I had not seen my former student, Adam, for a decade or so after his graduation from Hillsdale College when I ran into him and his young family at the supermarket. “You once asked me” he said, “for what purpose was the soul of man made. I had little in the way of an answer then but have the beginnings of one now: The soul of man was made for happiness, which means to learn to love God and enjoy Him forever.”
a primer of existentialism and stuff like that….
—from a memoir still in progress, “The Man Who Wore A Tea Cup On His Head“
The title to these remarks is a bit imposing since it suggests we are about to spend the next batch of existential minutes discussing philosophical activity, thinking, willing, judging, metaphysics and stuff like that, admired only by a few who dress poorly and live their lives with little interest in cash money while always gliding and soaring above time’s tempests.
But this is also history but not the usual kind with wars and conquests, all within the appearance off time. There is actually only one history and without the usual beginning and without the usual ending. What I will read is cut out from an enormous tapestry with a few threads because only God can venture to compass more than a hand’s breadth.
I hope you ladies and gentlemen can take some strength from it.
You folks assembled here already know what I mean having studied all that stuff: Plato’s echoes, thinking ego and the self, Kant’s deontological ethical theory, metaphor and the ineffable, the Apostle Paul and the impotence of the will, Aquinas and the primary of the intellect, Scotus, Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger, and all those guys who talked about stuff like that, kingdoms of ends, thoughts, you see, beyond the mark of which very few mortal minds can reach and too deep to meet my ordinary understanding, nor more than eye can penetrate that Sea of Eternal Justice, or so said Dante or another guy by the same name.
Having said that and watching boredom creep in, with our time here this day I’d rather talk about our local Kroger Grocery Store and my three-and-a-half decades of shopping at this local store although I did also shop at Market House where the wine selection is existentially good enough and a bit less cash money as so advertised….
And so in the Life of the Mind and Heart I recall from years ago, likely over 30 years now, an occasion when I was near the pasta section and down the aisle came a rambunctious child, filled with existential joy and vinegar, and chased by his apologetic harried mother who was likely no longer an existentialist what with motherhood and all.
Well, he wrapped himself around my leg and giggled that philosophical urchin whose manners were rude and toward self-display as I Norwegian-ly suspect. His breathless mother, who had just chased him down the aisle, explained his happiness: his fifth birthday and his name, Adam, all of which was too good to be existentially true.
So, down on one knee next to this red-headed-freckled birthday boy to whom I though to address a question about the Life of the Mind but not free will or pre-destination; rather, “Adam,” I queried, “Did anything exist before you?”
A thoughtful child, he responded quickly, “No.”
Wrong, of course, but for a five-year old, a year constitutes a full fifth of his entire existence which must seem longer than in later years when a year will constitute a twentieth or thirtieth or sixty-seventh of one’s time on earth, the latter of course closer to that somatically anticipated date of one’s departure which is not, by the way, an illusion or deception—it existentially happens!
Merleau-Ponty, by the way, says much the same in his 1945 “Phenomenology of Perception” in which death is defined as primordial openness, the “lebenswelt,” or maybe just another atomic sensation.
Time will tell….
Well, there you have it: The Life of the Mind, and Heart and that five-year old Adam likely a budding philosophy major convinced that nothing existed before he existed and only God knows how many years to spend in studying that same question: Did anything exist before you? Or is it more likely that even to pose such a question to The Life of the Mind is to confront or play sly tricks with reason and entrap it in momentary aberrations, illusions of transcendental judgment and stuff like that, and all of which is a more plausible argument for why one would wish to become a Benthamite, a utilitarian, and to have one’s corpse taxidermed, placed in a cabinet until some prankster comes along and makes off with your head, and thus utilitarianism without a head.
And for those of you taking notes in the margins, that’s Benthamite, not Bedlamite, albeit, difficult at times to tell the difference….
A small difference….
Well, as I said, three decades or so shopping at Krogers, and although I may have seen young Adam at other times the next time I happened upon this thoughtful young person he might have been ten or so and was cross-legged in the aisle by the magazines and thumbing through a baseball magazine. He had on his Boston Red Sox cap, this little forlorn red-haired chubby Buddha and was studying baseball statistics.
What question to ask, then, since he likely was only now coming to that stage of true self-conscious awareness in the Life of the Mind. So, I queried, “Whatcha reading?”
“Stuff,” he said.
I asked, “Why baseball? Why not football or tennis or golf or basketball?”
Well, I could see he was not taken up with my questions. I, a stranger and all, and his joyful mother having existentially taught him about strangers. But I asked anyway: “Adam, is your love of baseball because it’s timeless, pastoral, edenic, and played on a field of midsummer dreams?”
“I play right field,” he said, and that led me to conclude that his Life of the Mind, his “essence,” had evolved, nay emerged, from nothing existed before him to the abject existential loneliness of anyone who has ever played right field, and placed there by a coach who likely knows that almost no little-leaguer ever hits the ball to a right fielder and thus, well, the existential essence of that poor little soul spared the embarrassment of a trickling little meandering grounder caroming off his glove or foot. “Adam,” I thought to say to him, quoting that most existential New York Yankees’ catcher Yogi Berra, “90% of the game is half mental; the other half is physical.”
Rather, I took young Adam’s hand in mine to shake it kindly and murmur, “Adam, I, too, suffer from the thorns of life; I bleed, I die.”
Noting for the moment that I knew that his ten-year old was now less likely to be a philosophy major and more likely a poet, or psychology major, or cartoonist—but not a baseball player.
But my friends sitting here this day, let me say that it’s ubiquitous this passing of time; Henri Bergson, he says much the same because once one attempts to measure a moment it’s gone, time being mobile and incomplete and although I would see young Adam now and again usually at church where he looked uncomfortable crammed into a blazer and white shirt and tie and khaki pants while confronting the possible horrors of two weeks of that existential, ubiquitous thing in time called “Vacation Bible School,” two weeks of flannel board Bible stories and rhythm bands and kids banging sticks and idiophone triangles.
Well, in time I came to know that his family had suffered a trauma, the usual, a divorce, father having left the family. But there was mom, at church, young Adam to her left, and the two younger sisters to her right. Admirable, I’m sure you would all agree, her duty to her family.
Came a summer morning maybe half-a-dozen years later and off to Krogers again and there was youngAdam, taking a break on a bench along the eastern sidewalk of Krogers. A summer job for him working at Krogers.
When I was loading the water-softener salt he came over to help, gentlemanly, and so we sat on the bench for a bit, just to chat for a bit.
He must have been 15, maybe 16, gawky, geeky, spaghetti-arms, becoming tallish, some fuzziness on his cheeks, some spotty reddish pimples on his chin.
“You know,” he said to me, “there are times I just feel so unreal.” Well, I knew his blessed mother had enrolled him in our Hillsdale Academy and so I knew he was deeply invested in the classics for his own Life of the Mind. So, to get the conversational ball rolling I explained to him that I, too, had once felt that way reading Virgil’s Latin, a darker memory in my own Life of the Mind surpassed only by later studying that most unlovely of all foreign languages, derdiedas German.
“No,” he said, and then gave me a sort of sideways pickerel look and then said “it’s girls, you know, chicks. I don’t have my own car and I don’t have much money and so chicks don’t notice me and so I feel so unreal.” Reality was then becoming an existential something for a youngish adolescent who becomes “real” only when noticed by girls and that realness, rather than a sixth sense of the Life of the Mind is what belongs to our biological apparatus. Charles Sanders Pierce and old Santayana say much the same, philosophical empiricists, you see.
I suggested to adolescent Adam that the solution to his dilemma was simply to be himself, to let his true “essence” shine forth. He looked at me as if I had been dropped down from some alien world. “Do you really think that will work?” he said.
Little did he know, that young Adam, that he was just at that age when all men begin that life-time of wandering into an age-old existential perplexing problem never to be solved either in this universe or in the entire course of human history: chicks that is….
Dante came to know it best when after that time in Purgatory he stepped foot into Earthly Paradise only to be upbraided by her, by that chick, by Beatrice.
But then my young Adam-friend explained he had been reading and reading lots of really really good books, like in the time he had to spend out there in right field: Milton Friedman, Hayek, von Mises (whom he loved to pieces), Albert J. Nock, the superfluous libertarian with whom he shared, as he said, mucho existential sympathy.
Well, time passed and off to college and then a few office visits and I noted his determination to major in political economy, readings in free markets, capitalism, money, a car, and the grandest accomplishment of all, a girlfriend, a real one to make him feel less unreal. Thorstein Veblen, that prophet of the leisure class, says much the same.
He said he would graduate, go to law school, practice for a bit, and then become a judge and then a seat on the United States Supreme Court. Go for rah gold I said.
And so it was to be although on a college bench one day, his second semester of his first year, Adam was basking himself in spring-time sunshine like a turtle just out of hibernation. Pre-registration, he said, and his major declaration and indeed it was political economy. I ventured to suggest he would eventually change his mind. He said, “No.” I said, “Yes,” and thus a bet was born. If he changed his mind he would have to name his first-born child after me. Naive as he was, he took the bet, and as the story goes the plot thickening, he changed his mind, and beginning of his junior year he became, yes, a history major with a possible second major in, yes philosophy, sway of influence and all from some very fine professors, very fine….
Life of the Mind, you see….
Well, it’s a good story this but one which in time beckons a conclusion.
Heidegger says much the same about time beckoning a conclusion.
Well, I had not seen Adam for some time after his graduation, a decade or so, and in fact he had probably slipped away from my notice, from the Life of My Mind until one Saturday in Krogers. I was near the bananas. I looked up from handling the bananas, against which there is a law, and there he was.
There were four others with him. He had become handsome, red-haired still, tall and well-formed. And next to him a woman, very lovely to behold, slim and proud-looking. And his own mother, now a bit gray and be-spectacled.
Well, he saw me and a smile lit up his face and the group scurried over to the bananas from the potato bins. He took the potato out of his right hand and we shook. He introduced me to his wife who shook my hand and smiled and although we had never really met she said to me “thank you.” I had no reason to understand why. I gave his mother a warm hug. His wife, Elizabeth was her name, Adam and Elizabeth, you see, and, well, she had a bundling sort of thing in front of her in which was snugglingly keeping warm a little girl.
I learned they were living in the Cleveland area. Adam owned a manufacturing business, ball-bearings, for which there is apparently a great need these days, ball-bearings, go figure. He gave me his business card, white with red embossed letters. An enterprise, and he an entrepreneur, and existentially loving it.
Hidden behind Adam was another young one, a little red-haired freckled boy, peering out at the odd man by the bananas. Adam said, “Doc, this is my son.”
It was plain to see he was shy but I was thinking, “Did he or did he not remember our bet, old Adam?” Well, the cleared his throat and said, “His name is Adam.”
I got down on my creaky knees and held out my hand to shake the younger Adam’s hand which came out but with a very wet and sticky thumb. I thought to ask this newer existential Adam whether anything existed before him and then re-thought the problem thinking, no, let’s not start that old story again.
The older Adam then asked whether I remembered that spring afternoon we sat on that college bench, second semester his first year in college? I said I had a vague recollection but it was some time ago. “You asked me a question,” he said, “and did I remember the question?” I confessed it was some time ago and time makes memory a bit weak.
He said, “You asked ‘For what purpose was the soul of man made?’”
“Oh, that old saw,” I said.
He said he remembered how he had little in the way of an answer but had the beginnings of one now, Life of the Mind, and all of that. I knew he had something to share. And so I said, “please.”
“The soul of man was made for happiness,” he said, “which means to learn to love God and enjoy Him forever.” And then he gave his wife a light kiss on the cheek, his mother the same, and then hefting the new Adam, the same on his pink cheek.
About now I was getting existentially worried about a smooch on my cheek, angst, fear and trembling, and so held my bundle of bananas against my chest to ward off whatever might be coming my way, Norwegian that I am.
Well, the older Adam, now father to the younger Adam, said he had heard I was retiring and asked, “To what?”
I said, “To the Life of the Mind.”
Well, he nodded and shook my hand once again in parting and then this little holy family made its way back to the potato bins.
Who knows when and under what circumstances we will meet again. Time being what it is, which over time assumes an identifiable shape called history and its “psychism,” which makes history opaque to itself and which is called philosophy… that is if history has an inner intuition we grasp in this one small story from the larger tapestry story titled “The Life of the Mind and Heart at Hillsdale College.”
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The featured image, uploaded by Notorious4life, is a photograph of Hillsdale College taken 10 December 2022. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
