This is real philosophy

“Well, I said, there is a story, that is Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from Piræus, under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing them open, he ran up to the dead bodies, saying, Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight” Plato Republic 440a book 4

That's what it is all about. When Heidegger wrote to one of his lady friends that "My philosophy is a philosophy of the night" he mean it. I think that reflects a profound understanding of the questions we should be asking ourselves. Philosophy reveals to us the nature of the world, the groundless of truth and ethics, of even the impossibility of defining our own being. It is dark. It is not nihilism though. Don't fall into that trap. Nihilism is a desire to no longer think, to be told and to accept blindly. That is the ultimate nihilism. It is a desire to no longer be human. Humans are humans in that they question their own existence. Perhaps the question is the ultimate weapon against nihilism, though it does itself have a destructive character.

The look into the abyss of being, of freedom, not in the flimsy french trendy sense, but in the Heideggerian awe and fear of the abyss. That is the philosophy of which I speak. It is the antithesis of nihilism. Perhaps it is the only way to stand up to the abyss. Stare back into it. I shan't quote the oft quoted Fred here, but we have to look. Don't turn away.

To those who forget

Death Fugue

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Marguerite
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling
he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he orders us strike up and play for the dance

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margeurite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margeurite
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then in smoke to the sky
you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams
der Tod is ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith
Paul Celan

(Translated by John Felstiner)

the blog race

We’ll all agree that catch 22 seems to hold some water weight. And by water weight we mean the weight of cerebral fluid, so it isn’t really water. It might be slightly more viscous, which of course means it takes more energy to flow. Regardless what does this have to do with anything? We can never know that we are crazy. If we know we are crazy then we are rational enough to talk about being crazy thus we are not crazy.

Fine.

But what about the act of speeding towards insanity. Perhaps not even insanity but the act of feeling your entire world fall apart. Perhaps into some sort of kirkegaardian angst or perhaps heidegger’s nothingness of angst. But are we talking about metaphysics, perhaps not. But perhaps. No. yes. Who knows. What is metaphysics? What is ontology? Let’s just say I am talking about Inderweltsein. Yeah I didn’t split the words up with the neat little hyphens. It shouldn’t be split un anyway. We are all about letting beings be…in the middle…voice. Freedom.

Okay so we can’t talk about being crazy, but even a rational creature knows when we are speeding towards the abyss. Most of us like to look out of the car window as we’re driving. This car just happens to be driving into the abyss, but it is an abyss that we really don’t know. We can’t talk about it. That is the madness. Madness is silent.

Okay, so the arts in their ambiguity allow us to describe what we can’t. they perform where words lack. They silently point to madness. That’s what I would like to talk about. John has supplied me with a great song. Why? God knows. He tries to torture me. Happiness is a warm gun. Well only for one of those bugs. Second hand smoke is a killer. Unless of course you get way too much of the real deal. That will also get you. As will the sun. And the moon. And air.

So here we have the song, “Why won’t you talk about it?” by The Radio Dept. So hopefully I have framed my discussion pretty lucidly. The answer to the title is, hey look you sell out English speaking Swedes, I can’t talk about it. That is the whole idea behind the dialog seemingly presented in the song. There is no dialog perhaps. Perhaps it is an internal dialogue. We all lose our minds, we know it, we see us falling into the abyss that we cannot describe, that we can’t talk about, that I can’t tell you about. It could be so easy to talk about this song as some cheesy break-up song with some nice distortion and that kind of teenage angst, but I think that misses the point completely. And it is boring. Life is worth a little more than that shit…if it is worth anything in the beginning. Well for argument’s sake let’s suppose it is.

So how do we point to ther trauma of the abyss, that whole that can never be filled? We feel ourselves pulled into it, we know that once we get there our memory and understanding of the ride will be erased. We look for words but as soon as we do, we cannot find them, even then we are sinking further and further into irrationality. What do we have left? Only the call, hoping that in said call we are understood. Yet as we get dragged deeper into this whole we forget even the meanings of our pleas, we just allow ourselves to fall in, repeating the same seven lines over and over again so by the time we reach the end of the song, when the music goes away and we are left in silence, the refrain meant nothing. We have the answer to our title with the silence that ends all.

So we can talk about losing our minds.

Is that not the most fascinating part of this song. That we can understand that part of this whole thing. We know when we lose things. The issue then is that we are there when it is gone. What is identity? I don’t want to go into some kind of Lockean critique of memory across time or that shit, but identity is neat. So we can feel our self moving in a particular direction. This of course would then require a specific critique of time, which at this juncture I do not want to provide. But seriously. We can feel ourselves speeding towards something, let’s just say an episode, death, the break-up of a relationship, or more interesting perhaps the foundation of a relationship. Eros is madness isn’t it? Why won’t you tell me? The need to know. The need to be sated of all desire. That is always a kind of madness, a blinding madness that leaves us repeating silly phrases over and over again until they lose all meaning. That happens doesn’t it. No? Just me? Not me at all.

Perhaps that is why the call and response of the song with a singular singer is fascinating. Is it a singular internal monologue. Is it a conversation that is ventriloquized by the same guy. It really doesn’t matter. I tend to enjoy the idea of the internal monologue. We know it is coming, we feel the eros pull us in. then silence

It always ends in silence.

Silence tells us something though does it not. Only that which we cannot know.

If you want to learn how to play the piano...

You take lessons from Beethoven. Well, it turns out he is not available for lessons anymore. Thus, we turn to the next best thing--his students.

So it is with virtually everything. academia is especially prone to this kind of thinking. Who are the heirs of a teacher's thought? Tradition says that it is his best students. even the poor students still take something from the master. Look at Plato. He decided to not follow Socrates orders and write. Of course it was Nietzsche who said, "One repays the techer badly if one remains nothing but a pupil" but that advice is difficult to follow. Even in taking the advice you are taking the advice of the teacher. You will need to pull a Machiavelli and destroy the previous teacher so thoroughly that no one can even remember him (thanks Heidegger).

Regardless. I have been trying to track all the masters through my teachers. I can say that I am two degrees of separation from Derrida (via two people), two away from Levinas, three away from Heidegger, two away from Harold Bloom, two from de Man, three away from Heidegger, Althusser, Foucault, Blanchot and four away from Husserl.

Exciting, right? A little.

Lack of Identity...go to uber Commercialized Pop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4669ozY4faQ

Thanks for the link...you know who.