Monday, June 27, 2016

spring 2016


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.


June 18 | Here on the Left Coast, my view about “Brexit” couldn’t matter less to a Brit—not that I presume any Brit reads here. But it’s worth noting that, after the issue was debated by the storied Oxford Debate Union last week, the audience voted 227 to 79 for “In.” On their side is the International Monetary Fund, the central banks—and the betting markets. But the people? Hey, that’s populism for you. Do the most intelligent, high-principled and better informed views deserve to prevail?

I steer away from all of that to muse generally about persuasion: “What makes the better argument,” which takes an unusual stance: argument as a mode of teaching, more than as justification or seeking to compel a change of view. It’s an improvisation, not formal presentation. I began the posting with no overt preconception of how or where it would go.


June 10 | A bad review of Heidegger’s 1932-1938 notebooks caused me to do a posting which became a web page, “ ‘Heidegger’ as no mirror of the few and the rare,” which occasioned some revision of my “...political times” page (¶s 3-4) and “...nazism” page (¶s 4-5). I want to stop giving time to others’ bad reading (for a few months at least). But sometimes I can’t resist.


June 4: Trope City News | I’m playing among conceptual scaffolds that are addictive fun (to my mind—probably solely), but have no easy (brief) sketch.

I made several attempts here to analogize my progress, a short while ago; but each felt reductionist. So, I deleted every attempt.

Time will come soon when textual fleshing flows—frequently. There’s already a good plan for the long term.

I’m flowing in rapids of detail—like the “flurry” screen saver available to all Apple computers (flowing myself mostly at a moderate rate—though sometimes a little manic, sometimes a little sluggish—life!).

The Apple flurry’s floating center is a self-transforming gravity of radiant flowering, flourishing generativity—apparently. It’s a lovely algorithm, to me a profound dance.

Conceptuality is architextual, proximally. And primordial love of enacting is—?

I can’t wait to transpose my gardening into sensible displays.

So, I’m not waiting: I’m in flurries of progress pathing ways of flowing high clearly.


May 27 | Obama’s address in Hiroshima is notable.


May 7 | Two postings happened last week without anticipation of them when I last updated here, end of April: “race of the river: a preface,” May 3 (about Heidegger turning into the gravity of Time—so to speak); and May 1, “Heidegger as fiction (thus, creepy shadow),” about academic gossip. I want to discuss a few more aspects of Heidegger’s notebooks from 1931-38, but I don’t know when.

Anyway, I’m appalled by how uninformed the academic gossip has been—not that evidence contrary to gossip was available; but why such bad faith reading was compelled to present itself is beyond me. I thought for years that there was a credible set of issues to defend. There’s not. The issue is why “scholars” have been so compelled to read badly (thus argue badly) or to rely on each other for unargued insinuations.

I want to correct the record in a few more ways than I have already. But I’m less interested in being persuasive (which normally requires immanent dialogue with the reader) than being clear about how I read and why I find so much contrary reading to be bad.

Then I want to permanently, resolutely move on—forget defending Heidegger against knee-jerk readers; and just focus on my own work—which I’m managing to do anyway, for the most part. That’s why I can’t know when I’ll do some thorough notes on some themes from Heidegger’s notebooks, 1931-38.


April 30 | A painter, a writer, composer, whatever gets happily immersed in flows, explorations—mindscapes—that are amazing. Then, sudden emergences want to be fully enowned before their effect on all the flourishing can be known. This can be profoundly entertaining (but not good for getting what’s already done organized for presentation).


April 23: Late March’s “critical artist as obituarial character” was an honorary promissory note, so to speak.

My April has been occupied with so much basic conceptual work that I haven't done anymore online. But I expect a fruitful May here.