The Danish philosopher who anchors Cameron's account, in dialogue 24, of what real intellectual seriousness costs. Sent by a University of Alberta tutor to "read every book of Kierkegaard that's been translated and then come back," Cameron discovered through him that an argument could be sustained not over four hundred pages but four hundred books — the scale of commitment he sets against the triviality of the meme. Kierkegaard is less a doctrine on this page than a method: the authority one submits to in order, finally, to question oneself.
Across the dialogues
Enters as the measure of depth — the philosopher Cameron was ordered to read entire, teaching him that a single argument can extend not over four hundred pages but four hundred books
Kierkegaard enters as an ordeal of depth — the tutor's command to read the entire corpus is Cameron's example of how seriousness is transmitted, by submission to a single mind read whole.
"I went to the first meeting with my tutor and he said to me, I want you to read every book of Kierkegaard that's been translated and then come back to me."
The lesson Kierkegaard taught Cameron is one of scale — that a single sustained argument can span an entire body of work, the antithesis of the bubble-like meme that dissipates and is replaced.
"I realized that an argument could be extended not over 400 pages, but 400 books."
Returns after thirty-eight sessions for a single phrase that ends up organizing the night — "dropping the guitar" is introduced as a nineteenth-century name for a rhetorical move and comes back at the close as the figure for McLuhan's own failure and the series' inheritance of it
The deliberate collapse of a virtuoso performance is given a pedigree and a name — which is what lets the session treat McLuhan's rug-pulls as a technique with a history rather than as personal eccentricity.
"there's actually a long tradition of this. It could probably be traced back at least to Aristophanes. But Kierkegaard, for example, in the 19th century, did studies of this, and he called it dropping the guitar, which I think is a great phrase."
Connections
Reading all of Kierkegaard on a tutor's command is Cameron's origin story for what serious, depth-first study demands.