Today, I feel a need to make an arbitrary list of consequential reconceptions. These are some of the core ideas I want to put in one of the several pamphlets I have planned. I’ve named two of them: Geometric Parables and The Ten-Thousand Everythings. Maybe this is the start of a third pamphlet, Syllabus Listicalis. Blindness is … Continue reading Syllabus Listicalis
What has happened to our attitudes toward bigotry? I used to feel like I was a member of a vast alliance of people committed to fighting bigotry. We believed it was possible, and in optimistic moods perhaps even even inevitable, that bigotry would be overcome. In the last three or so years, though, I have … Continue reading Bigotry bigotry
Is it just me, or do the conceptions of logocentrism outlined in my Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory seem logocentric? Logocentrism – The Greek logos has a wide range of meanings, and designates both a rational or intelligible principle and a structure or order that provides phenomena with an origin, or that explains their nature. … Continue reading Logocentrism
Design is like gift-giving. How? When one person gives another person a perfect gift, the gift is valuable in three ways: The gift itself is intrinsically valuable to the one receiving it. The giftis good to have in one’s life, because it makes life easier, more pleasant or more meaningful. The gift contributes to the … Continue reading Design as gift (edit for 10ke)
Religions are born as freely-given gifts. They mature in gratitude toward the giver. They die as stolen gifts, snatched from the giver’s hand and stolen as a possession: a belief. * The giver is a mystery known only by way of receiving from who-knows-where. In the absence of this receiving the giver becomes nonsense. Once … Continue reading Inspiration, faith, belief.
To neither lose one’s receptivity nor to lose oneself in it: uncompromising enforcement of the law of reason on all, most of all oneself. * “Reason? Why?” Because it is reasonable. “But that’s circular.” It is the greatest circle. It is certainly more expansive than the tiny, skull’s-breadth circuit you’ll spin within if you try … Continue reading Law of Reason
I need to make friends with some fellow-nerds whose heads combust when they read stuff like this: Religion corrects for our farsightedness. It addresses the invisibility of objects that are commonly too familiar, too available, too immanent to be seen. To this end, it intentionally cultivates nearsightedness. Religion practices myopia in order to bring both … Continue reading Miller/Latour: What religion does
Teaching is a kind of gift-giving. As with all gift-giving, teaching is not a simple transfer of property from one party to another. Nobody gives a gift to another detached individual: authentic gifts are given to a relationship. * There is an art to giving and receiving gifts — a sense of good form — … Continue reading Good form in idea exchange
Ideologues make Trojan horses of factual account packed with ethical valuations. Once you learn to open the horse and force out the passengers, you can accept gifts from your enemies. * While all religions attempt accounts for the same metaphysical sphere of reality — at least to the degree of acknowledging its existence — they … Continue reading Smuggled ethics
The following is not an argument. It is nothing more than a way to see things, which can be entertained, tried on or ignored. One person can compel another to accept certain facts through use of logic and empirical evidence (under threat of excommunication from the world of the reasonable), but understanding of worldviews is … Continue reading A new way to see?
We keep working to provide more and more, cheaper and cheaper, better and better products to consumers. Nobody in our era has more attention lavished upon him than the consumer. Why? Because satisfying customers is what brings us success, and success brings us great rewards — bigger homes, cooler cars, higher-fi home theaters — all … Continue reading Otherful-togetherful
From Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy: Euripides’ basic intention now becomes as clear as day to us: it is to eliminate from tragedy the primitive and pervasive Dionysian element, and to rebuild the drama on a foundation of non-Dionysian art, custom and philosophy. Euripides himself, towards the end of his life, propounded the question of the … Continue reading Lycurgus of Thrace