Lars Iyer's Blog, page 72

Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences ...

Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences too are what brings this about; but I don’t mean visions and other forms of sense experience which show us the ‘existence of this being’ but e.g. sufferings of various sorts. These neither show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an object, not do they give rise to conjecture about him. Experiences, thoughts – life can force this concept on us.

Wittgenstein, remark in Culture and Value

At the harvest, in the vineyard, wherever men must labour...

At the harvest, in the vineyard, wherever men must labour hard, they begin with songs whose words express their joy. But when their joy brims over and words are not enough, they abandon even this coherence and give themselves up to the sheer sound of singing. What is this jubilation, this exultant song? It is the melody that means our hearts are bursting with feelings words cannot express. And to whom does this jubilation belong? Surely to God, who is unutterable. And does not unutterable mean what cannot be uttered? If words will into come and you may not remain silent, what else can you do but let the melody soar?

Augustine

There are problems I never get anywhere near, which do no...

There are problems I never get anywhere near, which do not lie in my path or are not part of my world. Problems of the intellectual word of the West that Beethoven (and perhaps Goethe to a certain extent) tackled and wrestled with, but no philosophy has ever confronted (perhaps Nietzsche passed by them).

Wittgenstein, remark in Culture and Value

As to religious thoughts I do not think the craving for p...

As to religious thoughts I do not think the craving for placidity is religious. I think a religious person regards placidity or peace as a gift from heaven, not as something one ought to hunt after. Look at your patients more closely as human beings in trouble and enjoy more the opportunity you to say ‘good night’ to so many people. This alone is a gift from heaven which many people would envy you. And this sort of thing ought to heal your frayed soul, I believe. It won’t rest it; but when you are healthily tired you can just take a rest. I think in some sense you don’t look at people’s faces closely enough.

Wittgenstein, writing to Drury, a trainee psychiatrist

I will be using this blog only for quotations as well as ...

I will be using this blog only for quotations as well as publicising details of events in which I am involved, reviews, etc.

I am writing a new novel here.

Spurious and Dogma will be coming out in Turkish, publish...

Spurious and Dogma will be coming out in Turkish, published by a new publishing company founded by the members of Kolektif Atolye, a design and architecture company.

Spurious will also be coming out in Italian, from the publisher, Casa Editrice Odoya.

A 40 minute video of me reading from Dogma at Northeastern University, Boston.

Call for PapersRemembering the Impossible Tomorrow: Ita...

Call for Papers

Remembering the Impossible Tomorrow: Italian Political Thought and the Recent Crisis in Capitalism

The British Society for Phenomenology 2013 Annual Conference

5th- 7th April, 2013

St Hilda’s College Oxford

 

During Marx’s time radical thought was formed from a convergence of three sources: German philosophy, English economics, and French politics. In the introduction to Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics (1996) Michael Hardt argued that these tides had shifted, with radical movements drawing from French philosophy, US economics, and Italian politics. More recently, Matteo Pasquinelli has argued that ‘Italian theory’ has attained an academic hegemony comparable to that held by French philosophy in the 1980s.

 

But despite the proliferation of analysis and organizing drawing from and inspired by the history of autonomous politics in Italy, where are these voices today? In 2012, if you listened to the mainstream politicians and economic experts and no-one else, you would hardly know that there was any financial crisis in 2008. You might have a faint recollection that for a brief moment alternative voices were heard in the media, but now it as if nothing at all had happened.  The waters that once had parted have now engulfed us again. It is the same voices articulating the same tired ideas as the whole of Europe slides into the nightmare of austerity, despite the fact they do not appear to have any relation to reality, and even those who speak them seem exhausted and worn out.

 

For some time now, many of us have noticed that there have been different voices, and they began speaking many years before 2008 warning us of an impending disaster. These voices were coming from Italy. Perhaps because of their own experience, the radical Italian thinkers never believed the logic of the market could solve its own problems or that life and capital were one and the same.  Our hope is to draw from this history as well as listen to some of the new generation of Italian political thinkers, to share their ideas, offer an alternative diagnosis of the present, and perhaps even a suggestion of what different future might look like.

 

Confirmed Speakers:

Dario Gentili

Paolo Do

Federico Chicchi

Silvia Federici

Franco Barchiesi

Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi

 

Please send an abstract of approx 500 words to Dr William Large (wlarge@glos.ac.uk) by 24th September 2012.

  Website: http://britishphenomenology.org.uk/

Apelles, the famous painter, wished to reproduce the foam...

Apelles, the famous painter, wished to reproduce the foam from a horse's mouth in a painting. He was not able to get it right, and decided to give up. So, he threw the sponge he used to wipe his brushes against the painting. When the sponge hit the painting, it produced nothing other than an imitation of the horse's foam. In the same way, the Skeptics start off like other philosophers, seeking peace of mind in firmness and confidence in their judgements. When they do not achieve it, they suspend their judgement. No sooner than they do this than, by pure chance, peace of mind accompanies the suspension of judgement, like a shadow follows a body.

Sextus Empiricus

Have you seen the gigantic Tintoretto in Venice in which ...

Have you seen the gigantic Tintoretto in Venice in which the earth and the sea, the terraqueous globe, are hanging above people's heads? The horizon is moving off into the distance; the depth, the ocean distances, and bodies are taking flight, an immense rotundity, a mappamundi; the planet is hurled, falling and rolling in mid-ether! ... He was prophesysing for us. He already had the same cosmic obsession which is consuming us now.... As for me, I want to lose myself in nature, to grow again with her, like her.... In a patch of green, my whole brain will flow along with the flowing sap of the trees.... The immensity, the torrent of the world, in a tiny thumb's worth of matter.

Paul Cezanne

The dialogue with nature remains for the artist the condi...

The dialogue with nature remains for the artist the condition sine qua non. The artist is a man. He is himself nature, a part of nature within the domain of nature. [...]

Today, the artist is better and more subtle than a camera... he is a creature upon earth and a creature within the universe; a creature on one star among other stars. [...]

[The artist's] progress in the observation and vision of nature gradually let him accede to a philosophical vision of the universe which allows him freely to create abstract forms... Thus, the artist creates works of art, or participates in the creation of works, which are an image of the creative work of God... Just as children imitate us while playing, so we, in the game of art, imitate the forces which created, and continue to create, the world... Natura naturans is more important to the painter than natura naturara.

Paul Klee