LoveKnowledge by Brand Roy;

Author:Brand, Roy;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PHI005000, Philosophy/Ethics and Moral Philosophy, PHI004000, Philosophy/Epistemology
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2012-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

The Book of Life

In the Seventh Walk Rousseau reflects on how nature informs his reflections on his life. He wonders why he is so drawn to botany—“why this particular activity should attract me and what charm I can find in a fruitless study where I neither make any progress nor learn anything useful” (Reveries, 106). As he gradually discovers, collecting plants lays a foundation for reflection and reverie. Gathering and classifying these fragments of nature prompts him to meditate on a “natural order” and to appreciate the complex interweaving of natural beings that unites humans with the world. Ironically, he discovers this unity by employing an arbitrary system of classification that subdivides and orders species according to arcane Latin names.

Botany is, of course, another way of writing life. And the book Rousseau plans to write (about “each blade of grass,” as he tells us) is the book of life. What distinguishes Rousseau’s exploration of nature from that of the scientist is that he does not want to know nature for theoretical or practical purposes. His botanical excavations involve focusing on nature and lavishing small, caring gestures upon it through the marking of language.

Life and language come together not because they are one but because of the movement of reverie that relates them. This is not a simple fusion; the tension is palpable and the problem is always alive. But the project is nevertheless not to speak over but to give voice to what remains silent and apart. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke writes: “I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.… Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distance continues to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky.”6 Accepting and embracing the distance makes love and friendship possible. When I think I know you, I wrong you. When I resign myself to the impossibility of knowledge, I wrong you. But when I live this tension, making it formative of our relations, I see you “whole and against a wide sky.”

This tension operates between the author and the written self and between the text and the reader. Thus a book that begins by asserting its isolation ends up making friends.

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