摘要：Søren Kierkegaard’s classic book, Fear and Trembling (1843), begins with a reflection on the present condition of what one might call the marketplace of ideas. The preface opens with the declaration, “Not only in the business world but also in the world of ideas our age stages a veritable clearance sale.”3 The way of thinking that emerges out of the marketplace is one in which answers are mass-produced. Philosophical positions are presented as products that can be had on the cheap and the processes out of which these positions are forged are obscured. The preface concludes by making a direct connectionbetween the systematic form of thinking that was fashionable during that time and a recent breakthrough in transportation technology, the horse-drawn omnibus. 4 The connection drawn here seems to be more significant than a rhetorical trivialization of a certain brand of philosophy by aligning it with the instrumental domain of the economy. To draw such a stark divide between the theoretical and the practical is to institute the very form of thinking that is being called into question here. Rather, what seems to be at stake are competing forms of life that are formed through specific practices, technologies, and relationships.
