With these notes, I am not trying to tell the world “the way it is.” These are merely my opinions. Some of them I do not even hold anymore: I may have changed them in the process of thinking about them, which fact I am always obligated to report in my subsequent notes. As for others, I may one day change some of them too, if I live long enough, and think long enough.
The opinions I used to hold, but not anymore, are still precious to me. They were the antecedent steps of the ladder, without which it was impossible to climb up to the more recent ones. Each opinion, whether former or current, is a facet of the problem which it had once or has today attempted to address. Being links in the chain of a thinking process, they can all be benefited from, they can all contribute to a more comprehensive study of the item in question.
I do not encourage the reader to agree with me. I would be happier in a case of a thoughtful disagreement. It is not what I say about these things, which is of utmost importance, but it is thinking about them, which is.
Some of my opinions may appear quite shocking, and even outrageous. Which means that they are working as powerful remedies on a sick patient, giving him a mighty jolt, in order to revive his intellectual capacity out of its comatose slumber in the netherworld of conventional wisdom. And so, to such an indignant critic I say, paraphrasing Themistocles, “Hate me, but hear me out!”
For I am not telling the world “the way it is.” I am leaving it a legacy.
No comments:
Post a Comment