Some time back, we examined the
fraught subject of academic discipleship
in this essay:
And now this postscript:
In The New Yorker for 1
April 2002, Adam Gopnik recounts
his pilgrimage, while still a grad student, to the home of the philosopher Karl Popper, living in prickly
retirement (the article is titled “The Porcupine”) in the English countryside:
Many years ago,
when I was young and still in search of wisdom, I went on a pilgrimage to meet the man I thought was the
wisest in the world.
The sage’s relations with his
philosophic colleagues had for long been far from collegial; indeed, the occasion for Gopnik’s publishing his meditation
now, was the appearance of a book built entirely upon the long-ago incident of
Wittgenstein threatening Popper with a poker (presumably upon the theory that
“this tutorial room is not big enough for two
philosophical prima donnas!”). In
his long talk with Gopnik, Popper denied he had ever received any useful
criticism from colleagues.
And as for acolytes:
He smiled
sadly. “All of my students are
attacking me now. Three of my
students, all of them I helped to get positions, to get chairs, and they know
this, and still they attack me personally. You know, when you do things for people, there are two types
of reactions. There are those who
cannot forget you for it, and those who cannot forgive you for it.”
Gopnik ends his essay with a
bravura what-if:
Had Jesus invited
a few Pharisees over for the Supper … it might not have been his last. Dining with disciples is a perilous
business.
No comments:
Post a Comment