Philosophy

Anyone who has read this blog for a while has probably noticed some changes in the last couple of months.  I'm posting less often, and when I do, the comments are less explicitly philosophical, or at least have less to do with elaborating the ideas of individual philosophers.  This change doesn't mean that I'm talking less, or less seriously with Helena Iara, but that as she grows up, interests and relationships change.



When Helena Iara was a little baby, she loved the sound of a voice: intonation, rises and falls, the sound of funny or soothing words.  What mattered most to her was the fact of talk, and the joy of looking into someone's eyes; musing about the history of philosophy helped me to find things to talk about as we rocked in the hammock or walked in the deserts of Santa Fe or the jungles of Florianópolis.  Philosophical reflections were really for me, a way to understand what was going on with her, to have the minimal difference of the other that allows thought to happen.

But as Helena has grown up, she now understands what I have to say, or at least a truly surprising amount of it.  Her interests now drive the conversation, and though those interests aren't any less intellectual or stimulating, they don't emerge from a dialogue with Zizek or Kristeva, but with bow-wows and miows and flowers and the other exciting parts of her world.

 

As Helena and I began these reflections, she taught me by her presence, by what I imagined that she might be thinking.  Now that she can actually tell me what is interesting to her, these lessons are different, less easy to describe in philosophical language... and frankly, more fun to have than to describe.  To paraphrase Marx, "In the past, philosophies have tried to understand babies.  The point, however, is to play with them."