Philosophy and Self-sentimentality

I am trying to write an essay about what it is to perceive something as a difficulty in one's job. It's tempting to think that there are difficulties which are internal to a job in the sense that a job naturally entails some challenges, responsibilities and obligations. There is the idea that "professions" are jobs that include higher ethical demands than others (even though there are many uses of "profession"). When I reflect on my own "job" I realize how problematic this picture really is. Before and after research seminars I usually curse my self-obsessive tendencies, which become only too apparent in my being nervous that my text will be torn to pieces and that I will look like an idiot in the eyes of others. That I sometimes find it difficult to present texts at seminars is an expression of the person I am and not something that is a necessary part of what it is to be engaged in research. Even though seminar-angst is a familiar phenomenon to many researchers I am convinced there are some who don't see it as particularly difficult to be the object of public criticism. Or more to the point: they tend not to think of academic criticism as something that is aimed at me as a person. This is not of course to say that there academics care less about their work, I would rather be prone to say that the opposite is the case.

Reading some philosophers, Rush Rhees, Wittgenstein and my own supervisor are three of them, is enjoyable because their texts contain little self-sentimentality or self-importance. (I know that some people have different feelings about Rhees, seeing in his "confessional style" a form of self-indulgence, but I don't really understand that.) These writers are open about their confusion and lack of clarity. This makes it easier to follow their thoughts. Nothing is hidden, as it were, even if it may be difficult to understand them for other reasons - the topic being difficult as such, for example. Rhees often confesses in this text: "I don't understand this." and "I am confused." Of course this has little to do with confessions in the sense that one would spray one's guts all over one's philosophical insights. Philosophy does challenge us as persons, but that is another story. Philosophical thinking challenges one to be prepared to scrutinize one's own thinking. In that way, the person is always at stake.