Aesthetic Materialism

The "always-already" (as Heidegger puts it, the "immer schon") is a kind of trap, or loop - the type that connoisseurs of anxiety delight in.  Althusser, for instance, insists that we are "always already" subjects - forcing one to push back interpolation to the beginning of time or earlier.  But the existence of the "always-already" would necessitate its corollary, the "never yet".  (An example might be Adam Kadmon, which is pure potential.)

  What do I hate?  Whom do I hate?  (And I'm not saying that I'm right to hate anyone, but I do in fact hate... why?)  I hate arrogance - but only a certain kind of arrogance.  I also love some forms of arrogance, and feel benign indifference about others. I love the kind of arrogance of someone like Oscar Wilde, or Max Stirner, or Friedrich Nietzsche - or even Karl Marx.  For people like this, arrogance is a kind of affectation, a performance, a provocation, and a bit of joke.  They're being arrogant, but they know they're being arrogant.  And it's charming.  And I laugh along with it.  (John Waters is another example.) On the other hand, I don't mind the arrogance of someone like Joseph Campbell, or Carl Jung.  They're arrogant, but they're so stupid that they have no idea how arrogant they are.  They're arrogant, but they don't know they're being arrogant.  So I can forgive their arrogance. But between these is the f...

Two sets (or ideas, or principles, or entities, or categories, etc.) are considered properly dichotomous iff: 1. They are mutually exclusive - that is, there is absolutely no overlap between them, and 2. Together, they are exhaustive - that is, there is nothing that is outside both of them. For example, within the Real numbers, "rational" and "irrational" form a proper dichotomy.  That means that every Real number is either rational or irrational, and no number is both rational and irrational. For a counterexample, within the natural numbers, "prime" and "composite" are not a proper dichotomy.  This is because the number 1 is neither prime nor composite. Notice, also, that dichotomies may be proper in one context, but not in another.  For instance, in the set of integers, "even" and "odd" form a proper dichotomy.  But in the realm of Real numbers, they don't.  (Pi, for instance, is neither odd nor even.)  Many of the old ...

Knowledge is a habit that works.  Knowledge is skill, practice. Anything that can be learned is knowledge.  Is this definitive?  Or are there knowledges that one doesn't need to learn - things that one "just knows"?  

Artistic modernism can be understood as the belief that artists should be creative, and the more creative, the more original their work is, the more artistic it is; if possible, art should be radically original, radically creative.  This is in contrast, of course, to the notion that art should be traditional, somehow based or grounded on tradition. Coming up with new ideas, of course, is difficult.  One can easily fall into despair, and whine that all of the ideas have already been had.  Thus modernism necessarily implies a kind of hope - a hope that new ideas are indeed possible. Related to this is social modernism, which is the belief that one can structure social relationships without grounding these social relationships in tradition.  You can, as it were, invent your social relationships.  Love, for instance: you can invent love. Perhaps, fundamentally, modernism is an enthusiasm, a kind of energy.  All of this is, of course, questionable.  But to...

It is often claimed that the self does not exist, that there is no such thing as a self, anywhere. But what can possibly be meant by such a claim? Suppose that I were to say, "There is no such thing as a sklorb." And someone asked me, "What is a sklorb?" And I replied, "That's just it: sklorbs don't exist!" And they said, "Yes, but what do you mean by 'sklorb?'"  And I responded, "The very concept of sklorb is meaningless." Them: "Then what are you talking about, when you claim that sklorb doesn't exist?" Me: "Nothing." Them: "Then why did you say it?" Me: "No reason."     Jill: The word "self" must mean something, in order for the sentence "There is no self" to be meaningful at all, in just the same way that the word "egg" must be meaningful, for the grocer to meaningfully inform me that they're all out of eggs.  Bill: I mean... what? Jill: Wh...