So, you want to be better, be more. Think about your life like you might a thesis.
Great little essay.
Course Blog for Phil 1020
Sunday, June 2, 2019
Saturday, June 1, 2019
The Very Elements of Intelligence
In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that... or: There is capitalism in so far as... The use of expressions like "to the extent that" is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.
Simone Weil, The Power of Words
Paper Due Sunday at Midnight
Don't forget!
Also be sure to look at all the Greed, Avarice and Lust entries here on the blog. Required reading for class. Try to think about the idea that all three are forms of false mastery.
Also be sure to look at all the Greed, Avarice and Lust entries here on the blog. Required reading for class. Try to think about the idea that all three are forms of false mastery.
Scrooge Asks for Pity
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which
it stood.
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.
"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
The finger still was there.
"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life."
The kind hand trembled.
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me."
The Spirit was immovable as ever.Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, EBENEZER SCROOGE.
"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried, upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
The finger still was there.
"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life."
The kind hand trembled.
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
False Mastery: Avarice, Gluttony and Lust
As I will say in class (and likely have said), we are embodied creatures -- and so creatures of circumstance and vulnerability. We live our lives enmeshed in circumstances, most not of our choosing and most not (fully) under our control. Yet we find ourselves free in the midst of circumstances--and we know our vulnerability: even if we would rather not know it, and so do our best to pretend otherwise.
The greedy person, the gluttonous person, the lustful person: at a deep level, each is engaged in an effort to overcome circumstance and vulnerability and so to forget or overcome or transcend embodiment. We have genuine needs for material possessions, for food and drink, for love and intimacy. These needs throw us back on our circumstances and they reveal our vulnerability.
The greedy person attempts to master circumstance and to prevent vulnerability by piling up possessions. Like the rich fool in the parable (in Luke 12: 16ff), the greedy person looks forward to being able to say to himself, "Come, soul, thou hast goods in plenty laid up for many years..." But the problem for the greedy person is also illustrated by the rich fool, who dies in the night after his plait of self-congratulation. The greedy person cannot master circumstances, cannot prevent vulnerability -- no matter how much he or she accumulates. And so nothing that is possessed is ever enough; eventually, the unruliness of circumstance or the exposure of vulnerability reveals that, and then more must be possessed, so as to regain the mastery and prevent vulnerability. And so on. The greedy person's mastery is always false mastery.
I will extend this to gluttony and lust soon, but I suspect you can well enough imagine how the extension will go.
The greedy person, the gluttonous person, the lustful person: at a deep level, each is engaged in an effort to overcome circumstance and vulnerability and so to forget or overcome or transcend embodiment. We have genuine needs for material possessions, for food and drink, for love and intimacy. These needs throw us back on our circumstances and they reveal our vulnerability.
The greedy person attempts to master circumstance and to prevent vulnerability by piling up possessions. Like the rich fool in the parable (in Luke 12: 16ff), the greedy person looks forward to being able to say to himself, "Come, soul, thou hast goods in plenty laid up for many years..." But the problem for the greedy person is also illustrated by the rich fool, who dies in the night after his plait of self-congratulation. The greedy person cannot master circumstances, cannot prevent vulnerability -- no matter how much he or she accumulates. And so nothing that is possessed is ever enough; eventually, the unruliness of circumstance or the exposure of vulnerability reveals that, and then more must be possessed, so as to regain the mastery and prevent vulnerability. And so on. The greedy person's mastery is always false mastery.
I will extend this to gluttony and lust soon, but I suspect you can well enough imagine how the extension will go.
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