From my review of Foucault's Confessions of the Flesh, filed today with the TLS: "Foucault's partisans and critics both find it strange to see the chic author of The Birth of the Clinic delving into, say, a philosophically rich book of Miscellanies by Clement of Alexandria, or a Christian reimagining of Plato’s Symposium by Methodius… Continue reading What happened to Foucault?
Author: David Lloyd Dusenbury
David Lloyd Dusenbury is a philosopher, historian of ideas, Times Literary Supplement contributor and senior fellow at Budapest's Danube Institute. The author of I Judge No One and The Innocence of Pontius Pilate (published by Hurst and Oxford University Press), he is also Chair for Jewish-Christian Relations at the University of Antwerp.
“Where sensual pleasure is most intense”
This is Cicero (echoing Plato's Philebus), not Augustine (echoing Paul's I Corinthians): "Where sensual pleasure is the most intense, it is the most inimical to philosophy. Who can follow a reasoning or think anything at all under the influence of intense pleasure?" cit. M. Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, trans. R. Hurley (New York, 2021),… Continue reading “Where sensual pleasure is most intense”
Foucault, unsurprised
"In reality, the practices of direction and spiritual examination - elaborated by ancient philosophy - were accepted into Christianity, where they saw a development of new forms and effects ... That these ways and means of the philosophical life were put into practice [in the early Christian monasteries] is not surprising in the least ...… Continue reading Foucault, unsurprised
MF, Confessions of the Flesh
"Compared with Greek & Roman religions, Christianity imposes on its believers an obligation to 'tell the truth' about themselves that is infinitely more imperious in its form & more demanding in its content. It is through these new rules of 'veridiction' that one must try to understand what is said in Christianity about the flesh."… Continue reading MF, Confessions of the Flesh
Jerusalem
Jerusalem, a year ago today. Jerusalem, 13 May 2020, D.L.D.
PKD: “Come to me, artificially accelerated cortical-development idea”
"Come to me, artificially accelerated cortical-development idea, he said in prayer." - Finally reading Philip K Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1964). Four chapters in, it feels more real than the news.
“Old campaigner”
I wouldn't dream of claiming the Homeric epithet πολυμήχανος, but I like to think I've earned Robert Fagles's rendering: "old campaigner". Like Odysseus, I can now say (with places of the dead & islands of love in mind): "Twenty years gone, & I am back again."
Samizdat in Pravda: “Невиновность Понтия Пилата” (The Innocence of Pontius Pilate)
It's eerie, to see your samizdat in Pravda: Американский историк раннего христианства Дэвид Ллойд Дусенбери (David Lloyd Dusenbury) из Еврейского университета в Иерусалиме выпустил книгу "Невиновность Понтия Пилата" (The Innocence of Pontius Pilate)...
Ambrose, long before Milan
Ambrosius How is it possible that I'm only hearing now - after a decade in Leuven - that Ambrose of Milan was born & raised in present-day Belgium (Gallia Belgica)?
Our Dmitri, Waltz No. 2
It's worth recalling that Dmitri S. wrote his shimmering Waltz No. 2 (of Eyes Wide Shut fame) in 1938 - at the close of the Great Purge (Stalin), on the cusp of the Second Great War (Hitler-Stalin). Love, & defiance, at their absolute-lightest (& still, somehow, so heart-heavy).
D. L. Dusenbury 