Protected: On remembering

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Traitor (Tarot)

Tarot – Traitor [Club Teatria 24.3.2007]

Hundred lashes!
-The battles are fought outside.
Count your blessings!
-The war is in the head.
Hundred lashes!
-Try to suffer less than learn.
Count your blessings!
-I try to be fair with both.

Hundred lashes!
-Walk proud to the pole.
Count your blessings!
-The seconds are really short.
Hundred lashes!
-Don’t forget how to breathe.
Count your blessings!
-They’ll carry you away.

I won’t stand your cowering.
Your selfpity disgusts me.
And here you’re just wallowing in you feces.
You’re a traitor…to your species.

I want my secrets kept.

The hand’s hard for the curious.
Iron grip, the whip flies furious!

I won’t stand…
You’re a traitor…to your species.

I want my secrets kept.
You kneel, I accept.

M. Hietala

Does philosophy have a foundation?

If we are to construe philosophy as having the highest degree of generality insofar as it legitimates and accounts for all intellectual practices, we may be justified in our belief of it as a queen of the sciences.

Kant proposed, I argue, that there are foundations to our thought, principles that regulate our thinking insofar as we are rational at all; these assumptions underpin the whole enterprise of exploration and thought itself. These reflective principles of judgment are; systematicity, unity, among others. Let us consider unity for now.

Unity is the ideal of knowledge being in a full continuum. That mathematics may be on the same par as aesthetics; that engineering with medicine; that metaphysics be on par with logic. What are the underlying regulative principles upon which they consist? It is such a construal of the question, if it can ever be answered, that may demonstrate the fundamental unity of knoweldge.

Does philosophy have a common base? This seems a most ridiculous suggestion, at least, prima facie. Given the law of a philosopher always having an equal yet opposite opponent; given that there are many who give strong arguments for theses so vastly distinct, and often, so vastly opposite; from atheism to realism, nominalism to realism.

Philosophers, if they are genuine of heritage from the tradition of Socrates; have the fundamental desire to understand, and express this by their fundamental of explaining. This is very vague, indeed. But to explain, one may, as a legitimate normative principle, must have something explainable. It is here, that we may input the desiderata of the principle of suffiicient reason; that every ‘why’ question has an answer.

We are but the immature child, who asks the parent why; the question of why in this child consists of a continuous enquiry, further and further they go, asking deeper truths of an explanation; why did x? why is this answer adequate? what constitutes an answer? why should I accept it?

Knowledge, and reality, we must conceive of the former insofar as we can understand the limits of the latter. Such is the transcendental project of philosophy.

Michael, Destre

Beauty as a feeling (On Allison’s ‘chain of associations’)

In the year 1789 (I think), Archibald Allison published a work on aesthetics, on the same year as Immanuel Kant; it was a directly opposed theory with deeply empiricist flavourings. Kant’s aesthetic account, by contrast, is more nuanced of a rationalist account, but Allison assert what Kant denies, but in doing so, I think Allison hit the nail right on the head on some issues.

One particular conception that I considered prima facie true, and my mind really hasn’t changed on this, is the significant empirical component in our aesthetic behaviour. When I see an object, I associate it with past memories in which I have seen it, and with past times in which I saw it; and those past times evoke memories of the feeling I had when I saw it.

For me, a summer’s day reminds me of those days in the collegium with S*; it reminds me of a few other summers which were particularly bad, but it also, through the culmination of these memories, synthesises to a new experience: it is no longer the past, it is now; this year can be different. A chain of reasoning comes through the cognizance of our recollection, a determinate set of facts, and an indeterminate process of feeling.

Granted, there is a very complex and relative chain of thought to our associations, and it would be interesting to formalise the process we have in such cases; we could have a formal logic of aesthetics, or a formal logic of memory, or even a formal logic of emotional reasoning/emotional conditionalisation.

But what I think is the lasting platitude here, is the undeniable empirical aspect of aesthetics (aesthetics, after all, is experience)…

Michael, Sinistre

My special place (Michael)

The British Museum, and in particular, the Greek exhibit; represents literally the Areopagus to me. The ancient Greeks were the vanguard of humanity, so much so that we still learn from Aristotle today; they taught us what is beautiful, what is good, what is true. They taught us democracy, and the proper meaning of aristocracy. The Greeks taught us to admire the beauty of femininity, and not to hide it, they taught us what masculinity was; masculinity is contemplative wisdom, the aged leaders who are skilled at the art of words, and of swords.

Most of all, Aphrodite represents the eroticisation of perfect femininity to me. I’m sure that Antisophie is chastise me for saying this; but I think Aphrodite represents the peak of feminine beauty, her voluptuous curves as if to say I don’t care what you think, I am beautiful and you WILL adore me! Athene’s wisdom, her access to the world of intellect so powerful that men pale in comparison to her; yet she holds a shield and spear; Athene, perfectly wise, yet modest in dress, but fierce in battle, she is the true Athenian Idol, she is my idol; oh, how could we all be like her!

Aphrodite represents the height of attractiveness; she is sly and manipulative (as Venus, to Aeneas); she is tricky and clever, typically male characteristics, and most of all, she expresses this raw lustful beauty and eroticism about her; she’s so beautiful and sly, that no mortal can ever achieve her, no mortal man is ever worthy of her perfection. You will get burned by the claws of the Aphrodites of the world; but I don’t care…she’s worth it!

The Parthenon exhibit represents the appreciation and deference to the Greeks, it is almost as if seeing the same world that Socrates walked into as an Athenian. It is from the home of the true Areopagus; and the Acropolis. The Greeks represent the idols of my childhood, the civility that maintains my present, and the Areopagite future of a new.

The Greeks exhibit both beauty and wisdom, from Praxiteles to Plato, through Sophocles to Homer; Pausanias to Homer; they were the golden age of humanity; the stuff of dreams, the hope for the future.

The Greeks represent a passing fancy to a deep seated project for the future. They encapsulate every facet of human ideal from sexual desire to the life of contemplation. From the barred to the endorsed; they are the rose-tinted fantasy. and it is the British museum that facilitates my ridiculous fantasies; my longing to be close to those greats like Aristotle. My longing to live in a golden age of human development.

Michael

[minor eds. Sinistre]

My special place (S)

For me, the Royal Festival hall represents my love for music. This was where I discovered Rachmaninov, Brahms, Rimsky-Korsakov, and even Philip Glass. This is a place of beauty, and a place of friendship. It was during those nights when I spent during the summer with Michael, that we looked over the bridge that overshot London, that we found such immense beauty in the industrial jungle; we cound such beaty in the moment; the water passing through in the Thames; the closeness we felt, between ourselves as friends, and the intimacy and merging we felt in the embrace of the music. This place was going to be the place where I was going to meet my first love. It never worked out that way, but I still adore this location.

Sinistre

Protected: Reasons I like Stephen Fry…(On cultural archetypes)

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Protected: Two bugbears

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My special place (D)

Chelsea old church. When Michael comes to visit and we meet up in London; we find this place very special. More is a man dressed in unassuming scholarly robes; yet had the constitution and courage to challenge the King. More is a man whom which we are both named after; and whome which we admire most greatly. A scholar, and a moral-political dissident. He is an Areopagite in our eyes

Destre

The Islander (Nightwish)

This was a very moving song when I saw it live. Nightwish certainly have changed of late; and here is one of the ways: Marco getting more creatively involved…just imagine, he’s in Tarot, too!

M