a quiet section of Queens. Her Dad, who had traveled the world, liked me. He saw me as his potential son-in-law and hooked me up with a desk job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I did the clerical work assigned to me each day in a hurry, giving me enough time to study and concentrate on the two figures who were saying the most to me: Schopenhauer and Hume. The two men were linked: Schopenhauer, the only great German philosopher who could read English, actually wrote a long introduction to Hume’s philosophy. Of course I’d been reading Schopenhauer since childhood—Schopenhauer who put will over reason and mystery over fact; Schopenhauer who dealt so profoundly with the questions of sadness and sorrow. I kept his essays and aphorisms under my pillow.
That summer I found myself writing little Schopenhauer-styled notes to myself. “What’s the point of living?” “Why not see what nonexistence is all about?” “When this consciousness ends, what does the new consciousness look like?” “Do I dare step into the void?” “Is there a void?” I
didn’t fall into depression. I was happy with Mary and eager to
get to graduate school. There was no reason to be depressed. And yet
these thoughts of nonexistence rattled through my daily thoughts.
These were not suicidal thoughts as is
normally understood— the usual despair that accompanies that
state of mind was not present. No, it was nothing on par with the
mental health crises that others have faced. Rather, I was curious to
see whether, when these lights go out, other lights come on. I’d been entertaining these thoughts since I was a kid back in Sacramento. But the thoughts never turned into action because of a singular insight: The thoughts were narcissistic. They involved only me and my philosophical query. I thought of the people I would hurt—Mom and Dad, Cliff and Cynthia and Cheryl. Mary would be devastated. So would my friends. So I stopped the notes and put away Schopenhauer. But not for long. To this day, Schopenhauer remains one
of my closest companions.
David Hume became an even closer companion. Hume’s still my man. Gotta teach a course on him at least once every two years. Gotta have his books by my bedside. Gotta keep reading the brother. He is the finest philosophic mind in the English language. Back in the summer of 1973, I was preparing for an oral exam at Princeton in September.
Even though they had admitted fourteen of us to the graduate program, they reserved the right to weed out four or five if we didn’t do our summer preparation. That meant choosing one legendary philosopher and not only absorbing his entire work, but all the scholarship on him as well. Hume was my choice cause there’s no one like him.
Hume was a Scottish genius who lived in the eighteenth century. I started out with his A Treatise of Human Nature , written when he was in his late twenties. At twenty-seven, he had a nervous breakdown. I related to his intensity and eagerness to know. He put down religion. He even put down conventional knowledge. He said, “Reason is, and only ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” He was an iconoclast who questioned fearlessly. His book, Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, published after his death, is the most profound critique of any religious faith. His atheism challenged my faith but never destroyed it. He understood dread—he himself had experienced the death shudder. David Hume was a soul brother.
Mary Johnson was a soul sister. I was so head-over-heels that one Sunday afternoon I invited her to ride the subway into Manhattan with me.
“Where we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see, baby,” I said.
I waltzed her into St.
Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, dropped to my knees, presented her with a ring and said the words for the first time in my life (though, I hasten to add, not the last): “Will you marry me?”
The lady smiled and said
That summer I found myself writing little Schopenhauer-styled notes to myself. “What’s the point of living?” “Why not see what nonexistence is all about?” “When this consciousness ends, what does the new consciousness look like?” “Do I dare step into the void?” “Is there a void?” I
didn’t fall into depression. I was happy with Mary and eager to
get to graduate school. There was no reason to be depressed. And yet
these thoughts of nonexistence rattled through my daily thoughts.
These were not suicidal thoughts as is
normally understood— the usual despair that accompanies that
state of mind was not present. No, it was nothing on par with the
mental health crises that others have faced. Rather, I was curious to
see whether, when these lights go out, other lights come on. I’d been entertaining these thoughts since I was a kid back in Sacramento. But the thoughts never turned into action because of a singular insight: The thoughts were narcissistic. They involved only me and my philosophical query. I thought of the people I would hurt—Mom and Dad, Cliff and Cynthia and Cheryl. Mary would be devastated. So would my friends. So I stopped the notes and put away Schopenhauer. But not for long. To this day, Schopenhauer remains one
of my closest companions.
David Hume became an even closer companion. Hume’s still my man. Gotta teach a course on him at least once every two years. Gotta have his books by my bedside. Gotta keep reading the brother. He is the finest philosophic mind in the English language. Back in the summer of 1973, I was preparing for an oral exam at Princeton in September.
Even though they had admitted fourteen of us to the graduate program, they reserved the right to weed out four or five if we didn’t do our summer preparation. That meant choosing one legendary philosopher and not only absorbing his entire work, but all the scholarship on him as well. Hume was my choice cause there’s no one like him.
Hume was a Scottish genius who lived in the eighteenth century. I started out with his A Treatise of Human Nature , written when he was in his late twenties. At twenty-seven, he had a nervous breakdown. I related to his intensity and eagerness to know. He put down religion. He even put down conventional knowledge. He said, “Reason is, and only ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” He was an iconoclast who questioned fearlessly. His book, Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion, published after his death, is the most profound critique of any religious faith. His atheism challenged my faith but never destroyed it. He understood dread—he himself had experienced the death shudder. David Hume was a soul brother.
Mary Johnson was a soul sister. I was so head-over-heels that one Sunday afternoon I invited her to ride the subway into Manhattan with me.
“Where we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see, baby,” I said.
I waltzed her into St.
Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, dropped to my knees, presented her with a ring and said the words for the first time in my life (though, I hasten to add, not the last): “Will you marry me?”
The lady smiled and said
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