolerance for minute error, in his reading habits he was primarily searching for bold and expansive interpretations. As I advanced in academia he relished keeping me informed of scholarly fashion that had somehow captured the imaginations of the culture and book sections even editorial pages of the Dutch broadsides.

In addition to being a teacher, Rob was a scholar, translator, and poet. His translations of Dante's Divine Comedy, Statius' The Thebaid, Lucan's Bellum Civile, Virgil's Bucolica/The Eclogues combine vast erudition with linguistic and poetic sensitivity. He also translated Epictetus. He would probably be very amused to hear me claim modest credit for triggering his renewed interest into Lucan just as he was completing his stupendous Dante translation. But it's true: while teaching the Treatise in my first seminar at Wesleyan in 2002, I was confused by the way the motto of book 3 of Hume's Treatise had been translated in the then new 'student edition' published by OUP. (The motto is from Lucan.) We started a correspondence about it, and I date to it the start of my interest into Seneca.

When I heard Rob had died, I looked at our correspondence to see when we last had written. I noticed to my horror he had never acknowledged my word that I had dedicated the forthcoming Neglected Classics volume to him. I had not registered this silence at all during the depths of my own illness.

Before I close, I don't want to suggest Rob was an ethereal personality only. He was happy whenever he could talk about Erika or Sabine. And our reading groups were carefully planned around not just his choir practices, but also his cycling holidays.

I also don't mean to suggest he was above name-dropping. Once he asked me slyly if I knew who Henny Vrienten was. They had met swimming their laps in de Zuiderbad. Later Vrienten became involved in the recording of Rob's Dante.

Near the end of De Magistro, Augustine suggests that when we praise a teacher, we're really praising ourselves and this never seems to me more true than in the Academy during the many, lovely ritual practices of acknowledging the roles of supervisors in one's education. Self-praise does not strike me as a sin, but I have to admit that all of these academic practices (fests, collections, memorial conferences, etc.) seem, however sincerely felt and expressed, a bit tainted by the multiplicity of self-advancing roles they play in our prestige hierarchies and zero-sum political economy. (Perhaps this also accounts for the sincerity.)

We encounter our high school teachers through their words, their curriculum, their classroom, and features of their personality as well as the school yards myths about them. The older, and more experienced I get in the classroom, the more it seems to me they -- I mean all true teachers -- use a feature of their personality, perhaps made excessively visible to the student, to find a way to connect with the longings and desires, perhaps vanity even (as Adam Smith claims), of their students, and turn this connection, however tenuous, into the engines of shared enquiry. This also means that not every teacher is the right fit for each student.

The reason why when we praise a teacher, we're really praising ourselves according to the closing lines of De Magistro is that teachers are kind of puppets or actors speaking thoughts of others and that it's the student's reason or intuition that is doing the real work of understanding even if the words of the official teacher trigger or guide such understanding. The Platonic idea with which De Magistro closes, that nobody teaches another anything, has, thus, generated learned philosophical commentary that betrays non-trivial professional anxiety.

Augustine does make an exception to this quite general claim at the start of De Magistro, which I doubt is retracted during the dialogue. He suggests that when we ask questions we're really teaching something about our needs or our plans. The latter includes, of course, the path of inquiry, as Augustine explicitly notes. Rob was magisterial in asking questions that directed our gaze to the inner, guiding light that we need on life's path.

 

 

Covid Diaries: Highs and Lows

It's time for another Covid Diaries update. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here, here; here; and here). It's been a complex few weeks for me.

 

I want to start with a tremendous high. Last Tuesday I taught the last session of my intro lecture course to an overflowing auditorium. (I have over 600 students, and all the lectures are recorded and available with a thirty second delay.) At the end of my lecture I tagged on a few minutes of quasi-impromptu remarks. I thanked them from the heart for their encouragement and kindness during the semester; that they respected my boundaries and were unfailingly kind about my invisible/cognitive disability. This generated a tremendous applause. And I joined in the cheer, applauding them.

 

I then added a few remarks on the significance of political theory and the course, and closed with a kind of blessing wishing them wisdom (etc.) What happened next was surreal (like in a Hollywood movie you don't believe); I received a standing ovation. Eventually I joked -- which is what I do when I feel uncomfortable, I guess -- that I would hand out signatures at the end of class. That got the applause to stop. But I was mobbed by students who gave me flowers, thank you cards, chocolates, drawings, and -- never make this joke again -- a long line of kidz who wanted signatures. This lasted an hour! (Students had applauded after each lecture, so I knew there was appreciation.) During all of this, I knew I was going well beyond my cognitive limits and that I would have to deal with headaches and nausea. I walked home, got soup, and tried to sleep.

 

The next morning I woke up with a headache (the worst of the 7 weeks of lecturing), and decided to take it easy. I watched the end of the lecture on video a few times enjoying the moments again, and checking my memory of the event. By the end of the afternoon I was much improved, and could enjoy early Spring.

 

I also received news from HR that I won my battle with them about back-pay for holiday-pay that they had deducted in virtue of my disability. After consulting the union and jurisprudence, I had pointed out to them that according to European jurisprudence that holiday is a human right and that you can't lose it even if disabled or sick. (I learned from the union, that they generally obtain the pay out on behalf of people who are let go in virtue of their disability at the end of the contract. But that people like me who might return to work often end up losing a few days of holiday pay.) HR granted that they have no right to withhold it over 2021 (especially because they had already agreed to pay out in 2022!).

 

Later that week, I had a meeting with my department chair that I initiated. Under Dutch disability rules, in a few months my occupational physician, an outside expert, the department, and myself have to decide about my future. It's pretty clear now that I won't recover fully in the next two months The department has been very supportive (I have a few minor kvetches), but in all the communication to me it's always been about hoping for full recovery. So, I wanted to know how the department views a future with me if I don't fully recover. The meeting was encouraging and constructive. The real key for the department will be whether I can return to non-lecture format teaching or not. There is a lot more to say about this meeting, but I felt reassured that there won't be an effort to push me out.

 

After that, I decided to return to London. But not before my sister taught me some meditation tricks, and my mom  delivered some fantastic chocolate cookies.

 

Over the week-end I arrived in London exhausted. And the first 72hrs were both joyous and challenging catching up with the family after nearly 8 weeks away (with just one week-end visit). I had non-stop headaches and nausea for a few days. And I am reminded of my limits after two months of near self-isolation. Basically my symptoms are under control unless I interact socially with others for more than twenty-five minutes. 

 

Today, I had a meeting with the neurologist in the NHS long covid center at UCLH. She was a very kind and thoughtful physician. (I also learned that I was initially slotted to be seen by her in October -- she remembered my dossier -- but because they got overwhelmed with emergency care, I got pushed back. ) After taking my history and doing some cognitive testing, and discussing the situation with me, she decided to treat my symptoms like a kind of migraine. (A big contrast to My Dutch neurologist.) Her hope is to get the headaches under control first, and that I will get better and better in social environments over time. (She was also happy to hear that I had no teaching for four months.) I ran a number of the Dutch occupational therapy treatments by her, and that was instructive, too. She didn't promise miracles, but assured me that people with my symptoms do recover even after a year plus. Also, it's so nice to have a neurologist that takes my covid problems seriously. (Yes, I am pissed off at my Dutch neurologist.)

 

Tomorrow, my students take their final exam, so I am hoping that this time next week, I can close the door on course related stuff for the academic year. (It's astonishing  how many logistical and other curve balls come your way when class size is this huge.) I have returned to my daily swim, and next week I return to my research. I also look forward to my regular blogging. I am still withdrawing from conferences and other events, but I am growing hopeful I can return to these later in the year.

Final Covid Diary Update of the Year: On Partial Cognitive Disability

I am taking my customary end of year blogging break, again. And I hope to return to near-daily blogging in January. 

I have enjoyed and appreciated all the well wishes, my dear readers. (For my "covid diaries," see here;  here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; and here). It's a strange feature of my current disability that it is easier and more relaxing for me to write a blog post than to have a minor conversation in a café or restaurant. Social interactions are exhausting, and if there is ambient noise or more than one interlocuter, I am likely to have headaches and bad sleep (and a kind of 'soft'-brain fog--in which my thoughts slow down and my phenomenal experience is not as rich as it ordinarily would be). Unfortunately, the side-effect of such interactions is reduced time and energy for blogging, and other writing. (Basically I have been unable to do research while I taught my small Fall course.) 

My occupational therapist has convinced me to try to limit social interactions to no more than thirty minutes. And to plan plenty of rest between them. Her theory being that longer interactions just drain me of all energy. 'Energy' is the explanatory concept, the goal, and the ground of everything the occupational therapist says to me. (In Dutch, the occupational therapist is an 'ergo-therapist,' and in conversation with her, I have to prevent myself from using random passages from Aristotle's Ethics.) She basically compares my brain to a car battery that due to my current activity pattern is incapable of fully recharging and, so, fails to retrain itself post trauma. (She alternates comparing my brain to one that has suffered considerable trauma and one that is suffering from burn-out.)

As I have noted before (recall), the occupational therapist has induced a number of behavioral changes all of which amount to avoidance of multi-tasking, doing a better job of relaxing when I should be relaxing, and to give myself a chance to 'build up energy.' Luckily, I don't have to teach for about eight weeks, and I will also try to do more exercise along the way.

The most recent meeting with the occupational therapist annoyed me greatly. Basically, all the new exercises (and 'home-work') involve planning exercises. These are chapter 2 of the exercise-book I was given. It took me a while to figure out why I found it annoying. (The occupational therapist is a funny and empathic person.) But after some reflection, I realized it was because I felt I with my particular symptoms wasn't being treated, but rather I was a number being put through a pre-existing training program. Undoubtedly, the training program is useful, but while i have some cognitive impairments, inability to plan my life is not one of them.

As I said it took me a while to figure out my irritation. What triggered it was her considerable surprise that reading and writing is relaxing for me. Her surprise didn't bother, but the lack of adjustment of the training program does. In particular, she sent me a number of videos (which her patients appreciate greatly) even though I had explained to her earlier that zooms and videos are especially draining. Paying attention to another's reasoned argument or explication basically sets me back a day; whereas reading is a piece of cake.  

All of this is in the category, minor troubles relative to the sorrows of humankind. But since I have been sick for a year now, and the pattern has recurred with several other health care providers (go read the covid diaries), I am more attuned to it. Basically nobody knows what my underlying problem really is, and nobody is willing to spend public money to do the kind of invasive testing to figure it out. The testing itself is unlikely to produce conclusive evidence of what's wrong with me, and it is unlikely it will produce a suggestion of how to treat me. And since hospital visits actually set me back days on end, the medical system sensibly hopes my body will cure itself eventually rather than drag me in for lots of tests.

Since this gets repeated with most folk like me -- i.e., long haulers without clear lung and/or heart problems --, we're also disappearing from the system. Nobody is counting how many of us there are, and how much work is being lost. Basically, GPs and and occupational physicians keep track of their own patients, and they know I am not alone; and they share best practices in whatsapp groups. Often we read the same pre-prints when I come to them with experimental treatments. Interestingly enough, the London covid clinic prescribed me heavy dosage of melatonin, and then my UK GP refused to prescribe it except in very small dosage. (This is actually funny because in Holland melatonin is an over the counter drug, but my Dutch GP expressed surprise that this would work at all for long haul.)

My Dutch neurologist told me he rarely sees patients with long haul. (Meanwhile, the waiting list for the neurologist in the London long haul clinic is over a half year now.) Since in the Dutch system, the costs of the first two years of (partial) medical leave are born by the employer and employee (I have have a pay cut alongside my reduction in work hours and responsibilities). And that means that the government will only start noticing us in the Spring of 2022, when the first generation of long haulers will be pushed partially into social security. And since the employer is initially responsible for finding fitting work for the employee, the government will only notice those who are completely disabled or those working for very small companies. So, the numbers, if any, won't start adding up until later in 2022 and 2023. 

If I could handle social interactions, this would be the moment I would try to mobilize a Dutch patient group for long haulers. But the very idea of trying to fight the system, and to coordinate many despairing and angry patients, is not 'energy enhancing.' And so I hope that by planning well and conserving energy, I recover sufficiently so that I can keep a version of my job by the end of next year. The system, of course, finds my defeatist response very welcome.

I have come to describe myself as cognitively 'disabled' and 'impaired' (or 'handicapped'). I know that sounds final, and I don't believe it's final. But I have also noticed that 'sickness' doesn't convey my situation and what I need. I need others to accommodate themselves to my limits, and it means that I have to police these limits in a way that I am not used to at all. (It reminds me a bit of when I had to keep visitors away from my partner and son when he was new-born.) And I am also discerning that I have to police my own activities most. Obviously, this risks a spiral of social isolation; I am no fun to be around because I can't do much or engage in much. Yesterday, when I was in the office, I literally had to keep well-wishing and well-meaning colleagues from entering my office because I needed time to recover. And it is very difficult to be a partner and dad, when you have to do it in twenty-five minute installments.

The reason I use 'disability' is because when people encounter me they can't see anything wrong with me. And while I don't fit some of the stereotypes of cognitive disability either, at least with cognitive impairments, we're used to them not being wholly visible in one's countenance. (Sometimes people notice I am tired or green/gray.)

As I noted recently, I have also been diagnosed with partial hearing loss. This has nothing do with covid, it seems, and is potentially reversible. But it occurred to me that one reason why social interactions are so exhausting is that because of the hearing problems I have to work harder at hearing and processing what people say. (This is a good place for your favorite joke about ignoring what others say!) One day, I'll write a paper about intersectional disability.:)

In January, I'll do a post on how all of this has changed my approach to teaching. But I have gone on long enough, and I need some time away from the screen. It is the way.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Pynchon on 1984

By the time they have left the Ministry of Love, Winston and Julia have entered permanently the condition of doublethink, the anterooms of annihilation, no longer in love but able to hate and love Big Brother at the same time. It is as dark an ending as can be imagined. But strangely, it is not quite the end. We turn the page to find appended what seems to be some kind of critical essay, "The Principles of Newspeak". We remember that at the beginning, we were given the option, by way of a footnote, to turn to the back of the book and read it. Some readers do this, and some don't - we might see it nowadays as an early example of hypertext. Back in 1948, this final section apparently bothered the American Book-of-the-Month Club enough for them to demand that it be cut, along with the chapters quoted from Emmanuel Goldstein's book, as a condition of acceptance by the club. Though he stood to lose at least £40,000 in American sales, Orwell refused to make the changes, telling his agent, "A book is built up as a balanced structure and one cannot simply remove large chunks here and there unless one is ready to recast the whole thing . . . I really cannot allow my work to be mucked about beyond a
certain point, and I doubt whether it even pays in the long run." Three weeks later the BOMC relented, but the question remains, why end a novel as passionate, violent and dark as this one with what appears to be a scholarly appendix?
The answer may lie in simple grammar. From its first sentence, "The Principles of Newspeak" is written consistently in the past tense, as if to suggest some later piece of history, post- 1984 , in which Newspeak has become literally a thing of the past - as if in some way the anonymous author of this piece is by now free to discuss, critically and objectively, the political system of which Newspeak was, in its time, the essence. Moreover, it is our own pre-Newspeak English language that is being used to write the essay. Newspeak was supposed to have become general by 2050, and yet it appears that it did not last that long, let alone triumph, that the ancient humanistic ways of thinking inherent in standard English have persisted, survived, and ultimately prevailed, and that perhaps the social and moral order it speaks for has even, somehow, been restored.--Thomas Pynchon (2003) "Introduction" Nineteen Eighty-Four By George Orwell [HT: Victor Gijsbers]

We know that Pynchon is not the only major novelist that grappled with Orwell's Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four; at the end The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood, who according to her own testimony about 1984, "read it again and again," pays homage to it in the "Historical Notes" themselves "Being a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, held as part of the International Historical Association Convention held at the University of Denay, Nunavit, on June 25, 2195." In presenting these historical notes, Atwood, reassures the reader, who may have no taste for (recall) Socratic metaphysics --  "for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved" (Plato, Republic, 546a)" -- that the "Gilead period," too, will come to an end in some sense. 

Pynchon, who is not exactly known for his optimism, is right to pay attention to the Appendix to 1984, but I am not entirely sure that his hesitant ("perhaps") optimism about what the Appendix signals can withstand scrutiny. His interpretation assumes, first, that the (let's call it) authorial stance of the Appendix has to be taken at face value. That's decidedly odd because 1984 represents us with a world in which just about every text is a forgery of some sorts. (While it would be a mistake to treat them alike, Orwell and Borges were contemporaries, after all.) In fact, much of the action of 1984 consists in the production of forgeries (not just of texts of memories). The production of newspapers by the Ministry of Truth and the torture chambers of Ministry of love have this in common. So, why would the Appendix be any different?

As an aside, the apparent function of the forgeries in Oceania appear to be to produce a totalizing infallibility about everything, not the least the past, of the Party. (No Pope would dream of this!) And what it illustrates is that even if one were to grant (for the sake of amusement) the linguistic idealist, that all is text, what one may call the production values that inform or are exhibited by the production of texts make a huge difference. Linguistic idealism comes in many varieties. If one treats this focus on 'values' as bourgeois, feel free to replace 'production values' with 'means of production' in the previous sentence. In so far as Orwell is a true socialist (and an author), this attention to the conditions of textual production need not surprise. 

But let's stipulate that we need to take the Appendix at face value. You may say, 'What else can we do, after all?' It's true, as Pynchon emphasizes, that the Appendix treats Newspeak as a thing of the past. Given that Pynchon explicitly understands Newspeak as the essence of Oceania, and in his argument tacitly relies on the metaphysical principle, I'll paraphrase Spinoza (E2D2), that when its essence is taken away the entity ceases to be, Pynchon infers from the demise of Newspeak quite reasonably that Oceania must have ended.

Before I get to the merits of Pynchon's argument, a reader may suspect that I will object to Pynchon's metaphysics as an imposition on the world of 1984. Of course, I am assuming you are not the kind of reader who may find my parading of metaphysical jargon quite pedantic. Even so it's worth noting that the core torture scenes in Part III of 1984, emphasize that metaphysics is salient. The torturer, O'Brien, repeatedly, in fact, reminds his victim, Winston Smith, that metaphysics is not his "strong point." So I am not going to object to the form of Pynchon's argument.*

Newspeak is what the philosophers call a final language. In the text -- I have in mind both 1984 and its Appendix -- this is marked by the contrast between the provisional versions (as, I now quote the Appendix, "embodied in the Ninth and Tenth editions of the Newspeak Dictionary") -- and its definitive form "embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary."  As we learn from the Appendix and, earlier in the novel, from Syme, who, before he is presumably vaporized, is one of the developers of Newspeak, Newspeak is supposed to be an austere language: its vocabulary culled down, and, through some semantic tools the expressive power of particular words is greatly enhanced, the language's expressive power is curtailed. It's a final language designed to be spoken and used by the Party.**

Now, Syme indeed suggests that the "Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak." The narrator of 1984 adds that this is expressed with "a sort of mystical satisfaction." And indeed this idea, the perfection of language, is characteristic of what we may call Enlightenment mysticism (and satirized by Swift). Pynchon's interpretation of 1984 is rooted in Syme's understanding of Newspeak.

The Appendix, which follows Syme's interpretation of Newspeak sometimes literally, omits this mystical claim. I'll quote the Appendix (and then suggest an alternative to Pynchon's interpretation):

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

Unlike Syme, the Appendix places greatest emphasis on the fact that the purpose of Newspeak was to make what in 1984 is called 'Thoughtcrime' impossible. Even a Quine-ean couldn't be heretical through indirect methods in Newspeak. We might say, then, that it is regimentation that is the fundamental function of Newspeak as a final language.

Interestingly enough, this is an aside, the author of the Appendix recognizes that once Newspeak is perfected, it would make translation of books and even complex fragments from older languages into Newspeak in a certain way impossible unless they either referred "to some technical processor some very simple everyday actions." (The Appendix offers the Declaration of Independence as an example of how "impossible" would be to render it into Newspeak.) One wishes (recall) our advocates of formal languages would keep this in mind.

Be that as it may, a more natural interpretation of the demise of Newspeak presents itself now.  For, from the point of view of the Party, the elimination of even possible Thoughtcrime would be self-defeating. For Thoughtcrime grounds the repressive apparatus of the Party. The possibility of Thoughtcrimes are -- as much as the conditions of permanent War -- central to the structure of self-discipline of the Party. The elimination of Thoughtcrime as a category would spell doom to the survival of the Party because it would lose its main means of self-control as a ruling, corporate spirit. It would then have to start codifying laws of some sort and bureaucratize, formalize these. This was not a problem in the world of 1984 because the perfection of Newspeak had been projected, as the Appendix notes in its closing sentence, into a more distant future (2050).

So, a more natural political possibility is that the Party abandoned the project of Newspeak because it saw that its perfection would be self-undermining and incompatible with the ideological needs of Ingsoc in power.*** (By contrast, a socialist language planner like Carnap recognizes that Esperanto, for example, is great for a world of public Enlightenment.) And the Appendix reflects the writings of someone who is intimately familiar with the abandonment of Newspeak (not the demise of Oceania).  Admittedly, there are some passages in the Appendix that exhibit a rather free-thinking attitude: the use of the Declaration of Independence as an example, in particular, is rather cheeky. And it forms the best evidence for Pynchon's interpretation. But the more literal reading of the Appendix understands it as a fragment from a reconstruction of the rise and fall of Newspeak as a social enterprise. That is compatible with the survival of Oceania once the Party realized that the mystical attitude toward Newspeak threatened to make it the essence of Oceania.+

 

 

Covid Midterms

I interrupted the flow of my covid diaries (see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here; here; here; here; and here) because there was very little to add, and I wanted to use my 'writing time' for other intellectual activities. Three weeks later, progress is frustratingly slow, but there are some changes: my permanent muscle fatigue is gone. (Perhaps this is due to taking vitamins B1/B2 which was adviced by a fellow philosophical, long hauler. I can't prove causation, but I will happily continue with the pills.) I am less irritable around music and other people. We have had a few family meals now. I even went to the movies with my son the other day--Godzilla vs Kong is surprisingly moving and well done movie. After I was floored, but it was a joy to spend half a day with my son having fun; the first time in over five months!

I can spend about an half hour on zoom/phones before nausea and headaches set in. Sometimes I can stretch it a bit. For example, I didn't participate in the PhD defense of my brilliant student Lea Klarenbeek. But I very much enjoyed the proceedings on the webinar. To simplify: she used ameliorative analysis a la Haslanger and applied Anderson's ideas on relationality equality to the concept of integration. Crucially integration should not be viewed as a property of individuals, but of structures, societies, and groups with each other. (Her target is a kind of civic nationalist/communitarian discourse that rounds integration in Europe.) I could follow the discussion, but after I logged off I was floored. Yesterday we had parent teacher discussions on zoom with my son's teachers. After it was done I crawled into bed.

I still have periods of partial insomnia in clusters for a few days, but I also have days of fine sleep in a row. More important, I can read about four pages of philosophy in half hour increments a few times a day. If I go on too long I get nausea and headaches. So, I can read about 80-100 pages per week. (Kind of what I expect from our bachelor students.) Not satisfying, but at least stimulating.

I am unable to do creative intellectual work (unless one puts twitter in that category). But I can edit pre-existing material in thirty minute increments. Currently I am entertaining myself with the idea that I am writing a book on the Liberal Art of Government drawn from my digressions. The book will be a kind of commentary on Foucault Birth of Biopolitics. I have a draft of an introduction and a first chapter that I am circulating.

A new cognitive problem that I am aware of is that I suffer from strange memory loss. I don't recall conversations and I have trouble recalling names/places and other stuff that I ordinarily have at hand. I noticed it because my son was very surprised i had forgotten the details of a school trip (that's the kind of thing I get excited about). And he pointed out it was not the first time during the last few months. When I checked with my wife, she admitted that she had been wondering about my memory. But because I am otherwise so aware and present, she found it difficult to be sure. My occupational physician thinks some things don't imprint unless I am able to give it my full intention.

The NHS has shortened the amount of time for my second jab. So I will be fully vaccinated in a few weeks. Meanwhile, I have had a round of medical screening, and I have been triaged for one of the long haul special clinics. Unfortunately, they are experiencing "extremely high volumes" so it is unclear when I will be seen by a specialist.

Yesterday, my occupational physician took me through the roadmap ahead. Early in July she will make an official determination whether I can return to work in September. September is not just the start of new academic year, buy also, coincidentally, the moment my benefits will be (modestly, albeit structurally) lowered. We have also booked a date the end of July to make sure no correction is needed. She greatly tempered my expectations about what I can expect to be doing. She thought that lecturing might be possible, but when I said that I teach a (rather large) seminar style course in the Fall, she sighed kindly. 

September feels ages away, but after her sigh I was quite shaken. It didn't help that I spoke to a disciplinary colleague about his long haul recovery. He has benefitted greatly from rehab, but his underlying message was that while there is improvement he is learning to live with and accept his limitations. On some level I know that shows wisdom. 

In fact, while with due gratitude to my family (for their support), past unions and the welfare state (for my present financial support), and my colleagues (for their extra work), I view my long haul as an un-mitigated disaster. Even so, I have come to embrace one of my new routines: I have gotten used to not responding to emails at once. I especially have come to see the mental health benefits from not responding to work related emails at once. And while I find it frustrating that I cannot digress on the issues of the day, it's not an unmitigated disaster to focus on listening to others only.

I am not especially impatient day to day about my recovery. Since I suffer very little now, it's not at all unbearable. Because I have withdrawn from most commitments I do not feel much pressure. Part of me does not mind to give up my supervisory and managerial duties. While it is clear some of my colleagues have really had to do a lot of extra work because of my incapacitation (and some have let me know this in rather forthright manner--I love the Dutch!), I also feel things are organized enough that I am dispensable at work. But the conversation with my disciplinary colleague in light of my sweet sighing, occupational physician did rekindle the fear that I may never fully recover my intellectual or social skills. This fear sneaks up on me and occasionally sours my humor.

 

 

On Covid Tedium and Regretting Oblomov

One of the strangest features of my slow Covid recovery (recall here; here; here; and here) is the pattern of (ahh) asymmetric cognitive impairment. I don't mean here just the loss of skill in doing things which I have associated with a kind of gappiness in my consciousness.

About two months in I am still incapable of reading books and spending more than thirty consecutive minutes on responding to emails. If I try to do do so I get a headache and/or a fatigue that feels like my scull is filled with a lead ball about two-thirds its size. The same effect is also produced by conversation, which I find very taxing, watching lectures, writing blog posts, and even relatively short walks. I still find most music unbearable even when well rested and without other symptoms. And when I am fatigued, even background humming or whistling can set off irritability and a kind of noise in my brain.

By contrast, I can spend my bedridden hours watching food shows and action flicks on Netflix; play online Scrabble; or scroll through Twitter and Facebook feeds. I am also aware enough of my situation to write emails withdrawing from commitments, and to spend my time reflecting on what I might do with my life, how to earn some income, if I never manage to recover the skill, that is capacity, to read and teach philosophy again.

I could, I suspect, write philosophy in short increments. But it couldn't be a professional or scholarly philosophy because I can't engage with other people's writings let alone the literature. In reflecting on this, I sometimes feel regret that my adopted philosophical style, even in these digressions, where I don't have to play by the rules of scholarship, is structured by the artifice of the imaginary, disciplined conversation with others; as distinct from, and opposed to, say, direct contact with concepts or arguments.

The other day I was watching The Grandmaster, a late and self-consciously more artistic and philosophical entry in the IP man series of kung fu films. In the key, climatic scene one of the protagonists (played by Zhang Ziyi), who has just compared her commitment to honoring the code of her family and her filial duty,  says, "To say there are no regrets in life is just to fool yourself." 

When you have spent more than seven weeks in bed, you have plenty of time to linger on one's life choices. So, perhaps that's why the just-quoted scene from The Grandmaster affected me greatly. I decided her stance is a fine response to the "I regret nothing" attitude of hedonism. (It is no surprise that Edith Piaf's song gets appropriated so often in commercials.) Of course, a life with only regrets may be no life at all! 

The existence and acknowledgment of regret is not a sunk cost fallacy, but rather a consequence of accepting or tracking the consequences of meaningful choices. The realization that one could meaningfully have, perhaps from a certain vantage point should have, done otherwise is a sign that one takes a certain kind of responsibility or ownership over one's actions.* It need not entail that one would do anything different. If one dislikes sentimentalism, one can call regret an aesthetic by-product of being accountable to self.

As I scan the books in my library, including the piles of books I had intended to read the past few months, I realize regretfully that despite my familiarity with its conceit, I never read Oblomov. I wonder if I had read it, I would have been better prepared for the in-activity, the Oblomovitis of covid long hauling.

As I was lying in the dark, the vacuous spinning of my insomnia wearing off, I decided that I regret I never read Oblomov would make a fine title of my aphoristic, covid memoires. 

 

 

 

Covid Fellowship and Constrained Living with Invisible Disability

After last week's digression on the effects of my Covid, I was very touched by the many generous well wishes I received. Reading notes of encouragement in my darkened bedroom filled my time for a few days. Thank you.

Two kinds of responses surprised me. First, while commiserating with me, a number of people shared publicly their experiences of living with regular vertigo, tinnitus, and headaches. They did so on this blog, but also in other social media. My piece was a trigger for them to come out, as it were, and share their otherwise invisible disability in our wider professional circle.* These testimonials give a glimpse of stoic perseverance and alert us, perhaps, to quiet suffering. 

Second, a smaller, but not insignificant number of covid 'long haulers,' and their partners, privately reached out to me, to wish me well, to encourage me, and also to tell me that they recognized my symptoms. They have provided me with fellowship and support through the chat functions of social media. 

Because I find speaking quite exhausting, I am, despite my family, rather isolated during the day. But the fellowship -- as I call them to myself --, has made me feel connected to those who have a sense of what it's like. Relative to the people who died or were incubated in hospitals, we don't seem especially stricken. But we struggle in a world designed for activity.

Because I mostly lacked the canonized covid symptoms  -- fever, cough, lack of smell, shortness of breath** --, the fellowship has been reassuring. Knowing that others, too, experience the waxing and waning of dizziness/boat-rocking, fatigue, headaches, difficulty concentrating, and insomnia has given me a sense it's part of the territory. They have given me a window, a sense of familiarity, into how my experiences hang together. 

Last week, I discussed my inability to read and focus; I have withdrawn from all professional activity. In particular, classes start without me next week. Even the fellowship can't remove the dread I may never teach again. 

This week, however, I want to give a sense of the manner in which the inability to concentrate ('brain fog') manifests itself in other ways, too. The most obvious example is that three times since quarantine ended, I nearly burned down our kitchen. Each time I skipped an otherwise obvious step; e.g., pouring water into the espresso machine after adding the beans, removing the paper-towel-role or the plate from the burning stove. Each time I missed that something was burning in front of my eyes until I smelled the problem, and, eventually, registered it as a warning.  

In reflecting on my experiences I receive, I imagine, an oblique glance at the what it's like of Alzheimers and dementia (and, perhaps, other forms of consciousness in animals and AI). And  there is no difference in experience. Compared to my pre-covid self my steam of consciousness does not feel more granular or gappy. I don't have a sense, in the moment, of my blind-spots.

Thanks to Dennett's work I am familiar with the fact that even very healthy conscioussness is full of unacknowledged gappiness. Because I recall my past capacity, I recognize, after the fact, that some of my behavior exhibits less skill-full functioning, an incompetence at tasks I had once been familiar with. Since I am nearly fifty that's not a wholly new experience.

A few years ago, the work of Elizabeth Barnes on disability taught me that the human condition should be conceived as constrained living (here); (here), (and here). The gappiness of my possible blind-spots is not experienced as constraint at all. I don't feel handicapped when I walk into our kitchenette.

By contrast, while I have some recollection issues (with names, especially), I have a pretty vivid sense of my capacities before Covid. And this alerts me to a whole range of new constraints day-to-day. For example, I have learned to walk while dizzy, which involves an inattention to the sense that I might fall any minute; instead I trust in the sturdiness of my legs.

I also can't listen to any music. In fact, the only distraction I tolerate is watching already familiar films, but not musicals, or TV  (or highly episodic series). This is also familiar to the fellowship. One curiosity is that watching explosives or gun-fights on Netflix does not bother me at all, but any other background noise -- the barking of a dog in the yard, even my son singing happily -- evokes the horror of a scratch on a blackboard. 

  

Leaving Your Ego at Home: on being a historian of philosophy

And, herein lies, I think, one of the great things about doing philosophy through historical figures like Leibniz. Whilst it’s very hard to leave your ego at home, there is less personal at stake when trying to discuss what you think Leibniz thought about x than when trying to say what you think about x. For one thing, everyone knows deep down, it would be crazy to think that they understood Leibniz an sich, and, for another, we all know he was a lot better at philosophy that we will ever be! And yet the joy of thinking philosophically is ever present.--Paul Lodge.

If I am granted the (extremely) controversial claim that studying Leibniz is no different than studying any other canonical, and would be canonical, author,* then in the quoted passage from Paul Lodge, one can read (at least) four claims about being a historian of philosopher: 

1. One's ego is less involved in studying a canonical philosophy than philosophizing directly.
2. The people we study are "a lot better at philosophy" than "we will ever be."
3. It is nearly impossible to fully understand a canonical philosopher.
4. Being a historian of philosophy is a joyful activity.

Claim (1) will come as a surprise to those only focused on the often minute squabbles among historians of philosophy. Even so, there is an important element of truth to (1). This is not because historians of philosophy are by nature less ego driven or vain -- Schliesser is exhibit A to the contrary --, but because part of the training of becoming a historian of philosophy is a disciplined bracketing of one's ego. For, whatever one's ultimate goal(s) in being (momentarily) a historian of philosophy (and there are huge disagreements over this), an attempt to grasp another thinker(s)'s text is a key part of it. One central benefit of this disciplined exercise in understanding another is to become self-aware of one's presuppositions that one brings to the text. When historians of philosophy complain about anachronism, what they really worry about is the unthinking, un-methodical, even unconscious imposition of the reader's thought-world onto the text. This unconscious thought-world is a whole series of expectations about how words, concepts, meanings, terminologies, grammar, values, as well as political and cultural practices (etc.) relate to each other. We can become aware of such hard to detect expectations of our ego, when we systematically confront utterances by others that do not fit our expectations in usual even uncanny ways.

So, the historian of philosophy is increasingly skilled at being self-ware of central, usually hidden, features of her own ego while she gets increasingly skilled at entering into another person's text. So, the disciplined student of the history of philosophy is following the Delphic injunction to know herself. Along the way she learns to 'bracket' her own ego in  the midst of grasping the text of another. In practice, this 'bracketing' of one's ego is always imperfect, which is why, say, the writings of historians of philosophy tend to reflect the ruling fashions of the generations of their teachers (give or take). Either way, one way to understand Lodge's claim is to see that when one philosophizes 'directly' (without mediation of historical texts) the hidden life of one's ego is, even if one has a naturally modest nature, not as systematically bracketed all else being equal. In practice, of course, all else is not equal, and there are lots of other philosophical and social practices that can generate some such bracketing of one's ego (say disciplined by formal technologies, or by dissonances through one's cultural back-ground, etc.). Having granted that last point, so many of the worst social incentives in philosophy reward the hyper-projection of one's ego onto metaphysical or social reality; the previous sentence is not as cryptic as it sounds. Here's a small example: status in our discipline tracks rapid come-backs, witty put-downs, and bold conjecture (backed up with plausible enough systematic analysis); we rarely reward, in our public esteem, sympathetic colleagues that are incredibly good at listening to another and bringing out the best feature of their interlocuter's views. (Obviously, when we are drafting a paper we very much appreciate having the sympathetic colleague.) Being trained as a historian of philosophy is to be trained into becoming a sympathetic colleague. (Again, this is compatible with the further thought that a historian of philosophy is uncouth, listens to bad pop music, a jerk, etc.)