I have recently been struck with something that I had never really considered before. In the academic sphere, there is very little justification regarding topics of study. I got my latest edition of Faith and Philosophy in the mail today, and noticed an article entitled “Locating the Self in Kierkegaard and Zen” by a George Adams. Now, I consider this to be an intriguing topic, and I look forward to reading the article once I have time. But it struck me, especially as I have been puzzling over rewriting a paper I had written on Kierkegaard, Bakhtin and Spirituality, that it seems to be a kind of odd mix. What do Kierkegaard and Zen have to do with each other? Is this really important, or is it interesting, but of no more real worth than to keep some one academically entertained and busy?
Maybe it’s the result of my now inherently practical (or at least goal-oriented) studies, but I find this article to be kind of silly. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy this, or have never done this myself (I’m still trying to justify to myself bringing Kierkegaard and Bakhtin into a paper that maybe didn’t really need them). It’s just that, well, what’s the point? Will Kierkegaard studies really be advanced by this paper? I doubt it, since Kierkegaard and Zen had probably never met before. Will it advance Zen studies? I can’t say, but I doubt it for the same reason.
And it’s not as if I am finding all of scholarship silly. Scholarship is important. Thoughts need to be thought, and need to be thought through well. And there are some things, like another article on Trinity and Polytheism, that, while being scholarship to the nth degree, actually produce something that may very well be useful.
It just makes me wonder... how much of scholarship is an attempt to produce rather than an attempt to produce something?
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