teaching philosophy

By some fortunate accident about two months ago, I discovered Cristina Nehring's book A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-first Century. By the time I got to page 7,

We inhabit a world in which every aspect of romance from meeting to mating has been streamlined, safety-checked, and emptied of spiritual consequence. The result is that we imagine we live in an erotic culture of unprecedented opportunity when, in fact, we live in an erotic culture that is almost unendurably bland,

I stopped to devour everything I could find on her website. By page 8,

For however much is won by making sex (in its widest sense) "safe," however much is gained by making orgasms available on tap and bed partners accessible by the click of a mouse, more—far more—is lost.,

I decided I would buy the book soon. At page 13,

At its strongest and wildest and most authentic, love is a demon. It is a religion, a high-risk adventure, an act of heroism. Love is ecstasy and injury, transcendence and danger, altruism and excess,

I bought the book. I read it at a feverish pace, eyes wide, heart racing—this is how to approach life. Nehring's book inspired my intro to humanities syllabus—I ripped many of the readings straight from her book, and why not? How better to keep myself from forgetting why it is so important to teach and to teach in the humanities than to remember that it all returns to love? 

I just started rereading her book again and this time, I remembered my favorite page in Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. 

As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy. 

This is what Nehring means, too. This is the loss she mourns and the ideal she holds up as exhortation. Come, desire this, too! Remember this and make it alive again! 

I'd forgotten the Winterson passage. How I loved that page! There was a time when I had that page memorized, I loved it so much. I was determined never to settle for anything less. I don't think I have settled, but I forget my craving for consuming fierceness.* There are bad, harmful ways of destroying and being destroyed and in my efforts to turn away from them, I've forgotten to remember—to see—that it can be beautiful and life-saving.

I am very curious to see how I teach this class. It might be that I care too much about this, that it is too much a message to myself and that I will sputter helplessly with each new reading—"Do you see? Do you? This is what life is. This is what you must do, no matter what else you do. You must risk everything. You must want something better than safety. Do you understand?" 

*I'm not so bad off as Hélène in "A Fine Rainy Day," but close. Perhaps I'll write about this, too. Another piece of the puzzle.