March 20:
Last night (last night of winter, strictly speaking—though feeling spring), I was enthralled by all two hours of Terrence Malick’s latest cinepoem, “Knight of Cups,” which is so L.A., even in its precious meditativeness (which is a deliberate aspect of being in episodity). The narrative—and it is a narrative—isn’t philosophical, but far more than an autobio-graphical sequel to “Tree of Life”; and more than a visually surreal critique of hyper-mobile, simulacral, and attention-deficited bacchanalian urbanity. It’s a pensive and innerworldly chance for some leading LAers to confront their own kind: Think—transcended by the cinematic artistry (which is masterfully “spontaneous”), re: being and time in LaLa Land.
Through sensation, one finds affection, thereby gains connection for there being balance, love, clarity, joy, hope. Herewith, there’s time to begin.
March 13 | “‘how goes it’...” is about a sense of truth of being. I recognize that my transition there from feeling (parts 1 and 2) through considerations about obesity (part 3) to thinking about Heidegger (part 4) may seem arbitrary, like several postings merged into one. But it all happened in one sitting, like an allegory of interplaying interests.
Part 2 of that implicitly pertains to themes in philosophy of mind that I’m planning to address.
Part 3 implicitly pertains to a key aspect of “philosophy for good”: deep temporal interface of private and public good, which is an ostensible way of polemically rendering the scale of “shared grounds,” which I intend to flesh out post-polemically during 2016.
March 4 | “the role of Considerations within his ways” is short, but links to detailed discussion of two entries from Heidegger’s Considerations.
That culminates (for now) a line of argument that is listed in the middle of the area 4 page of my project on “Heidegger and reading political times” (mid-page paragraph there beginning: “A sequence of current posting...”). I’m weary of discussing why Heidegger isn’t culpable for surviving nazism, but academic readers are profiting from silly paranoia; and are persistently trading on others’ casual trust in scholarly pretense.
I’m not intending to consider online any more Considerations, but I never know what I’ll desire to do a month from now, whenever.
Here’s the ending of my discussion of one Considerations entry:
Extracting all entries which mention Jewry from the whole of Considerations (as Trawny and Polt did) displaces attention from that whole (let alone Heidegger’s prevailing work) in constellating the scattered mentions as belonging together essentially, as if thereby the essential constellation contaminates his thinking (rather than a pre-phenomenological ways of reading). But the suspicious professers have no clothes.And by the way: “Whom was entitled to speak?”
February 29 | Still working diligently—which repeats last week’s assurance.
It’s not conceptual difficulties I face, rather inspirations that won’t quit. My old excuse persists: Not stopping to call home at length is not “saying” I don’t care. All the better when I do recount.
Young fictionists are advised by elders to not talk about a story before it’s written, because the urge to tell belongs to the writing.
The process is so fun.
February 22 | Prospecting a scale of faculties was a fun thought.
February 17 | Sorry: I’m nearing a peak far away which is the condition for going further here. I can’t predict anything. I can keep the promise to check in.
February 8 | “cultivating branches” was posted.
There, “branches” is a verb.
January 30, 2016 | A difficulty with update deadlines I make on my homepage is like taking time away from doing a large-scale pointillistic painting (work in progress) so I can sketch a gestalt of one small region (mere posting).
Taking time for that is fine. But pretending that a gestalt precedes its emergence is unfair to the process—
—not that I don’t know where I’m going. A hiker doing a complex hill knows very well what peak she designs to make, yet not the vista to be—though surely there’s a grand one.
January 23, 2016 | Hmmm.
I imagine walking into a classroom, pondering the audience in an uncomfortably long silence (10 seconds?); then saying of them “Hmmm.”
I trust that most would laugh—which reminds me: I’ve long wanted to discuss philosopher Owen Flanagan's essay “Performing Oneself.” It’s a respectable philosophical topic, you know, at least regarding theory of action. Rhetoricality, so to speak, can be a matter of principle.
I wrote the above on the 22nd, mulling what to do with “intellectuality” (promised Jan. 10; see below) by the 23rd, my promised update. But I’ll let the above be the update.
Or: How about prospecting a conception of performing intellectually? That would pertain to virtue epistemology.
Is “being” intellectual at risk of scientism?: a bias for ostensibility (or prima facie meaning)? Would a sign of that be: treating a holistic philosopher —artistic, ethical, political, etc.—historiographically?, as if such could be appropriately philosophical biography? Inquiring minds might want to know.
January 17, 2016 | Giving attention to misreading of Heidegger is contrary to giving attention to good reading.
But a lot of misreading is going to gain attention in 2016, so I’ve made some time to briefly indicate how to and how not to read Heidegger’s private notebooks, i.e., his Considerations.
That posting was mostly done Jan. 14, edited and expanded from spontaneous comments at Amazon.com (very spontaneous—antedated now), around the end of December and Jan. 3, thus the posting date: Jan. 3. Then it was substantially revised Jan. 15-17.
I know that’s important to you (not). [Heidegger had a good sense of humor—which easily comes across as sarcastic in print—notebooks, letters. It’s adaptive for living with regular absurdity among one’s colleagues. But Karl Jaspers had a problem with that.]
Jan. 10, I expected to have a discussion on “intellectuality” by Jan. 18. But my meta-discussion of Trawny’s boring book (that posting) took time, and my interest in intellectuality is tangential to conceptual work that the former is intended to supplement; and which occupies as much time as I can make for it. Developmental writing (offline) is an endless pleasure, but it easily looks incredible (uncredible) in succinct presentation.
The experimental conceptuality of Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy isn’t private language, but I know well that thinking is very different from re-presentation (which is an appropriative event) of private representations that may regularly use given terms in wholly (mindfully) new ways, for good reason.
Consider ‘intellectuality’ vis-à-vis “intellectual history” vis-à-vis “beyng-historical thinking” as rubric for Appropriativity or enowning our era’s prevailing conceptuality progressively. (That’s an improvisation.)
January 10, 2016 | I intend to do a good (albeit short) discussion of intellectuality, which would be to dwell with the notion of being intellectual as such, which would not be about me thinking of myself as an intellectual; I don’t. But those who identify with being intellectual cause me to want to dwell with the notion.
I want to title my discussion “intellectuality by reason of minding.” I hoped to have it done by the 16th. That didn’t happen.
My anticipated title is odd, I know. Being odd happens naturally for me. But I’m sober! (Always—though always sufficiently caffeinated.)
Initially, the title was to be “...of thinking,” not “of minding”; but I want to render what’s called thinking (briefly) relative to deeply or highly—wholly—minding (or enminding, so to speak) given openness of others, beyond thinking about “reason” as basically intellect. (That’s not: minding, given openness of others; rather, no comma: minding the given openness of others—more oddness of grammar).
Yet, my discussion is to be focused merely on intellectualness: intellectuality.
January 5, 2016 | Constellating heights (how I spent the past week!) is no alienation from rolling hills—midlands, lowlands. Indeed, the view from aloft is very nice. Vistas can be thrilling, especially of expanses already known—better here, because a continuum of perspective can be luscious (Play's the thing!)—
—notwithstanding a nuisance at my door, which I don’t want to discuss now. But I’ll say: The contamination was a book I felt compelled to face, like a psychoanalyst having a troublesome neighbor who sparks curiosity—which steals me from writerly pleasure; but I afforded the time.
So, I turn the calendar happily.
And I’m happy to feel close to beginning The Project I’ve been developing for many months. In the short run, the pathmaking will show merely as posting more regularly (installments always noted on my home page, upper left at “new in site,” for a week or so), not by overtly prospecting the project as such.
December 21, 2015 | During project development the past week or so, I’ve thought of themes for an update here, listed them on a page for later, added themes, elaborated a little, sequenced.
But it became too much for one posting, once again that plight of exuberant inflation. I count 16 separate posting foci from the past week. That doesn’t include eight areas of undone follow-up from summer and autumn. And there’s the tens I’m now working with, and hundreds (no lie) growing intermittently on my drive, each project having tens of themes linked with themes in other projects (inter-textuality that would draw Proust, reincarnated, into awe)—conceptual gardening indeed. Too much for spontaneous cogency.
Choose one?
No.
Bay Area night is overwhelmed with rain and cold, for which we (who have homes) are thankful.
Starry starry night (and high constellating, my love) belongs to warm imagination.
For the “holiday” period—an annually lovely time to me for writing—I’m gifting myself a break from online fidelities.
