Speculations

Some are squibs. Others are longer than a Victorian novel... Oh well, not quite that long. 

 
Ogata Korin: Cranes 

The key pieces, all substantial, are as follows:

Revolution The radicals of 1968 are our rulers of today.
Russian Climate A look at an intellectual outsider.
Dropout Boogie Deleuze and Guattari are placed under a microscope.
Professional Amateurs Saving a great British philosopher from the pros.
The Liberal Stalinist No mercy for Zizek.
The Temperate Zone A few disagreements with Mary Beard about the public realm.
The Tyranny of the Concept We are educated to dominate the world not understand it.

Cuddle this Reason

So easy to misunderstand the past. When some knight in codpiece and tights talks about Christ and the Cross, naturally I assume these words mean to the same to both of us. It’s worse when philosophers, dressed closer to the contemporary age, and speaking in the measured tones of the learned, use words like reason and innocence. Are we really talking about the same thing?


Milton Keynes

So old, it’s battered, the cover like something left out in the rain. And the pages; they smell of age, are falling out like bad teeth. Nevertheless, through the wrinkles there is wisdom. Though perhaps not all its pages should be returned to those ancient covers…


A Respectable Rebel
Edward Snowden is different from most ‘computer dudes’. There is the attachment to his parents, and to their history in the American intelligence services.

A Truth for All
Karl Kraus we can take anywhere. Dr Freud must stay in his surgery....

The Tyranny of the Concept
We have solved the riddle of the contemporary predicament. The problem is the solution, believed to be benign and universal. Mr Concept is a con. Time he was exposed.

Shetko Speaks
Russia is full of philosophers. They hang around its films, novels and short stories like a beggar about a street corner; though it’s not money they’re after… Lend us an ear, guv’nor. They want to fill our ears with priceless advice. Svetlana Alexievich is very fond of such characters. 

An Article of Faith
Christians, I find, are the most tolerant of people. Only last Saturday they were on my doorstep, where we enjoyed some friendly conversation. It was a quite wonderful twenty minutes.

Reason's Virgin
Although educated in the classical French tradition, Simone Weil, in this extract, posits a thoroughly British philosophy of mind. It is a tradition that conceives thought as the product of impulses - they are atoms of perception - stimulated by external stimuli; the mind, in David Hume’s classic formulation, a stage where actors hardly stay for a scene; passers-by to their own drama.

Tête-à-tête 
Elizabeth Hardwick and Tim Parks have a conversation.

A Philosophic Friend
Friedrich Nietzsche. Always there when we want him. 

The Zone
We must go into the zone. But first let's meet some people. You ask who they are. Have I to describe them? Come come, you know these characters. They’re really good people, nice people like you and…well, me! Come on. Come on. It’s time to say hello.

The Boss
Years ago I was talking to the owner of a secondhand bookshop; it is Tombland, here in Norwich. As I was paying out the pension for some decrepit philosopher she mentioned that Foucault was seldom in the shop, though he was the most popular figure on her course. She ascribed this to sentimentality: Discipline and PunishThe History of SexualityArchaeology of Power keepsakes from university days.

Mad Places
"The Strugatsky Brothers created an "impossible" zone in their 1971 novel Roadside Picnic, its very impossibility a lure for the seekers from the dull proletarian town located nearby."
“Dickens, Eliot, George Gissing: Hemingway killed that lot off with his first novel. You can’t write three-deckers when twitter’s your publisher. Only a Rochefoucauld will do today.” 
Liberals are dabblers in ideas. They play with the surface of concepts, whose meaning once learnt at home, at school, in the university, is now acquired through the newspapers, those life-long friends.
The artist lives on a narrow ledge over a deep ravine; all around are the hard and clear outlines of jutting rocks; and then just there, just in reach is a beautiful flower; the artist stretches and touches…
Change is dangerous. Especially in a culture where natural processes are idealised and flux is believed the ultimate reality.  Today we think that change is a social good. Progress. It is the deism of the modern age.
We let you out on bail on the condition that you stopped beating up academics.  You were freed on good faith, as you seemed genuinely contrite and…
Joachim Radkau writes about a man I don’t believe he understands at all, although he knows everything about him.  He has access to the Weber archive. He knows all about Max Weber’s mental collapse and his sexual problems.  He has all the facts and so of course he joins them together to reach what seems to be a self-evident conclusion: Weber’s breakdown was caused by his repressed sexuality.  Yes!  It is true!  Radkau thinks he has found the (dirty) secret that explains this great thinker.
Mary Beard’s defence of a woman’s right to speak in public also seems to blur the dividing line between the public and private spheres.   She is right that historically women have been excluded from it, and she is right to insist that they be treated equally within it. But in doing so she downplays the specific nature of the public domain, and on occasion seems even to confuse it with private life.
Nietzsche has been reading Serenity Science.
"Herzen never forgot, as some of his most inspired fellow revolutionaries often did, that actual human beings, and specific problems can be lost sight of in the midst of statistical generalizations.  In his discussion of what men live by, there occurs the smallest proportion of abstraction and generalization, and the highest proportion of vivid, three-dimensional, ‘rounded’ perception of actual character, authentic human beings with real needs, seeking attainable human ends, set in circumstances which can be visualized."

Nietzsche is on the telephone.

Several months writing about a problem – the simple certainties of the half-educated – and then I read Robert Byron, who nails it with one clever vignette. 
He likes to portray himself as an outsider, a performer, the peripatetic circus man; the clown.  He is always buzzing about!  A gadfly revelling in the cries and angry rebuffs, the yelps of irritation, his iconoclastic wit provokes amongst the overly serious and slow of mind.  He loves to upset people, although we all know it is only harmless fun and academic games.  A Bruce Forsyth of the conference circuit...
The Gnostics were ugly.  Their bodies dominated by terrible sores, scabs, bruises and defective body parts.  Wealthy? Yes.  Learned? Yes.  But ultimately a social eyesore, best locked away in the libraries of distant villas, on the borders of the empire.

Cars.  They are a novel with the same plot, and where all the details are the same; even the covers resemble each other.  Life in the front seat: a sofa on the crowded road before a TV with just one channel.
Decades of talk about enterprise and capitalist adventurers, and we end up with a world dominated by bureaucrats.  It is such an obvious consequence of the corporate takeover of our society that it is easily overlooked.
If you spend all the time in the local shopping mall you may start to assume that everything is harmless and inoffensive – we know the managers will allow nothing ugly and alienating into these so familiar franchises.  So we assume that everything is safe for us to read, unless the kindly authorities explicitly tell us otherwise.  We come to rely on others for the judgments we should make ourselves.
Berger exaggerates the sensibility of the rich and famous.  He thinks them artists, and thus he elevates them too high; mere bungalows become skyscrapers, nondescript offices St Paul’s Cathedral.  
It is not surprising that unsophisticated academics will gravitate to those qualities they recognise, and for which they have sympathy, and ignore what they cannot see; in this case the very essence of a person’s greatness and value.  In the process they reduce thought to reason, art to exposition; and Schopenhauer to a filing cabinet of premises and conclusions.
This quote came to mind after my recent punch up with Michael Albert.  As I recovered from the severe swelling around the forehead, and surreptitiously peering over my dark glasses when no one was about, I mused on what he meant by my “special approach”.
Nietzsche sends a letter.
It is easy to love what is far away: Stalin’s Russia, Obama’s America, and red squirrels on the European continent.  There are no ugly contradictions or irritating resistance for us to overcome.  We do not have to compromise or argue our points of view.  Thinking is superfluous: for us they are either saints or victims...
We all entitled to say a book is important, indeed the most important in its field.  To say it suggests we believe it; and is indicative of our character.  Many will accept this statement because they like and trust us. 
How are we to know the profound from the shallow; when everyone now appears to swim in the same waters…

All Around You
CCTV has changed over the years.  Today they stalk the ordinary person, following him through the streets, keeping an eye on the fancy property, to ensure the wealth and privilege, that towers all around her, is given the respect it deserves

The Original
With the corporate takeover of the press in the 1990s Britain has gone the way of the United States.  How much further will we go…

Dropout Boogie
Certain intellectuals are famous, albeit only amongst students and university lecturers.  History suggests it is rarely for the quality of their thought: few are justly known for their work alone.  Usually there are other reasons, which have little to do with their intellectual worth; a popular one is to play the Zeitgeist’s jukebox, giving an academic justification for the prejudices of the age. 

Too Busy
What also strikes me about so much of the social sciences is their banality.

Quality
What a strange place the press is. It is a little world all by itself; a sort of Monte Carlo on the River Thames. A fantasy world, free of the all the constraints, and social justice, that makes life liveable for the rest of us.

Russian Climate
Of all the great philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer has the poorest academic reputation; he is largely ignored, often dismissed when discussed; while his theories are badly misunderstood and distorted.

Revolution
For the Left there are two 1960’s.  The haute couture of Paris 1968, and the prêt-á-porter of America, Brazil and the rest. 

We Killed the Indians
Abuse.  How intellectuals love it!  Rather than argue from the facts they prefer to ignore them; with arguments originating from their own prejudices, their strong emotional attachments – to power, wealth and nationality.  How strange.  For one would think that intellectuals, of all people, would revel in reasoned dispute.  But to stick to the facts is a form of equality, a sort of intellectual Gunfight at the OK Corral, and thus far too dangerous – for one’s ideas and academic reputation.

Prejudice
Have you forgotten this old nursery rhyme?

The Extremist
Sometimes just to quote is enough…

How Weak are You?
Of course, our words can change a tree!

Trauma (II) In Our Fingernails
Railway Spine.  This was the name given to victims of railway accidents in Victorian Britain who suffered trauma.  The symptoms were both psychical and somatic and included mental confusion, blurred vision, and noises in the head.

Trauma (I) It Will Save Us
We love big ideas!  Like Lego we can construct marvellous palaces with our words, indeed whole cities; we can make an empire so extraordinary that even Marco Polo will not be able to describe it.

All By Itself?
Science is catching up with the arts! 

Let's Take a Break
Should the poet work hard? Current fashions suggest yes, he should: to the office early, and non-stop on the email track until exhausted he slumps home, to sleep under the evening TV...

It is easy for human observers to see the response they want and so to be fooled by the monkeys
It seems frantic haste can affect science too. In the previous post I wrote about the pressure to do more in less time, of Lord Dacre and the authentication of fraud. Now we have this from the Harvard scientist Marc Hauser:

F*** Dacre!
Nick Davies in Flat Earth News gives a new name to our modern day media: churnalism. The production line manufacture of news, that is often lacking content, is sometimes pure fiction, and is always open to the manipulations of the PR industry, that increasingly supplies many of the stories.

I Believe in Pavements
Newman and Locke are almost certainly talking about different kinds of knowledge and insight, where the levels of evidence and argumentation required are substantially different. 

So Simple
All ideas are simplifications. They aim to capture some aspect of the world, by isolating it. 

How Can You Forget?
Recognise this distinction, between ignorance and ability, and others follow: the difference in cultural sensitiveness, the variations in the depth of understanding, the variance in literary quality, amongst individuals; and then consider the varieties of market place where these ideas are displayed.

Changes
One of the incidental pleasures of second hand bookshops is the conversation – yours or other peoples.

Short Sighted
We talk and argue, sometimes we write, often we blog; but always we act as if our ideas were universal. That we can see the whole world from our living room, rather than just a mean little garden with its poor gate.

Be Individuals!
One most never forget that our ideas are wrapped up in our culture. Sometimes, these can be extracted, and live a reasonably separate existence – art and science are examples – but once we enter the real world, the practical one of daily politics and the economy, then these ideas will cease have an independent existence.

It's All Nonsense!
A respectable professor builds his great pyramid. Then the robbers come to raid it.

Let It All Out
What does one make of Freud? Enormous impact, voluminous writing, some penetrating observations mixed up with much nonsense. Compare him with Nietzsche and Marx he now appears a minor figure, more important for his influence on the culture, that the quality of his thought.

Great was His Heavenly Happiness
That sense of unease as the words bubble and germinate; before and they run and fall, and scamper across the page. That delicious moment when the artist loses himself.

Is There Beauty in Hegel?
One could surmise that there is a limit to the number of people who are aesthetically sensitive; and with the expansion of the university system there will be a large number of academics without a feel for the subject they teach and research. 

Do You Mind Dreadfully?
For so many intellectuals, especially of the 20th century, ideas were of canonical status – it is they alone that explain our actions and our thoughts. 

The Bomb
Can one idea fit all?

Poet Knocks out Philosopher!
Controlling the ring suddenly Russell finds himself floored by Durrell.

Lazybones
In discussing the danger of administrators and officials, who want to tidy up the world, to run it along efficient and predictable lines, Bertrand Russell reminds us about the power of laziness:

DIY Worlds
We create our own atmosphere; we live inside shells….

Mini Skirts in the Baroque
History. So ambiguous. Facts and arguments are collected from the past, yet interpreted in the present. This can set a historical event into a broader context, but risks injecting contemporary prejudices into it. 

Lost in a Footnote
It is a curious phenomenon: hundreds of thousands (millions) of scholars, dedicating many years to their subject, yet they leave so little behind. Like the workmen in the great cathedrals, their memory simply a stone here and there… 

Modesty
If only the French intellectual stars of the C20th had listened to Jean-Jacques:

Would You Like a Fluxus Teddy Bear?  Yes or No?
One day William Wordsworth may find himself removed from the library shelves.

You Can Be Right When You are Wrong
Thus a certain immediacy of experience, and of life – there is a certain lifelessness about ideas that deaden our experiences. Remove them, and we have to think and create, and act for ourselves. Old ideas are like the clothes we wear...

Flowers are Lovely When You Laugh at Them
C.K. Stead in his marvellous study of T.S. Eliot and the new poetry discusses Eliot’s “objective correlative” and his view that the poet loses his personality in the act of creation.

Pick & Mix
Are coincidences independent of us?

Is it Possible, Do We Think With Our Legs?
The dynamism of knowledge! Has it ever been expressed so well? 

Infuriating!
You dive into a swimming pool only to find Hume’s Enquiries all over the tiled floor…

I Want Facts and Figures
Sometimes a question highlights its own absurdity, while exposing the erroneous assumptions that lie underneath it. 

The Past Does Not Exist
To break new ground must a major thinker reject reality?