Shades of the Prison House

(August 2011)

Back in 1979 when I was twenty-five years old, I would barely have known whether the government here in the UK was a Conservative one or a Labour one. Really, I suppose I was just very unworldly. I was moderately well-read and cultured, but in a very lopsided and narrow way. A lifelong susceptibility to literary elegance had been awakened at school, where I resolved to study Latin at university. I was pressurised into doing law instead, but, in itself, that was only a small mishap. I graduated in 1977.

Kierkegaard took from this the particular thought that everyday language needed to be stirred by something extrinsic in order to dislodge the routine theatricality and affectation that had overtaken it. Of course his presuppositions were religious, which might have put me off, but I could still appreciate his keen sense that words were being overcome by instrumental and calculative humanism. In particular, he foresaw the day when people would be taken to be good or kindly only if they espoused the correct political views.

In an overcast and sunless world, ice has covered the fields, but few see anything wrong. Sometimes in the past communities have moved across rougher ground, sure-footed in their sharing of richer traditions. Of course the fear is that, in a sunlit world refreshed by great gales blowing down the centuries, the shadow may turn out to be that of an authoritarian polis. Nothing could be further from my intentions.

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