After the hardboiled eggs, I brought out my file drawers and made an impassioned presentation of my project. The chairman's eyebrows knitted in puzzlement. Then a light came into his eyes. "It sounds," he said, "like you're developing a Weltanschauung." (That's German for a worldview.)
"Yes," I answered, "you could say that. I do feel I've found a way of putting the pieces together."
He paused a moment, and then spoke up in the tone of one who has found a solution to a problem. "Well, how about Emerson?" he asked, referring to Ralph Waldo, one of the established gods in the American pantheon of thinkers. "Emerson was also interested in a Weltanschauung. Why don't you do your graduate study on Emerson?"
I looked at his face for signs of humor, or even malice. Surely he was joking. But no, he was dead serious. It's great to study the likes of Emerson, the implication seemed to be, but it's hardly thinkable to try to do the likes of what Emerson did, to see the human condition whole for oneself.
When I balked at taking up his suggested "modification" of my plan, it was suggested that I write up a proposal for them, explaining what I wanted to do and why they should let me. Over the next weeks, I took up this task with passion and, when I handed in my brief I felt a surge of hopefulness. So carefully had I addressed all their stated concerns that it was hard for me to imagine on what basis they might defend any refusal of my petition.
As things turned out, however, the challenge of defending their refusal proved no obstacle. Two months went by, and they didn't even answer. When at last I accosted one of them on the street, all he could say was, "We couldn't let you do that." That was all the reply to my arguments I ever got.
So much for their integrity.
As far as I could tell, the positions that mattered to them had less to do with the truth of their arguments than with the power of their place in the hierarchy. To defend the latter, they had no need for the former to be defensible.
I left the great university and traveled west, back across the continental divide. Eventually, I completed my book. Eventually, it was published (as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution).
My book was not, of course, about Emerson's Weltanschauung. But Emerson does appear once in it. I quote a passage where he laments how the organization of society has weakened "this great fountain of power," the whole person. "The state of society," Emerson writes, "is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about, so many walking monsters-- a good finger, a neck, a stomach, but never a man."
"Yes," I answered, "you could say that. I do feel I've found a way of putting the pieces together."
He paused a moment, and then spoke up in the tone of one who has found a solution to a problem. "Well, how about Emerson?" he asked, referring to Ralph Waldo, one of the established gods in the American pantheon of thinkers. "Emerson was also interested in a Weltanschauung. Why don't you do your graduate study on Emerson?"
I looked at his face for signs of humor, or even malice. Surely he was joking. But no, he was dead serious. It's great to study the likes of Emerson, the implication seemed to be, but it's hardly thinkable to try to do the likes of what Emerson did, to see the human condition whole for oneself.
As things turned out, however, the challenge of defending their refusal proved no obstacle. Two months went by, and they didn't even answer. When at last I accosted one of them on the street, all he could say was, "We couldn't let you do that." That was all the reply to my arguments I ever got.
So much for their integrity.
As far as I could tell, the positions that mattered to them had less to do with the truth of their arguments than with the power of their place in the hierarchy. To defend the latter, they had no need for the former to be defensible.
I left the great university and traveled west, back across the continental divide. Eventually, I completed my book. Eventually, it was published (as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution).
My book was not, of course, about Emerson's Weltanschauung. But Emerson does appear once in it. I quote a passage where he laments how the organization of society has weakened "this great fountain of power," the whole person. "The state of society," Emerson writes, "is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about, so many walking monsters-- a good finger, a neck, a stomach, but never a man."
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