Without Lifting A Finger

But you don't even know your little story ["The Judgement"] yet. It is somewhat wild and meaningless and if it didn't express some inner truth (which can never be universally established, but has to be accepted or denied every time by each reader or listener in turn), it would be nothing. It is also hard to imagine how, being so short (17 typewritten pages), it could have so many faults; and I really don't know what right I have to dedicate to you such a very doubtful creation. But we each give what we can, I the little story with myself as an appendage, you the immense gift of your love. Oh, dearest, how happy I am through you; tears of happiness mingled with the single tear the end of your story brought to my eyes.



Walking (by myself). So photos took the place of conversation.                       

Franz Kafka , a photo by anniehallx on Flickr. Franz and Felice

Felice Bauer (18 November 1887 – 15 October 1960) was a fiancée of Franz Kafka , whose letters to her were published as Letters to Felice . Early Life Felice Bauer was born in Neustadt in Upper Silesia (today Prudnik ), into a Jewish family. Her father Carl Bauer (c. 1850–1914) was an insurance agent, her mother Anna, née Danziger (1849–1930) was the daughter of a local dyer. Felice had four siblings: Else (1883–1952), Ferdinand (called Ferri, 1884–1952), Erna (1885–1978) and Antonie (called Toni, 1892–1918). In 1899 the family moved to Berlin . [ 1 ] Felice began attending a Handelsschule , a vocational school for commerce, but had to give it up in 1908 because her family could not afford it. From 1909 on, she worked as a stenographer at the Berlin record company Odeon . [ 1 ] One year later, she moved to the Carl Lindström Company , a manufacturer of gramophones and "Parlographs", then the most advanced dictation machines. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] After a short while she ...

I am sure all my letters also got lost -- the one from Kratzau, from Reichenberg, this morning's letter, the ordinary, the registered, the express letters, all of them. For instance, you say I wrote only a few lines on Sunday night, whereas I sent you at least 8 pages and an infinite sigh. Dearest, if our mail doesn't bring us together soon, we shall never get together.

     May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

Once hard to find, Kafka's letters are now easily gotten via Kindle. His letters to Milena (I bought a used paper copy years ago) is my favorite (read it thrice since 2003). Or will his letters to Felice Bauer become my new favorite? *      Yesterday I pretended to be worried about you, and tried hard to give you advice. But instead what am I doing? Tormenting you? I don't mean intentionally, that would be inconceivable, yet even if I were it would have evaporated, faced by your last letter, like evil faced by good, but I am tormenting you by my existence, my very existence.

Millenium Bridge, London , a photo by sypix on Flickr. Don't think I ever crossed it. Another "next time" thing. Picked up another Julian Barnes book for my b-day: The Sense of an Ending . Veronica meets Tony on the "Wobbly Bridge."

Might have to scroll down a bit but it should be here . It's also available in paper--along with a host of fabulous others--at Amazon .

        

The third man argument (commonly referred to as TMA ), first offered by Plato in his dialogue Parmenides , is a philosophical criticism of Plato's own theory of Forms . This argument was furthered by Aristotle who used the example of a man (hence the name of the argument) to explain this objection to Plato's theory; he posits that if a man is a man because he partakes in the form of man, then a third form would be required to explain how man and the form of man are both man, and so on, so on, ad infinitum . [From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_man_argument ]

Seemed like a natural switch: from Physics to Metaphysics. Physics was ok but getting a bit tedious. *      Further, of the ways in which we prove that the Forms exist, none is convincing; for from some no inference necessarily follows, and from some arise Forms even of things of which we think there are no Forms. For according to the arguments from the existence of the sciences there will be Forms of all things of which there are sciences and according to the 'one over many' argument there will be Forms even of negations, and according to the argument that there is an object for thought even when the thing has perished, there will be Forms of perishable things; for we have an image of these. Further, of the more accurate arguments, some lead to Ideas of relations, of which we say there is no independent class, and others introduce the 'third man'.

Peter Weiss' The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade. Yes, I do. Just the sesquipedalian title reminded me of my life, life (viewed through the prism of self). *** The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade ( German : Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade ), usually shortened to Marat/Sade ( pronounced:  [ma.ʁa.sad] ), is a 1963 play by Peter Weiss . The work was first published in German . Incorporating dramatic elements characteristic of both Artaud and Brecht , it is a bloody and unrelenting depiction of class struggle and human suffering which asks whether true revolution comes from changing society or changing oneself. [From Wikipedia: htt...

Intepretation The inscription is accepted by authoritative sources, such as the Catholic Encyclopedia, [ 18 ] to be a mocking depiction of a Christian in the act of worship. The donkey's head and crucifixion would both have been considered insulting depictions by contemporary Roman society. Crucifixion continued to be used as an execution method for the worst criminals until its abolition by the emperor Constantine in the 4th century, and the impact of seeing a figure on a cross is comparable to the impact today of portraying a man with a hangman's noose around his neck or seated in an electric chair. [ 19 ] It seems to have been commonly believed at the time that Christians practiced onolatry (donkey-worship). That was based on the misconception that Jews worshipped a god in the form of a donkey, a prejudice of unclear origin. Tertullian , writing in the late 2nd or early 3rd century, reports that Christians, along with Jews, were accused of worshipping such a deity....

Marcus Aurelius , a photo by Master_PoQ on Flickr. Something else I'd like to see on the Palatine Hill (if I ever go back).

Alexamenos graffito , a photo by aka Jens Rost on Flickr. A friend pointed this interesting graffito out to me yesterday. Hadn't heard or seen of it before. I initially thought it a horse's head but apparently it's a donkey's. The Greek translates as "Alexamenos worships [his] god." It was found, and is now housed, on the Palatine in Rome.

     Plainly, too, to be in time does not mean to co-exist with time, any more than to be in motion or in place means to co-exist with motion or place. For if 'to be in something' is to mean this, then all things will be in anything, and the heaven will be in a grain; for when the grain is, then also is the heaven.

Best brick chicken in town. Mac n cheese is pretty good too. 

About as interesting as it gets (on my way home). 

        



Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (ca. 490–430 BC) to support Parmenides's doctrine that contrary to the evidence of one's senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion . It is usually assumed, based on Plato's Parmenides (128a-d), that Zeno took on the project of creating these paradoxes because other philosophers had created paradoxes against Parmenides's view. Thus Plato has Zeno say the purpose of the paradoxes "is to show that their hypothesis that existences are many, if properly followed up, leads to still more absurd results than the hypothesis that they are one." ( Parmenides 128d). Plato has Socrates claim that Zeno and Parmenides were essentially arguing exactly the same point ( Parmenides 128a-b). Some of Zeno's nine surviving paradoxes (preserved in Aristotle's Ph...

Zeno of Elea ( / ˈ z iː n oʊ ə v ˈ ɛ l i ə / ; Greek : Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεάτης ; ca. 490 BC – ca. 430 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of southern Italy and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides . Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic . [ 1 ] He is best known for his paradoxes , which Bertrand Russell has described as "immeasurably subtle and profound." Life Little is known for certain about Zeno's life. Although written nearly a century after Zeno's death, the primary source of biographical information about Zeno is Plato 's Parmenides . [ 3 ] In the dialogue, Plato describes a visit to Athens by Zeno and Parmenides, at a time when Parmenides is "about 65," Zeno is "nearly 40" and Socrates is "a very young man". [ 4 ] Assuming an age for Socrates of around 20, and taking the date of Socrates' birth as 469 BC gives an approximate date of birth for Zeno of 490 BC. Plato says that Zeno w...

     (5) Further, too, if it is itself and existent, where will it be? Zeno's difficulty demands an explanation: for if everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place, and so on ad infinitum.

        

Belief in the existence of the infinite comes mainly from five considerations:      (1) From the nature of time -- for it is infinite. (2) From the division of magnitudes -- for the mathematicians also use the notion of the infinite. (3) If coming to be and passing away do not give out, it is only because that from which things come to be is infinite. (4) Because the limited always finds its limit in something, so that there must be no limit, if everything is limited by something different from itself. (5) Most of all, a reason which is peculiarly appropriate and presents the difficulty that is felt by everybody -- not only number but also mathematical magnitudes and what is outside the heaven are supposed to be infinite because they never give out in our thought.      The last fact (that what is outside is infinite) leads people to suppose that body also is infinite, and that there is an infinite number of worlds. Why should there be body in...

     This nothingness had a definite, if indefinable, content. For a long time she had been in the habit of repeating to herself, on all sorts of occasions, words of Novalis: "What then can I do for my soul, that lives within me like an unsolved riddle, even while it grants the visible man the utmost license, because there is no way it can control him?"

How much do we know about Pythagoras? What did Plato and Aristotle say about him? Since I'm teaching Physics this year (at least for now), I started reading Aristotle's Physics . We'll see how long it will hold my attention. Anyway, I ran across this interesting paragraph in the online  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy : The Pythagorean question, then, is how to get behind this false glorification of Pythagoras in order to determine what the historical Pythagoras actually thought and did. In order to obtain an accurate appreciation of Pythagoras' achievement, it is important to rely on the earliest evidence before the distortions of the later tradition arose. The popular modern image of Pythagoras is that of a master mathematician and scientist. The early evidence shows, however, that, while Pythagoras was famous in his own day and even 150 years later in the time of Plato and Aristotle, it was not mathematics or science upon which his fame rested. Pythagoras wa...

Surprised I hadn't put this up long ago. Guess it's because there are so few translations on the Net and I didn't want to copy it out? Not sure. Anyway, I was thinking of this this morning and had to post it. It was written for Rilke's friend, the painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (I have been to her grave and her husband's museum). This translation is by A.S. Kline (2001); I have a copy of Mitchell's Rilke on my shelf (perhaps more "poetic," but not always closer to "authorial intent").         Requiem for a Friend I have dead ones, and I have let them go, and was astonished to see them so peaceful, so quickly at home in being dead, so just, so other than their reputation. Only you, you turn back: you brush against me, and go by, you try to knock against something, so that it resounds and betrays you. O don’t take from me what I am slowly learning. I’m sure you err when you deign to be homesick at all for any Th...