Second Game
On Perplexity
Issue 09 — Spring 2022 — Session 03 —
Microliteratures, 2
By Jesús R. Velasco | Published on January 18, 2022
By Jesús R. Velasco | Published on January 18, 2022
Maimonides gave a name to the sensation of uneasiness, sin, or even danger he felt every time he --or people around him-- faced the law and, in order to be in contact with its normative power, could not avoid philosophizing. Philosophizing, for him, as for many others in his environment, was to think with the philosophers (Greek philosophers, above all), and not only with the lawyers and theologians. He called that --perplexity.
Perplexity can be enormously productive. It’s the bread and butter of our relation with theory and with the sometimes desperately slow process of thinking with –because it may imply also thinking against: against more traditional positions, against the grain, against the all-powerful strength of cosmic erudition, against the weight of scholarship, against the current trends…
In this game, you will practice perplexity. What about the danger, the vulnerability of examining things from the past while not being able to get rid of current concepts, issues, ideas, needs, personal history?
