Creativity @ Substack and Von Kleist On Thought Formation

A reflection based on Heinrich von Kleist´s "On the Gradual Construction of Thoughts During Speech"

When I hit 100 Subscribers, I thought it was time to give back. Time to write something specifically for Substack, and for the writers here who have inspired and encouraged me so. Time to write for their benefit and the improvement of their writing and thinking. Here was my original post:

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My Substack Story

Sometimes it takes the presence of another person. After I quit graduate school to follow a vocation as a missionary and pilgrim in Europe, I didn't write much of anything for four years. And an interesting thing happened to me intellectually during this time, as happened once before in a three year hiatus from intensive reading after my time at University. The philosophical and theological thoughts I had digested in graduate school were refined in a sense, and not an altogether positive sense, because certain thoughts faded. Really the whole topography of certain areas of thought in which I specialized slowly dimmed along with a certain sharpness of thought that comes with the constant argument, discussion, and merciless criticism material to any academic environment.

In contrast, other thoughts persisted and grew, other thoughts continued in their fecundity to impress themselves against my mind. These still sought to be expressed, developed even. The hours of rumination while walking brought some thoughts together, and powerfully so. And this sort of process of decay both purified and revealed the thoughts that still animated my life, my attention, after the chaff had been committed to the fire of four years of intellectual decay. There´s a lot of chaff in the world of academic theology, these years helped me see what was vital.

So, increasingly, I desired to write, but, for whom? No one I meet in the day to day has any interest in reading what I enjoy writing about. There are great novelists and playwrights who would write masterworks in an empty forest. I am not one of those people. I cannot write for myself, or to myself. I even got in the habit of asking people, friends. After we'd have an interesting conversation about a philosophical or theological topic, I'd tell them, “Hey could you ask me to write about this?“ They´d look at me confused. Mensch, if you want to write, write. Some said they would ask but never did.

Anyway, this November, I finally got my wish, and luckily, not at my own provocation. I met a language student studying in Freiburg, also a pious Catholic. We had a few theological conversations, and on parting she remarked, “I enjoyed talking to you. If you started a blog or something, I would read it and share it with my friends.“ “At last,” I thought. I set up Sancti Stulti the next day. An audience of one is enough to get me writing. According to my own estimation, the most interesting ideas I developed in grad school were expressed in letters to friends. But, the circle of readers grew, at first slowly, then more quickly, and along with it a certain delight in writing for a definite audience.

I have avoided social media my whole life, my few misadventures into facebook and twitter seemed to prove the motors behind these behemoths were envy and animus respectively, so I avoided them. And Substack genuinely seems to be different. The society here seems to run on creativity and encouragement. And that's been a lovely surprise. When you are starting out, a positive comment under an article means a lot, it's a sort of green light to keep going. Out of gratitude, this essay is my stab at making sense of what I've experienced writing here for a few months, at making sense of what´s made writing here such a positive experience.

Heinrich von Kleist´s “On the Gradual Construction of Thoughts during Speech“

What I´ve been thinking about, particularly after four years of writing really nothing outside of a few talks, is the effect of writing on thinking. And the effect of a public on writing, as that what substack is good at finding for you, a public. And it's a powerful gift. But what is the power exactly? The essay that keeps coming back to mind as a basis for my experience here is the thought provoking-short essay of Heinrich von Kleist, Über die allmähliche Verfertigung der Gedanken beim Reden or On the Gradual Construction of Thoughts During Speech (link). This essay should be required reading for Substack writers. But I will condense it to a few insights here.

1. Speaking is a means of intellectual discovery

If there is something you want to know and cannot discover by meditation, then, my dear, ingenious friend, I advise you to discuss it with the first acquaintance whom you happen to meet. He need not have a sharp intellect, nor do I mean that you should question him on the subject. No! Rather you yourself should begin by telling it all to him. I can see you opening your eyes wide at this and replying that in former years you were advised never to talk about anything that you do not already understand. In those days, however, you probably spoke with the pretentious purpose of enlightening others - I want you to speak with the reasonable purpose of enlightening yourself, and it is possible that each of these rules of conduct, different as they are, will apply in certain cases. The French say: l´appetit vient en mangeant and this maxim holds true when parodied into: l´idee vient en parlent.

An old philosophy professor at my University once warned the people who were reluctant to speak in our discussions, “you must know that those who are speaking do not know more than you. It's an epistemic bias that we assume those who speak know, so if you aren't speaking because you don´t think you know as much as the others, you need to learn to become comfortable speaking when you don't know.“ This was wise advice, but this essay from von Kleist raises the stakes. Maybe by speaking, those who speak come to know something. Something—of which, when they raised their hand and sought to speak—they could not articulate in terms of their internal conversation with themselves. So when the shy students hear the more talkative ones speak with conviction in a seminar discussion, or hear them having insightful things to say, von Kleist suggests perhaps they do have a superior knowledge, one only won by and in speaking itself. It's true that they probably weren't any less ignorant than the silent students at the outset. But the shy students do pick up on something real, the thoughts being spoken belie a superiority to the thoughts they have in their interior conversation that remain unexpressed. These interior thoughts lack the formation and discovery that comes with speech, which is all the more reason to try to articulate your ideas before others, even if you are unsure or if they are undeveloped, and even if, as von Kleist remarks, the people listening are too stupid to comprehend. It's the power of human presence. It just takes one single, silent human face before us to be the catalyst of discovery, we just have to start speaking.

2. Speaking releases a more potent intellectual force than thinking, a force that more urgently seeks the completion and perfection of the thought.

But since I always have some obscure preconception, distantly connected in some way with whatever I am looking for, I have only to begin boldly and the mind, obliged to find an end for this beginning, transforms my confused concept as I speak into thoughts that are perfectly clear, so that, to my surprise, the end of the sentence coincides with the desired knowledge. I interpose inarticulate sounds, draw out the connecting words, possibly even use an apposition when required and employ other tricks which will prolong my speech in order to gain sufficient time for the fabrication of my idea in the workshop of reason.

My take on his observation here is that speaking makes use of the intersubjective force of the audience. The audience doesn't want to hear wandering, rambling but a completed idea. Thus, when someone stands before a crowd in a train station and commences a speech on the need for a revolution. Perhaps he has no idea why there should be revolution, but the mere fact of a hundred faces turning attentively to him, expectant that he has good reasons, releases an incredible force, a reverse panopticon of sorts, and this force can be harnessed toward intellectual discovery. Just like farm animals eat more when they have to compete for food, this man's mind is going to work on overload to find brilliant reasons for revolution, by the mere fact of the faces turned towards him. This intensity cannot be recreated without others. Certain people shut down in the face of this sort of pressure, it is true, but it is a power to be harnessed.

The modern philosopher who most adeptly incorporated this power into his writing method was Soren Kierkegaard. He would walk through Copenhagen every day and engage in philosophical conversations with people from all strata of the society. He would have whole chunks of text on memory and to try out on people for its rhetorical effect. But he was also notorious for stopping in the middle of these walks, abruptly bringing the dialogue to an end with the overwhelming urge he could barely contain, saying, “I have to write.“ This was not planned, he only did this when he discovered something while walking and talking that he didn't want to let escape him. He abruptly departed only when he had formulated his thoughts perfectly and it had the intended effect on his hearer. As I said, I think the primary force of the attention and visage of others is a force to completion and perfection. When we are merely thinking, this can sometimes be a difficult force to harness as one can always get lost in tangents or endless weeds of objections and criticism. The sociology of speaking helps our minds work toward completing thoughts, as our hearers want something complete and relatively short.

3. This intersubjective force makes extemporaneous speech superior

I believe that, at the moment when he opened his mouth, many a great orator did not know what he was going to say. But the conviction that the necessary wealth of ideas would be provided by the circumstances and by the resulting excitement of his mind, made him bold enough to pick the opening words at random.

This helps explain, from naturalistic grounds, the wisdom of the following scripture in the Gospel of Matthew, “But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” (Mt 10.19). Grace perfects nature, and the Holy Spirit wants what is perfect, i.e. the chance to make use of this process to get His message across. Thus the teaching here should be de fide dogma for all you biblical fundamentalists out there. The point being if you plan out a speech beforehand, it is unlikely it will reach the perfection it could have reached had you learned to work with this intersubjective force in real time, the force that aids one in forming thoughts while speaking before others. The best rhetoricians, of which I think have long since died, know this and know how to use a crowd to their advantage. If they plan out what to say beforehand and memorize the speech, they are failing to utilize their biggest aid, the presence of the crowd. This highest advantage being the formation of new insights while speaking, things that could not be accessed alone.

This also provides another interesting answer to a question that troubled St Francis: whether it was more pleasing to God for him to preach or pray in solitude. He sought long and hard for the answer in prayer, applying his reason to the matter, and could come to no definite answer. He was sullied by the contact with the people concomitant with preaching, but it did them good. In contrast, solitude and prayer cleansed him and sanctified him. The answer that long last came from heaven was that preaching is more pleasing to God, though clearly prayer and preaching support each other, and more pleasing because preaching edified the masses. With this insight from von Kleist, we can see a second reason for the supremacy of preaching in terms of the intellectual edification of the preacher himself. That he will learn things that could only be learned through preaching them. St Francis only did extemporaneous preaching in any case.

This insight also sheds light on the grace of the great commission itself: Matt 28:19-20 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Every christian is called to proclaim the Gospel, to share the good news to others. And part of discovering the depths of the Gospel is this proclamation itself, it will be learned therein. Our knowledge of the Gospel itself will grow toward perfection, when we open our mouths to speak it forth without fully knowing. It only takes the presence of another person.

4. We do not learn, a state of mind does.

How necessary a certain mental stimulus really is, if only to reproduce concepts which have already occurred to us, can often be seen when persons with open and educated minds are examined and are suddenly confronted with such unexpected questions as these: what is the State? or what is property? or something of the kind. If these young people had just come from a party in which the State or property had been discussed for some time, perhaps they would easily have found the definition by the comparison, abstraction and recapitulation of ideas. But here, where this preparation of the mind is wholly absent, they are seen to falter, and only an examiner lacking in understanding would conclude that they do not know anything. For it is not we who know, but at first it is only a certain state of mind of ours that knows. Only very vulgar intellects, people who yesterday learned by heart what the State is and by tomorrow will have forgotten it, are likely to come out with the right answer here.

This final quote is a helpful qualification of the previous three. This is a skill to be harnessed: the art of speaking before others as a means of generating insight and developing thinking. The foundation is a state of mind that needs to be cultivated. The difference between a casual discussion at a party and standing before examiners helps us to clarify von Kleist´s insight here. Standing before examiners, as we all know, can make us clam up, can make us forget everything. This is primarily because we lose the proper state of mind, whereas the presence of others in more informal, and more charitable, less terrifying settings is more likely to be generative of fruitful thinking. I still think von Kleist would say that for the seasoned rhetorician, even the board of examiners is a plus. But the heart of the matter is developing this playful, relaxed state of mind where the power of speech can have its due effect on our thinking, and we can easily recall what we know. Without this, the presence of others is no use.

My first camino walking through Burgundy in winter, also during Covid confinement—no one was supposed to be outside after 6pm.—I experienced solitude like never before in my life. I rarely interacted with others for sometimes weeks at a time. The conclusion I came to, was that if I talked to myself while enduring this sort of solitude, I would go crazy. And, if I talked to God I would be sustained and grow. Having studied academic theology, it always amazes me how the things that will make the most impact on one's spiritual life are so simple.

Every human being can reap the immense benefits of trying to turn their interior conversation with themselves to God. This is one way of defining prayer itself, the first step of which is simply to gather yourself before the awesome presence of God, a God who loves you and cares for you and wants you to call Him Father. The flip side is also true: flagging in prayer or falling into sin, in my experience, entails not only forgetting many crucial things but also forgetting a peaceful state of mind, a state of mind that learned a great deal in God's presence. The gift of extreme solitude is that it forces you to choose self or God, it helps one to find this state of mind. Even when we are alone, the peace of mind generative of creativity and discovery depends on our capacity to place ourselves in God's presence and speak. It really just takes the presence of another person, my God has three.

My Substack Experience: On the Formation of Thought while Others are Reading Your Writing

I think this is a helpful essay for all Substack writers because it, even as it stands, makes clear we should try to make speaking an essential part of the writing process. This goes without saying, if we take seriously von Kliest´s discovery of the power of speaking. In fact, this would need to be a stand alone essay, but the first two of the theses I listed from the article are also true about writing itself.

Firstly, writing is a means of intellectual discovery. Similar to speech it is a making-concrete and a making-physical or digital of our thinking. So that thoughts take up space on a page and can be considered by others. Akin to speaking, this task of making-concrete and making-physical is a part of the process of discovery for the writer. Writing develops our thoughts.

Secondly, like speaking, writing itself unleashes a more potent intellectual force than mere thinking, a force toward completion and perfection. Writing makes thought concrete differently. It's less bound by time, and not insane to do alone, but the intersubjective power of committed readers—and for a letter you likewise just need one—can be equally powerful. There isn't really extemporaneous writing as there is with speech, so the third thesis isn't quite as relevant, but von Kleist´s point about extemporaneous speech being able to achieve in higher perfection should cause us to pause and consider how we write and the technology we harness to do so. The practice of writing by hand, or with a type-writer, or on a PC, these will each have a different effect on the writer and his thinking. The freedom to use backspace to perfect sentences isn't there when you write by hand. This, inevitably, affects the intention and attention of the writer with each sentence and paragraph, which undoubtedly will effect thoughts and writing themselves, and even the discoveries the writer makes in the process. If the most perfect or potent formation of thought comes during extemporaneous speech, we can ask, what of the formation of thought while writing, which tools are the most fecund.

Moreover, this sort of intersubjective dynamic von Kleist touches on is the power of Substack itself. It gives you readers! And immediate access to a large audience of readers. This is such a gift toward the development of thought, as it touches on the final point that: we don't learn ourselves, a state of mind does. And the best state of mind is one that is in community, for a community, and before a community, with friendly, encouraging eyes attending to your thoughts. This is exactly what Substack offers so readily, access to a creative state of mind. The fact Substack doubles over as a social media platform, and one that, in my opinion, does an excellent job of directing a small trickle of readers to the smallest fishes in the pond, this was, to me, a wonderful gift and it continues to be, as only one set of eyes is enough to give one access to this creative state of mind.

I am still working to nail down my method for using Substack as a writer. But, when I had a very small following, I would basically send out a very rough first draft. “It's going to two friends and 8 people I don´t know, it's mediocre, who cares, publish it,” I would impatiently say. But what amazed me was how, for the hour after I hit send and knew a few people were reading, a tremendous energy was released, not merely to edit, but for wholescale revision and re-envisioning of the post entirely and how it could be drastically improved. After experiencing this a few times, I recalled this essay from von Kleist, as it reminded me a great deal of what he described. It was the intersubjective power of the attention of others— though I couldn't see them in person, I could see them via the metrics—that could be harnessed to enlighten me about what I was wanting to articulate in the first place and how I could best complete that thought. Thus, the perfection of the post tended to come to me only after I had sent it out to my list and everyone who was going to read it was already finished reading.

Now that I have more than 10 subscribers, I would like to get in the habit of only sending polished writing out into people's inboxes. I am trying to shift from harnessing the actual intersubjective power of people reading my posts when it is already too late to make revisions they can see, to trying to harness the potential power of this attention while I still can make changes before I send it out. Basically, because I cannot do this entirely (yet), I have started posting to the web a few days before I send a post to the email list, which seems like the best way forward, for me at least, to make use of this dynamic without giving my subscribers something incomplete. The creative state of mind spoken of by von Kleist appears also to live here amongst writers at substack. To all of you for subscribing and giving that to me along with your time, how can I best express my sincere thanks? What can I say? Sometimes it takes the presence of another person.

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The entire von Kleist essay can be read here: On the Gradual Construction of Thoughts During Speech

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