Friday, June 27, 2014

The spot we lose it

There is a purple flag in Sarajevo, which, marking the spot Archduke Franz Joseph was assassinated, says, "This is where the 20th century began." I have not been there; I heard this on the radio. 

What that banner marks though is really, a prime example of binary thought. Binary thought, which makes everything possible, must divide everything into one of two things, this or that. This is the 20th century. That is not. 

I like this example because, regardless of the aplomb of the radio personality, it points up the absurdity of such divisions, the arbitrary nature of such cleavage. 

Of course if there was a flag over each instance of binary thought, we would not be able to see anything real, just the thoughts. Oh--- wait -- we can't already. 

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Out of the mouths of academics

We quote an article from Berfrois:

If a philosopher is someone who is trying, through the use of reason, to find a kind of intelligibility which grounds our experience of that which there is, that very general sense of philosophy as a project that is trying to uncover the true nature of reality, a metaphysical project, then Shakespeare isn't a philosopher. Shakespeare is someone who leaves us in the dark as to what that reality might be. What we get instead is an experience of ambiguity and opacity.

We quote ourselves: What if what you get after pursuing every intellectual resource available, faithfully, fully, you discover the true nature of reality, IS an experience that cannot be verbalized -