I Love Knowledge

I do. I just do.

When people ask, "Why do you study this or that?" I used to have a million answers about the practical usefulness of knowing the things I come to know by studying. They are still true, those million answers. But the real answer is coming into very clear relief: I just love knowledge. I love acquiring it, I love knowing that it's out there, and I love having it in my head (or my foot, for that matter; I don't care where it gets stored really). And I know I am not alone in this love. The very word "philosophy" means love of wisdom. Maybe that's not the same as knowledge, but close enough.

And I don't understand why anyone wouldn't love knowledge. It's an end unto itself; it's just great. Yes there are practical, spiritual, psychological and whatever other kind of consequences of having it that justify its pursuit, but Knowledge needs none of those supports to hold it up in all of its noble glory.

So why are so many people worried in graduate school about why they're pursuing this or that field of knowledge? Why the hell NOT pursue it???

Am I nuts? Is this like Hillary's thing about Everest?

Maybe that's it. Maybe some of us are just wired to want to gobble up knowledge and just hug it and kiss it and pass it around for everyone's enjoyment, (better doing that to knowledge than to... well, whatever), and maybe some of us are just wired to want to climb mountains. I for one am glad that I am in the former group.

(Re the latter group, I HIGHLY recommend Jon Krakauer's book, Into Thin Air.)

UPDATE: Ok, I posted that yesterday after a lunch with other graduate students.  Then, over dinner, I participated in a discussion/seminar with the dean of University of Chicago Divinity School, Richard Rosengarten, who completely vindicated everything I just wrote!  Of course, he did it in a way more sophisticated way, having been thinking about it for several decades longer than I have, which made it even more gratifying.

He said many things, but one thing I thought was particularly helpful to me was this: 

While knowledge is Good in and of itself, we have to constantly remind people of its fruits, because they simply won't accept it otherwise.  But we had better believe that knowledge is Good in and of itself, because those fruits are often not going to be very apparent in our day to day (and sometimes even year to year!) lives as scholars.  Despite the utility of scholarly pursuits, we need not - nay, should not - be utilitarian in our relationship to them.

He seemed more at peace than I (again, he is several decades my senior) with the reality of people's need for fruit or utility or justification or whatever we might call it.  I am frustrated with it.  And especially with Jews who can't just accept that knowledge of Torah is good, even if it's not "relevant" or "practical" or what have you.  Knowledge is "a tree of life to those who embrace it!" Proverbs 3:18.  We sing it every week in shul!  Asking whether that learning you just did made you grow (as a person, as a Jew, whatever) is just infuriating.  If you learned something, you grew; plain and simple.  

Then he said this most encouraging thing to us PhD students whose endeavors are so often under-appreciated by a society that doesn't acknowledge how deeply valuable is the life of the mind: "Don't let anyone say that you're hiding your light under a bushel because you're doing this."  

Thank you Dr. Rosengarten!