Infamous Head of Hair?

           

            All through yoga and then song practice on Tuesday morning I was dreading taking my bike out into the snowstorm to get to my first class of Continental Philosophy. My right wrist still hasn’t healed since I sprained it after falling from my bike a month ago, so I was frightened of another wipeout. When I headed out I decided to avoid the side streets that might not have been cleared, so I took Queen to Spadina and then rode north to Koffler House. The way was surprisingly clear of snow and though it was messy and my ass got damp, I was relieved that it wasn’t slippery.

            When I arrived in the “Shoppers Drug Mart” auditorium there was only one other student there, and after I picked a seat in the third row I went back to chat with him. Nigel is a teaching assistant at a high school while at the same time attending U of T as a part-time student, majoring in Philosophy. He told me that he was auditing the class before enrolling in it next summer. Nigel looked like he was in his fourties. A woman came in who looked like she was about the same age. Philosophy seems to attract more mature students than English. Miranda commented to us about the link to the Kerkegaard reading material not working. I told her I’d just downloaded a different PDF of “Philosophical Fragments from another site. She suggested that the professor might require a specific translation.

            The Shoppers Drug Mart lecture hall is a fair sized theatre style auditorium. Hen I first walked in my impression was that it was nice, but after sitting down near the front I noticed that the walls are just bare concrete, except for some acoustic panels patched on top. It looks as if the room is still under construction but I suspect they just cheaped out and called it done.

            The professor came in a little before 10:00. He’s a friendly, bespectacled balding guy with a bit of a grey beard. He was wearing a pale blue dress-shirt without a tie. He needed some advice on how to raise the video screen in order to free up the blackboard, then he pulled up a chair and sat down. He said he wanted to wait for students to come from the other location because he was sure that some people wouldn’t have gotten the email he’d sent the day before to tell us about the change of building. He was quite relaxed while we were waiting and chatted amicably with us.

            He started the lecture more than ten minutes late. He introduced himself as Robert Gibbs abs told us that he is the director of the Jackman Humanities Institute. He added that the concept of humanity is one of the guiding themes of this course.

            He told us that he didn’t know how long he was going to be able to lecture because he was currently suffering from severe neck pain. He said that he thought we would understand that because some of us probably have bodies.

            He informed us that the new lecture hall has technology that wouldn’t have been available in the previous space and suggested that he might take advantage of that in the next lecture by playing Mozart’s Don Giovanni to accompany our reading of Kerkegaard, because Kerkegaard was a fan of that opera.

            He told us that philosophy is not for the swift.

            He said that the edition of Soren Kerkegaard’s “Philosophical Fragments” that he most recommends was published by Princeton University Press. He offered to give a dollar to any of us who can find the first printing with the pink cover. He added that Princeton University Press has also published Robert Gibbs, but he doesn’t recommend that.

            He took a poll, asking us various questions about how long it takes us to get to class and by what means. A surprising number lived within fifteen minutes of class. I was in the fifteen minutes to half an hour category and told him that I also take my bike. He asked how it was that morning and I told hum that it had been slushy but not slippery. His reason for asking the questions, in addition to getting to know us, was to inform us that Soren Kerkegaard never travelled more that two hours away from home in his entire life.

            Since the opening part of Kerkegaard’s “Philosophical Fragments” deals with Socrates, the professor pointed out to us that the goal of Socrates is to show you that you don’t know what you know. He then promised us that we would know less at the end of this course than we did at the beginning.

            He told us that he will be talking a lot during this course because he loves to talk, but assured us that it would not be high-level performance art.

            He encouraged us to bother him as much as possible and said, “Philosophy is about questions. If you want answers you will have to go to a different department.” He added that philosophers are suspicious of the knowing of answers. He told us that people do try to find answers to questions like “How do we know?” but it doesn’t always work out. He argued that we should be asking “Why?” rather than “How?”. He urged us to doubt everything and said that whatever everyone else takes for granted is what the philosopher worries about.

            We think when things don’t make sense. He said that there are various ways of thinking, such as by listening, reading and writing, but suggested that the best way to think is while talking.

He suggested that it could be that those who become professors of philosophy are simply stuck because once one starts philosophy t may be impossible to leave.

He reminded us that we’ve probably all been in a bar and heard someone say, “I’ve got a philosophy about that!” He told us that what these people are saying really is philosophy because they are trying to make sense of things.

            So far, it sounds like this course is going to be very different from Knowledge and Reality, which is a great relief for me.

            He talked about being one of the guardians of the library and his embarrassment about doing most of his research online.

            If we can think about the difference between Jesus and Socrates we can understand more of our world.

            He told us that Continental Philosophy is like a Continental Breakfast. I’m not sure how he justified the analogy though. He described the more substantial but also greasier British breakfast and compared that to a small cup of very dark coffee with a croissant but I didn’t get how Continental Philosophy is like the latter. He said that the Continental tradition is a Christian theological tradition, which is not so much the case in the English tradition. He asked if we can make sense of humanity without theology.

He did say that the philosophical tradition of Canada, because of our two cultures, used to be to do both English and Continental Philosophy at the same time. He added cryptically, “The French are the only ones who are truly rational. You know that don’t you?”

Another statement he made that puzzled me was, “Europe has no sense of its boundaries and the rest of the world is paying for it daily.”

He said of Kerkegaard that he wrote Philosophical Fragments under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus. Professor Gibbs said he creates distance to draw us to our own thinking. He added that when we play a game we are no interested in the mind of the game creator.

I looked up “Climacus” and in Greek it means “scale”.

After the lecture, I introduced myself to Professor Gibbs, shook his hand and asked him if it mattered which translations of Kerkegaard we had. He said it didn’t matter at all and there would only be subtle differences, then added, “How many of us speak Danish anyway?” I said that I know how to say, “Thanks for the coffee” and one swear word which sounds like “Fahsahden”. I’d always thought that it meant “for Satan” but apparently “for Satan” in Danish is “for Satan”. I guess it might have been colloquial to the region and the peasant class from which my Danish side climbed though.

As I was leaving Koffler House, after all my worrying about slipping on the snow or ice and falling from my bicycle and after proving to myself that I’d had nothing to be bothered about in that respect, while walking across the courtyard I slipped on the ice and landed hard on my right arm.

I walked my bike down Spadina to Russell Street, and then rode east to St George and then south to College. I walked again to King’s College Circle and then rode up and around to University College. I had about three and a half hours to kill before my next class, and on a fair weather day I would’ve just gone home for a siesta, but this time I opted to just find a space to wait.

            The first thing I did was to locate my classroom, then I went a few doors away and into the enormous and at the time unoccupied East Hall. I plugged in my laptop, sat at a desk and began to reread Philosophical Fragments. After a while I got sleepy, so I put my feet up on another chair and dozed for a while. I ate a lunch of three bananas, two oranges, an apple and some chestnuts. I finished the first chapter of “Philosophical Fragments” and then began reading the second chapter of Nietzsche’s “A Genealogy of Morals” in which he talks about punishment with pain being the mechanism that our society has learned to use in order to create memory.

About half an hour before class I went to my classroom. It was very small compared to all the other rooms in which I’ve taken English classes. This was more the size of the rooms they give us for learning French as a second language. When I came in there were two young women already there. I looked around half an hour later after the room had filled up and saw that there was not a single guy. Just as I thought that though, two young men arrived and a few more trickled in later.

When our instructor, Andrew Lesk came in, he walked past my desk, turned his head and with a smile said, “You look familiar!” I told him it was good to see him and he mirrored that sentiment, adding, “I’d recognize that head of hair anywhere!” I had not known that I have an infamous head of hair! Maybe it’s just my head itself that stands out and the hair just follows its contours.

Andrew was wearing a grey suit with a red and black horizontally striped tie. Maybe it was just to make a first class impression or maybe he’d just come from a meeting. I’m sure he’ll get more casual as we go along.

As an introduction to his course, instead of going through the syllabus, Andrew passed out a short story by Ethel Wilson, called “Hurry Hurry”, and after having each of us read a paragraph out loud until the conclusion, he then set about to guide us through a close reading and analysis of the piece.

It’s a story about a woman walking with her dogs on Sea Island in 1939, long before it became the location of the Vancouver International Airport. What she sees is what she usually sees at first, but the way the activity of the various birds is described serves to foreshadow a violent end.

On the ride home, the slush had begun to freeze and was therefore more slippery. I managed to remain upright on my bike though. Hen I got home I placed my vehicle at an angle into the bathtub to let the snow melt. It took quite a while because the ice and snow were clinging to cold metal.