learning curve

Distinctions generate meaning

2011-12-22T00:42:00.000-05:00

"The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it." $26 from the *Enquiry* And that's why I'm enjoying Hume.

the hard problem

2011-09-01T15:00:00.000-04:00

L’Élève: la République a donc le droit d’intervenir dans les conditions du travail et dans le règlement des prix et des salaires? L’Instituteur: Sans doute, elle a ce droit. Elle l’exerce au nom du Peuple. Que serait, que pourrait un industriel ou un négociant sans le travail du peuple et sans la protection de la République? La République, en assurant au commerce et à l’industrie leur liberté,

On eating too much

2011-04-13T21:40:00.000-04:00

But Knowledge is as food, and needs no less Her Temperance over Appetite, to know In measure what the mind may well contain, Oppresses else with Surfeit, and soon turns Wisdom to Folly, as Nourishment to Wind. John Milton Paradise Lost, bk VII, 126-130.

Time and Critical Theory

2011-03-22T23:11:00.000-04:00

When the shadow of the sash appeared in the curtains it was between seven and eight oclock and then I was in time again, hearing the watch. It was Grandfather’s and when Father gave it to me he said, Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it’s rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reductio absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual

Leftist Socialism

2011-02-23T09:03:00.000-05:00

Kolakowski, Leszek. “The Concept of the Left.” [from The New Left Reader] How to give the Left a conceptual definition? Leszek Kolakowski begins with a quasi ontological point: “every work of man is a compromise between the material and tool” (144). This principle is as true of dentistry as it is of revolution, “social revolutions are a compromise between utopia and historical reality. The

Most fundamental right

2011-01-15T09:11:00.000-05:00

This opinion piece, from the World Affairs Journal in which Pascale Bruckner defends the recent French ban on the burqua, is from a few months ago, and has doubtless been discussed elsewhere. This debate has been written about brilliantly (in very different modes, for instance, by Joan Scott and Cecile Laborde), and I haven't got anything in particular to add, except to stand back and gape at

Chapter One, The Philosophy of Money

2011-01-11T21:50:00.000-05:00

As part of my continuing attempt to be more educated in classical sociology, I’m beginning to read Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money. I have so far read the first chapter of this rather large book. This chapter is an enormous amount of philosophical ground-preparation, about subjectivity, objectivity, relativism, and value--and then about ten pages discussing money in the vocabulary so

Sources of Reaction

2011-01-08T12:08:00.001-05:00

Il existe aujourd’hui un genre de fanatisme scientifique qui menace d’être funeste à la science: il ferait tout sauter pour éprouver un explosif, il perdrait un État pour tirer des archives et mettre en lumière un document ‘intéressant’. Ce système anarchique et révolutionnaire est de source métaphysique. Il n’a rien de rationnel. Proprement il consiste à remplacer le dieu des Juifs par la

Anti-Constitutionalism

2011-01-05T16:36:00.000-05:00

S'ils invoquent l'exécution littérale des adages constitutionnels, ce n'est que pour les violer impunément. Ce sont les lâches assassins qui, pour égorger sans péril la République au berceau, s'efforcent de la garrotter avec des maximes vagues dont ils savent bien se dégager eux-mêmes. Robespierre, 5 Nivôse II (25 December, 1793)

His body lies a-mouldering

2010-12-16T20:05:00.000-05:00

The deed was done. The next day the world knew and the world sat in puzzled amazement. It was ever so and ever will be. When a prophet like John brown appears, how must we of the world receive him? Must we follow out the drear, dread logic of surrounding facts, as did the South, even if they crucify a clean and pure soul, simply because consistent allegiance to our cherished, chosen ideal

Trees and other anarchists

2010-10-25T16:15:00.000-04:00

James C. Scott. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. 1998. The basic ideas of Seeing Like a State may be expressed in two of Scott’s favorite examples. The first, used to introduce the themes of the book, is that of scientific forestry. This is basically the practice of treating a forest like a specialized kind of farm. Rather than allowing

how not to write

2010-09-26T12:16:00.001-04:00

This is again from the Quaderni del carcere Q14 §36. Criteri metodologici. Una manifestazione tipica del dilettantismo intellettuale (a dell’attività intellettuale dei dilettanti) è questa : che nel trattare une quistione si tende ad esporre tutto quello che si sa e non solo ciò che è necessario e importante di un argomento. Si coglie ogni occasione per fare sfoggio dei propri imparaticci, di

Jeffersonian apocalypse

2010-09-22T10:43:00.000-04:00

In the struggle which was necessary, many guilty persons fell without the forms of trial, and with them some innocent. These I deplore as much as any body, & shall deplore some of them to the day of my death. But I deplore them as I should have done had they fallen in battle. It was necessary to use the arm of the people, a machine not quite so blind as balls and bombs, but blind to a certain

Gramsci on Croce

2010-09-17T23:15:00.000-04:00

[Il Croce] crede di trattare di una filosofia e tratta di una ideologia, crede di trattare di una religione e tratta di una superstizione, crede di scrivere una storia in cui l'elemento di classe sia esorcizzato e invece descrive con grande accuratessa e merito il capolavoro politico per cui una determinata classe riesce a presentare e far accettare la condizioni della sua esistenza e del suo

Grande est la série de ceux qui les suivent

2010-08-09T23:04:00.000-04:00

Three really remarkable ideas struck me in reading over Etienne de la Boétie’s Discourse on Voluntary Servitude (the link is to a modernized French version). The first, perhaps the most remarkable, is simply stated at the beginning, and said over again in different ways in the whole first quarter of the essay. Governments function because people allow them to do so. A king does not rule on a

Conrad

2010-08-05T16:33:00.000-04:00

In fact, I thought the Bastions a very convenient place, since the girl did not think it prudent as yet to introduce that young man to her mother. It was here, then, I thought, looking round at that plot of ground of deplorable banality, that their acquaintance will begin and go on in the exchange of generous indignations and of extreme sentiments, too poignant, perhaps, for a non-Russian mind

Zizek's Violence

2010-07-15T16:58:00.000-04:00