If I can struggle against a fit of depression,in the name of what vitality can I oppose an obsessionwhich belongs to me, which precedes me? In good health, I take the path I prefer;“sick,” it is no longer I who decide: it is my disease.For the obsessed, no choice:their obsession has already opted for…
Theoryis a primary,primordial decision,which determines what counts and what does not –what is or should be,and what does not matter. As a highly selective narration,it cuts a clearing of differentiationthrough untrodden terrain. — The Agony of Eros by Byung-Chul Han Ahh, theory is the crux of the matter is it not !? The prime…
You’ve got to be kidding. Not more on religion… But I have to — because I am not finished. There is much at stake. To risk overstating the matter, — “the survival of humanity!” At least that is how it seems from my vantage point. I know that I am the least likely in…
“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’ I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!” —…
When modes of expression are worn out art tends toward non-sense, toward a private and incommunicable universe. An intelligible shudder, whether in painting, in music, or in poetry, strikes us, and rightly, as vulgar or out-of-date. The public will soon disappear; art will follow shortly. A civilization which began with the cathedrals has to…
A friend sent me an article by David Brooks, published in the September issue of The Atlantic, How the Bobos Broke America Brooks uses his incisive analytical skills, a deft facility with language to outline the rise of the Creative Class to the apex of the pecking order of American influence, and a rising simmer…
I discovered another writer. Or did the work of Emil Cioran discovered me? There is the old saying, “when the student is ready, the teacher will come.” E. M. Cioran was born Romanian. He left for Paris in the late 1930s. I purchased his second book published in French, entitled, All Gall Is Divided. …
Uncultured mansees in conscience, in reason,so far as he recognizes it as his ownno universal objective power; therefore he must separate from himselfthat which gives him moral laws,and place it in opposition to himself,as a distinct personal being. Belief in revelationis a childlike belief,and is only respectable as long asit is childlike. — excerpt,…
“‘Now if love is always for this,’ she proceeded, ‘what is the method of those who pursue it, and what is the behavior whose eagerness and straining are to be termed love? What actually is this effort? Can you tell me?’ “‘Ah, Diotima,’ I said; ‘in that case I should hardly be admiring you…
In that great fatality called Christianity, Plato represents that ambiguity and fascination, called an “ideal,” which made it possible for the nobler spirits of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to set foot on the bridge leading to the ‘Cross’… And how much Plato there still is in the concept “church,” in the construction, system,…
