"The question behind other questions, the answer behind other answers"
The "spirit of seriousness" possesses the objective man, the responsible man, the mature man. Our seemingly opposed friend, Mr. Infinite Jest, is not, however, anti-serious or seriously irresponsible.
He's not seriously anti-serious. He may even remain more serious than he might like to think. It may be nothing but his seriousness in one sense that urges him to question "the spirit of seriousness."
He is aware of it as a role. He knows the words. He can write them. He can include (create) a fierce critic of his ironism within its exposition. He does this to impishly exhibit the depths of this ironism. In his domination of mere words by mere words, he may even be a friend to the serious man.
But the serious man is perhaps pained by the impotence of his words. For him they were and are decisive. The ironist throws him up against the finality of his final vocabulary. His holy words are dust in the ears of the ironist. A nothingness behind them is made visible.
It is not that the final words become false. It is that they become optional, contingent, _non-final_. This is "death," transcendence, freedom. One is faced with the mineness of one's commitment or project. The project may be social. One may be part of a group, share in the worldview and the "final" words of that group. But there are other groups. This might be OK. The other group is opposed on the level of detail, but it is composed of serious men like oneself. These other serious are wrong on the level of the message rather than on the level of the medium.
The ironist, the "pure" existentialist, however, is wrong on the level of the medium -- simply by being aware of the medium, of the invisible background of "nothingness, " "freedom," transcendence.
If the ironist was a wolf in the park or a fallen tree blocking the road, that would be better. Instead, he speaks not only the words of his ironism but also, if he likes, the "final" words --but without a sense of their finality. He opens the abyss.
So the serious man to maintain his serious pose (which is to say to avoid understanding his seriousness as a pose) must interpret the ironist as a sick man or an evil man. The ironist, of course, is not offended --beyond as it were the "violence" of words. In this sense the ironist is the true materialist. If he shrugs at materialist ideologies, he knows better than most the gap between words and "reality." He fears actual violence as an interruption of his creative project. He assumes verbal violence as the background or womb from which his position emerged in the first place. "Spirit" hovers above the battlefield of its birth, enjoying the spectacle, taking a piece here and there for it's never quite perfect yet smoothly functioning already auto-theology.
The "message" of the content is any kind of important, serious, objective, universal, moral position. The "medium" is the authority with which one is speaking, the role that has become so automatic as role as to be invisible. Ironism is an intense awareness of this medium or form. It evolves _from_ the spirit of seriousness, as an intense search into motive. A passionate search for the hard, terrible, objective truth led, for the ironist, to a consciousness of this search as a kind of heroic, narcissistic role-play. Obviously practical truth has a bodily relevance. The truth sought was metaphysical. It was the kind of truth behind science and religion, placing all secondary kinds of truth in a hierarchy.
This hierarchy is the key. Authority is central. What is superior? Who is superior? This is the question behind the other questions and the answer behind other answers.
He's not seriously anti-serious. He may even remain more serious than he might like to think. It may be nothing but his seriousness in one sense that urges him to question "the spirit of seriousness."
He is aware of it as a role. He knows the words. He can write them. He can include (create) a fierce critic of his ironism within its exposition. He does this to impishly exhibit the depths of this ironism. In his domination of mere words by mere words, he may even be a friend to the serious man.
But the serious man is perhaps pained by the impotence of his words. For him they were and are decisive. The ironist throws him up against the finality of his final vocabulary. His holy words are dust in the ears of the ironist. A nothingness behind them is made visible.
It is not that the final words become false. It is that they become optional, contingent, _non-final_. This is "death," transcendence, freedom. One is faced with the mineness of one's commitment or project. The project may be social. One may be part of a group, share in the worldview and the "final" words of that group. But there are other groups. This might be OK. The other group is opposed on the level of detail, but it is composed of serious men like oneself. These other serious are wrong on the level of the message rather than on the level of the medium.
The ironist, the "pure" existentialist, however, is wrong on the level of the medium -- simply by being aware of the medium, of the invisible background of "nothingness, " "freedom," transcendence.
If the ironist was a wolf in the park or a fallen tree blocking the road, that would be better. Instead, he speaks not only the words of his ironism but also, if he likes, the "final" words --but without a sense of their finality. He opens the abyss.
So the serious man to maintain his serious pose (which is to say to avoid understanding his seriousness as a pose) must interpret the ironist as a sick man or an evil man. The ironist, of course, is not offended --beyond as it were the "violence" of words. In this sense the ironist is the true materialist. If he shrugs at materialist ideologies, he knows better than most the gap between words and "reality." He fears actual violence as an interruption of his creative project. He assumes verbal violence as the background or womb from which his position emerged in the first place. "Spirit" hovers above the battlefield of its birth, enjoying the spectacle, taking a piece here and there for it's never quite perfect yet smoothly functioning already auto-theology.
The "message" of the content is any kind of important, serious, objective, universal, moral position. The "medium" is the authority with which one is speaking, the role that has become so automatic as role as to be invisible. Ironism is an intense awareness of this medium or form. It evolves _from_ the spirit of seriousness, as an intense search into motive. A passionate search for the hard, terrible, objective truth led, for the ironist, to a consciousness of this search as a kind of heroic, narcissistic role-play. Obviously practical truth has a bodily relevance. The truth sought was metaphysical. It was the kind of truth behind science and religion, placing all secondary kinds of truth in a hierarchy.
This hierarchy is the key. Authority is central. What is superior? Who is superior? This is the question behind the other questions and the answer behind other answers.
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