tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6907693919565256102023-11-16T02:46:21.255-05:00Genetic Method"Eternity is in love with the productions of time" --W.B.Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-33873376477018837842016-06-01T13:39:00.000-04:002016-06-01T13:39:42.015-04:00Unlike Augustine ...
Unlike Augustine, I have no caritas (sometimes translated as love)
to recommend, especially not of the non-corporeal things which I do admit exist, albeit in no fashion
like that of corporeal things. For
Augustine to love what is his ownmost,
if you will, is not an activity like loving the work of Shakespeare or Hölderlin.
Augustine is disingenuous, I say,
because once he realized Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-22495283331524265912016-05-24T10:15:00.002-04:002016-05-24T10:15:49.337-04:00If humans are designed for knowing, then ...
Aristotle says that man by nature
desires to know. Like all Aristotelian
claims, this one is wrapped up in a view of nature at large. For Aristotle one of the primary features of
nature is that it is teleological—it is directed towards an end. This doesn’t mean, like a car, that it its
wheels are pointed in a specific direction and will go that way—but that, to
use this Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-22080093799419118932016-05-12T10:12:00.000-04:002016-05-12T10:12:48.177-04:00Light and realityThe object has two deceptive images, counterposed. First, the object is seen from above and is a circle with a whole in the center. Second, the object is seen from in front and is a square that is solid. A circle and a square cannot be one another, but both are true.
Yet in a third image we see the unity of the two images, because we can see that a cylinder sits before us which looks like Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-77883818873399923072016-05-12T10:11:00.003-04:002016-06-01T13:40:29.572-04:00On the non-existence of reflection
In an NYRB essay on former intelligence czar Michael Hayden’s new memoir,
the author notes a curious moment where Hayden describes the interaction of
intelligence figures across borders who meet and talk shop. In this tête-a-tête
occasionally a moment emerges that Hayden calls a “creation mythology,” in
which his counterpart would make a comment passed off as fact that expresses a
non-critical Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-29808954259771642792016-05-11T10:59:00.002-04:002016-05-12T10:13:25.433-04:00Confessions, Redux
More than a thousand years have passed since Augustine—now
known by the name Saint—started
composing his famous Confessions. Augustine senses a profound interiority, a deep memory in which he finds what
constituted him. He calls this
interiority God. The dream of deep interiority is not disconnected from the
violence on the streets of Baltimore. Is
it paid for by black bodies, Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-87785148357033082812016-05-10T09:58:00.002-04:002016-05-10T09:58:48.574-04:00Reflections
Let’s watch “Battlestar Galactica” or “Star Wars” together
and immediately we are met with an image that denies humanity, for humanity did
not evolve, but has existed forever. “A long time ago in a galaxy far away.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]-->
Instead it has suffered tremendous turns of fate. These are Christian concepts no doubt. Can we both accept the evidence of Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-58285180571568896362015-01-27T23:02:00.000-05:002015-01-27T23:04:28.465-05:00Adriel Trott on Friendship (Part Two)In my last post on friendship, I responded to my friend Ashley Vaught's questions about the role of proximity in friendship in Aristotle. I consider some questions there about whether virtue friendship is possible when we are still on the way to becoming completely virtuous. I was left wondering how we can ever become virtuous if we need friends to become virtuous but we can't be virtue Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-51052246103067916062015-01-15T15:25:00.001-05:002015-01-15T15:25:25.713-05:00Watching "Fargo" and thinking about David Denby's accusationThe other day I went to the agora, where I met a man (David Denby) peddling strange notions. He looked into my soul and said, "A____, you are a deep believer in the force of the Coen, but this means at heart you are a misanthrope. You are not laughing with, but at."
When I think misanthropy, I think Farrelly brothers films, for crude examples, or films by Todd Solondz and Neil LaBute, for more Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-65694654599329443402015-01-15T14:53:00.000-05:002015-01-15T15:30:06.356-05:00Original questions from an email to Adriel Trott, prompting her responseAdriel,
thanks for answering my texts the other night. I reckoned that I better send you an email rather than text the other things that I was thinking. I also thought you might guest blog on my blog on the issue, if you were interested. I wouldn’t require more than answering these questions off the top of your head, if you wish.
Anyways ...
What do you think about that passage in the NicNot Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-56557904094266781722015-01-15T10:07:00.000-05:002015-01-15T10:07:00.383-05:00Response to Guest Blogger, Adriel Trott, on friendship and proximityI am deeply surprised by Adriel’s disinterest in and perhaps doubt about the importance of friendship, as for me it is deeply rooted in the purpose of the Nicomachean Ethics, which is not merely to teach us about virtue, but to inculcate it within us (and this is not to mention the connection between friendship and justice). For Aristotle true or complete friendship is not for the sake of Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-6097895670827397102015-01-14T10:14:00.000-05:002015-01-14T10:16:30.341-05:00Are the Coen brothers' films misanthropic?David Denby makes this claim, first, I think, in a New Yorker blurb published after No Country for Old Men was released (I read it in his book Do the Movies Have a Future?, which I would recommend, but not as much as David Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film, which I highly, highly esteem). He says, this is the first film in which the Coens tell the straight story, so to speak, Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-15318980083659796832015-01-12T11:37:00.001-05:002015-01-12T11:37:53.367-05:00Guest blogger, Adriel Trott: "My friends, there are no friends." My friend Ashley Vaught sent me a long inquisitive email about teaching Aristotle on friendship. Let me just say to start that I really don't like thinking about, writing about or teaching Aristotle on friendship. When I teach the Nicomachean Ethics, I rarely teach the friendship bits. I have always wondered what the philosophical point was. And as someone interested in how political life Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-4690758303297728662014-12-15T12:43:00.000-05:002015-01-12T11:39:27.131-05:00Fight Club: can heterosexual homoeroticism be homophobic?The more I think about the conclusion at the end of my last post, the more it seems to me that FC is homophobic, whereas I was initially just trying to say that it was homoerotic. To reiterate, it is homoerotic because of the way in cherishes, even idealizes, male-male relationships, particularly in the experience of the physical struggles of fighting. Moreover, the visual presence of TylerNot Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-10423622339066782392014-12-14T11:32:00.003-05:002014-12-14T12:15:39.586-05:00Is Fight Club depressing?
FYI: this is not a polished or even especially organized piece of writing, but develops in response to a Facebook conversation. Second, I'm talking about the movie, not the book (I don't have time for crap like the latter).
As friends have pointed out, David
Fincher’s dark aesthetic sensibility seems to encourage this conclusion, but I
have to say I do not know why. INot Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-32907607793674789822014-11-27T18:40:00.000-05:002014-11-27T18:42:54.406-05:00McCulloch has proven that Wilson must be indicted (among other things)
St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch appears to
have gone out of his way to achieve justice, in his presentation of evidence to
a grand jury to indict Officer Darren Wilson on the charge of the murder of
Michael Brown. But only the appearance
of justice has been done, and a new grand jury must be convened immediately
with a different prosecutor presenting evidence.
Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-76309843744328064402014-10-27T08:13:00.000-04:002014-10-27T08:13:00.579-04:00Hiroshima Mon Amour, Part 5
Fifth, memory is forgetting. We must do justice to the past, to the horror of the catastrophe of Hiroshima, through remembering it. We cannot forget Hiroshima. But the horrible yet beautiful thing about Hiroshima, she remarks, is that Hiroshima will happen again. Life returns to Hiroshima, reconstruction must take place. The love lost in Hiroshima, for the sake of Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-47707777872109899742014-10-26T08:10:00.000-04:002014-10-26T08:10:00.272-04:00Hiroshima Mon Amour, Part 4
Fourth, “Hiroshima, mon amour” concerns the problem of anonymous memories. Because memories are the remainders of our experience, the idea of an anonymous memory is counterintuitive. How can what I experienced become anything other than mine? Images are representations separated from the truth and from life. Does not this separation imply an impersonality, if I am my Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-48254433436958516742014-10-25T08:05:00.000-04:002014-10-25T08:05:00.075-04:00Hiroshima Mon Amour, Part 3
By now, the third problem of “Hiroshima, mon amour” should be obvious, namely, the timelessness of these memories. Nevers and Hiroshima are memories which are invoked, we might presume, in the present narrative of two lovers about to be separated. Nevers and Hiroshima are the past and the film unfolds in the present—the future foretells their separation. But this film disrupts Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-86783247026661258322014-10-24T07:59:00.000-04:002014-10-24T07:59:00.046-04:00Hiroshima Mon Amour, Part 2
The second half of the film relieves us of these troubling reflections and engorges our ludic desires for a narrative in which we can forget ourselves (but now we have simply become the body which is the film). In the second part of the film we see her recall her “own” memories, memories of love and madness and as such invokes the second of the five problems which “Hiroshima, mon amour” Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-80545697383078973292014-10-23T07:57:00.000-04:002014-10-23T07:57:06.480-04:00Hiroshima Mon Amour, Part 1
“Hiroshima, mon amour” begins with images of bodies and this visual metaphor will serve as an anchoring theme throughout. These embracing bodies are slowly being covered with ash. They grow less and less discrete, almost indistinguishable as bodies. The skin does not melt or burn with the accumulation of ashes; rather, ironically, it begins to sparkle, almost becoming beautiful. Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-29891572718348009042014-09-18T08:46:00.000-04:002014-09-18T09:56:56.999-04:00Football, the NCAA and the NFL be damned!
No, it’s not good news.
This was the response I wanted to give to the woman at the counter who commented, upon seeing the Penn State mug that I was carrying (my wife’s in fact, because mine was in the dishwasher at home), “good news about Penn State, eh?”
She was referring to the early end of the suspension of the Penn State football program from participating in the post-season. This was Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-46997795114159332552014-03-21T18:22:00.000-04:002014-03-21T18:22:06.820-04:00Humans out of nature?Quick answers to the question, how does human being emerge from the state of nature for Rousseau.1. Society, language and reason are concomitant activities/states, mutually conditioning and enabling. This means that in society (by which I mean simply human cohabitation) humans have need of language, and without this need they would not develop it. Without language humans could not develop Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-85762830045564532372013-03-22T14:33:00.000-04:002013-04-21T00:10:54.813-04:00Zombie allure
What is so exciting about Rob Zombie? I cannot explain the natural quickening of my heartbeat when I hear the name and think "More Human than Human ... House of 1000 Corpses ... Halloween [revisited] ... Halloween II [revisited, leider]". Ha. Ha. Har-dee har har.
But seriously, why are zombie films in television in such persistent circulation these days? The same could be asked of the Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-28657469914146167932013-03-17T14:33:00.001-04:002013-03-17T14:33:33.703-04:00"Cutter's Way" (1981), or What is Noir?<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-690769391956525610.post-15756284551380605952012-12-16T11:13:00.002-05:002012-12-16T11:16:49.482-05:00Incomplete: Reading log: David Mitchell's _Cloud Atlas_I am proud to say that, despite my failure to make headway in Heilbron's biography of Galileo (the first 50-some pages of so I've found quite interesting in fact), I am 47% of the way through David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (according to Kindle's wonky pagination--that is a total peeve of mine, but don't get me started).
I read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet earlier Not Chethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10273786971120329655noreply@blogger.com0