Brian Hamilton » Miscellaneous

How to succeed in continental philosophy

Brian Hamilton — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:34:11 +0000

Read enough classical texts to find some unusual concept or practice which is mentioned, but left undeveloped. It’s safest to draw from Plato or Aristotle, as then one can be confident of undermining the whole history of Western philosophy, but the scholastics are also a good choice if one wants to appear slightly eccentric, and going to Augustine might make you the next big thing. (Avoid St. Paul, especially if you’re a Christian, as you’ll probably end up coming across as a feckless imitator.) Proceed to demonstrate how this concept, properly understood, leads to the undoing of the whole discourse to which it originally belonged. Finally, identify three or four examples of a structurally similar idea appearing later in history, to prove that you have succeeded in superseding not only the original thinker himself, but his whole subsequent tradition.

Bonus points if you find such a concept in a relatively obscure person or text, then show it to be determinative for subsequent canonical thinkers.

To My Old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson

Brian Hamilton — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:16:01 +0000

Via Ta-Nehisi Coates, an amazing and hilarious 1865 letter from Jourdan Anderson, an ex-Tennessee slave, to his former master, who had written him asking him to return to work for him:

bq. As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free-papers in 1864 from the Provost- Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly—and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio….

bq. P.S. —Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

Read the whole letter–it’s incredible.

Shattered existence

Brian Hamilton — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:00:44 +0000

“A being does not want to be recognized, it wants to be contested: in order to exist it goes towards the other, which contests and at times negates it, so as to start being only in that privation that makes it conscious (here lies the origin of its consciousness) of the impossibility of being itself, of subsisting as its ipse or, if you will, as itself as a separate individual: this way it will perhaps ex-ist, experiencing itself as an always prior exteriority, or as an existence shattered through and through, composing itself only as it decomposes itself constantly, violently and in silence.”

—Maurice Blanchot, The Unavowable Community, p. 6.

Pedaltrain, by Stephen M. Johnson

Brian Hamilton — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:40:53 +0000

“[Stephen Johnson] writes of avoiding his desk when inventing, avoiding the connotations of serious endeavor, of earning a living. ‘I wish instead,’ he writes, ‘to be irresponsible, rash, associative, dreamy, impish, brainy, intuitive, and stupid.’” (via kottke)

Defending Twitter

Brian Hamilton — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:51:33 +0000

Jason Kottke has a defense of Twitter that I actually buy. Not enough to make me actually want to waste the time it would take to twitter the wide variety of banalities in my life, but at least enough to make me stop mocking it. Surely that’s a start!

Cantaloupe

Brian Hamilton — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:16:07 +0000

I had a dream last night wherein I was perched precariously on a very small ledge, in a room made entirely of cantaloupe. Below me was nothing but a deep, black abyss. The perch, too, being made of cantaloupe, and with no hope of rescue, I had no choice but gradually to eat away my foothold and fall to my death.*

If only I could achieve this level of dark and kooky imagination in my waking life, I could probably make a decent living writing mock horror films for some niche market. —Actually, no, I almost certainly couldn’t make a decent living doing that.

p(small). ==*== Actually, of course, I did have a choice: why not just eat into, maybe even through, the wall? But these obvious solutions never occur to me in dreams.

So nice not to meet you

Brian Hamilton — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:37:00 +0000

I just received a wonderfully polite and invincibly disguised spam email that began like this: “Hi there! It has been long time since we did not meet. I hope everything is okay with you.” Turns out Cindy found a great medicine shop on the net and, generously, thought of me!

Counter-intuitive comparison

Brian Hamilton — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:49:02 +0000

bq. Is the Bilbao Guggenheim better than McDonald’s french fries? Are penguins better than Miracle Gro? Can anything beat heated seats on a cold November day? It is becoming increasingly difficult for the majority of our population to differentiate between good things and crappy things. Our streets are filled with growing hordes of the underastonished, old and young alike, who might not comprehend the benefits of fewer, better things. At the Counter Intuitive Comparison Institute of North America, we understand the clearly the risks associated with continued indifference to things. It is our hope that, eventually, the hordes will become aware of the Big Chart and its potential to de-crappify our lives.

A Faith Impenetrable

Brian Hamilton — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 21:45:07 +0000

“Love surely has its priests in the poets, and occasionally one hears a voice that knows how to honor it, but on faith not a word is heard. Who speaks in honor of its passion? Philosophy goes further. Theology sits by the window all made up and courts its favor, offering to sell its delights to philosophy. It is said to be difficult to understand Hegel but to understand Abraham is a small matter. To go beyond Hegel is a miracle but to manage Abraham is the easiest thing of all. I for one have devoted considerable time to understanding the Hegelian philosophy; I believe also that I have understood it fairly well, and I am foolhardy enough to think that when I cannot understand him in certain passages in spite of the effort applied, then probably he himself has not been entirely clear. All this I do easily, naturally, without getting a headache from it. However, when I must think about Abraham, I am virtually annihilated. At every moment I am aware of that prodigious paradox which is the content of Abraham’s life; at every moment I am repelled, and in spite of all its passion, my thought cannot penetrate it, cannot make a hairs-breadth of headway. I strain every muscle to get a perspective, and at the same instant I become paralyzed.”

—Søren Kierkegaard (Johannes de silentio), Fear and Trembling, p. 27.

Analogia Entis, Again

Brian Hamilton — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 22:10:53 +0000

For anyone slightly confused by the earlier debate about the analogia entis, Millinerd just posted an incredibly helpful short piece defining the analogia entis by recourse its ancient roots and present usage. His own conclusion sounds just about right to me:

bq. So, who’ll it be? Bonaventure/Benedict or Barth? I’ll take ‘em all, the Barthian insight being wonderfully framed by the wider perspective of Bonaventure and Benedict. All shed important light on an enormous truth. What cannot be accepted is Barth’s (or Luther’s) hyperbolic desertions of large swaths of the tradition. Just as Protestant condemnations of the Mass cannot reasonably be sustained in light of the Catholic Church’s emphatic clarification… that the Mass is not a repeated sacrifice (which was the basis of the original protest), so Protestant condemnations of the analogia entis cannot be sustained in light of Benedict’s qualifications without running on the fumes of anti-Catholic prejudice (of which there is plenty).