“Reader’s Digest Condensed Books” On Steroids*

 *if the kids are still saying that!

So I just read a New Yorker article on Blinkist, an app that reduces Heidegger’s Zein und Seit to something you can read in 20 minutes. Or less.

I am not making that example up.

I saved you the trouble of reading the New Yorker article with the title to this post. And pointing out (though you had to get to here to find out**)that the entire article makes its point without ever using the term reductio ad absurdum. Which I feel is a very sadly missed opportunity to use said term without rebutting an argument.

You’re welcome,

**What else were you doing with your time? You were already here.

Yes, you have to be this old to even remember Reader’s Digest, much less their condensed books (there is indeed nothing new under the sun, ya punk kids! Now get offa mah lawn! Dagnabbit!)🤬 Which is the point, ain’t it?

I do not deny the power and utility of the aphorism. Better to know the Golden Rule than nothing. Better to know the two greatest commandments if you haven't the time for the Torah. 

But I increasingly doubt that very many things can be so easily boiled down. As it happens, I've read the Very Short Introduction to Heidegger, and I found it pretty good. But last year I announced that I would "blog" Sein and Zeit, and I made a start, and I've quit, because I can't really do it. The experience of the whole thing (or even the small part I've gotten through) doesn't lend itself to condensation. And describing a book is not at all the same as reading it. 

And even once finished, much is forgotten. A re-read inevitably leads to, "I don't remember that," or "I didn't understand that at all the first time through." 

Hence my doubts about the website formerly known as Twitter. In my older age I much enjoy going over the hard stuff I once struggled over. I still struggle, but enjoy it more partly for knowing I can't ever master it.

I’ve read books that I “mastered.” Or thought I did. Then re-read them, or just checked my “mastery,” and found something I had forgotten, or left out of my very conclusory analysis. And other “masters” of the topic also had their description of the elephant without trying to put the entire animal into the picture. Unless, frankly, they’re German (seriously: German scholarship is the Platonic ideal of scholarship). Germans write three books: the thesis, the footnotes that offer a secondary but related argument, to the thesis, and a third book inside the first two commenting on and critiquing other scholars on the topic. 

And yes, I know Heidegger is German. And I am going somewhere with this. I think.

It’s like “biblical theology.” Theologians thought if they could discern a uniform theology in Scripture, they could settle on a “valid “ theology. Call it the unified field theory of theology, if it helps. And they finally gave up, because no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t formulate one that wasn’t subject to serious critique from some part of the Bible excluded to formulate the theory.

Mastery isn’t real; not in the sense of totality. It’s really just something other people tell you that you have. You have it, in other words, because they say you do. Real mastery is knowing that isn’t possible; and it’s about how much you know you don’t know. (Theology and mystery; didn’t see coming, huh? 🤔)

I’ve read Derrida on Heidegger, and his discussions are never comprehensive but brutally particular and granular. It’s just a small example, but I’m convinced Derrida picked the portion of Heidegger useful to his thinking, and left the rest aside.

It’s also why dissertations are on very narrow and arcane topics. And then passed off as mastery.

You’re right. It’s more fun to struggle with the issues than to think you’ve wrestled them into submission.