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PARTISAN REVIEW
contain a good deal of convention: rules for spelling or punctuation,
the correct form for a footnote, parliamentary procedure. To establish a
positive fact is frequently difficult, and in its nature no fact can
be
certain. The anchoring model is therefore negative, the case where the
demonstration of error is swift and decisive. What I want to praise is a
virtually instinctive preference for statements rich in facts and for
arguments constantly dependent on facts, a preference accompanied by
distrust of statements notably thin in factual claims and by a readiness
to give up large views and ingenious theories which contain demon–
strable error. Along with this, I want to praise a willingness
to
venture
factual statements and
be
embarrassed if they prove wrong, with no
attempt to evade that risk by seeking in advance some higher logical
ground. This attitude leads to looking things up in dictionaries and
encyclopedias, reading the notes to a text, consulting history with
wide-ranging curiosity, or when a point of critical theory is in
question, clarifying not with an imaginary, but with a real and
pertinent example. The true value here is a discriminating sense of the
sort of claim evidence ought
to
decide and of the potential existence of
that evidence. A mind nourished on this sense will not feel submission
to fact as depressing its freedom, but will feel rather the power
conferred by engagement with actualities.
The second element is memory. I grew up in an era which looked
on memory and fact both as enemies of spontaneous creativity. Memor–
izing poetry was a waste of time. What mattered was not remembering,
but "knowing where to look it up." Since "the facts" changed con–
stantly, why bother to remember any? Exam writers scorned "regurgi–
tation," and claimed the student should "learn" even from taking an
exam. To be unable to forget was self-evidently a curse, the theme of
stories calculated to produce a metaphysical
frisson.
And yet modern
literature is inconceivable without memory: think of Proust, Broch,
Faulkner. Learning a foreign language is almost entirely a feat of
memory: you do not discover the uses of the subjunctive by reasoning.
Memory may not be the same as intelligence, but in this case, it does
what intelligence cannot. And surely memory is a
part
of intelligence.
Real history emerges when individuals take upon themselves the
responsibility of embodying the past through their memories and thus
open their own lives to the continuing effects of that memory. Memory
is the agency for constructing an extended self, whose experience and
responsibilities are not just personal.
The final element I will call "committed thinking. " Thinking
begins in the willingness to hold a view firmly and long enough to test
