Thanks!

For a contrarian take on liberalism, I've just read Jean-Claude Mishea's angry but brilliant (anti-liberal?) critique Realm of Lesser Evil. I need to read it again; if you haven't already, I think you'll find it worth a read.

Jean-Claude Mishea's - Realm of Lesser Evil. — 180 Proof

Charles Mills - Black Rights/White Wrongs — Maw

These look great! At some point I want to read Domenico Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter-History, and these look like they'd make for good companion reading. @Maw, you gotta tell me how you like the Brown book.

Philosophy of Logics by Susan Haack

With Naming and Necessity and Reference and Existence on the way...

Jan Assmann — Hanover

Assman is apparently a perfectly good and respectable Austrian name. Julius Assman was an Austrian manufacturer of very fine watches in the second half of the 19th century. Some years ago I saw an ad for a commemorative wristwatch for him. Very plain, platinum case, mechanical movement, three hands. On its face it said the Assman Watch. Price a bargain at $500,000 dollars.

Now that got me thinking. A fellow inherits half-a-mil and decides that what he needs to spend it on is the Assman watch. Then he goes to office to work and shows off his new acquisition....

The ad was real, in one of the very fancy magazines for wristwatches. I don't have a punchline. If anyone has one, feel free....

• Lobe, Paul Baden — 180 Proof

Oh, that's mah book. Cheers again for reading :up: . Hope there's something in there for you. @csalisbury said he liked some of it. But he was drunk at the time, so...

really?

Yep.

Anyhow, don't want to discuss me here. Carry on. :point:

Assman is apparently a perfectly good and respectable Austrian name. — tim wood

I don't question the gentleman's respectability. I expect it's a family name, having been gained by the prior occupation or reputation perhaps of his ancestors. Much like someone named Smith was a blacksmith or silversmith and maybe someone now named Carpenter had a great great grandfather who was just that.

So Jan Assman had a great great grandfather who enjoyed the backside and was apparently well known for it. It's not something I blame him for, and I do admit to a certain admiration for his celebrating that facet of his personality. His now accomplished descendant, who apparently is quite the Egyptologist, in a whimsically ironic twist, provides evidence of his own ancient civilization through his name. The original patriarch Assman apparently enjoyed staring at, fondling, and perhaps even invading the ass. Good for him I say. Good for him.

Harold Bloom 1930-2019

"I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike — and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two — are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats."


:wink:

I just finished Philosophy and Real Politics by Raymond Geuss. It didn’t end with a kiss, but it was satisfyingly realistic.

Formation of the Historical world in the Human Sciences
Dilthey's Selected Works, Volume III

The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering
by Byung-Chul Han

Good?

--

Michel Feher - Rated Agency: Investee Politics in a Speculative Age

Nassim Taleb - "The Black Swan"
Herbert Marcuse - "One Dimensional Man"
Umberto Eco - "Kant and the Platypus"
Sextus Empiricus - "Against the Logicians"

• Human Compatible, Stuart Russell

re-reading:

• When Colorblindness Isn't The Answer, Anthony B. Pinn
• Collected Essays & Memoirs, Albert Murray

We invented the blues; Europeans invented psychoanalysis. You invent what you need. — Albert Murray

:cool:

The Reproduction of Evil. A Clinical & Cultural Perspetive, Sue Grand
The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, Bott Spillius et al., eds.

Yes. Thanks again for mentioning Geguss.

• A History of the Bible, John Barton

NB: Any history of a religion (and its scriptures) is very much like seeing how a magic trick is done. Most don't want to know, of course; they just want the magic - the make believe - without knowing how they're being tricked.

The Gospels, funnily enough.

Continuing on from the Old Testament, alongside a whole lot of secondary literature, and Yale lectures from their open courses. In my exprience, the more I learn about how the bible got made, the more I appreciate what a remarkable document it is. Are both the Old and New Testaments strange, shaggy stitchings together of heteregeneous texts, compilations created in order to serve as mythic propaganda in the interest of power? Yeah, almost certainly. It's no coincidence that a king of an embattled Judah, 'discovered' the deuteronomic laws in a library at the same time many scholars believe the bulk of the old testament was composed. And It's no coincidence the geography of the pentateuch looks a lot the geography of Judah vis-a-vis Egypt at that time. So forth. If you think that the 'magic trick' is 'this is all factual and revealed' then even a small dose of history will dispel the illusion. And it's a lot of fun to learn that history. But does the bible have any power after you understand its sordid, seamy history?

Zizek

"Recall the old Catholic strategy to guard men against the temptation of the flesh: when you see in front of you a voluptuous feminine body, imagine how it will look in a couple of decades – the dried skin, sagging breasts… (Or, even better, imagine what lurks now already beneath the skin: raw flesh and bones, inner fluids, half-digested food and excrements…) Far from enacting a return to the Real destined to break the imaginary spell of the body, such a procedure equals the escape from the Real, the Real announcing itself in the seductive appearance of the naked body. That is to say, in the opposition between the spectral appearance of the sexualized body and the repulsive body in decay, it is the spectral appearance which is the Real, and the decaying body which is reality – we take recourse to the decaying body in order to avoid the deadly fascination of the Real which threatens to draw us into its vortex of jouissance."

I just read Engels on early Christianity. Great stuff! It focuses on The Book of Revelation (for reasons explained in the text).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/

:cool:

If you think that the 'magic trick' is 'this is all factual and revealed' then even a small dose of history will dispel the illusion. And it's a lot of fun to learn that history. But does the bible have any power after you understand its sordid, seamy history? — csalisbury

Once I'd learned (enough of) how the 'magic trick' was/is done - after 10 years of parochial school 'bible study, church history & altarboy service' - I seemed to slip effortlessly, almost helplessly, out of the Catechism's mind-forg'd manacles like a newborn out of the womb again, but this time, fallen wide-eyed instead of wailing onto the pellucidly hard cold ground of my facticity. :joke: Teen apostate, then very soon a 'born again' anti-magical thinker & knowing skeptic. Still, decades on, for me the fascination of 'The Illusion' remains. Thus, e.g. Barton's book, etc.

Zizek

"Recall the old Catholic strategy to guard men against the temptation of the flesh: when you see in front of you a voluptuous feminine body, imagine how it will look in a couple of decades – the dried skin, sagging breasts… (Or, even better, imagine what lurks now already beneath the skin: raw flesh and bones, inner fluids, half-digested food and excrements…) Far from enacting a return to the Real destined to break the imaginary spell of the body, such a procedure equals the escape from the Real, the Real announcing itself in the seductive appearance of the naked body. That is to say, in the opposition between the spectral appearance of the sexualized body and the repulsive body in decay, it is the spectral appearance which is the Real, and the decaying body which is reality – we take recourse to the decaying body in order to avoid the deadly fascination of the Real which threatens to draw us into its vortex of jouissance." — csalisbury

Great quote! :clap: :cool:

When visiting your girlfriend's family for the first time, imagine yourself fucking their mother, and then their grandmother, this will allow you to establish an approximate upper bound on the relationship length...

Edit:

Upon noticing a perceived flaw in your girlfriend's appearance, meditate upon it, if attachment remains after the meditative exercise, do the same thing as an exercise to try and prevent orgasm - if you can still cum, eternity awaits...

Edit2, De Sade's Principle:

Imagine the body decomposing, the shit in their bowels, the smell of their breath in the morning, decrepit and codependent... Enlightenment is turning the real into viagra.

Once I'd learned (enough of) how the 'magic trick' was/is done - after 10 years of parochial school 'bible study, church history & altarboy service' - I seemed to slip effortlessly, almost helplessly, out of the Catechism's mind-forg'd manacles like a newborn out of the womb again, but this time, fallen wide-eyed instead of wailing onto the pellucidly hard cold ground of my facticity. :joke: Teen apostate, then very soon a 'born again' anti-magical thinker & knowing skeptic. Still, decades on, for me the fascination of 'The Illusion' remains. Thus, e.g. Barton's book, etc. — 180 Proof

Makes sense. My religious upbringing was of the desultory 'I guess this year we're going to try going to mass for a couple months' sort and my spiritual volte-face had more to do with making my mean Dad sad than giving up something wholly enveloping. My 'return' to religion is less a return, then a 'wow, I didn't even get it before' & even then I've been treating the bible more as a text-sandbox to flesh out some ideas on spirituality/literature/history than a place I plan on moving into permanently. Pardon the provocation, I guess I've got a mild crush, and I got heated up seeing her ex badmouth her in public. Seemed like the best defense was "you're just saying that cause you still like her!'

decrepit and codependent — fdrake

made me lol. De Sade by way of modern relationship therapy.

Pardon the provocation, I guess I've got a mild crush, and I got heated up seeing her ex badmouth her in public. Seemed like the best defense was "you're just saying that cause you still like her!' — csalisbury

Not following this ...

The lady's the bible, the zizek's the 'you still like her,'

:ok:

Daivd Graeber - Debt: The First 5000 Years
Maurizio Lazzarato - The Making of Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition
Maurizio Lazzarato - Governing by Debt

A slight theme.

Daivd Graeber - Debt: The First 5000 Years — StreetlightX

I've been reading this one on and off for a while. Tell me what you think of it plx!