Althouse: "To be thin-skinned, farsighted, and loose-tongued... is to feel too sharply, see too clearly, speak too freely."

May 27, 2015

"To be thin-skinned, farsighted, and loose-tongued... is to feel too sharply, see too clearly, speak too freely."

"It is to be vulnerable to the world when the world believes itself invulnerable, to understand its mutability when it thinks itself immutable, to sense what’s coming before others sense it, to know that the barbarian future is tearing down the gates of the present while others cling to the decadent, hollow past. If our children are fortunate, they will inherit only your ears, but, regrettably, as they are undeniably mine, they will probably think too much too soon and hear too much too early, including things that are not permitted to be thought or heard."

From a Salman Rushdie story called "The Duniazát."

21 comments:

Ann Althouse said...: Subscribers only to get to the whole thing. Sorry!; 5/27/15, 10:21 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Salman Rushdie is married to Padma Lakshmi.; 5/27/15, 10:30 AM
buwaya said...: Pretentious fellow isn't he.; 5/27/15, 10:37 AM
rhhardin said...: Pope wrote the poem Dunciad, where truths were spoken. Poets are like that.; 5/27/15, 10:45 AM
traditionalguy said...: Salmon is a very good writer. No wonder the religious tyrants fear his writings will set people free.

Ban the books. Slaughter the writers. Or better yet, just control the internet and the future sole legal tender by digital money.; 5/27/15, 11:02 AM
Ann Althouse said...: The quote is from a character in the story. He's an old philosopher, the actual historical figure Averroes.; 5/27/15, 11:07 AM
traditionalguy said...: I got the whole thing at the link, I think.; 5/27/15, 11:07 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Averroës (/əˈvɛroʊˌiːz/; April 14, 1126 – December 10, 1198) is the Latinized form of Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد‎), full name ʾAbū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rušd (أبو الوليد محمد ابن احمد ابن رشد), a medieval Andalusian polymath. He wrote on logic, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, theology, the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, psychology, political and Andalusian classical music theory, geography, mathematics, and the mediæval sciences of medicine, astronomy, physics, and celestial mechanics. Averroes was born in Córdoba, Al Andalus (present-day Spain), and died at Marrakesh in present-day Morocco. His body was interred in his family tomb at Córdoba.[6] The 13th-century philosophical movement based on Averroes's work is called Averroism.
Averroes was a defender of Aristotelian philosophy against Ash'ari theologians led by Al-Ghazali. Although highly regarded as a legal scholar of the Maliki school of Islamic law, Averroes's philosophical ideas were considered controversial in Ash'arite Muslim circles.[7] Averroes had a greater impact on Christian Europe: he has been described as the "founding father of secular thought in Western Europe"[7][8][9] and was known by the sobriquet the Commentator for his detailed emendations to Aristotle. Latin translations of Averroes's work led the way to the popularization of Aristotle.[10]"; 5/27/15, 11:08 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Key phrase: "the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe."; 5/27/15, 11:09 AM
Seeing Red said...: It's like humans haven't changed.....so no crystal ball needed. This isn't rocket science.; 5/27/15, 11:27 AM
Sebastian said...: "It is to be vulnerable to the world when the world believes itself invulnerable, to understand its mutability when it thinks itself immutable"

Even for magic realism, this seems unusually stiff and stilted pillow talk.; 5/27/15, 1:20 PM
Unknown said...: Well, "far sighted" is not a negative adjective in my own personal thesaurus; the other two, "thin-skinned" and "loose-tongued" would be critical. His point is messed up a bit.; 5/27/15, 1:21 PM
lemondog said...: ...the great philosopher Ibn Rushd,

I assume no relationship.; 5/27/15, 2:22 PM
traditionalguy said...: The discovery of ancient Greek culture knocked the socks off the educated European men of the middle ages who overnight became Greek Philosophiles. Even T. Acquinas brought it inside Church theology. The Greek ethos was beloved by the educated aristocracy for the next 300 years. But then it crashed head on with the Hebrew ethos when cheap printed translations of scripture could also be read by literate men.; 5/27/15, 3:02 PM
Quaestor said...: I know Rushdie is considered a great writer by the kind of people who eat stilton at faculty luncheons, and I realize he's got a kind of hero status because of that fatwa thing -- though to be brutally honest Rushdie tried to get relief by publicly praising Islam (the Religion of Peace, dontcha know), got spurned and re-fatwa'd, and finally returned to atheism -- Nevertheless I find his prose annoying, not repellant, just irksome. I realize he's trying to evoke the style of the traditional storyteller of the souk, but -- sheesh! -- enough's enough.; 5/27/15, 4:20 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: New Study: The world's a lot more violent than reported

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159495 via @sharethis; 5/27/15, 4:23 PM
cubanbob said...: Ann Althouse said...
Key phrase: "the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe."

5/27/15, 11:09 AM

Noted. Too bad the MENA hasn't availed itself of his works.; 5/27/15, 5:09 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Quaesturd, you can be taken seriously while ridiculing Rushdie's supposed cowardice after you face down a billion fanatics who feel justified in killing you, and who are willing to do it.; 5/27/15, 10:32 PM
Rusty said...: I thought it started much earlier, Ann. Around the time of Boethius.; 5/28/15, 6:25 AM
mccullough said...: Rushdie is an ok writer. Tough to be a British writer born after WW2 when they were dismantling the empire. Not a fertile place for creativity.; 5/28/15, 8:17 AM
Kirk Parker said...: " Not a fertile place for creativity. "

And yet Rushdie is quite creative! (Have you actually read Satanic Verses?); 5/28/15, 10:35 AM