Monthly Archives: June 2012

(sketch of historicist paradox)

“Every philosophy is the philosophy of its own day… thus it can find satisfaction only for the interests belonging to its own particular time,” “philosophy… is its own time grasped in thought” (Hegel)

bounded particularity is universal

a uniquely determinative objective of a philosophy adequate to our particular time

to understand philosophy as always and everywhere in principle the same quest for timeless and universal truth (Strauss)

what is always most modern is modernity’s own obsolescence, the having arrived at a non-existent destination (the time-boundedness of thought negates thought as thought, producing time)

Posted in notes, Philosophy Tagged with: ,

a political theology analogy

libertarianism : liberalism :: Judaism : Christianity

Posted in notes, Politics, Religion

the meaning of the meaningless campaign

Whether the eventual measures taken come from the nominal left or nominal right may be less important than the order in which the major externalities of financialized neo-liberalism de-externalize. The first decade of the 21st Century can probably be taken as a first draft for augmentation under identified emergency conditions of central power, outside of elections, but with broad popular and bi-partisan support.

Posted in Politics Tagged with: , ,

Unger’s meaningless betrayal

Unger still wants to answer the young Marx’s call upon philosophers not just to understand the world, but to change it. Wills wants to walk the same path that Unger, with impressive clarity, has marked out – for instance in the six minutes of the YouTube that few even of the mediating intellectuals will consider – but Wills wants to walk it more slowly and carefully, lest America take a detour into Rick Perry’s Texas, perhaps never to emerge, perhaps to dwell there needlessly long at needless cost. The President… has appointments.

Posted in Featured, Philosophy, Politics Tagged with: , ,

More on Breaking Bad: Setting up S5 and vs. House

Looking forward to Breaking Bad Season 5, I realize that one main reason to be a bigger fan of BB than of the well-regarded House is if, like me, you know you’re a loser – which means “in the wrong from the perspective of a wrong world.”

Posted in TV Tagged with: ,

You act like you never saw a severed human head on a tortoise before

…been catching up on all the Seasons 2 – 3 Breaking Bad I missed. Doing a whole season this way has a lot to recommend it over sitting through a season episode by episode, week by week.

Posted in TV

from good to goods, and the return of questions

“A Clash of Models” by James K – latest posting in the League of Ordinary Gentlemen’s virtual symposium under the question “What, if anything, is wrong with inequality?” – resembles previous submissions in that it seems to assume that something called “productivity” is virtually synonymous with “the good,” and furthermore is susceptible to simple quantitative amplification or augmentation – i.e., the more of it the better.

Posted in Economics, Internet, Philosophy Tagged with: , ,

Citizenship Annihilated

The Citizens United decision and its application joining together and heightening disgust with and alienation from multiple central institutions of republican democracy – Supreme Court, the “free” media, popular elections – with some prospect of contaminating the entire political-ideological superstructure < -> triumph of our self-consciously most ardent patriots.

Posted in notes, Politics Tagged with: , , , ,

The Figure of Mitt

All successful politicians must by definition adapt to the system which in its pure form – something to be feared – is the system of empty opportunism (we hold empty opportunism to be self-evident). The figure of Mitt represents its nothingness exquisitely, but the meaningfulness of its meaninglessness would have at least as much to do with us and where we are with poor rich Mitt.

Posted in Internet, notes, Politics, US History Tagged with: , , ,

The Mediocracy vs. Leo Strauss

Expressed as mere opinion, as mediocritism strongly asserted, what Strauss or any honest human being has to say about certain not-possibly-true possible truths may become effectively indistinguishable from the views of cranks, lunatics, provocateurs, and traitors. To approach such not-possibly-true possible truths at all may mean asking to be counted a Nazi, for example – or even, if not worse than as a clearer and more nearly present danger, a “neo-conservative.”

Posted in Featured, Internet, Philosophy, Politics Tagged with: , , ,