summer 2016

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September 23:

Summer ends. Over a month has passed since I updated substantively. So, here’s “the last apology for trivial update notes.” Welcome autumn (in the northern hemisphere).

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August 13 | Development offline is currently too involuted to allow for writing briefly about it now, and I don’t want to give my attention to anything else this week (i.e., not try to distill happy involution into a brief about it all, nor give lots of time online to anything unrelated).

(Well, OK, for example: Why does conceptual research call for neologism?—which doesn’t imply a Private Language of conceptualization. Is there a kindredness between tropology and topology that originates from the nature of conceptuality? What is the nature of conceptuality? Is philosophical narration a conceptual spaceship fueled by readerly engagement? Aren’t you glad this update now ends?)

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the last apology for trivial update notes

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Every day (nearly) gives me fun learning, fun developing themes (conceptual trekking, tripping), and writing freely, in my own idiom (privately—sorry). Enjoyment is its own reward. I’m working 8-or-more hours per day, making steady progress.

What’s here so far (via blog and Web pages—as of summer 2016) are improvised episodes in an introductory sense of what interests me for my Project, that so far has no description, no synopsis.

spring 2016

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June 27:

The Brexit vote is not legally binding. This June 24 posting led to a lot of commentary by me on the Facebook/Habermas page, over several days after the vote. But my Facebook postings on this have been removed, to be used later relative to developing my interest in Habermas’ interest in EU integration and other interests of mine. What becomes of all of that will be indicated at the top of the “Brexit” posting—and also at the “new in site” Web home page spot, for a few days. But apparently Brexit-related matters aren’t going to be settled soon; so, I don’t know when I’ll want to do more on this issue.

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a preface on Peter Gordon’s shadow play

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Heidegger’s notebooks of 1931-1938—Considerations II-VI—do not “cast a dark shadow over Heidegger’s legacy” (blurb on the back cover of the English translation, now named “Ponderings II-VI”). The blurb comes from an October 2014 gossip column by Peter Gordon via The NY Review of Books. But Gordon there doesn’t show that he understands Heidegger (which is ironic, because he’s made a career of comparing other writers to his own reading of Heidegger’s career).

So what? An air of scandal sells books.

critical artist as obituarial character

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Geoffrey H. Hartman died March 14. Notice is pieced together promptly. Literary thinking itself is concealed by imperative of casual reading. Otherwise, as Margalit Fox quotes Denis Donoghue, late 1980, “I wonder would that be worth the labor of understanding it?” Donoghue might better have added some punctuation: “I wonder: ‘Would that be worth the labor of understanding it?’.”

I want to dwell with the textuality of the obituary. Is that unfair?

But I don’t have time now. The obituary appeared March 20. This is a revised version of the March 20 note which goes far enough to show how challenging a furthering can become.

winter 2016

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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.

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the role of Considerations with his ways

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I don’t want to give more attention to paranoid silliness about Heidegger’s animus toward German ideology, but I can’t resist noting that F.-W. von Herrmann’s authoritative view of Heidegger’s black notebooks concurs with my own.

I’ll eventually provide more detail—within proper context, i.e., in light of specific discussion of Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy. But I don’t plan to do that this season. The important point, though, is clearly asserted by von Herrmann.

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a scale of faculties

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How strange is it that ‘faculty’ “begins” (medievally—looking at an Unabridged definition etymologically) as denotation of an academic profession, then becomes a notion of a priori mental capability, gets outmoded for that, yet continues to hybridize as senses of intellectual power, as if mind as such reflects academic professionism? Or the university expresses the horizon of mental ability (mentability)?

cultivating branches

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white space
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That causes me to recall the last page of Henry Miller’s Big Sur
and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, which has a black-line rectangle containing white space. Inside is only the sentence “This is a Kandinsky.”

one’s resistance to dwelling with Heidegger

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When I began reading Peter Trawny’s book, Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy, I already knew (for nearly two years) that his case was invalid. But I’m surprised by how invalid his case is. I finished reading the book (carefully!) because Heidegger’s Considerations (notebooks from 1931-38), will be available in English soon, and I wanted to be sure I was perceiving Trawny’a case about the notebooks fully.