Reading excerpts from Process and Reality and Modes of Thought, on the one hand, ignites hunger for a greater understanding, but on the other hand, highlights t

Reading excerpts from Process and Reality and Modes of Thought, on the one hand, ignites hunger for a greater understanding, but on the other hand, highlights the lack thereof and, in today's day and age, the impossibility of a possible fruition. Susan Sontag, in effect: > We read writers [Weil, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche] of such scathing originality for their personal authority, for the example of their seriousness, for their manifest willingness to sacrifice themselves for their truths, and—only piecemeal—for their "views." As the corrupt Alcibiades followed Socrates, unable and unwilling to change his own life, but moved, enriched, and full of love; so the sensitive modern reader pays his respect to a level of spiritual reality which is not, could not, be his own.