What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms — in short, a sum of human relations, which become poetically and rhetorically intensified, transposed, and embellished, and which after long use seem firm, canonic, and binding to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that they are illusions;…
In some remote corner of the universe, effused into innumerable solar-systems, there was once a star upon which clever animals invented cognition. It was the haughtiest, most mendacious moment in the history of this world, but yet only a moment. After Nature had taken breath awhile the star congealed and the clever animals had…
A grey, damp day! Yea! I hope to go for a walk this afternoon, an eyes-wide-open walkabout. Daytime temps are around the freezing point for the first time in many days. A mammalian body does not do well in a single digit environment. So, I plan to stroll a while, and enjoy what I…
Blues suffuses from the speakers, and the room is alive with male and female melodic voices. This blends with a spirited tide of conversation coming from the tables, especially the big round table in the corner by the window. Starbucks, Tuesday morning. Today, the side streets are icy and hazardous. Someone mentioned that the…
These days I seldom dream. There have been periods of my life when dreams came often, sometimes with such intensity that when waking, the dream was so vivid, to be as persuasive as my mentally aware life. I remember when my mother died many years ago, sadness descended to ebb and flow for months….
An hour plus was spent reading Nietzsche’s account – the pre-Socratic philosophers struggle, one after another to “explain”, to express to their own satisfaction, the nature of Being. Is Being singular and indivisible? If so does that mean that all that we experience, the multiplicity and the change in every direction is illusion and…
Shearing ice crystals, sound with each step in the predawn gray. The friction of each footfall on this “bitter” morning announces winter’s presence. Friction and heat. Heat in January. Heat as concept, a marker of life remains in my memory. Can you imagine the feel of warmth, to move about in a verdant landscape? …
…[the] awful energy of striving after Certainty, in a mythically thinking and highly emotional –fantastic age is quite remarkable. “Grant me but a certainty, ye gods!” is the prayer of Parmenides, “and be it, in an ocean of Uncertainty, only a board, broad enough to lie on! Everything becoming, everything luxuriant, varied, blossoming, deceiving,…
Late again to Starbucks today. Restless night, waking at 2AM and lying still, waiting for sleep to return. Another session, looking at this screen wondering what to write. Sometimes there is a theme that bears more words, thought and development. But is anything possibly a start over? According to Parmenides everything is apriori inscribed,…
I continue to read Nietzsche’s description of the philosophers who came before Socrates/Plato. Plato is the watershed of the intellectual heritage of the West. Plato, a composer of theatrical drama introduces us to Socrates by his collection of Socratic Dialogues. Socrates is an example, teacher/role model. He instructs by provoking reflection, the exercise of…
