Degrees of Theory

Theory can be many things.

At their most intense theories are prescriptive.

At their most basic they are observational.

In the former case one has predicted a phenomenon so well that one can reasonably create a doctrine or set of rules that will prescribe a course of action.

In the latter a phenomenon is so unpredictable that one is satisfied with simply observing it properly.

Observation is obviously a part of every theory.

Prescription and prediction is clearly not.

Understanding the many layers of theory is definitely important if we are going to grapple with Clausewitz.

The rough gradient of theory:

Observation

Identification of regularity

Generalization

Prediction

Prescription.

Those five things are generally a part of theorizing. But not every theory need follow them in that order.

Regularity is a tricky question, especially with human phenomena.

For in nature we simply identify regularity.

In humans we have the extra problem that we can not only identify regularity, we can also create regularity. Thus we must worry about mistaking habit (second nature) for (first) nature.

This problem of reflexivity and habit should make us tread lightly in the realm of human theory.

We don't want to make ourselves into simple abstract beings just for the sake of clear thinking.

Let experience overrun the theories, I say.

I owe so much to William James and Henri Bergson right now. Thanks.

Resistance

I resist many things in my life.

It was an undercurrent for many years. I was so habituated to favoring what wasn't that I lost touch with what is. My mind drifted more easily in the was and could.

I've become more acquainted with the present. I like it here quite a lot.

I'm far more conscious of resistance now. When the moment demands a mood, when the bus won't get me somewhere on time, when my mind or body won't cooperate with me. Yet my resistance still surprises me.

I am currently resistant towards writing. Even these keystrokes bring me a bit of pain. That last sentence made my brow furrow and my left eye compress into an awkward painful wink.

Writing has always involved a 'towards which'. I have always written with a future in mind. A future in which I am an academic, a professor, a lauded and accepted thinker among a community of thinkers. Writing was previously a means to an end, the end being graduate school and a scholarly profession.

But the idea that one can be a 'professional philosopher' is of recent origin and seems less and less viable to me. One can be a professional teacher. One cannot be a professional philosopher. My best friends have told me so. Bloom clearly asserts that philosophy is an individual task. Collingwood is adamant that the life of a professor is not the best life for a thinker who hopes to write books.

This is such an obvious fact that it often escapes my gaze.

I wanted philosophy to provide my primary access to the world, I wanted it to supply my community. But it won't. I suspect the American universities are bankrupt, another casualty of the new American oligarchy.

Many other issues are presenting themselves to me as relevant. I continue to reflect and I have no intentions of stopping.

But do I intend to stop writing? Why do I find it so difficult to write in the present? I've so often written in the future. I've done this work with the idea of it leading me to somewhere else, some place that I am not, somewhere with people that I don't know.

But I love where I am, and I love the people I know.

I'm not sorry I didn't get into graduate school.

I'm sorry that thinking and philosophical living has been so impoverished by its confinement to the university. I'm sorry that it has been rendered so politically and socially impotent. I'm sorry that we have a shitty institutional structure that only provides pseudo-engagement with the world of politics and philosophy.

I'm sorry that people read Clausewitz so poorly.

I won't resist my thinking. I don't want to resist my thinking.

But it isn't 'taking me anywhere', it won't be a career for me, and that causes me pain. It is the death of a dream, the death of a fantasy.

I think this is for the best. I don't want the poverty and desperation that comes from the university life.

I see how it could very easily lead to sloppy thinking. In that world one must publish or perish, not think clearly and honestly.

I still find my heart and my mind so full. The world is richer than it's ever been for me, and I don't need any person or institution to ground me.

Although, I wouldn't mind a person.