“…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.”]
Aristotle, Physics, 223a21-9, quoted in Frank Kermode’s The Sense of an Ending
From the following passage in the original:
Εἰ δὲ μηδὲν ἄλλο πέφυκεν ἀριθμεῖν ἢ ψυχὴ καὶ ψυχῆς νοῦς, ἀδύνατον εἶναι χρόνον ψυχῆς μὴ οὔσης, ἀλλ’ ἢ τοῦτο ὅ ποτε ὂν ἔστιν ὁ χρόνος, οἷον εἰ ἐνδέχεται κίνησιν εἶναι ἄνευ ψυχῆς. Τὸ δὲ πρότερον καὶ ὕστερον ἐν κινήσει ἐστίν· χρόνος δὲ ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν ᾗ ἀριθμητά ἐστιν.
Friedrich Nietzsche, notebooks, 1888, in Nice
[… was gedacht werden kann, muß sicherlich eine Fiktion sein]
Charles de Montesquieu (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)
Fellow Tumblrs, I have a question for you.
Right now, I’m trying to put together a list of the best movies, novels, works of philosophy and works of theory that deal with the idea of the post-apocalypse. (Because that’s how I roll on Tuesday mornings.)
You here in Tumblrverse I suspect have read and seen a slew of these works that I haven’t, and if you have any suggestions, I’d really appreciate hearing them.
So far I have: Children of Men, Blade Runner, 28 Days Later, The Road, Wall-E, Planet of the Apes, Battlestar Gallactica, Walter Benjamin, and Cioran’s Histoire et Utopie.
Many thanks ahead of time.
“The novel was born with the modern era that made of man, to cite Heidegger, the ‘only true subjectum*,’ the ‘foundation of everything.’ It’s in large part thanks to the novel that man arrives on the European stage as an individual. Far from the novel, in our real lives, we don’t know very much about our parents such as they were before we were born; we don’t know our good friends except as fragments; we see them come and go; in no time, they vanish, their places taken by others. They form a long parade of replaceable beings. Only the novel isolates the individual, throwing light on his biography, his ideas, his feelings, making him irreplaceable, making him the center of the universe.”
Milan Kundera, Une Rencontre, Gallimard, p. 53, my transl.
* “subjectum” is one of those fancy philosophical terms I’ve heard people throw around way too casually. I was a little confused when I came across it here and decided to hunt down a good definition. The dutch philosopher Jos de Mul (a very cool guy: he and I met to discuss Greek stuff over coffee one time, and he was incredibly helpful in hashing out ideas that had left me a bit befuddled), in his book, Romantic desire in (post)modern art and philosophy, offers a concise and clear explanation of the word’s history and meaning.
[ “Le roman est né avec les Temps modernes qui ont fait de l’homme, pour citer Heidegger, le ‘seul véritable subjectum’, le ‘fondement de tout’. C’est en grande partie grâce au roman que l’homme s’installe sur la scène de l’Europe en tant qu’individu. Loin du roman, dans nos vies réelles, nous ne savons pas grand-chose de nos parents tels qu’ils étaient avant notre naissance ; nous ne connaissons nos proches que par fragments ; nous les voyons arriver et partir ; à peine disparaissent-ils, leur place est prise par d’autres : ils forment un long défilé d’êtres remplaçables. Seul le roman isole un individu, éclaire toute sa biographie, ses idées, ses sentiments, le rend irremplaçable : fait de lui le centre de tout.” ]
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Cambridge, 27 April 1951. (via mebbee) (via pyrrhosrepublic) (via gwyon) (via invisiblestories)
I feel and felt the same way about lightly frosted nut-sprinkled donuts. Wittgenstein and I are so alike, except for the genius philosophy part.
