Favorite Epictetus moment

from Epictetus Encheiridion, #51

How long do you put off thinking yourself worthy of the best things . . . ? You have received the philosophical propositions that you ought to agree to and you have agreed to them. Then what sort of teacher are you still waiting for, that you put off improving yourself until he comes?

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I did not know that

In his lectures on metaphysics, Adorno writes:

Even the categories of male and female are distinguished according to the same dualism by Aristotle, all the higher, form-giving categories being equated with the male -- as was only too evident in a patriarchal society -- and the merely material and existent with the female. No doubt you will have endured a learned school-teacher telling you that the roots of mater and materia are related, and you will recall the ensuing howl of triumph -- that, too, is an echo from Aristotle's Metaphysics. (p. 78)

I never endured learning this from a learned school-teacher. The devolution of philosophy in our lives is measured by the progressive disappearance of even philosophic pedantry and charlatanism.

hacia la multitud

Because it seems the thing to do (plenty more here), and having been a little more critical over on Posthegemony, a snippet from Pablo Neruda, specifically (almost) the end of his monumental Canto General:

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la rochefoucauld favorites

22
Philosophy triumphs easily over past, and over future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.

26
Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily

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rev tim haggard: music saturday

A song I listened to recently put me in mind of Reverend Tim Haggard's situation.

The song is by the band 'Garbage.'

The title of the song is "Sex is not the enemy"

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ASSI, BILLIORAY, FERRAT, BABICK, Edouard MOREAU, C. DUPONT, VARLIN, BOURSIER, MORTIER, GOUHIER, LAVALETTE, Fr. JOURDE, ROUSSEAU, Ch. LULLIER, BLANCHET, J. GROLLARD, BARROUD, H. GERESME, FABRE, POUGERET.

As a footnote to yesterday's contribution to the Being and Event Reading Group of The Weblog, a translation of a short passage from Alain Badiou's La Commune de Paris: Une déclaration politique sur la politique:

Everything depends, therefore, on the consequences. But let us note that there is no transcendental consequence more powerful than the appearance of something that did not exist. That is how the day March 18, 1871 places in the center of a political turmoil a collection of unknown workers, unrecognized even by the specialists of the revolution, by those old "forty-eighters" that will unfortunately hinder the Commune with their ineffective disputes about words. Let us return to the first proclamation of March 19 by the Central Committee, the organism directly responsible for the insurrection of the eighteenth. "May Paris and France together lay down the foundation for a republic acclaimed in all ways, the only government that will forever close the era of invasions and civil wars." Who signs this political declaration without precedent? Twenty people, three-quarters of whom belong to the proletarians defined and constituted solely by circumstance. The newspaper of the government has every reason to ask: "Who are the members of this Committee? Are they communists, bonapartists or Prussians?" Here the unshakeable motive of the "foreign agents" can already be seen. In reality the result of the event is that for the first time the inexistent workers are carried into a temporarily maximal, political existence.

Love

'Passivity is anything but resignation. I'm speaking of an almost ontological passivity, one that changes your being in a practice that depends on an absolute elsewhere. It is striking that Campos lays out this passivity - creative as well as corrosive - under the emblems of femininity. Over time, I have come to notice that women attune themselves more profoundly to this uprooting abandonment, just as, inversely, they are drier and more obstinate when it comes to caution and conservatism. The feminine, when it ceases to be the domestic organisation of security and fear, goes furthest in the termination of all cowardice. For this reason, I would like to spare a thought for Ulrike Meinhof, a German revolutionary of the Red Army Faction, 'suicided' in her cell. And also for Nathalie Ménigon, a French revolutionary of the group Actione Directe, currently rotting away in our national prisons. Say what you will, these women had 'the passion of the illegal joined to the ferocious'.' - Alain Badiou, 'Seven Variations' from The Century, 2005.

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Paxless in Americana

It's a match made in heaven.  One wonders if they know each other?  A commenter on the latter, one "Big Billy" asks a good question:

What if a pair of opposing hypocrits (where one says one thing and doesw [sic] the other, and the other says the other and does the one thing) team up? As a human, I find it impossible to constantly avoid hypocrasy [sic], so why not pair up and embrace out hypocritical natures, and then we can really progress, right? My partner will do my work for me while I do his work for him. We will both get our jobs done while approaching more exagerated extremes.
But then again, we're probably better off if you just call me an idiot too.

In this our quest, for the ultimate blog brevity I then leave it to you, dear eater, to draw your own excursions.  For it is a black and white world, with the Author sitting f'evern top (ever'n especially whilst claiming the bottom!) and we was only ever kiddin', once Hugh challenged e to a duel. 

A duel, e says!  At dawn, no less.  E dunno, somehow "be offended, but say so" just don't 'ave the same ring to it.    An' sometimes it be da fools who call idiots, "idiots" best.

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