Francis Bacon reminds us that modernity is the real antiquity: "True", Bacon says, 'antiquity' is "ancient and older in relation to us, but with respect to the world itself, it was newer & younger. ... Our age is the older of the world, enriched & stocked with countless experiences & observations." - The New Organon,… Continue reading Modernity is the real antiquity
and only we against whom the Church Fathers would have written pamphlets contra academicos only we will meet with a terrible fate flames and lamentation for having received a baptism of earth we were too valiant in our uncertainty - Zbigniew Herbert, "Baptism", 1957 Z. Herbert, The Collected Poems: 1956-1998, ed. and tr. A. Valles… Continue reading “contra Academicos”
"How I wish", said the Emperor Domitian, "that I were as fine-looking as Maecius thinks he is." - Suetonius, Domitian 20
Keep your smart-phone by your bed? See if you can spot the relevant lines in Chaucer: "His Almageste and bokes grete and smale, His astrelabie, longinge for his art, His augrim-stones layen faire a-part On shelves couched at his beddes heed ..." The picture, here, is of Clerk Nicholas keeping his algorithm tool (augrim-stones) at… Continue reading Chaucer’s algorithm
My motto for the new year comes from Slavoj Žižek - yes, Žižek - in conversation with Alain Badiou: "I am prepared to advocate my views in a democratic way; but not, however, to allow others to decide democratically what my views are - here I confirm my philosophical arrogance." - Slavoj Žižek & Alain… Continue reading “Here I confirm my philosophical arrogance” – Žižek
The project of modernity in three phrases: "There remains one hope of salvation ... that the entire work of the mind be started over ... and the business done (if I may put it this way) by machines." Reread that: "the entire work of the mind ... done by machines"! - Francis Bacon, preface to The… Continue reading “The business done by machines”
I have an essay, "Postnatural Intelligence," in the new issue of First Things (Feb. 2019) - on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), the arc of modern philosophy, & the rise of 'intelligent' technologies. "The novel’s genius is that it shows how the 'modern Prometheus' and his critics can both be right. It may be within our… Continue reading “Postnatural Intelligence” in First Things
A curious parallel: Jesus, like Socrates, never writes. But, in both cases (if memory serves), there is a single exception to this rule: (i) Jesus writes in the dust in defence of a woman whom he refuses to condemn (the pericope de adultera at John 8.2-11); (ii) Socrates traces geometric figures in the dirt on behalf of… Continue reading Those who do not write
"Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other. ... Technical perfection strives toward the calculable, human perfection toward the incalculable. Perfect mechanisms ... evoke both a fear and a titanic pride which will be humbled not by insight but only by catastrophe." - Ernst Jünger, The… Continue reading “Human perfection and technical perfection”
The new years walk, restoring Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem The time. Redeem The unread vision in the higher dream ... - Thom Eliot, 1930 TSE in the Bahamas, 1964
