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“I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.”
“…all philosophy is an act of language. Rhythm, vocabulary, syntax, everything that leads us to poetry, we find equally in philosophical texts, no matter how abstract. ‘All philosophy begins with a poem,’ Alain once wrote about Valéry. The great thinkers are often supreme writers, thinkers such as Nietzsche or Kierkegaard. Bergson, one of the masters of the French language, received a Nobel Prize for Literature. Plato deserves to be compared to Shakespeare when we consider the creation of characters, of dramatic gestures. But we also see that thought and writing can stand in conflict with each other. Certain philosophers tend to write very badly, to suffocate the writer in themselves: lIke Hegel, the king of anti-style. This double tradition of lyric genius, as in the case of Plato, or that of rigid pedantry, of systemization, as in the case of Aristotle, is there right at the beginning.”
From an interview with George Steiner, “Europe is in the Act of Sacrificing its Young,” in Télérama.fr, December 12, 2011, trans. mine
[“…toute philosophie est un acte de langage. Le rythme, le vocabulaire, la syntaxe, tout ce qui nous conduit vers la poésie, nous le rencontrons également dans le texte philosophique, aussi abstrait soit-il. « Toute pensée commence par un poème », écrivait Alain à propos de Valéry. Les grands penseurs sont souvent des écrivains suprêmes, tels Nietzsche ou Kierkegaard. Bergson, l’un des maîtres de la langue française, a reçu le prix Nobel de littérature. Platon mérite d’être comparé à Shakespeare en ce qui concerne la création de personnages, de gestes dramatiques. Mais la relation entre pensée et écriture peut aussi se révéler conflictuelle. Certains philosophes tiennent à écrire très mal, à suffoquer l’écrivain en eux, comme Hegel, roi de l’anti-style. Cette double tradition du génie lyrique chez un Platon et celle de la pédagogie sévère, du système, chez un Aristote est là depuis le début.”]
“Where there is beauty there is pity for the simple reason that beauty must die: beauty always dies, the manner dies with the matter, the world dies with the individual.”
“We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning?”
“What for Nietzsche was a necessary but consistently overlooked feature in all philosophy became in his own case, through a lifetime of effort, a self-conscious achievement: he showed that writing is perhaps the most important part of thinking. And since he also believed that thinking “is an action”, we might with some appropriateness attribute to him the hyperbolic view which this book aims to investigate, that writing is also the most important part of living.”
from Nietzsche: Life as Literature by Alexander Nehamas. We’re reading this book for faculty study group and it is the first time I’ve read anything regarding Nietzsche, but I’m finding it a great and edifying read as it forces me to think below the surface level of things and consider a deeper meaning. Since then I’ve picked up the Portable Nietzsche, which is just as ridiculous as it sounds, and it is full of great stuff that helps me dig below the skin-level of things and hopefully improves what I’m working on. All of these things give me a newfound energy to constantly write and that I’m not doing enough, which is tough. (via davepress)
Tragos HQ officially endorses Nehamas’ Nietzsche: Life as Literature, as well as his more recent book, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art.
“If you want to get a real education in America you’re going to have to fight—and I don’t mean just fight against the drugs and the violence and against the slime-based culture that is still going to surround you. I mean something a little more disturbing. To get an education, you’re probably going to have to fight against the institution that you find yourself in—no matter how prestigious it may be. (In fact, the more prestigious the school, the more you’ll probably have to push.) You can get a terrific education in America now—there are astonishing opportunities at almost every college—but the education will not be presented to you wrapped and bowed. To get it, you’ll need to struggle and strive, to be strong, and occasionally even to piss off some admirable people.”
“If triangles had a god, he would have three sides.”
(via marrepe123)
At Tragos HQ, we often wonder about these triangles. Does language force us to believe in the existence of a generalization drawn from billions of variant particularities? Your oak and my spruce participate in the same Form of tree? Or is the triangle example nothing more than muddle-minded idealism?
Carry on, history of philosophy.
In the meantime, I give you Montesquieu’s quotation in the original, from his Persian Letters:
Si les triangles faisaient un Dieu, ils lui donneraient trois côtés.
(via apoplecticskeptic)
“Something about continual movement carries a concurrent urge for familiarity—like ordering the same drink in any bar, perhaps. In short, movement breeds anxiety, and anxiety seeks stability.”
Eye of the Bespoken
You’ve read Mills post in which he questions our moral complacency in vaunting beauty.
Funny thing. Today, I was reading Sartre’s play No Exit, and in my edition’s footnotes, came across this snippet culled from his other play, the Condemned of Altona.
Johanna, a former film star, has just been praised for her beauty by her father-in-law.
Johanna. — I’m not beautiful. Is that clear?
Father. — If you’re not, who is?
Johanna. — No one. Everyone’s ugly but disguised. I won’t disguise myself any longer…Do you understand my meaning? People made me a beauty…film by film.
[Jean-Paul Sartre. Huis Clos: Pièce en un acte. Routledge, 1990, p. 102, my translation.]
“Ugly but disguised” is a fine way to put it.
“The generic can be more intense than the concrete. We do not lack illustrative examples. Since I was a boy summering in the north of province, I was fascinated by the surrounding prairies and by the men downing maté in the kitchen; but my happiness was fierce when I found out that those plains were “pampas”, and those guys “gauchos”. The same with the imaginative souls who fall in love. The generic (the repeated name, the type, the fatherland, the adorable destiny invested in it) reigns supreme over individual traits. And these individual traits are tolerated by virtue of the generic itself.”
[Jorge Luis Borges: Historia de la eternidad. Emecé Editores, 1953, my translation]
I have always felt guilty for sometimes preferring the abstract and general to the concrete and specific. If I were a better person I’d only write Anglo-Saxon monosyllables that mark out not just rocks and lizards, but panetellerite and plumed basilisks. And specifically the ones under your feet (not directly in the latter case, I hope).
But the dirty truth is that I fall headlong for classifications, schemas, generalizations, brands and rankings. For a while I thought this was a moral failing, but now I more comfortably attribute it to having spent too much of my childhood baking in the sun.
The thought, then, that all the “details” endure by grace of the generic? That, my friends, is a consolation and a half.
That there is a Book somewhere tolerating (stomaching!) the presence of this tawny, dampstained, pencil-scratched, black-cased, dust-jacketless library edition of History of Eternity splayed on my blond-wood desk would surely please our man Borges, wherever he might be in his labyrinth in the sky.
[Original:]
Lo genérico puede ser más intenso que lo concreto. Casos ilustrativos no faltan. De chico, veraneando en el norte de la provincia, la llanura redonda y los hombres que mateaban en la cocina me interesaron, pero mi felicidad fue terrible cuando supe que ese redondel era “pampa”, y esos varones, “gauchos”. Igual, el imaginativo que se enamora. Lo genérico (el repetido nombre, el tipo, la patria, el destino adorable que le atribuye) prima sobre los rasgos individuales, que se toleran en gracia de lo anterior.
