DABOISASTRGLEDT – by Ivaniel “Ivo” Georgiev
DABOIS, it’s time for another blog post. Last week I had an anthropology exam—the final for this semester, worth 50% of my grade. I had to explain Hume’s idea that reason is a slave of passions. I did, but I did it in pure DABOIS style. No phones, no helpGPT, no academic safety net.
The feedback came back. I was wrong. But not the way my lecturer thinks.
Before we continue, thank you. (YES, I WILL NOT STOP REPEATING IT!!!)
I know that the time we have today cannot be returned – NEVER – and I am sincerely glad that you are spending part of it here.
If you are new here, this is not the typical place where someone preaches or tries to sell you something; on the contrary, this is a courtroom where there are no verdicts, only questions that lead to more questions, to reveal what has not been revealed.
I point out the things that we accept, swallow, hide, and pretend don’t shape us every day (even though they control us). If something here makes you feel uncomfortable, well, discomfort is perhaps the best sign that we haven’t yet fully learned how to anesthetise it.
- Curiosity lights the match.
- Action keeps the fire alive.
- Effort is what everyone talks about until it becomes necessary.
I hope you stay until the end… but that’s up to you.
Oh, and if you want to tune in to today’s loop radio, the track is “(It Goes Like) Nanana” by Peggy Gou. Let it accompany you, or don’t. It won’t change what follows, but it might change how you feel it.
Now, let’s Nanana ourselves to the moon and back.
Any Feedback is Better than None
Here’s what my professor sent:
Like you, others tend to understand “reason” as the more reasonable passions and “passions” as the more basic or primal ones. Similarly to the distinction of doing something “with the head”, rather than “with the heart”. And this is not what Hume means. That’s the main reason for your grade.
Your writing style is interesting, but it is too chaotic. You jump from one position to the next quickly, and it sounds a bit like it doesn’t matter what you wrote two sentences ago; it only matters what you are writing now and where the moment takes you. And philosophical writing requires a bit more of a structured approach.
But your style didn’t impact your grade in a negative way. It was the content that did it. Besides not getting Hume’s point, which was the main reason, there were other problems content-wise. The passions of Christ, for example. “Passions” in the case of Christ also mean something different than what you described them to be. And also, all your examples were mentioning “passions” in a way that is not illustrative of the question asked.
It’s good that you want to think on your own and devise arguments and examples of your point. But it matters that your point is not the point the question was about.
Hope that helps.
I replied politely. Said I understood. Thanked her.
But I didn’t understand – at least, not in the way she meant.
Where Real Philosophy Happens
Here’s what she missed: I wasn’t confused about Hume. I was answering a different question.
What is Hume doing? Let’s call it descriptive psychology. That’s pretty much what he does – mapping how motivation works in human beings.
In other words, if reason calculates, then passion drives. Therefore, reason is the slave because it serves passion’s goals.
I get that – honestly… I really do.
On the other hand, I was doing existential phenomenology without being aware of it. My thought processing was focused on whether lived experience actually separates reason and passion in the way Hume claims.
I gave “The Passion of Christ” as an example in my essay; however, it wasn’t about theology. It was about a person acting from something that is both passion and reason simultaneously – a felt conviction that at the same time structures action. I was arguing that the separation Hume describes is a useful model, but it can’t be a description of lived reality – or at least not the best there is.
To me, that’s not misunderstanding Hume. I disagreed with the premise that motivational psychology can be cleanly categorised.
But because I didn’t translate myself into exam language, I looked confused instead of contrarian.
Structure is Useful, Not Real
This is the line I should’ve built the entire exam around.
Hume’s categories (reason, passion, motivation) are tools. Brilliant tools indeed. They help us navigate human behaviour. But they are not the territory itself. They’re one single map among many possible ones.
When I brought up Christ, I was pointing to a moment where Hume’s map can’t help you get oriented – where someone acts from a unity that precedes the reason/passion split. (Again, that’s not theology, but phenomenology.)
But I never said that – at least the way I describe it here. I just wrote it and assumed she’d follow.
If an idea cannot survive translation, it was never as solid as it felt.
I refused to translate because I thought translation would flatten my point. But what truly happened is worse: my point didn’t land at all.
I felt something true. But I didn’t give it the skeleton it needed to walk into someone else’s mind without collapsing.
The Chess and Jazz Problem
My professor is teaching chess. I’m playing jazz. Neither is better. Both are different.
But even if you speak with people who listen to jazz, they may not hear your kind of jazz. Even if two people both play chess, they don’t think the same moves.
Understanding is never complete. It’s never zero, either.
There’s a gap between experience (what you feel), expression (what you say), and interpretation (what others hear). That gap can’t be closed. But it can be navigated – if you try.
Navigation requires enough shared structure, so your meaning can travel without dying in translation.
What I’m Actually Rebelling Against
A couple of days after the anthropology test, I had a lecture on “Introduction to Ethics” where we started looking at Aristotle’s idea of ethics. I didn’t agree with the Greek philosopher. I just got very keen on the acknowledgement he had.
I’m not against Hume. I’m not against Aristotle. I’m not even against academia.
I’m against the illusion that structure is cosmic instead of human.
Categories don’t reveal the world – their value comes from constructing it. And because humans construct categories, the categories themselves reflect humans, not the universe.
Aristotle’s “essence” is one way of slicing what we call “reality.” Quantum physics is another. My intuition is another.
None of them is final. None of them is complete. None of them is the world itself.
They’re maps. And maps multiply the same way humans do.
This is why the following thought crossed my mind: “What they established, we would have too.”
Not because Aristotle wasn’t brilliant. But because given enough time, any human mind will try to structure chaos – that’s what all minds do.
Aristotle formalised a universal human impulse. I’m not undermining him. I’m placing him in the human continuum.
The world has changed, and it will. The humans never did.
The Turn
So here’s what I must admit: I didn’t fail the exam because I was too chaotic, intuitive, or rebellious. I failed because I answered phenomenologically when I had to do it psychologically – and I refused to signal the shift.
That’s a choice – of course, my choice. And all choices come with consequences.
The consequence is: I don’t get heard. My insight – whether valid or not – gets dismissed as confusion.
And that’s on me.
The problem wasn’t that my thinking was wrong. The problem was that I didn’t build the bridge between what I meant and what she could hear.
Translation isn’t flattening. It’s care.
If I want my meaning to travel farther than my own head, I need to give it a form that survives the journey.
The Hartmann Revelation
Four days after the exam – and the next after the introduction to ethics – I had a lecture on Nikolai Hartmann’s ethics.
And there it was – everything I’d fumbled toward in the exam, structured, precise, undeniable.
Hartmann argues that values exist independently of systems, but systems are how we access them. Values are pre-categorical, but we can’t make a sustainable habitat without categories. We need categories to make values actionable.
That’s exactly what I was trying to say about reason and passion.
Lived experience precedes the split between both. But we need this very “split” to talk about it.
The difference between Hartmann and me? He knew how to translate.
He understood that rebellion without translation is simply noise. I thought translation was surrender.
I was wrong. But how right was I?
What Rebellion Actually Requires
I said I don’t want to be understood – I want to be felt.
That’s half-true. The other half is an excuse.
If I truly didn’t care about being understood, I wouldn’t argue this long. Oh man, you should’ve seen the draft. I wouldn’t quote philosophers. And I wouldn’t publish.
I do want understanding. I just don’t want it on their terms.
But refusing to translate at all doesn’t preserve depth – it isolates it.
Real rebellion isn’t refusal. It’s precision. It’s learning the system well enough to know where it lies – and as you know, I once proclaimed myself the king of lies (in a whispering manner).
Rebellion means bending the rules with intention, not breaking them out of ignorance.
I don’t need to become a copy of the people who came before me. But I do need to learn their language well enough to be heard when I speak mine.
That’s not selling out. That’s strategy.
What Happens Next
I’m not giving up chaos. I’m not becoming academic. I’m not shrinking myself to fit a system.
But I’m learning this: The system can’t hear untranslated insight. That doesn’t make the insight wrong. It makes it ineffective.
And ineffective rebellion isn’t rebellion – it’s just shouting in the dark.
So here’s the new rule: Write chaotically. Edit strategically.
Feel first. Structure second. But don’t skip the second step and call it purity.
Because purity that no one hears is just another word for irrelevance.
Honestly, that’s it
I’m not afraid of being misunderstood. I’m afraid of being flattened.
And I’ve realised this: the best way to avoid being flattened is to be so precise they can’t reduce you.
Being vague invites misreading. Clarity forces them to deal with what you actually said.
So I’m choosing clarity. Not because the system demands it, but because my ideas deserve better than to die in translation.
Academia doesn’t punish chaos. It punishes untranslatable insight. And I’m done being untranslatable… so you better learn!
Thank you for being part of this feedback circle fiasco, BOIS and GALS.
Remember: there is no insight without responsibility for its translation.
If you missed the last post, catch up @ You Can’t Give Me Anything, because All That You Have is Stolen…
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Sincerely yours,
Ivaniel “Understanding-but-translating-anyway” Georgiev
P.S. No poem this time, I know. No inspiration, and I didn’t want to force it. Anyway, I broke my streak, but there are such days – it’s not the end of the world. This postscriptum got longer than I expected.
p.s to the p.s, don’t try to translate if you are not ready to translate. BYE!
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