Art 44: Oscar Wilde

Piano 82: Schumann—Little Piece, Op.68

ScruffyOwlet · 82: Schumann—Little Piece, Op.68

Art 43: Friedrich Nietzsche

Art 42: Karl Marx

Art 41: Πλάτων

Piano 81: Chopin—Prelude 4 in E minor, Op.28

ScruffyOwlet · 81: Chopin—Prelude 4 in E minor, Op.28/4

Thought 608: Four Ideas (1)

(1)

Artistic intention

need not be the 

source of truth

in a work of art,

because artists

are the 

mediators

rather than

creators of

of that which

inspires them.

(2) 

Com-ments

belong to 

to mentalism.

(3)

Many a

modern

workplace

is a cult.

(4) 

The Magician

of Messkirch

was not yet

an occultist.

Thought 607: Economic Growth—A Contradiction in Terms

The economical cannot grow

because to economise

means to spare,

to preserve.

economic growth = uneconomic waste

Thought 606: National Socialism—A Contradiction in Terms

National Socialism is an oxymoron

because Socialism has to be

international to fight capital

that is itself international.

Thought 605: Reading the Self

Reading the Self

means understanding

that the thoughts we have

of others and things 

have to do with us.

French 5: Commentaire sur le livre « Qu'appelle-t-on penser ? » de Martin Heidegger

Oeuvre phare quoique négligée du grand corpus heideggerien

Qu'appelle-t-on penser ? est un cours que Heidegger dispensa dans les années cinquante, soit une bonne décennie après la fin de la seconde guerre mondiale. 

Hannah Arendt y vit une importante clé de voûte dans l'oeuvre conséquente et riche de cet auteur-professeur-philosophe très controversé.

Contenant deux parties, la première partie s'attache à éclairer la pensée de Nietzsche, en particulier l'oeuvre Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra — Un livre qui est pour tous et qui n'est pour personne , et son cri: 

« Le désert croît : malheur à celui qui qui abrite le désert ! »

; — Heidegger le précise, le désert dans le Sahara africain n'est qu'un type de désert.

Cette partie comporte une importante analyse du surhomme, déjà anticipée dans les années trente durant sa confrontation avec Nietzsche, ainsi que sa différence avec le dernier homme ; en réalité, le surhomme n'est pas un superman ou une extension de l'homme traditionnel mais simplement l'homme qui s'est affranchi de l'esprit de vengeance, « du ressentiment contre le temps et son « il était » », qui diminue tout, qui ne cherche qu'à punir et qui cligne de l'oeil au lieu de penser.

Mon propre travail en tant que penseur m'a mené à l'observation suivante : le surhomme est l'homme qui va au delà de l'animal raisonnable (du latin animal rationale), vers l'animal qui pense son habituation (voir En français 2: L'habitation et la maîtrise du monde).

La deuxième partie du cours consiste en une fastidieuse et pénétrante analyse d'un fragment de Parménide ; une connaissance de l'alphabet grec est ici préférable. 

Il s'agit de savoir en quoi la vérité peut-t-elle se manifester dans l'ère de la technique moderne (y compris cette page internet).

Conclusion : c'est une oeuvre riche et pleine d'innocence et de subtilité qui dit la même la chose, plus ou moins, que Être et temps, mais en beaucoup moins de mots. 

Recommandé à tous les amateurs de la pensée !

Thought 604: Eighteen Ideas

(1) 

Art is the universal 

medicine—we have

art lest we perish

from the truth.

(2) 

Politics is philosophical

to the extent that it thinks,

and philosophy is political

to the extent that it seeks

to establish trust in

its favour.

(3) 

'Now tell us what you think about this:
Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
But Jesus knew their evil motives.
"You hypocrites!" he said.
"Why are you trying to trap me?
Here, show me the coin used for the tax."
When they handed him a Roman coin,
he asked, "Whose picture and title are
stamped on it?"
"Caesar's," they replied.
"Well, then," he said, 
"give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar,
and give to God what belongs to God."'

—(Un)Holy Bible, 
New Testament, 
Matthew 22:17–21

It is the same powers

that coin and tax—

we cannot have

one without

the other.

 (4)

Money has trust

in its favour,

unlike ideals.

(5) 

Almost everything under the sun

can be given a sexual reading.

This is the source in fact 

of many a joke.

(6) 

Let us not underestimate the relative

reliability and permanence to life

modern technological conditions afford us,

including as compared to the moods 

and vagaries of humans themselves.

(7) 

It is clear today that the social game of

networks, connections, and alliances

is heavily tied in with money and power,

including the very possibilities of

employment and earning a living,

as evidenced by the ubiquitous

expression, 'it's not what you know,

but who you know that matters.'

(8) 

One of the charms of learning foreign languages

as an adult is that it enables one to relive a second

childhood as it were of word acquisition, in so far

as we will proceed from basic words to more conceptual ones,

and from simple constructions to more complex ones. 

(9) 

Collusions between the elite and the mob to

police thought do not bode well for philosophers
who, in any case, are a tiny minority 

at the best of times,
and have been subject, historically, 
to waves of persecution, depending
on the (lack of) quality of 

the consciousness 

of their time.

Power as combining pathology at the top
and at the bottom was subtly highlighted
by director Stanley Kubrick in his film
A Clockwork Orange,
as indicated by the film 

analyst Rob Ager.

[Van Gogh's Prisoners Exercising]

[Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange]

(10) 

If philosophy is the friendship of wisdom,

and wisdom is the application of understanding, then

philosophy is the friendship of applied understanding.

(11) 

Books that offer recipes for success,

as conventionally understood,

tend to sell better than books offering

the long road to wisdom.

(12) 

To know oneself
is most of all to grasp
the relation of the 'I' to the 'me',
one that I have called 'conscience',
the perceiving of perception
and the knowledge of knowing,
which is to say: apperception.

(13) 

'Life as the yield of life.—
No matter how far a man may extend himself
with his knowledge, no matter how objectively he
may come to view himself, in the end it can yield 

to him nothing but his own biography.'

—Friedrich Nietzsche,
Human, All Too Human—A Book for Free Spirits,
Volume I, 9. Man Alone with Himself, §.513

Bio-graphy is indeed, 

etymologically speaking,
the writing of life.

(14) 

Not existence but co-existence 

is what makes life tricky,

due to the fact that 

'it is hard to be good'

(χαλεπὸν ἐσθλὸν ἔμμεναι)

and that 'the majority are bad'

(οἱ πλεῖστοι κακοί)—

as two ancient

statements put it.

(15) 

The rule of the economic (οἰκονομική)

over the entire spectrum of society

can only serve to erode the political (πολιτικά),

because the latter demands a public space for

the freedom of speech and deed among equals

that is not that of the οἶκος, the household,

which belongs to the private sphere of necessity.

(16) 

Negative interactions with close ones can sometimes

outweigh many months of good interactions with them, 

depending on the intensity of the disagreement,

because when one is pained from hurt,

one seeks a cause and someone to blame, 

whereas the neutral and jolly is taken for what 

it is and requires no confrontation.

(17) 

Both statism and capitalism are religions.

In fact, they are cults in so far as one cannot

readily escape either without coming a cropper,

all the more so that they feed into each other

as mutually reinforcing forces where

the former, statecraft, can be viewed as the 

death-pledge to careless security, and the latter, 

capital, as the mort-gage with numbered money.

(18) 

The confession by Patrick Bateman in American Psycho,

one that ultimately, in his own words, 'meant nothing', 
showcases a certain self-transparency on his part that is

indicating of a grain of integrity, at least in so far as he does 

admit to his true apathic nature, both to us the viewing

audience at the beginning and to his own lawyer at the end.

Piano 80: The Beatles—With A Little Help From My Friends

ScruffyOwlet · 80: The Beatles—With A Little Help From My Friends

Piano 79: The Beatles—Hey Jude

ScruffyOwlet · 79: The Beatles—Hey Jude

Thought 603: A Note on Mulholland Drive

COWBOY

A man's attitude... 
a man's attitude goes some ways 

toward how a man's life will be. 
Is that something you agree with?

ADAM

Sure.

COWBOY

Now... 

did you answer cause you thought 
that's what I wanted to hear 
or did you think about what I said 
and answer cause you truly 

believe that to be right?

ADAM

I agree with 

what you said... 

truly.

COWBOY

What did I say?

ADAM

That a man's attitude 

determines to a 
large extent how 

his life will be.

COWBOY

So since you agree 

I guess you could be a 
person who does not 

care about the good life.

ADAM

How's that?

COWBOY

Well, just stop for a little 

second and think about it. 
Will ya do that for me?

ADAM

Okay, I'm thinking.

COWBOY

No. You're too busy being 

a smart aleck to be thinkin'. 
Now I want you to think and 

quit bein' such a smart aleck. 
Can you do that for me?

ADAM

Look... Where's this going? 
What do you want me to do?

COWBOY

There's sometimes a buggy. 
How many drivers 

does a buggy have?

ADAM

One.

COWBOY

So let's just say I'm driving this buggy 
and you fix your attitude and 

you can ride along with me.

***

The Cowboy can be 

read as being David Lynch 

telling the audience in the

form of the smart-aleck 

director Adam to fix their

attitude as to the film 

and to ride with 

the buggy-driver,

the Director, on the

journey of Mulholland

Drive.

Thought 602: Nature & Nurture

It is nature

that determines

nurture.

Thought 601: Medication v Medicine

Medication that treats symptoms is lucrative,

unlike medicine that cures causes.

Piano 78: Revisited—Virtual Insanity

ScruffyOwlet · 78: Revisited—Virtual Insanity