Sunday, September 14, 2014

summer 2014


September 14: protean daze

Ever wonder why the old Greeks would fabricate such a god as Proteus?

I have a story about that, way beyond what They Say about a king—who so loved Helen before Troy?—who became the Old Man of the Sea who would always tell Truth, if he could be captured.


flexible perspectivity



I mentioned a notion of “flexible perspectivity” in my discussion of Habermas’ essay on Putnam’s “pragmatist virtue ethics,” but I didn’t introduce the notion carefully. I discussed it briefly, but that was unfair to the value I find in the notion.

Worse yet, I introduced the notion as if it was transparent, out of the head of Zeus, then mentioned more-accessible aspects later, which would better have been mentioned first (discussed in detail first). After some more preliminaries here, I'll quote all I mentioned earlier, in better order (giving it salience); and include some discussion.

radiant gravity



Nothing that I write is a clear pointer about where I’m going, though the point (the event of writing presented) should be clear in each instance—and is, I hope, for the thing here, the trace of the event, a time-space architexture presented.

For example, all I’ve written recently about Habermas is part of drawing a provisional closure, not departing further into being there soon (though surely again later!). Likewise with Heidegger. Writers who have profoundly influenced me are part of going on—where “on,” as my pathmaking, would be my learning going forward, into undefined horizons that nonetheless are the gravities, the Appeals.

What’s worthwhile to say about the Sirens drawing Ulysses?—as if I knew Homer. (My Dad’s first name was Homer. I was born on Bloomsday, June 16, the singular day of Joyce’s Ullysses, when Leopold Bloom has his odyssey about town.)

Yet, a draw—The Draw—draws me on.

I’m surrendered to being drawn by the hill whose forward vista I can’t yet see.

I’m given to the draw of drawing, given to drawing as such.