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Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Mind Spider*

Filed under: General — Tags: Mind Spider — m759 @ 2:29 pm

On a conference at the New School for Social Research on Friday and Saturday, December 3rd and 4th, 2010—

"This conference is part of the early stages in the formation of a lexicon of political concepts. It will be the 5th in a series of conferences started in Tel Aviv University. The project is guided by one formal principle: we pose the Socratic question "what is x?", and by one theatrical principle: the concepts defined should be relevant to political thought…."

[The conference is not unrelated to the New York Times philosophy series "The Stone." Connoisseurs of coincidence— or, as Pynchon would have it, "chums of chance"— may read the conclusion of this series, titled "Stoned," in the light of the death on December 26th (St. Stephen's Day) of Matthew Lipman, creator of the "philosophy for children" movement. Many New York Times readers will, of course, be ignorant of the death by stoning of St. Stephen

Beloit College Nuremberg Chronicle

commemorated on December 26th. They should study Acts of the Apostles— Chapter 6 and Chapter 7.]

Meanwhile, in this journal—

Click to enlarge

For some background on the Dec. 4th link to "Damnation Morning," see "Why Me?"

For some political background, see "Bright Star"+"Dark Lady" in this journal.

* The title refers to a story by Fritz Leiber.

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Endings and Beginnings

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:07 am

"Not any or every death is an end, or birth a beginning."

— J. M. Bernstein, The Philosophy of the Novel

Some related philosophy in a novel —

For some background, see "New School for Social Research" and "Orozco" in this journal.

See also the brief biography of Bernstein in a document about a meeting last month
in the Orozco Room at the New School.

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Monday, October 4, 2010

Stone Junction

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:29 am

Continued from May 18, 2010.

Previous logo for the New York Times feature "The Stone"—

Today's new logo, appearing retroactively—

Comparison—

From the October 3 "The Stone," Hegel on Wall Street—

The “Phenomenology” is a philosophical portrait gallery that presents depictions, one after another, of different, fundamental ways in which individuals and societies have understood themselves. Each self-understanding has two parts: an account of how a particular kind of self understands itself and, then, an account of the world that the self considers its natural counterpart. Hegel narrates how each formation of self and world collapses because of a mismatch between self-conception and how that self conceives of the larger world. Hegel thinks we can see how history has been driven by misshapen forms of life in which the self-understanding of agents and the worldly practices they participate in fail to correspond. With great drama, he claims that his narrative is a “highway of despair.”

— J.M. Bernstein of the New School for Social Research

A two-part self-understanding that is not from Hegel—

1. An account of how a particular kind of self understands itself:

… world’s wildfire, leave but ash:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

2. An account of the world that the self considers its natural counterpart:

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-
built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.
Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches,
Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.
Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ' ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare
Of yestertempest’s creases; in pool and rut peel parches
Squandering ooze to squeezed ' dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches
Squadroned masks and manmarks ' treadmire toil there
Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, ' nature’s bonfire burns on.