But one might in their defense read their narrative, non-systematic vision of the world as a different way to do philosophy-as-worldview or philosophy-as-wisdom. — Hoo

Exactly. There's certainly nothing wrong with rigor or systematization, and constructing well-wrought arguments (as well as finding the chinks in the arguments of others) can be deeply rewarding in-and-of-itself. The problem is that most philosophers seem to labor under the pretense that they're developing (or contributing to) a profound understanding of reality or of knowledge or of x. The pretense that their philosophy is (or is a key part of) the understanding. But what typically happens is that they simply excise everything but what they're comfortable with (or what, despite being uncomfortable, is susceptible to a type of manipulation or explication which is comfortable) and then manipulate and explicate until everything is properly arranged. Again there's nothing wrong with that (it yields all sorts of insights in mathematics, physics, linguistics etc.) but the claims philosophers make for their highly-processed presentations are absurdly general. That's really the problem. Philosophers restrict their scope immensely while proclaiming essential truths about things as broad as 'reality' or 'experience' or 'subjectivity' or 'knowledge' or 'being.'

(TGW characterized socratic questioning as being 'sufficiently penetrating.' I'd characterize it as dealing with concepts broad enough (love, truth, justice, knowledge) that the defense of any positive proposition about them can be unraveled after n questions (where n is a function of the defendant's talent for deferral-through-qualification.) The point of socratic irony is aporia. Or, as TGW says, "Once the desire for these things diminishes, and the practical incoherence of seeking them is seen to be contradictory on its own terms, the desire to be a metaphysician goes with it." )

Intuitively, it feels silly to say, of Proust, 'Yes, profound in his own way, but lets see him write a tract on seismology.' But how is that any different than saying he wouldn't have been a good 17th century empiricist? I suppose the difference is that seismology requires acquaintance with certain facts while writing about understanding in a certain way is something one can spontaneously do. Yet I imagine it would have been quite challenging for Locke to have written what he wrote, without having read what he read.

You can get a vibe from a writer that, if they had so chosen, they could have learnt the literature and contributed to the field. They just didn't. I wouldn't infer any deficiency from Barthelme's not having written a book on consciousness building upon Husserl, any more than I would infer a deficiency from his not having mastered meteorology. It's clear, reading the guy, that he has the capacity.

I love The Mirror too (especially that tracking shot with the burning cottage in the rain), but it's been a long time since I've seen it, and - probably because of its fragmentary time-hopping structure - I can't remember what the final scene is.

I feel similarly - when a movie or piece of music works for me, it dies so in a concrete way which is probably forever after irretrievable. The pure emotion is interwoven with complex but precise sensualized reflections about where I am (spiritually? emotionally? in relation to people I care about? hard to say). That said, there's something that unifies those experiences, disparate as they are. The best I can say is that it's a movement of opening up - both in the cathartic sense of releasing things I've concealed from myself and in the sense of being able to freely look around (whereas normally I feel this deep constraint, a need to be focusing on something in particular while restricting my awareness of everything else) Maybe this comes off as the gaudy spiritualization you mention, but its also true and something I value a whole lot. The problem might be that its quite literally ineffable, so talk about it is necessarily clumsy and impotent - like trying to describe a dream to someone.

I think it's hard to to say "Good art is meant to x" Different types of art serve different functions. Some art unsettles, some soothes. Though I think you always need to be a bit unsettled in order to be truly soothed. And to be open to true (aesthetic) unsettling, you often have to be soothed a bit first.

It sounds very cloying, but there's a scene in Andrei Rublev that gets me every time - There's this peasant stable in which are gathered a group of people laughing at a jester. The stable is established as a fully 3 dimensional space, through some brilliant camerawork, as a sort of spiritual zone, hard to put it. But then the main character is forced to go out in the rain, for some reason, and the scene is shot from within the stable looking out at him, through a door. He's outside, alone, yet being-alone, and outside, is made to feel like a mode of being-inside, though he clearly cannot understand that. All very sappy, sure, but the way that it's done places it a million miles from, say, the sentimentality of chaplin's tramp looking through a window at a new years gathering.

For me, it's Tarkovsky that does it, really does it. Watching Stalker or Andrei Rublev, stoned, in an enclosed and warm-lit setting - it's very hard to describe. It's a peacefulness that bristles with meaning, but what it means is just what it is, which is a peacefulness bristling with meaning. It's kind of like an emotional massage, all these tense blocked-up emotions are released into an open space which, though open, is structured perfectly to accomodate all of them. All sorts of conflicting and contradictory feelings which usually war with one another for dominance, shaming the losing feelings into hiding - suddenly they're all in a kind of warm, drowsy balance. It's simple and solemn and incredibly calming. But it's very rare I get to experience this, once a year if I'm lucky.

What would you consider Proust's 'stance'?

Eh, Ligotti is a very limited, adolescent writer, so it's no surprise his philosophy sucks. On the other hand, have you read Proust? My sense is he'd kill it.

But what is a socratic conversation? Isn't it basically just one person stating one's understanding of something while an ironic interlocutor asks probing questions? I'm quite sure my landlord would 'survive' more questions than me if the topic were landlording. And a baker would probably 'survive' more baking questions. My coworker who deals adderall on the sly would, I assume, 'survive' more dealing-adderall-on-the-sly questions.

Likewise, I think Proust or Beckett would survive certain series of questions better than, idk, Ayers, & Ayers would survive another series of questions better than they.

I don't know what to make of your comment other than that people can better answer questions about the things they know most about, which is borderline tautologous.

(I'm assuming, charitably, that you don't think 'rigor' means simply 'rigorous understanding of analytic philosophy')

Certainly as writers. What do you mean by thinking?

on my phone, I'll respond when I have access to a comp

But it would be absurd to say Proust or Beckett have no formal chops

The two smokescreens philosophers tend to use today are clear-headed devotion to truth for truth's sake (analytic) and political engagement (contintental). Both self-identifications obscure what's really going on.

I agree with tgw (& hoo over on another thread) that the will-to-philosophize stems ultimately from dimly understood pains, desires, and anxieties. Most Philosophy seems to have the purpose of shaping and sharpening one's conception of the world in order to keep it within the limits of cognition - in other words, in order to keep it at arms length. Most philosophy is really just clunky poetry resulting from the poet's immense self-limitation.The writers I've mentioned are able (1) to see philosophy for what it is (the irony tgw spoke of) but also (2) since they understand what it is, they can also use it as a theme to be interwoven with other themes. Basically their scope is much greater (& they have much better senses of humor)

Why are you outraged?

You're poisoning the well! No one will want to participate! The way I see the book, so far, is a super close reading of the first logical investigation punctuated by impatient anticipations of a broad conclusion (e.g 'do we not already have the right to say the entirety of phenomenology lies in the hiatus between indication and expression?' Well, no, obviously and if we did the rest of the book would be redundant.)The close reading bits, though, are keen enough to make it seem worth pushing on.

I think the ultimate target is presence, not mundanity (the introduction locks onto retention/protention and the alter-ego which renders possible intersubjectivity.) Indication involves passing from the known to the not-known (from what is present to what is not-yet-present) and I think this is why Derrida is honing in on it. I've only read the first two chapters, but I think the point is something like, if indication and expression are inseparable, then there is always a not-yet-present which makes what is present intelligible. Though I don't want to sap the convo from the not-yet-present reading group.

Just read chapter two this afternoon & I gotta say I agree. It's fine when he's analyzing the text itself, but the sudden sweeping proclamations about the phenomenological project as a whole are frustrating.

Compared to later Derrida though, this book feels remarkably lucid and controlled

@shmik I've read Cartesian Meditations and a good chunk of Ideas. Definitely doesn't go down easy.

Got my order today (went overboard, b/c I got nothing else to waste money on rn) but, hey, I somehow fucked up the order and got an extra copy of Voice & Phenomenon. Anyone want it? pm me shipping info and its yours.

Mmm, well it seems like it comes down to likeability in that case. It's interesting you mention not only their quirks but their virtues, though I'm not sure what you mean by the term. I know the people I like most are very funny, with a deep capacity for irony, yet able to drop the irony when shit gets real. In other words, it has nothing to do with their philosophy, really, except insofar as philosophy is secondary for them. (Which, incidentally, is why I think Barthelme, Proust, Beckett etc. are far greater than any philosopher, besides maybe Socrates.) Anyway, regarding temporality, I think I agree, though I still don't know quite how I'd put it. From what I know of Husserl, it's still too tied to a false profundity (or a glimpse of something true that a need for a certain kind of profundity has significantly obscured). It's the same reason Heidegger's turn to poetry strikes me as right, but far too clumsily executed.

I have some sympathy with what you're saying. If the salutary effect of encountering Cyrenaic thought is not derived from realizing it through action but, rather, being transformed by it , then the question indeed becomes: it what way does Cyrenaism transform how one acts? And the only action mentioned thus far is playing the courtier for money. And courtiers knew how to be ironic and trip up other courtiers long before philosophy appeared on the scene.

& finally I think that, if you follow the faultlines, it would be easy to show that being a consistent Cyrenaic is practically equivalent to not being a Cyrenaic (as, of course, is being an inconsistent Cyrenaic). So what's the point?

Let me be a bit polemical and ask: have you ever heard an addict philosophize/justify himself while high on his drug of choice? He may hit up Dionysus tommorow, in the sober light of day, but thats beside the point, which is right now, which is *this*

The planning paradox you mention seems quite damning. Tbh, it seems to derail the whole thing. I think its interesting that you say 'the Cyrenaic must devote less effort to planning than is typically considered sensible in order to remain consistent.' (1) Quite clearly, in order to be consistent, they would have to devote no time, rather than a fuzzily defined less time. (2) what need has the Cyrenaic for consistency? Why strive for that? Why does it matter if he foregoes immediate pleasure for the sake of hitting up someone for some cash?

sounds good to me

Yeah, I like doing the intro at the end. What were you thinking for a timeframe? Maybe chapter one by next weekend?

Hey bree, which concepts are you interested in?

I've ordered the Lawlor translation as well. I agree, @moliere that too much anxiety over the translation could just stall things entirely, so I'll bracket my concerns for now (tho @Pierre-Normand I'll pm you one particular passage that's causing me some grief)

The difference between the two translations is a bit worrisome to me. I've already found a few passages in the introduction which say entirely different things depending on which version you read.

I browsed the introduction to Speech & Phenomena at work today. It seems much less pose-y than most of his stuff and really dovetails nicely with some other current threads. I don't know if that's good or bad, since some controversy could spill over. I will say it does seem to take a lot of Husserl as read. You don't, maybe, need to know your Husserl (I'm no scholar myself) but then you have to just accept a lot of very broad characterization on faith. All that being said, I liked what I read, and would be down to do it. Shit's dense tho, it'll take real dedication.

Derrida's cool w/ me too

I agree with the thrust of the OP. I think it's interesting, though, that the two hidden motives you've identified in the quest for absolute truths are purity (disgust for dad) and power (I'm an extra-cave initiate!). Both are rampant, I agree, but I feel like there's an even more fundamental need - security. That there are absolute truths and that one can discover them and be sure of them- how profoundly comforting!

Though all three 'hidden' motives would share, I think, themes of withdrawl and preservation. The apprehension of a truth has a finality; you can find it on your own and once you have it and no one can take it from you.

I'd be interested - I don't know how much insight I'd be able to offer, but I think I'd benefit from it. I'd read whatever others are most interested in. I guess, of those you've mentioned, I'd be most interested in Quine, Chomsky or Derrida.

I don't see what's to be gained from cordoning off what is a transcedental addition versus what is really in nature 'in itself,' and there seems to be no interest in the project if you're not a Kantian (the question of 'is identity in the mind/language/computer, or in the thing itself?' is only of interest to someone with Kantian assumptions)

This isn't strictly on point, but I think most people who have even the tiniest little smidgeon of philosophical curiosity are naturally drawn to the question of in-itself vs. in-the-mind. Plenty of people who have never heard of Kant spontaneously ask: 'what if what you see as orange, I see as purple??'

Point being, imo the distinction being drawn doesn't seem specialized and academic at all.

The steep climb of knowledge, the arduous and lonely journey

aww, sorry babe <3

If analog processes are susceptible to 'digital' understanding (and they are, even if this understanding is necessarily limited), there must be something in them that allows this kind of understanding. Otherwise the 'digital' understanding is merely replicating itself, as if in a vacuum, freely and without friction.So, sure, we can say that, via autopoesis, the analog can serve as the ground for the digital - but how does the purely analogical yield itself to an external digital observer in a way that makes possible understanding/control? This seems to hearken back to Kant's schematism - and it remains just as obscure.

I have a guilty habit of strolling incredibly crime-ridden and/or impoverished neighborhoods (esp in ex-ssr countries) It feels like a terrible thing to do, but I keep doing it

You'd feel comfortable saying a blind person cannot learn empirical truths? all blind knowledge is a priori?