life is likely to be incon ve nient. So we replace the Platonic phi los o-
pher with the philosophy professor, scrambling after minute distinc-
tions, and with the public pundit, full of fl eeting information and
half- knowledge. But as to wisdom— that is another matter. Maybe
detractors of the philosophic ideal, from the brilliant Jacques Der-
rida to the brusque investor on the fl oor of the stock exchange, are
right, and the philosophical ideal is a rank deception. It hides a drive
for power; it feeds into fascism. But maybe the primary function of
the deconstructionists, inside the academy and out, is defensive.
They deliver the middle class from a major source of disruption—
which might also be a source of insight and illumination— the phil-
osophical ideal, the quest for Truth. We owe it to all to pose the
question of the ideal thinker—of what Stevens called “the impos-
sible possi ble phi los o pher’s man”— for every generation.
There is a third ideal that stands next to the heroic and the con-
templative: the compassionate ideal. The ideal of compassion comes
into the Western tradition defi nitively with the teachings of Jesus
Christ. But the compassionate ideal is older than Jesus; it is mani-
fest in the sacred texts of the Hindus, in the teachings of the Buddha
and, less directly, in the refl ections of Confucius. Did any of these
teachings have an impact on Jesus? We will probably never know.
What is certain is that the Gospels swerve profoundly from the
Hebrew Bible. There are intimations of Jesus’ teachings on compas-
sion in the Psalms and in the books of the prophets, but what he says
about love and forgiveness and kindness for all is radically distinct
from the ethos of the Hebrew Bible, which, at least in the Pentateuch,
the Bible’s fi rst fi ve books, is often a warrior ethos. From the start,
Yahweh is a loving creator god and a god of justice— but he is also
a war god.
There is no affi rmation of revenge or retribution in the teachings
of Jesus of Nazareth. His gospel is the gospel of forgiveness, a gospel
that the poet William Blake summarized in an inspired piece of
The Triumph of Self 7