Mart-deBlog

I am back in Berlin for my last ten weeks. The Doctor declared me sick and I am not allowed to go to class. So I went into the city to read, ending up in the S-bahn that goes around through Berlin and I sat there for several circles. In my window, the heart of Berlin passed by in the cinematic movement of the train, moving from East to West to East to West. On my lap lay one of the best books I have read in a long while. I was struggling, when I was looking outside the train, my book burned in my lap but when I was reading the book, the diversity of Berlin screamed for my attention.

Studying philosophy (or studying anything) implies that you close your eyes on the world, and direct them to the world of letters and concepts. Either you read or you absorb the environment. Essentially then, reading a book always disconnects you from the surroundings. And this the origin of the conflict between my stay at ECLA and my stay in Berlin: ECLA is a 'not-Berlin' and Berlin is a 'not-ECLA'; these two worlds oppose each other, one can only be in either one (see my previous post). And especially so because Berlin is my environment, I have never felt so easily connected to a place, so easily part of a culture but the same goes for the environment of philosophical discourse in which I am rooting more and more. But to leave Berlin for a moment, if I want to devote myself to philosophy it seems that this schism will be my home, I will always live between the book and the presence of things, as philosopher you can only be homeless.

But a small epiphany came over me while I was sitting in the train today, caught between book and window, between the abstract and concrete. Being homeless is not necessarily the same as being lost. There is a nomadic existence, the life of constant movement. Already, Plato wrote about the cave and the intellectual who breaks from the bonds of community and leaves the cave to see the sun, already Plato hammered on the act of traveling itself, advocating the return back into the cave. Philosophy is always associated with an ivory tower, and to be honest, my whole life I have actually dreamed of having a house with an immensely high tower. But I always have trouble dealing with elitism and I often prohibit myself from building the necessary towers of perspective. Then, today in the train, I had the simple realization, of building the highest tower possible, to strive for ascending high-up into the sun and then journey all the way back to earth, spending a nomadic life of transcendence, in never-ending circles of ascending and descending. Thus I calmed down, lowered my head to read, and I read about Hegel and the development of human consciousness in History through diverse Master-Slave relations, until I had enough and raised my head, to see a tough-looking skinhead nervously checking his pockets and the conductor with a self-aware grin...