Whoever fights with monstersshould see to itthat he does notbecome onehimself. And when you starefor a long time into an abyss,the abyssstares backinto you. Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Judith Butler, aphorism 146 For many certainly this is the “morning after”. Like the hangover after the all night binge. I…
Today is such summer’s that only a poet could describe by shading language into light. Today promises to be full. I have chores which I find agreeable. This day is my wife’s birthday. She and I have made common cause since we met in our early 20s. Many years are to be celebrated as…
This day, a Tuesday is unsettled with respect to the weather. Also, in truth the unsettled condition is the normal state of things for homo sapiens, for everyone of us, no matter our class, our poverty or our affluence. Education and health or youth or professional success does not eliminate the fact that not…
Monday. Feeling as if this is the first day, the first page of six more to be filled, hour by hour with my life. I am not alone though. Around me are others, working, playing, worrying, exploring, celebrating, and fucking up. All of us, with rare exception know that we are on the cusp…
Yesterday was spent at the Holocaust Museum in Skokie, illinois. The New York Times in a 2021 article lists 21 such museums in the United States. In my better judgment there will never be enough of such places. I am still reeling, trying to grasp the meaning of the images and the artifacts that I…
A new breed of philosophers is approaching. I will risk christening them with a name not lacking in dangers. From what I can guess about them, from what they allow to be guessed (since it is typical of them to want to remain riddles in some respect), these philosophers of the future might have…
It does not matter what philosophical standpoint you might take these days: any way you look at it, the erroneousness of the world we think we live in is the most certain and solid fact that our eyes can still grab hold of. We find reason after reason for it, reasons that might lure…
…a thought comes when “it” wants, and not when “I” want. It is, therefore, a falsification of the facts to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate “think.” It thinks: but to say the “it” is just that famous old “I” – well that is just an assumption or opinion,…
Our highest insights must – and should! – sound like stupidities, or possibly crimes, when they come without permission to people whose ears have no affinity for them and were not predestined for them. …There are heights of the soul from whose vantage point even tragedy stops having tragic effects; and who would dare…
O sancta simplicitas! What a strange simplification and falsification people live in! the wonders never cease, for those who devote their eyes to such wondering. How we have made everything around us so bright and easy and free and simple! How we have given our senses a carte blanche for everything superficial, given our…
