More specifically concerning: argument
The Topless Towers of Ilium
23 October 2002, around 16.59.
Archaeologists are a fiesty bunch. Take, for instance, this argument about Troy. How many people, really, would exchange insults about the size of ancient Troy? How big was Troy, really? Huge? Perhaps. Just the citadel? Maybe. Can we say? Depends about what era you’re talking about, I suppose. Like most cities, what once was Troy […]
aesthetic differences
25 October 2002, around 17.03.
[Bloom] claims to be of the school of aesthetic critics, remarking that, in an ideological age, ‘I feel quite alone these days in defending the autonomy of the aesthetic.’ Yet he himself doesn’t seem to have a clue about how to produce anything approaching the aesthetically pleasing in his own writing. In an interview in […]
on biography (3)
8 February 2013, around 0.02.
After reading Didier Eribon’s biography of Foucault, I turned with some relief to Karl Popper’s memoir Unended Quest. The biography of Foucault was maddening because it did what good biographies should do, and didn’t speculate, especially where speculation was warranted. Popper, meanwhile, positively disinvites speculation. There’s nothing to speculate about; he grinds through ideas with […]
wandering
4 June 2023, around 18.40.
Employing his broad conception of self-consciousness and his distinction between physical and moral freedom, he argues that the data of self-consciousness cannot establish moral freedom. At best, self-consciousness can reveal physical freedom, such as, after work I could go to the library, go home, go to the coffee house, or decide to flee my miserable […]