things we wish we had written ourselves

Consider the following list of great philosophical works:

Aristotle, Metaphysics
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
Heidegger, Being and Time

One can only admire these books (or at least I can’t help admiring them). But the funny thing here is that I have never felt the wish to have written these books myself. And that’s not because I’m immune to such feelings–– after all, I do wish I had written the following list of books myself:

Leibniz, Monadology
Bruno Latour, Irreductions
Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity

On the whole, the first list is much stronger, but it’s the second list that makes me wish I were their author. This is an interesting phenomenon, and seems to arise from the fact that while we are all capable of admiring many different kinds of achievements, we only wish to have done them ourselves if they remind us in some way of our own interests or capacities.

For example, it never happens that while looking at a great painting I think “I wish I had painted that myself”, for the simple reason that I can’t paint at all, and can’t even draw very well. The admiration in such cases is purely external, and never makes me say: “why didn’t I think of doing that?”

In the case of the great philosophy books contained on the first list above… well, I’m a philosopher, and people in any field will always wish to do the best possible work they can in that field. And yet despite my admiration for all four of those books, I never say to myself: “why didn’t I think of writing that?” Something about the style and organization of those books, great though they are, fails to remind me of the way in which I would choose to organize ideas myself. Here again, the admiration is deep but purely external, just as with paintings.

But the other list (which will differ greatly for each of us) reminds me of things that I would like to be able to do, or which do remind me of the sorts of things I try to do in my own work. Few mortals can write something as great as the Monadology, but it at least reminds me of a personal aspiration to write something logically clear, with suitably bizarre conclusions, and in equally concise form. Latour and I are intellectually pretty close in some ways (if distant in others), and he does a lot of things in Irreductions that I wish I had done myself. In the case of the Giordano Bruno book, I simply admire the way the Nolan brings outrageous comic audacity into the midst of serious philosophy, and I’ve tried to do that now and then myself as well.

But all of these remarks are merely a preface to a thought I was having again last night. If there is one work so far in 21st century philosophy that I wish I had written myself, the answer is clear:

Quentin Meillassoux, “Subtraction and Contraction”

If you haven’t read it, it can be found in Collapse III.

The funny thing is that Meillassoux himself doesn’t seem especially fond of this article. Mostly, he is surprised that people have mistaken its contents for his own views on the subject, when it is clearly announced as a work of philosophical fiction, in the manner of science fiction. It is also not his most typical work; After Finitude would have to win that award, at least so far.

Nonetheless, it is an article of staggering brilliance both in its basic conception (“imagine that Deleuze was a pre-Socratic philosopher and we had to reconstruct his entire system on the basis of a particular fragment about immanence in Spinoza and Bergson”) and in its stunning conclusion (“there are two kinds of death: that of the priest and that of the communicator”).

One day I told Meillassoux that this was my favorite of all his works, and the one that I wished I had written myself. He replied with friendly sarcasm that that’s because it is “the most Harmanian” of his works. And he’s absolutely right. We can admire alien achievements quite easily, but the ones that inspire a spirit of agon are the ones that somehow remind us of ourselves– the ones that seem, at least in principle, within reach of our own interests and capacities.

I could never have written something like After Finitude, nor would I have aspired to do so, and thus I admire it only from afar. But I might have been able to write something resembling “Subtraction and Contraction” if Meillassoux hadn’t beaten me to it.

Damn him. It’s not only a masterpiece, but one that I should have come up with first. Having been deprived of the chance to write it, I can at least read it, and that gives a great deal of pleasure again and again.