Sleepy

 

"De liefhebber van het debat mist vaak het gesprek."

 

"Ik krijg daar zo'n vaak van."

Maurice O'Connor Drury

 

The selected writings of Maurice O'Connor Drury, page 101

Latere Wittgenstein

 

Vroege Wittgenstein:

If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration
but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.

Latere Wittgenstein:

Hebt u daar al bij stil gestaan?

Meisje

 俳句

Meisje.

Tegen de linde
met opgetrokken knieën.
Dra wordt ze oma.

Pa

 


Er dreef een stoel op het water.
Een plastieken bordeauxrode tuinstoel
dreef zonder doel mee met de stroom.
Heel wat anders dan de plastieken bordeauxrode tuinstoel
waarop mijn vader op een zomerse dag na de gedane arbeid neerplofte.
"Hier zit ik en hier blijf ik zitten", zei hij dan.

Vreemd hoe de ene gedachte tot de andere gedachte leidt,
als een stoel die op het water drijft.

Erin Plunkett

en fortsat Stræben.
A letter to Erin Plunkett.

I am an unconditional fan of Kierkegaard.
And yet I do not read his books, at least not from start to finish.
As soon as I experience an author as a companion, I prefer to savor his texts.
I wait patiently for a fragment which is blown to me like a fluff by a summer breeze.

"Even if a person has achieved the highest, the repetition by which he must indeed fill out his existence, if he is not to go backward (or become a fantastical being), will be again a continued striving."
Delivered to me by Erin Plunkett.

Upon inquiry it turned out to be a fragment from Concluding Unscientific Postscript  (Hong & Hong, 1992, p 121: VII 100)
I also always get intrigued by the courier on duty.

Erin Plunkett 's current research considers the ontology of possibility in Kierkegaard.
An immanent doubt overwhelms me as soon as I read it.
Ontology?
Can I have missed something in Kierkegaard? Yes, I can.
Can I reread Kierkegaard? Yes I can.
Can I study Kierkegaard again? Yes, I can.
So I did.
I checked  Sören Kierkegaards Skrifter.
That's an amazing danish site with all the texts from Kierkegaard.
A man would start to learn Danish for lesser reasons.
There is a search engine.
"Skriv tekst her" (write text here) and push "søg" (search).
Nope, Kierkegaard didn't mention "ontologi" (Only three times in "Kommentarer").

"Concluding Unscientific Postscript" is a thick book.
But not thick enough.
The book was recently translated in Dutch.
Apparently there was not enough room to print the full title.
There is only "postscript" (naschrift) on the spine of the book.

I guess (it's always nothing more than a guess) the publisher feared the "unscientific" might scare the possible reader.
Can he publish it again with the full title? Yes, he can.
Can you skip the ontology? Yes, you can!

Postscript.
Maybe you like this one:

Although this little book (which is called "discourses," not "sermons," because its author does not have authority to preach, "upbuilding discourses," not discourses for upbuilding, because the speaker by no means claims to be a teacher) wishes to be only what it is, a superfluity, and desires only to remain in hiding, just as it came into existence in concealment, I nevertheless have not bidden it farewell without an almost fantastic hope. Inasmuch as in being published it is in a figurative sense starting a journey, I let my eyes follow it for a little while. I saw how it wended its way down solitary paths or walked solitary on public roads. After a few little mistakes, through being deceived by a fleeting resemblance, it finally met that single individual whom I with joy and gratitude call my reader, that single individual it is seeking, to whom, so to speak, it stretches out its arms, that single individual who is favorably enough disposed to allow himself to be found, favorably enough disposed to receive it, whether at the time of the encounter it finds him cheerful and confident or "weary and pensive."—On the other hand, inasmuch as in being published it actually remains quiet without moving from the spot, I let my eyes rest on it for a little while. It stood there like a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest, sought neither for its splendor nor its fragrance nor its food value. But I also saw, or thought I saw, how the bird I call my reader suddenly noticed it, flew down to it, picked it, and took it home, and when I had seen this, I saw no more (p. 5).

http://sorenkierkegaard.org/eighteen-upbuilding-discourses.html

Christoph Schuringa

 

Het meest voor de hand liggende antwoord wordt het meest over het hoofd gezien.

L. Lavrysen

 
Tropische temperaturen vandaag!
Zelfs de rechtspraak wordt er gortdroog van.
Arrest van het Grondwettelijk Hof in verband met de eindtermen.

Indien u "voldoende" (25x in de tekst) kan onderscheiden van "onvoldoende" (28x) hebt u voldoende om een oordeel te vormen.
Let wel: dit is een niet verbeterde kopie van mijn tekst.
In de verbeterde versie zal "zonder voldoende" niet erkend worden als een "voldoende" zodat de "onvoldoendes" zullen gecorrigeerd worden naar 29x ten nadele van de "voldoendes" (24x)

Om elkaar te begrijpen is het nog niet voldoende dat je dezelfde woorden gebruikt; je moet ze ook voor dezelfde soort innerlijke belevenissen gebruiken, je moet je ervaring ten slotte met elkaar gemeen hebben.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Voorbij goed en kwaad, 268

Es genügt noch nicht, um sich einander zu verstehen, dass man die selben Worte gebraucht: man muss die selben Worte auch für die selbe Gattung innerer Erlebnisse gebrauchen, man muss zuletzt seine Erfahrung mit einander gemein haben.

De journalist

 



Dat is tenslotte de plicht van de journalist: waarheid van verzinsel en dwaling onderscheiden.
Joël De Ceulaer, "Hoera, de democratie is niet perfect", blz. veel te veel.

De gemiddelde intellectueel van dezen tijd is, hoe verfijnd of geleerd hij ook moge zijn, eigenlijk doorgaans een typische journalist. In staat om zich op grond van eenige vaardigheid in het formuleeren over alles en nog wat met groote overtuigingskracht uit te spreken of uit te schrijven, voorts meestal in het bezit van een monopolie voor een of ander zorgvuldig afgepaald gebied, heeft hij het volkomen verleerd zich rekenschap te geven van zijn hachelijke positie. Menno Ter Braak, "Van oude en nieuwe Christenen", blz. 60

Samantha Rose Hill

(For once this is a "google translate" version of my previous blogpost)

Collateral delight.
That makes me incredibly happy.
Let me explain.
Hannah Arendt is not my philosopher.
You can check it, this blog has a search engine.
Usually when I see a quote by Hannah Arendt, I let it pass. Sometimes I don't.

Samantha Rose Hill wrote a book on Hannah Arendt and quotes her on twitter.

But didn't I write something about that?
Usually I don't use the search engine, nothing is more of an obstruction to the imagination than the realization that one is repeating oneself.  Sometimes I do.

Indeed I did.

"Hannah Arendt stelt dat al haar geschriften slechts één beweegreden hebben: iets te begrijpen. Ze verzuimt echter de vage term 'begrijpen' te definiëren. Begrijpen betekent eigenlijk zoveel als "in bezit nemen" (anders zou het niet zo belangrijk zijn)."
Imre Kertesz, "ik, de ander".

I had an uncontrollable urge to answer that to Samantha Rose Hill, so I went looking for the English source of the quote.
In vain!
Some research taught me that "I, the other" in original was  "Valaki más: A változás krónikája" and that the work had not yet been translated into English.
What a gap for the English-speaking Hannah Arendt enthusiasts.

"Hannah Arendt argues that all her writings only have one motive; to understand something. However, she fails to define the vague term "understanding". To understand actually means as much as "to take possession" (otherwise it wouldn't be so important).
Imre Kertesz.

That sheds a completely different light on the quote.
I want to understand totalitarianism.
I want to take possession of totalitarianism, I want to make it mine.

That impresses.
Not because I say so, but because Imre Kertesz, survivor of Auschwitz, says so.

There was only one detail left for me: looking up Kertesz's quote.
Contrary to the scientific way of working, I neglected to add a reference. For the same money, I could have just made up the quote and attributed it to Imre Kertesz to give it more weight. It's a trick that, knowing myself, wouldn't surprise me.
So I had to find the quote.
And the library was closed.
Maybe I could find it on the internet.
And then I stumbled upon the Noble lecture by Imre Kertesz.

"Here the notion that the world is an objective reality existing independently of us was an axiomatic philosophical truth. Whereas I, on a lovely spring day in 1955, suddenly came to the realization that there exists only one reality, and that is me, my own life, this fragile gift bestowed for an uncertain time, which had been seized, expropriated by alien forces, and circumscribed, marked up, branded – and which I had to take back from “History”, this dreadful Moloch, because it was mine and mine alone, and I had to manage it accordingly."
Collateral delight.
But it didn't get me any further.

I had to reread the book. Valaki más: A változás krónikája.
Google translate.
"Someone else, the chronicle of change."
Instant collateral delight.
What a lame translation is "I, the other"?
But the library was closed.

In the meantime, final exam with Miss Arendt (with special thanks to Samantha Rose Hill)

Write an essay on one of the following topics.
I definitely would pick six: "Explain why intellectuals can be attracted by a totalitarian ideology?"
Because they are intellectuals!
Sorry , I didn't notice (Use Milosz).

"A man may persuade himself, by the most logical reasoning, that he will greatly benefit his health by swallowing live frogs; and, thus rationally convinced, he may swallow a first frog, then the second; but at the third his stomach will revolt. In the same way, the growing influence of the doctrine on my way of thinking came up against the resistance of my whole nature."
Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind.

And then I had my book.

Page  17
"Only with Moritz Schlick is it worth showing solidarity: he thought and was shot for that reason - a fitting fate for a philosopher"
Collateral delight.

Page 25
"I had never been a member of the opposition movement, because my dislike of movements was possibly even greater then my dislike of the system."
Collateral delight.

Page 95

10.
Discuss:
"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exist."
(Use Imre Kertesz)