{"id":12697,"date":"2009-04-12T15:47:24","date_gmt":"2009-04-12T15:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/12\/are-you-a-natural-born-scribbler-take-the-gide-test\/"},"modified":"2009-04-12T15:47:24","modified_gmt":"2009-04-12T15:47:24","slug":"are-you-a-natural-born-scribbler-take-the-gide-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/12\/are-you-a-natural-born-scribbler-take-the-gide-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You a Natural-Born Scribbler? Take the Gide Test"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is an interesting passage from Andr\u00e9 Gide's last work, written shortly before his death in 1951, So Be It or The Chips Are Down<\/em>, tr. Justin O'Brien, Alfred Knopf, 1959, pp. 145-146, bolding<\/strong> added, italics<\/em> in original. Brief commentary follows.<\/font><\/p>\n

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It is certain that the man who wonders as he takes up his pen: what service can be performed by what I am about to write? is not a born writer, and would do better to give up producing at once. Verse or prose, one's work is born of a sort of imperative one cannot elude. It results (I am now speaking only of the authentic writer) from an artesian gushing-forth, almost unintentional, on which reason, critical spirit, and art operate only as regulators. But once the page is written, he may wonder: what's the use? . . . And when I turn to myself, I think that what above all urged me to write is an urgent need of understanding.<\/strong> This is the need that now prompts the ratiocinations with which I am filling this notebook and makes me banish all bombast from them. I hope the young man who may read me will feel on an equal footing with me. I don't bring any doctrine; I resist giving advice; and in a discussion I beat a hasty retreat. But I know that today many seek their way gropingly and don't know in whom to trust. To them I say: believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it; doubt everything, but don't doubt of yourself. There is more light in Christ's words than in any other human word.<\/strong> This is not enough, it seems, to be a Christian: in addition, one must believe.<\/em> Well, I do not believe. Having said this, I am your brother. <\/font><\/p>\n

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1. Writers are born, not made. For the born writer, doubts about the value of writing are insufficient to impede the process of putting words on paper. Something similar goes for the born philosopher. Doubts about philosophy are just more grist for the philosophical mill and have no tendency to impede the thinker's inquiry. No real philosopher is put off by doubts and objections of the sort cataloged and refuted in <\/font>Philosophy Under Attack.<\/font><\/a>  You are either driven by a need to understand the world or you are not.  If you are driven by that need you will gravitate toward philosophy whether or not you call it 'philosophy.'
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2. The writer writes to satisfy a pressing need, the need to understand himself and the world. Driven by that need, he scribbles away, well or poorly, with or without a readership, under gusts of inspiration or in the horse-latitudes of the spirit, and whether it fills or depletes his belly.
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3. The truth-seekers are to be trusted, the truth-finders doubted. Makes a good aphorism!<\/font><\/p>\n

4. Unlike Bertrand Russell and others, Gide discerned truth in Christ's words, but was unable to believe. This shows that the discerning of truth is insufficient for belief. So much the worse for doxastic involuntarism. Belief requires something more, an act of will. There is something voluntary about belief. In many cases, not all, we decide<\/em> what to believe and what to disbelieve. Josef Pieper who, in his Belief and Faith<\/em>, p. 26, refers to the last of the Gide lines just quoted, remarks, "A free assent of will must be performed. Belief rests upon volition." (p. 27) See <\/font>here<\/font><\/a> for more on doxastic voluntarism.<\/font><\/p>\n

5. Memo to BV: Get hold of the Andr\u00e9 Gide-Paul Claudel correspondence and explore why Claudel but not Gide embraced the Church of Rome. <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is an interesting passage from Andr\u00e9 Gide's last work, written shortly before his death in 1951, So Be It or The Chips Are Down, tr. Justin O'Brien, Alfred Knopf, 1959, pp. 145-146, bolding added, italics in original. Brief commentary follows. It is certain that the man who wonders as he takes up his pen: … Continue reading “Are You a Natural-Born Scribbler? Take the Gide Test”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doxastic-voluntarism","category-literary-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}