Jeffrey Kirpal’s blurb for Jorge Ferrer’s edited volume, The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008).
What a truly hopeful and beautiful book this is. Skillfully negotiating between the Charybdis of a reductive but precious rationalist contextualism and the Scylla of the profound but not always sufficiently critical religious traditions, these authors propose a new, more dialectical path for the future of Religious Studies — a path of participation that recognizes in a rare fashion the truly creative nature of that fundamentally mysterious process of human consciousness we so mundanely call ‘interpretation.’ Catalyzed by a marvelous opening essay on the history and meaning of this participatory turn, the volume promises to become for a new generation what Katz’s and Forman’s pioneering volumes were for earlier ones.
Is this seriously the kind of shit I want to do with my life.....?
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Doctor Rafa and the Good Soldier
"It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can’t people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it; it is beyond me. Is there any terrestrial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men’s lives like the lives of us good people—like the lives of the Ashburnhams, of the Dowells, of the Ruffords—broken, tumultuous, agonized, and unromantic, lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by deaths, by agonies? Who the devil knows?"
— Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (NY: John Lane, 1915), p. 273.
http://books.google.com/books?id=-KtaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA273#v=onepage&q&f=false
— Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (NY: John Lane, 1915), p. 273.
http://books.google.com/books?id=-KtaAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA273#v=onepage&q&f=false
Friday, April 23, 2010
Doctor Rafa Is Graduating With Honors
That's right, bitches!
Just finished my thesis defense. It was satisfyingly grueling, and my friends showed up to add their own questions.
All in all--I am awesome.
Just finished my thesis defense. It was satisfyingly grueling, and my friends showed up to add their own questions.
All in all--I am awesome.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Doctor Rafa Is Tired Lately
I've been writing this--
Your Arms Too Short to Box with God: False Pleasures in Plato’s Philebus
At a certain point in the dialogue, Socrates asks Protarchus whether “in the case of the experiences of any ensouled beings,” that is, in the case of human beings, “the one experiencing them is always aware of all of [our pleasures and pains]” (43b). This question points to the beginning of a discussion on the role of attention and cognition in the realization and categorization of pleasures and pains, a role that turns out to be very large indeed. In answering Socrates’ initial question, Protarchus replies that no, of course it is not so that we are aware of all them. Indeed, as says, we are “almost entirely unaware of everything of the kind” (43b). This seems correct as, to a large degree, we do categorize pains and pleasures according to a cognitive classification.
For example, knowing that our muscles are tense and stiff, we undergo painful massages, and seem to greatly enjoy the experience. The enjoyment of a massage depends on recognizing that one is being healed, knots released from our muscles, or we could easily surmise that we were being injured. Even more straightforwardly, we are often unaware of some of the vast number of stimuli, pleasant and painful, that flit across our bodies, due to the overwhelming number of sensations that we are constantly being exposed to. It requires a shift in attention to the sensation in question, along with the second, already stated judgment, to determine whether any sensation or action is indeed pleasurable or painful. Quite a complex apparatus for such an apparently simple, passive act such as perception.
Continuing on this point, once we have been shown the cognitive element in our perception of pleasure, the possibility of false pleasure can be raised. If perception requires cognitive processing, a failure to process correctly could lead to falsely perceiving something painful as pleasurable. If we base our cognitive analysis on a false premise, for instance, we might wrongly say something we feel is pleasurable, when it really should not give us pleasure at all.
This type of false judgment is what Socrates is getting at in naming the series of false pleasures he does. He names a list of feelings that include: “anger, fear, longing, dirge, eros, emulation, envy, and everything of the kind” (47E), all of them examples of false pleasures. It is unnecessary to discuss every one. Even taking one examples, anger, sufficiently capture the sense in which these can be said to be cases of mistaken cognitive judgment. In describing anger, Socrates asks: “Isn’t it the case that we’ll find [anger] full of indescribable pleasures?” (48a). It is not immediately obvious that anger is a pleasure, in all or even most cases. Anger is generally thought of as a negative emotion. Someone wrongs me. The injustice causes a welling up of emotion, along with physical symptoms that are rather like being ill. Perhaps the stomach drops, the face pales, the fists shake, and the jaw tightens painfully. Certainly none of these are pleasant sounding, or feeling. What, then, is the pleasure involved?
Socrates goes on, as if in response, that if we are doubtful about the pleasure of anger, we “have to recall” a certain set of phrases, taken from Achilles: “which sets even the very wise to anger/And is far sweeter than dripping honey” (48a). There is something familiar about the idea of anger being sweet, even as it scorches the one feeling it. In many cases of anger, there is a pleasurable feeling rather like a rush of adrenaline. In our moments of rage, we imagine that we are powerful, strong in response to the wrong that harms us. In our anger, it is not uncommon for us to imagine that the one who has wronged us is in pain, or punished. Thus, the pleasure of anger lies chiefly in imagining that we have the power to see those who wrong us punished, even if it is simply in our minds and we never attempt any physical action.
It is this pleasure, the pleasure that comes from imagined power, that leads to the falsity of the pleasure. When we imagine the pleasure of righting a wrong against us, we imagine that there is an injustice to which we are deserving of reparation. We imagine that we have the power to right the wrong, in the retributivist sense, by causing the one who wronged us to be punished. This imagining, however, is based on the idea that we actually have the power to right wrongs done to us. In most cases, we do not have that power. Say there is a hurricane that causes my expensive sports car to flip over and bash itself against a telephone pole. When the storm is over, and I see my car destroyed, my anger is directed at—what? The pleasure comes in imagining the situation righted, but who or what exactly do I imagine is being punished for destroying my car? The storm? The anger in this case seems to be directed at the world in general, a world which should seek to treat me justly. But why would I think the world is structured that way, to give me a special place in its order where my wishes are never to be countermanded? To think so appears to be a kind of egoism impossible to sustain.
This is true even in so-called cases of “righteous anger.” Elie Wiesel describes the moment when American soldiers came to liberate Auschwitz . Upon entering the camp and seeing the devestation inside, one of the American soldiers falls to his knees and flies into an absolute fit of rage, rising and tearing at everything around him, screaming and swearing. This case of seemingly pure anger, regarded by Wiesel as a sign that humanity had returned to his life, is a case of anger at broad human injustice, stemming from a sense of empathy and human brotherhood—the sense that humanity itself has been wronged. The anger here appears to have a clearer, more human target—the Nazi party, perhaps especially the SS guards who kept the concentration camp running, the kapos who made the prisoners’ lives even more hellish, or even Hitler himself. But this anger too seems to assume that there can be an undoing of such a horrific situation. The idea is that this should not be allowed to happen: “I care about this, so it should not have been allowed;” or perhaps, in this case, more “this should not have been allowed” more generally. But to say that is to think that one had the power to stop it. Clearly, no single American soldier, including the one in this story, had that power.
Stepping back, what then is the falseness of the pleasure? It is based on a mistaken view of human power. Rather, if the one feeling anger realized the truth of his own limitations, what he can do and what is impossible for him, he would receive no pleasure. The processing of something that happens to him, something that should be a pain (the pain of being wronged, being hurt, having one’s plans fail, etc.) becomes a pleasure due to a mistaken sense of self.
Saying that the pleasure of anger is based on incorrect assumptions about the world seems correct, but to say that, because the pleasure is based on incorrect knowledge, it is somehow not true is a strange idea. Surely when I feel pleasure, though I may be imperfect or even twisted, the pleasure itself is real. Right? Imagine another scenario in which someone were to say that the pain I feel is incorrect. Imagine that I broke my knee, an activity that assuredly is quite painful. If someone were to come up to me as I yelled (“Oh God, my knee!” or something to that effect) to tell me that I was incorrect, that I was not in pain and my knee was fine, I would surely think that man mad (or perhaps simply in very bad taste). Similarly with pleasure. Though the object of the pleasure felt in anger may be nonexistent (as my broken knee in the above example was not), to say that the feeling itself is invalid should strike the reader as odd. How could Socrates truly say that something straightforwardly perceived is false?
To say that it is false is to say that a true perception of the world would erase the pleasure. We have seen how pleasures and pains are inseparable from cognition. We see here how inseparable they are, and if our cognition is based on false pretense, then the pleasure is false, or mistaken. If we are to base our observations and pleasures on the truth of the world, then surely the pleasure would be absent with proper understanding.
But to say that they cloud the truth—is that to say that they are escapable, or undesirable? Imagine someone without such emotions. Is there not something inhuman about such a creature? A creature who is unaffected when wronged, unmoved when those close by die.
Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras was confronted with his son's death, he replied stoically, I knew my child was mortal.
Surely these false pleasures are negative in that they cloud our sense of the truth, keep us from knowing and feeling in a way that is congruent with nature.
But is the point that anger would cease, that sorrow would cease, or that they would simply lose the tinge of pleasure that is based on our incorrect assumptions. What would they change about our humanity? We would feel emotions still, simply emotions with true targets. There would still be anger and sorrow, perhaps, but without the hints of pleasure that make the emotions so powerful. That seems to be a more powerful suggestion. In this way we retain the affective nature of our humanity and the importance of reacting to our loved ones, oriented on a correct acknowledgement of our limited scope of power in the world. By acknowledging the limits of our power, we can know in a way that we might not be capable of without knowing our limits. We can see the truth, and come closer to our own truth, perhaps.
It's not done, as you can see, but I find the question interesting. Can we actually say that the pleasures are "false?" Incorrect, sure, but false? They wouldn't exist with a proper view of the world, sure, but they don't exist now? I still have my doubts.
Your Arms Too Short to Box with God: False Pleasures in Plato’s Philebus
At a certain point in the dialogue, Socrates asks Protarchus whether “in the case of the experiences of any ensouled beings,” that is, in the case of human beings, “the one experiencing them is always aware of all of [our pleasures and pains]” (43b). This question points to the beginning of a discussion on the role of attention and cognition in the realization and categorization of pleasures and pains, a role that turns out to be very large indeed. In answering Socrates’ initial question, Protarchus replies that no, of course it is not so that we are aware of all them. Indeed, as says, we are “almost entirely unaware of everything of the kind” (43b). This seems correct as, to a large degree, we do categorize pains and pleasures according to a cognitive classification.
For example, knowing that our muscles are tense and stiff, we undergo painful massages, and seem to greatly enjoy the experience. The enjoyment of a massage depends on recognizing that one is being healed, knots released from our muscles, or we could easily surmise that we were being injured. Even more straightforwardly, we are often unaware of some of the vast number of stimuli, pleasant and painful, that flit across our bodies, due to the overwhelming number of sensations that we are constantly being exposed to. It requires a shift in attention to the sensation in question, along with the second, already stated judgment, to determine whether any sensation or action is indeed pleasurable or painful. Quite a complex apparatus for such an apparently simple, passive act such as perception.
Continuing on this point, once we have been shown the cognitive element in our perception of pleasure, the possibility of false pleasure can be raised. If perception requires cognitive processing, a failure to process correctly could lead to falsely perceiving something painful as pleasurable. If we base our cognitive analysis on a false premise, for instance, we might wrongly say something we feel is pleasurable, when it really should not give us pleasure at all.
This type of false judgment is what Socrates is getting at in naming the series of false pleasures he does. He names a list of feelings that include: “anger, fear, longing, dirge, eros, emulation, envy, and everything of the kind” (47E), all of them examples of false pleasures. It is unnecessary to discuss every one. Even taking one examples, anger, sufficiently capture the sense in which these can be said to be cases of mistaken cognitive judgment. In describing anger, Socrates asks: “Isn’t it the case that we’ll find [anger] full of indescribable pleasures?” (48a). It is not immediately obvious that anger is a pleasure, in all or even most cases. Anger is generally thought of as a negative emotion. Someone wrongs me. The injustice causes a welling up of emotion, along with physical symptoms that are rather like being ill. Perhaps the stomach drops, the face pales, the fists shake, and the jaw tightens painfully. Certainly none of these are pleasant sounding, or feeling. What, then, is the pleasure involved?
Socrates goes on, as if in response, that if we are doubtful about the pleasure of anger, we “have to recall” a certain set of phrases, taken from Achilles: “which sets even the very wise to anger/And is far sweeter than dripping honey” (48a). There is something familiar about the idea of anger being sweet, even as it scorches the one feeling it. In many cases of anger, there is a pleasurable feeling rather like a rush of adrenaline. In our moments of rage, we imagine that we are powerful, strong in response to the wrong that harms us. In our anger, it is not uncommon for us to imagine that the one who has wronged us is in pain, or punished. Thus, the pleasure of anger lies chiefly in imagining that we have the power to see those who wrong us punished, even if it is simply in our minds and we never attempt any physical action.
It is this pleasure, the pleasure that comes from imagined power, that leads to the falsity of the pleasure. When we imagine the pleasure of righting a wrong against us, we imagine that there is an injustice to which we are deserving of reparation. We imagine that we have the power to right the wrong, in the retributivist sense, by causing the one who wronged us to be punished. This imagining, however, is based on the idea that we actually have the power to right wrongs done to us. In most cases, we do not have that power. Say there is a hurricane that causes my expensive sports car to flip over and bash itself against a telephone pole. When the storm is over, and I see my car destroyed, my anger is directed at—what? The pleasure comes in imagining the situation righted, but who or what exactly do I imagine is being punished for destroying my car? The storm? The anger in this case seems to be directed at the world in general, a world which should seek to treat me justly. But why would I think the world is structured that way, to give me a special place in its order where my wishes are never to be countermanded? To think so appears to be a kind of egoism impossible to sustain.
This is true even in so-called cases of “righteous anger.” Elie Wiesel describes the moment when American soldiers came to liberate Auschwitz . Upon entering the camp and seeing the devestation inside, one of the American soldiers falls to his knees and flies into an absolute fit of rage, rising and tearing at everything around him, screaming and swearing. This case of seemingly pure anger, regarded by Wiesel as a sign that humanity had returned to his life, is a case of anger at broad human injustice, stemming from a sense of empathy and human brotherhood—the sense that humanity itself has been wronged. The anger here appears to have a clearer, more human target—the Nazi party, perhaps especially the SS guards who kept the concentration camp running, the kapos who made the prisoners’ lives even more hellish, or even Hitler himself. But this anger too seems to assume that there can be an undoing of such a horrific situation. The idea is that this should not be allowed to happen: “I care about this, so it should not have been allowed;” or perhaps, in this case, more “this should not have been allowed” more generally. But to say that is to think that one had the power to stop it. Clearly, no single American soldier, including the one in this story, had that power.
Stepping back, what then is the falseness of the pleasure? It is based on a mistaken view of human power. Rather, if the one feeling anger realized the truth of his own limitations, what he can do and what is impossible for him, he would receive no pleasure. The processing of something that happens to him, something that should be a pain (the pain of being wronged, being hurt, having one’s plans fail, etc.) becomes a pleasure due to a mistaken sense of self.
Saying that the pleasure of anger is based on incorrect assumptions about the world seems correct, but to say that, because the pleasure is based on incorrect knowledge, it is somehow not true is a strange idea. Surely when I feel pleasure, though I may be imperfect or even twisted, the pleasure itself is real. Right? Imagine another scenario in which someone were to say that the pain I feel is incorrect. Imagine that I broke my knee, an activity that assuredly is quite painful. If someone were to come up to me as I yelled (“Oh God, my knee!” or something to that effect) to tell me that I was incorrect, that I was not in pain and my knee was fine, I would surely think that man mad (or perhaps simply in very bad taste). Similarly with pleasure. Though the object of the pleasure felt in anger may be nonexistent (as my broken knee in the above example was not), to say that the feeling itself is invalid should strike the reader as odd. How could Socrates truly say that something straightforwardly perceived is false?
To say that it is false is to say that a true perception of the world would erase the pleasure. We have seen how pleasures and pains are inseparable from cognition. We see here how inseparable they are, and if our cognition is based on false pretense, then the pleasure is false, or mistaken. If we are to base our observations and pleasures on the truth of the world, then surely the pleasure would be absent with proper understanding.
But to say that they cloud the truth—is that to say that they are escapable, or undesirable? Imagine someone without such emotions. Is there not something inhuman about such a creature? A creature who is unaffected when wronged, unmoved when those close by die.
Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras was confronted with his son's death, he replied stoically, I knew my child was mortal.
Surely these false pleasures are negative in that they cloud our sense of the truth, keep us from knowing and feeling in a way that is congruent with nature.
But is the point that anger would cease, that sorrow would cease, or that they would simply lose the tinge of pleasure that is based on our incorrect assumptions. What would they change about our humanity? We would feel emotions still, simply emotions with true targets. There would still be anger and sorrow, perhaps, but without the hints of pleasure that make the emotions so powerful. That seems to be a more powerful suggestion. In this way we retain the affective nature of our humanity and the importance of reacting to our loved ones, oriented on a correct acknowledgement of our limited scope of power in the world. By acknowledging the limits of our power, we can know in a way that we might not be capable of without knowing our limits. We can see the truth, and come closer to our own truth, perhaps.
It's not done, as you can see, but I find the question interesting. Can we actually say that the pleasures are "false?" Incorrect, sure, but false? They wouldn't exist with a proper view of the world, sure, but they don't exist now? I still have my doubts.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Doctor Rafa's Nodding Off
I really like taking a mug full of dry red wine, mixing in honey, and warming it up until it's steaming. It's really delicious like that.
I'm back in MD for the weekend, trying to finish up my thesis for good. That would be quite a load off my shoulders, gotta say...
I'm too tired to do much today. I'm just--exhausted.
Trying to hang in there awake in case andrew comes on, but I can only keep it up for probably...another hour or so, tops.
I'm back in MD for the weekend, trying to finish up my thesis for good. That would be quite a load off my shoulders, gotta say...
I'm too tired to do much today. I'm just--exhausted.
Trying to hang in there awake in case andrew comes on, but I can only keep it up for probably...another hour or so, tops.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Doctor Rafa, Nose to the Grindstone
The ending to Emile was surprisingly--sweet. I found myself moved, and am now going back through the text in a slightly more hopeful spirit.
I don't think Rousseau is an idiot, and I avoid the presumption that he's -simply- a chauvinist, though to a certain extent that is clearly inescapable. Still, I feel slightly better about my project.
I will need to work very, very hard in the next three days. I have gotten behind due to my own laziness.
This is just not acceptable, so I'm not going to accept it.
I can catch up, if I actually do it.
So I'm going to do it.
Simple, right? I look forward to crowing over my success.
I don't think Rousseau is an idiot, and I avoid the presumption that he's -simply- a chauvinist, though to a certain extent that is clearly inescapable. Still, I feel slightly better about my project.
I will need to work very, very hard in the next three days. I have gotten behind due to my own laziness.
This is just not acceptable, so I'm not going to accept it.
I can catch up, if I actually do it.
So I'm going to do it.
Simple, right? I look forward to crowing over my success.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Doctor Rafa On Fourfold Nature
Heh.
I told my lover a few days ago that he had been my first man. Looking at it, it seemed so personal, I didn't want anyone else running into it accidentally. I deleted it, after I'd been sure he'd seen it, and waited for some reaction.
When none came, no discussion, no acknowledgement, I wondered if I'd been mistaken. Was it not important after all? Not even enough to have any real--anything?
Perhaps it was amiss to expect a thank you, but now to treat it as a confused aftershock of a previously misleading relationship...I don't know. I thought it was important.
Maybe people just can't read subtext at all. I'm starting to think that more and more. It's definitely true of my non-lover friends. Everything has to be either explicit, or a private joke to myself. I don't mean that as a statement on intelligence; I don't think it has anything to do with intelligence. With those other friends, I suppose it must mean they don't know me very well. With my lover--who knows. These things happen.
I slept too much last night. I had hoped to be done working by this point in the day, but I've barely started.
An hour ago, I had a drink with a friend. He made cocktails, because I like them, and lay back on the sticky floor of his suite to ignore them as people came in and out.
It's harder to connect to people these days.
I'm trying to understand the Philebus version of nature.
We begin, along with Socrates, with three parts to the whole: the unlimited, the limited, and the mixed. We begin with the unlimited, which includes the entirety of the universe in its undifferentiated whole. The unlimited is the beginning of our experience, and there are endless gradations to the unlimited. “In a certain way,” Socrates expands, “the unlimited is many” (24a), calling to mind a continuous problem that should be on our minds when reading Philebus, the problem of the one and the many that is at the heart of this discussion of nature, as well.
As an example of the endless gradation, Socrates uses heat: “in the case of hotter and colder” Socrates states, “see whether you could ever conceive of some limit, or would the more and less…disallow to the genera an end” (24b). Protarchus, right again, states that he cannot. The very notions of heat and cold admit of endless gradation, going from the temperate to the infinitely hot and vice versa.
Looking at the full spectrum of hot to cold, however, and even to introduce the idea, it is necessary to begin to talk about limit. To begin to speak about the unlimited spectrum of temperature, we begin to talk about specific temperatures, to divide them into two realms: in this case, heat and chill. Thus we see how, to understand anything, we have to begin to limit the gradation, to take out specific instances from the whole and separate the totality into pieces. This separation is the second part of the whole, the limited.
Having defined the limit as a division having to do with our understanding makes the limited sound like a tool; this is not inaccurate. Having been introduced to the limited in this way, however, even before delving into its nature we are left with something of a problem. Is the limit entirely imposed by us on the unlimited, so that we may understand what we can of that whole—or is it also natural in some way, brought to us already limited, the universe naturally divided into parts that we only sense?
The limited is a tool to understanding anything unlimited—it is also natural in some way? Things that are” (26c)There is a problem here in deciding how we shape the world to force the limited for our own understanding, and what is inherently limited and divisible by nature. Do we impose the limit? How do we cut it up?
The limited is twofold“the offspring of the limit” (25d) is more problematic than the singular nature of the unlimited. Indeed Socrates does not resolve the problem of the limited , leaving the question on the table for us as it expands into the problem of cause and maker and hinges on the personal question of our humanity—there is a quantitative sense of limited (measure, numerical, homogeneous) “the equal and equality, and after the equal the double, and anything that is related as number to number or measure to measure” (25a) “by the insertion of number render them commensurate and consonant” (25e), and qualititative (heterogeneous, kind)
When we apply the limit to the unlimited , we get the mix. How can we have the limited without the unlimited? “once we see that each of the two has suffered a split and splintering into many, by a bringing together once more of each of the two into one” (23E), “the third is not just of some two things, but of all unlimited things that have been bound by limit” (27d)
The problem of the twofold nature of the limit and its application to the unlimited forces us to look at cause, to try to explain how the two reconcile into a single anything (particularly, a single human, which is what we should always be talking about in philosophy). However, this problem is only confounded at the causal level, where we see the same twofold nature. Why would we go to the causal level? “all things that come into being come into being on account of some cause?” (26e) But what is the cause?
Socrates says: “Isn’t it the case that the nature of the maker does not at all differ…from cause, and the maker and the cause would rightly be spoken of as one?” (26E). Protarchus should not simply agree with this assumption. We assume then that the cause is apart from the thing itself—nothing makes itself.
Then it becomes fourfold: Unlimited, limited, mix, cause
Cause versus maker—how do we understand the cause of the universe—is it qualitative of quantitative? Is it will or force?
This problem allows the specifically human--This problem makes virtue possible—how can something the same (human, quantitatively) be better or worse than another? We need to involve a qualitative understanding. Makes art, in the same sense of better and worse, and more generally, be possible.
What is art but the ability to restructure the limit? What do I do when I create –fiction,- a reality that doesn’t exist, where I can create characters you care for who do not exist. What do I do when I use language—I generalize about a world that you can picture, but to picture it is not for it to exist. When I write about a landscape, or a person, I pick out features. I pick out qualities that are important or evocative—I war too with this problem. Anyone trying to portray a person or any object in any artistic way will find oneself with a representation that is the result of this problem. What do we stress about the human form? What makes it beautiful? Is it the form itself? The character of the person?
Things impress themselves on our senses without our having to call them to us. To exist is to sense, and this is not something we turn off. But when we sense, we necessarily do so through the lense of our own experience. To create art solidifies that subjective glance at what we generally think is an objective universe. Art revels in the subjective and the objective.
We value well-done form. We marvel when we see an artist accurately, lovingly sculpt the human form in all of its complexity (as in David, for example), but would we value it if it were without the artist’s passion, what makes the art subjective? We value too the non-objective artist, the Picassos of the world, who invite us into a different way to see.
When we create art, we choose how to limit in a way that is most evocative of this problem. We see the contrast between the two kinds of limit, and we end up with a sort of mix as well.
Humans are all artists. We are both allowed a great deal of latitude in our world (we see how humans can influence our world) and we must worry at the depth of that latitude, for there seems to be very little innately to guide us. We have to worry to what extent we are artists, which has great importance in how we see ourselves related to our world (something that cannot help but be relevant to any human life).
It would be helpful if Stern would assign more papers, so I could get my head around it.
I told my lover a few days ago that he had been my first man. Looking at it, it seemed so personal, I didn't want anyone else running into it accidentally. I deleted it, after I'd been sure he'd seen it, and waited for some reaction.
When none came, no discussion, no acknowledgement, I wondered if I'd been mistaken. Was it not important after all? Not even enough to have any real--anything?
Perhaps it was amiss to expect a thank you, but now to treat it as a confused aftershock of a previously misleading relationship...I don't know. I thought it was important.
Maybe people just can't read subtext at all. I'm starting to think that more and more. It's definitely true of my non-lover friends. Everything has to be either explicit, or a private joke to myself. I don't mean that as a statement on intelligence; I don't think it has anything to do with intelligence. With those other friends, I suppose it must mean they don't know me very well. With my lover--who knows. These things happen.
I slept too much last night. I had hoped to be done working by this point in the day, but I've barely started.
An hour ago, I had a drink with a friend. He made cocktails, because I like them, and lay back on the sticky floor of his suite to ignore them as people came in and out.
It's harder to connect to people these days.
I'm trying to understand the Philebus version of nature.
We begin, along with Socrates, with three parts to the whole: the unlimited, the limited, and the mixed. We begin with the unlimited, which includes the entirety of the universe in its undifferentiated whole. The unlimited is the beginning of our experience, and there are endless gradations to the unlimited. “In a certain way,” Socrates expands, “the unlimited is many” (24a), calling to mind a continuous problem that should be on our minds when reading Philebus, the problem of the one and the many that is at the heart of this discussion of nature, as well.
As an example of the endless gradation, Socrates uses heat: “in the case of hotter and colder” Socrates states, “see whether you could ever conceive of some limit, or would the more and less…disallow to the genera an end” (24b). Protarchus, right again, states that he cannot. The very notions of heat and cold admit of endless gradation, going from the temperate to the infinitely hot and vice versa.
Looking at the full spectrum of hot to cold, however, and even to introduce the idea, it is necessary to begin to talk about limit. To begin to speak about the unlimited spectrum of temperature, we begin to talk about specific temperatures, to divide them into two realms: in this case, heat and chill. Thus we see how, to understand anything, we have to begin to limit the gradation, to take out specific instances from the whole and separate the totality into pieces. This separation is the second part of the whole, the limited.
Having defined the limit as a division having to do with our understanding makes the limited sound like a tool; this is not inaccurate. Having been introduced to the limited in this way, however, even before delving into its nature we are left with something of a problem. Is the limit entirely imposed by us on the unlimited, so that we may understand what we can of that whole—or is it also natural in some way, brought to us already limited, the universe naturally divided into parts that we only sense?
The limited is a tool to understanding anything unlimited—it is also natural in some way? Things that are” (26c)There is a problem here in deciding how we shape the world to force the limited for our own understanding, and what is inherently limited and divisible by nature. Do we impose the limit? How do we cut it up?
The limited is twofold“the offspring of the limit” (25d) is more problematic than the singular nature of the unlimited. Indeed Socrates does not resolve the problem of the limited , leaving the question on the table for us as it expands into the problem of cause and maker and hinges on the personal question of our humanity—there is a quantitative sense of limited (measure, numerical, homogeneous) “the equal and equality, and after the equal the double, and anything that is related as number to number or measure to measure” (25a) “by the insertion of number render them commensurate and consonant” (25e), and qualititative (heterogeneous, kind)
When we apply the limit to the unlimited , we get the mix. How can we have the limited without the unlimited? “once we see that each of the two has suffered a split and splintering into many, by a bringing together once more of each of the two into one” (23E), “the third is not just of some two things, but of all unlimited things that have been bound by limit” (27d)
The problem of the twofold nature of the limit and its application to the unlimited forces us to look at cause, to try to explain how the two reconcile into a single anything (particularly, a single human, which is what we should always be talking about in philosophy). However, this problem is only confounded at the causal level, where we see the same twofold nature. Why would we go to the causal level? “all things that come into being come into being on account of some cause?” (26e) But what is the cause?
Socrates says: “Isn’t it the case that the nature of the maker does not at all differ…from cause, and the maker and the cause would rightly be spoken of as one?” (26E). Protarchus should not simply agree with this assumption. We assume then that the cause is apart from the thing itself—nothing makes itself.
Then it becomes fourfold: Unlimited, limited, mix, cause
Cause versus maker—how do we understand the cause of the universe—is it qualitative of quantitative? Is it will or force?
This problem allows the specifically human--This problem makes virtue possible—how can something the same (human, quantitatively) be better or worse than another? We need to involve a qualitative understanding. Makes art, in the same sense of better and worse, and more generally, be possible.
What is art but the ability to restructure the limit? What do I do when I create –fiction,- a reality that doesn’t exist, where I can create characters you care for who do not exist. What do I do when I use language—I generalize about a world that you can picture, but to picture it is not for it to exist. When I write about a landscape, or a person, I pick out features. I pick out qualities that are important or evocative—I war too with this problem. Anyone trying to portray a person or any object in any artistic way will find oneself with a representation that is the result of this problem. What do we stress about the human form? What makes it beautiful? Is it the form itself? The character of the person?
Things impress themselves on our senses without our having to call them to us. To exist is to sense, and this is not something we turn off. But when we sense, we necessarily do so through the lense of our own experience. To create art solidifies that subjective glance at what we generally think is an objective universe. Art revels in the subjective and the objective.
We value well-done form. We marvel when we see an artist accurately, lovingly sculpt the human form in all of its complexity (as in David, for example), but would we value it if it were without the artist’s passion, what makes the art subjective? We value too the non-objective artist, the Picassos of the world, who invite us into a different way to see.
When we create art, we choose how to limit in a way that is most evocative of this problem. We see the contrast between the two kinds of limit, and we end up with a sort of mix as well.
Humans are all artists. We are both allowed a great deal of latitude in our world (we see how humans can influence our world) and we must worry at the depth of that latitude, for there seems to be very little innately to guide us. We have to worry to what extent we are artists, which has great importance in how we see ourselves related to our world (something that cannot help but be relevant to any human life).
It would be helpful if Stern would assign more papers, so I could get my head around it.
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