Alex Kudera's Blog, page 47
January 9, 2022
unquestionable sources
"[Mable Ong] had a positive manner of speaking, now and then turning her head aside to cough or laugh; she spoke bitterly about capitalism and would relate stories she had heard from unquestionable sources about women dying in childbirth because they could not afford the high cost of hospitalization, or even the cost of insurance programs."
~~ from Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
January 7, 2022
"the public educational system"
~~ from Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
January 2, 2022
the book that he was reading
"'[Ernst Cassirer] tried to push his way through t the back of the tram, and stood there occupying as little space as possible, with one hand reaching for a support so that he didn't fall over, and in the other holding the book that he was reading. Noise, jostling, poor light, bad air—none of it got in his way.'"
~~ from Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram Eilenberger
January 1, 2022
life as a teacher
"As [Martin] Heidegger was praising the primordial wisdom and natural integrity of his Black Forest farmers, the provincial teacher saw his fellow adults only as cattle, maggots, or, at best, three-quarters human. [Ludwig] Wittgenstein loved the idea of the "simple people," but not the reality, just as he loved the idea of life as a teacher, but not the rapidly changing job of teaching in Austria under the educational reforms instituted by the Social Democrats. His revulsion at the teaching methods that were being introduced was clear[.]"
~~ from Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram Eilenberger
December 30, 2021
the deadly melancholy of the Christmas season
"As early as December 20, [Walter] Benjamin made the analogy between cities and people explicit: 'For me, Moscow is now a fortress, the harsh climate which is wearing me down, no matter how healthy it might be for me, my ignorance of the language, Reich's presence, Asja's utterly circumscribed mode of existence, all constitute so many bastions, and it is only the total impossibility of advancing any further, only the fact that Asja's illness, or at least her weakness, pushes our personal affairs into the background, that keeps me from becoming completely depressed by all this. Whether I will achieve the secondary purpose of my journey—to escape the deadly melancholy of the Christmas season—remains to be seen.'
"On December 31, this question also seemed to have been answered. Benjamin was standing in front of a theater poster with Asja when he admitted: 'If I had to be sitting alone somewhere tonight, I would hang myself with misery.'"
~~ from Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram Eilenberger
December 29, 2021
a project-based teacher
"[Ludwig] Wittgenstein was a project-based teacher. He always tried to make his subject matter visible in objects. He was particularly keen on animal skeletons, which he prepared and assembled with his pupils. The carcasses, which included cats and other roadkill, he collected from the village streets, skinned and disemboweled them himself, before boiling the bones for several days. Even in Trattenbach the resulting foul stench led to fierce complaints from the neighborhood. But this didn't stop Wittgenstein from persisting with all the further stages of these projects. In the end he wasn't doing it for himself, he was doing it for education. Moreover, he couldn't have cared less about the opinions of his fellow villagers, unlike those of the children under his tutelage. Whenever complainants showed up at his house, he slammed the door in their outraged faces and told them that if the smell bothered them so much, they should simply leave, ideally forever!"
~~ from Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram Eilenberger
December 28, 2021
Peter Hessler returns
In the January 3 & 10 print issue of The New Yorker, Peter Hessler writes about correspondence and visits with middle-aged Chinese we first met as 1990s college students in his classic River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. Despite being only a tiny slither of mainland experience, this update on his students' lives does a remarkable job of capturing the entire country's changes and development over the past few decades. It's highly recommended reading.
