Introduction, Here and There (2008)

Here and There

Rick Hogan

“On ne peut penser et écrire qu´assis (G. Flaubert). There I have caught you, nihilist! The sedentary life is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value” (Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, I.34; trans. Kaufmann)

“Wer der Dichter will verstehen, muss in Dichters Lande gehen.” (Goethe)

“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably wind up somewhere else” (Yogi Berra)

“El que lee mucho y anda mucho ve mucho y sabe mucho” (Don Quijote II,25)

“For believe me, the secret of harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is—to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves!” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, #283; trans. Kaufmann)

A number of recent philosophers (e.g., Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue; Richard Wohlheim, The Thread of Life) have stressed the essentially narrative structure of living a life. In this light, my writing and collecting the following sketches is part of my project of “getting a life.”

Despite the constraints of a rapidly degenerating memory, I’ve tried to tell the truth. And I think that I follow Nietzsche—my favorite philosopher—in believing that there is such a thing to be told. We can carve up the world in whatever ways we do (“interpretations,” “perspectives,” “paradigms”), but what goes on within our structures is constrained by an independently existing reality. You can set up your Post Office however you please, but whether or not you get mail depends on “the world.”

Although I’ve tried to tell the truth, I have by no means tried to tell all of it. Respect for the privacy of persons living and dead—including, most obviously, myself—often obliges silence. This of course does not mean that unmentioned persons or events have not been of quintessential importance. That is to say, a lot of really important (to me) stuff will accompany me to the grave.

Who is all this for? Primarily for me: to satisfy my own need to see what I’ve been up to since 1944. (To monkey a bit with one of my favorite floating quotations: “I don’t know how I’ve lived until I see what I’ve written.”) And, of course, for my friends, sine quibis non.