David P Goldman: Confessions of a Coward
Early in April, with the publication of the May issue of First Things, I stepped out from behind the pseudonym Spengler to begin arguing my more considered ideas under my own name. The experience has been an interesting one: constricting in some ways and yet freeing in others.
One reason for the Spengler name was that I was working on Wall Street at the time, and a pseudonym allowed me to keep my two worlds separate. But I soon found that the Spengler mask also gave me freedom to employ striking ideas and provocative formulations—to take intellectual as well as literary risks. Along the way, I developed a core thesis that the response of nations to their own mortality was the key to understanding the great events of our time, and the existential theology of Franz Rosenzweig provided unique insights into geopolitics. What’s more, I had a great deal of fun writing as Spengler.
***
Looking back over it all, I see that though I was born Jewish, I am nonetheless a late convert to Judaism as a religion—and a convert from the worst sort of religious background. Heine once quipped that the purpose of every memoir is to lie, and he cited Rousseau as an example. Rousseau had used his memoirs to represent himself as a monster for having consigned his natural children to orphanages. But, Heine claimed, Rousseau made himself out to be a monster in order to cover up the more humiliating fact that he was impotent and the children he sent to the orphanage weren’t his to begin with.
In reviewing my own missteps in life, I feel that temptation to represent myself as a monster in order to cover up something even more painful: I was a coward. I was afraid of being Jewish. Everything else is rationalization. My intellectual life really began only a quarter-century ago when I reconciled myself to being Jewish. The truth is that I did not think my way into praying. I prayed my way into thinking.
One reason for the Spengler name was that I was working on Wall Street at the time, and a pseudonym allowed me to keep my two worlds separate. But I soon found that the Spengler mask also gave me freedom to employ striking ideas and provocative formulations—to take intellectual as well as literary risks. Along the way, I developed a core thesis that the response of nations to their own mortality was the key to understanding the great events of our time, and the existential theology of Franz Rosenzweig provided unique insights into geopolitics. What’s more, I had a great deal of fun writing as Spengler.
***
Looking back over it all, I see that though I was born Jewish, I am nonetheless a late convert to Judaism as a religion—and a convert from the worst sort of religious background. Heine once quipped that the purpose of every memoir is to lie, and he cited Rousseau as an example. Rousseau had used his memoirs to represent himself as a monster for having consigned his natural children to orphanages. But, Heine claimed, Rousseau made himself out to be a monster in order to cover up the more humiliating fact that he was impotent and the children he sent to the orphanage weren’t his to begin with.
In reviewing my own missteps in life, I feel that temptation to represent myself as a monster in order to cover up something even more painful: I was a coward. I was afraid of being Jewish. Everything else is rationalization. My intellectual life really began only a quarter-century ago when I reconciled myself to being Jewish. The truth is that I did not think my way into praying. I prayed my way into thinking.
posted by temporal at 5/07/2009
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