"My old teacher [Albrecht] Ritschl once said that I drafted even my philology articles like a Parisian novelist - absurdly gripping." - F. Nietzsche, "Why I Write Such Good Books", Ecce Homo: How to Become What You Are (1888)
Seeing things
Am I seeing things? 1595 engraving of Lucifer in an edition of Dante's Inferno; 1651 title page of Hobbes's Leviathan.
“Those that can do anything”
"It's amazing what those that can do anything can't do." - Victor Hugo, via Paul Virilio, The Original Accident (2007), 32
“What is not normalization?”
"You know better than me the unfortunate fate of this word 'normalization'. What is not normalization? I normalize, you normalize, and so on." Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, Collège de France, 25 January 1978
Essay in La Lettura (Milan): “Socrate e Gesù di nuovo a processo”
I have an essay on Nietzsche, Socrates and Jesus – with a glance at Dostoevsky – on pages 8-9 of La Lettura (no. 451) in today's Corriere della Sera (19 July 2020). Translated by a brilliant young scholar, Matteo Stettler.
The sign of the past
"That which we see today is the sign of the past." - Basil of Caesarea, Homilies on the Hexaemeron 7, 1
Geo-politics & the placement of commas: Karl Kraus
"At a time when people were generally decrying the Japanese bombardment of Shanghai, I met Karl Kraus struggling over one of his famous comma problems. He said something like: 'I know that everything is futile when the house is burning. But I have to do this, as long as it is at all possible; for… Continue reading Geo-politics & the placement of commas: Karl Kraus
“Fashions in philosophy and in consumer goods”
"By the time we are old we have undergone a great many murderous fashions, all those murderous fashions in art and in philosophy and in consumer goods." In a passage on Martin Heidegger - Thomas Bernhard, Old Masters: A Comedy, 1985
The Buddha appears
"Clement of Alexandria was but one major Christian author who showed a strong interest in Indian and Egyptian wisdom traditions. Clement is the first Greek author to mention the Buddha and Buddhism." - G. G. Stroumsa, The Scriptural Universe of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, Mass., 2016), 104 Reijer Stolk, 1943 (Courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
Descartes may have been human, after all
He may have been human, after all: "We are reliably informed ... that Descartes owned a little dog - Monsieur Grat - upon whom he lavished much affection, and who used to accompany him on his walks." - P. Harrison, "Descartes on Animals", The Philosophical Quarterly 42 (1992), 219-27, here 220
