Category: History of Ideas

Leopardi and pessimism

 

Leopardi, wondering if he left the TV on....
Leopardi, wondering if he left the TV on….

 

Giacomo Leopardi is one of the greatest secrets of 19th century poetry. Despite being heralded by luminaries like Schopenhauer1 and Nietzsche, his fame remains scattered in Europe and hardly extends to the American hemisphere. Leopardi’s Zibaldone di pensieri2 was read by every school kid but they barely cracked open his Operette Morali.3 The likely culprit is an irredeemable pessimism that was too difficult for interpreters to connect it to contemporary issues. Leopardi wrote mostly moral essays, parables, fables, and dialogues – painting life as a joke of the gods – a darkly comic view of world and its inhabitants. However, instead of leaving the reader sad and pathetic, they are actually funny.  Continue reading Leopardi and pessimism

Leibniz & God

In his philosophical system, Leibniz tried to juggle God and the monads. He claimed that monads are both eternal & indestructible, yet also with the same breath, he claimed that God is capable of creating them or destroying them in a jiffy. Monads are supposedly free, which is a must for all substances, but not so in God’s eyes.

Now, just exactly what is God in this system of monadology? Is God a monad Himself? Leibniz only goes far enough to assert that God is the “monad of monads.” Interesting, isn’t it?

If God isn’t a monad, then that would explain for God’s existence before he “flashes” the monads into existence. However, that means monads exist, and consists of properties only in virtue of the properties of this flashing, non-monadic entity. Then if monads depends on another entity, then they are not substances. The definition of substance is something that does not depend on anything else to be what it is. If monads depends on God, then they are only “modes” of a substance. If God is the only entity that does not depend on anything else to be what it is, then God is the only substance.

Hegel observed this: “There is a contradiction present. If the monad of monads, God, is the absolute substance, and individual monads are created through his will, their substantiality comes to an end.”  (Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3rd section)

If God is not a monad, then Leibniz is basically a Spinozist. :doh:

On the other hand, let’s say the “monad of monads” is a monad. However, if God is a monad, then by definition he cannot interact with other monads, or he would determine their essence, and/or they, his. At best, God as monad may be involved with his creation only virtually, which is the pre-established harmony Leibniz often writes about. Thus, if God acts through this pre-established harmony, then he could not have created that either. FWIW, whatever God does, it follows with absolute, logical necessity from his monadic essence. The idea that God will “create” this universe is already contained within the concept of God, much like “got shot in Dallas” is a necessary predicate of “JFK.” Given the hypothesis that to choose one monad is to choose the entire universe, then therefore, once God exists, then the universe such as it is, exists with utter necessity. God could not have had a choice about anything – except like JFK, he is ignorant of his true nature.

Bottom line: if God is a monad, then he isn’t God, but someone like us. If God is a monad, then Leibniz was an atheist. :eek3:

Pantheon and Christ

I have been thinking about the best or most appropriate way to tackle the relationship between Christ and the gods of Pantheon, and recently I came across a potential approach in Sloterdijk’s “Cabinet of Cynics” chapter from Critique of Cynical Reason where he goes through the five embodiment of cynicism through history. The first suspect is none other than Diogenes, who embodied the low theory version in his decided opposition to the all-too serious discourse of Socrates & Plato. Kynicism was based on the animal nature of man, where the gestures of the body were framed as arguments (farting or shitting or whacking off in public). In other words Diogenes poked fun at his grave opponents, but instead of talking against such idealism, he lived in opposition in an anti-theoretical, anti-dogmatic and anti-scholastic way. Continue reading Pantheon and Christ

Master Vice: Hypocrisy

In this blog I will analyze how hypocrisy is a master vice that includes three of the new seven deadly vices – humility, self-deception and prudery.

Hypocrisy is the respect vice pays virtue. – La Rochefoucauld

Hypocrisy is essentially an action where one pretends to hold clear and recognized set of values or attitudes but actually doesn’t. Despite choosing vice, the hypocrite understands that virtue is superior and assumes its facade. Therefore, the hypocrite is not being dishonest about good or evil, but rather himself. Continue reading Master Vice: Hypocrisy

Dialogue of Kings: a clash of moralities

Left to right: Archer, Saber & Rider

I have been enjoying the ongoing Japanese anime Fate/Zero, & episode 11 consists of a dialogue between three legendary kings who expressed philosophical differences about ruling. The interlocutors are Saber (King Arthur), Rider (Alexander the Great) and Archer (Gilgamesh), but the most interesting aspect was the diametrically opposite approach between Arthur and Alexander regarding how to rule. It was fascinating enough to inspire a lengthy rant on morality, Nietzsche, and representation. Continue reading Dialogue of Kings: a clash of moralities

On reviving the carcass of philosophy

The following are collected tweets (@thanatology) I’ve made in the past month about posthumanism, or reviving the carrion of philosophy:

Once the window to a frozen thanatosphere opens, thought becomes razor sharp enough to slice through the rotting corpse of anthropocentrism.


And the slimy pus of the absolute seeps out and clot into new-old ideas: a heretical Derrideanism that continually savages itself

 is a decadent form of post-Socratic felo-de-se that faces biological contingency w its own blind eyes a Corpse w/o Organs?

Freed from miserly enforcement of rule-bound metaphysical dilemmas, we are stoned by the fumes rising from a chaotic sea of virtualities.

Cynically supercharged w obscene desire for death, we, slaves to cruel directives of base materialism, bottom out in a dark zone of thought — once we see thru the deceptions of life Ego owns up to its pathology, embarrassed with its Macbeth dagger that drips the Earth’s black blood. 

Agitprops of phenomenology, in resurrecting consciousness, merely plunge themselves deeper into the quicksand of their coprophilic narcissism.

Today’s thinkers are mere maggots feeding on the carcass of Brobdingnagians, whose feces will join the deep undercurrent of chthonic thought. 

Crawling out from the bubbling orifice of its decomposing tomb, posthuman thought performs an autophagous Aufhebung as  cannibalism.

A perverse slave of its own meaninglessness, Posthuman Thought gnaws at the root of the Yggdrasil of its own fatuous jurisdiction.

Today our amputated Reason continues to goose-step around calcifying totems of half-baked ideologies, either out of perversity or mockery. 
Vaguely, the subject will re-cohere in the void pried open by the expulsion of Nature out of its hearth, due to revitalized post-idealism.After sprinkling black salt on the wounds of theology, sliced by universal contingency, thought painfully realizes the anorexia of meaning.

Posthuman thought adjusts its peripatetic trail among the gravestones of exhausted theologies in the misty light of the Polaris of nihilism.

Bizarre avatars will usher in new techniques of thought, sporadically evolving fetid rhizomes & decaying yet again in a farcical cycle.Inciting catastrophic predictions, opening a space for self-destructive ideological scrutiny & directing thanatocratic methods, philosophy ends up as a mere choreography of furious, demented & recurring political sequences.

Being & Time: Introduction (part II)

(for part I go here)

Knee-deep into ontological shit
I feel there’s plenty to mine from the first part of the introduction. :yup: On p. 16, Heidegger says that Dasein has a number of positions:

  • Ontic: the special position is ontic, in which existence determines this being in its being.
  • Ontological: Dasein is itself ontological, based on its existence. Dasein is the ontic-ontological condition of all ontology.
  • Dasein is ontologically primary being that precedes all Being that is the object of inquiry (or questioning).

Yeah, so? This piece is actually quite thought-provoking. That is, if you can handle the number of beings and ontologies and onticalities and existences… :roll: Continue reading Being & Time: Introduction (part II)

A vote for retromodernism

I came across this fascinating article on salon.com about the corrupting influence of nostalgia on contemporary culture. The argument of so-called Generation Void is that retro-zeitgeist nostalgia has mutated to the point that there’s no longer any original work anymore. Continue reading A vote for retromodernism

Next stop: Durkheim & anthropology

In a previous blog All Roads Lead to Ferdinand, I discussed Saussure as an opening of a new paradigm in the human sciences. Today, up at bat is Emile Durkheim, one of the founding fathers of the French social anthropology, who had a revolutionary insight that complements Saussure’s in linguistics. Continue reading Next stop: Durkheim & anthropology