The Jewish War. So fucking good

I did happen to start it before the very latest outrage.

The Münchhausen trilemma is basically what the mathematicians formally proved. As to how that proof relates to itself, uhh...

You know if you demonstrate that the Riemann hypothesis can't be proven or disproven, you've also demonstrated that it must be true. Logic has a sense of humour.

kokorodoko wrote: Fri Sep 29, 2023 2:25 pm(Hegel: The Science of Logic)

"All philosophers we know have expressed—i.e., taught—their ideas either orally, like Socrates, or in written form; otherwise they could not have become known to us. To express thoughts is to teach; but to teach is to demonstrate the truth of that which is taught. This means that demonstrating is not just a relationship of the thinker to himself or of a thought that is imprisoned within itself to itself, but the relationship of the thinker to others. Hence, the forms of demonstration and inference cannot be the forms of reason as such; i.e., forms of an inner act of thought and cognition. They are only forms of communication, modes of expression, representations, conceptions; in short, forms in which thought manifests itself.

The reason why we regard the forms of communication and expression as the basic forms of reason and thought lies in the fact that, in order to raise them to the clarity of consciousness, we present our fundamental thoughts to ourselves in the same way as we present them to another person, that we first teach ourselves these fundamental thoughts which directly spring from our genius for thinking—they come to us we know not how—and which are perhaps innate to our being. In short, the reason lies in the fact that we express and articulate our thoughts in thought itself.

Demonstrating is therefore only the means through which I strip my thought of the form of “mine-ness” so that the other person may recognize it as his own. Demonstrating would be senseless if it were not also communicating.

Hegel, in his presentation, aimed at anticipating and imprisoning the intellect itself and compressing it into the system. The system was supposed to be, as it were, reason itself; all immediate activity was to dissolve itself completely in mediated activity, and the presentation of philosophy was not to presuppose anything, that is, nothing was to be left over in us and nothing within us—a complete emptying of ourselves."


- Ludwig Feuerbach, "Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy" (1839)

Finished Russell Hoban's Turtle Diary. Ambitious but flawed narrative, most everything after the climax was a bit annoying, but I suppose he had to wrap it up somehow, now didn't he?

Finished Jim Harrison's Letters to Yesenin, loved it. Young fatherhood and suicidal ideation, heavy shit done well.

Started the Strugatsky brothers' Hard to Be a God. Hooked from the first pages. Curious how the Aleksei German film I saw some years ago uses or adapts the source material.

Man on Wire, Philippe Petit's book about his tightrope walk between the WTC towers. Wife brought it home to me from her school library.
I find the whole thing fascinating, it is amazing that he and his friends pulled this off.

Watch the documentary, skip the Zemekis film.

Diary of a Nose by Jean-Claude Ellena. I guess it's a diary he kept for a year. It's OK. Has a section with his choice of chemical constituents for many different simple perfume accords, so that's nice.

Simone Weil - Awaiting God. Whatever the new translation is. Not really feeling it

llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Sat Dec 02, 2023 10:28 am Simone Weil - Awaiting God. Whatever the new translation is. Not really feeling it

I dropped her ass!

On to I, Claudius

Finished The Deluge a couple weeks ago, and moved on to Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv. These books just appear in my house.

Sorry to be so lowbrow: Bullet Train