Month: June 2008

  • Annals of Philosophy:

    Prize Dance

    "I would not know what the spirit
    of a philosopher might wish more
     to be than a good dancer.
    For the
    dance is his ideal,
    also his art, and finally also his
    only piety,
    his 'service of God.'"

    -- Nietzsche

    Charles Taylor, winner
    of this year's Kyoto Prize
    in arts and philosophy:

    "... the object sets up
     a kind of frame or space or field
       within which there can be epiphany."

    Kylie Minogue does the Locomotion

    "My little baby sister
    can do it with ease.
    It's easier to learn
      than those ABC's."

    -- Kylie Minogue 

  • Quine Redux

    Born 100 years ago today:

    Willard Van Orman Quine, picture from cover of his autobiography

    From A Logical Point of View,  Harvard U. Press, 1980, p. 72
    From A Logical Point of View,  Harvard U. Press, 1980, p. 73
    Other approaches to the
    eight-ray star figure

    Figure by Quine for an argument against univesals in 'From a Logical Point of View'

    have been sketched in
    various Log24 entries.

    See, for instance, the
    June 21 entries on
    the Kyoto Prize for
    arts and philosophy.
    Quine won this prize
     in 1996.

    Quine's figure, cited in an
    argument against universals,
    is also a classic symbol for
    the morning or evening star.

    This year's winner http://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif
    of the Kyoto Prize has
    a more poetic approach
    to philosophy:

    "... the object sets up
     a kind of frame or space or field
       within which there can be epiphany."

    For one such frame or space,
    a Mexican cantina, see
    Shining Forth.

    See also Damnation Morning and
    The Devil and Wallace Stevens.

    http://www.log24.com/images/asterisk8.gif Charles Taylor.  See
    "Epiphanies of Modernism,"
    Chapter 24 of Sources of the Self
      (Cambridge U. Press, 1989, p. 477)

  • The Work of a Comedian:

    Random Walk with
    X's and O's

    Part I: Random Walk

    NY Lottery June 23, 2008: Mid-day 322, Evening 000

    Part II: X's

    3/22:

    Actor contemplating the Chi-rho Page of the Book of Kells

    "Shakespeare, Rilke, Joyce,
    Beckett and Levi-Strauss are
    instances of authors for whom
    chiasmus and chiastic thinking
    are of central importance,
    for whom chiasmus is a
    generator of meaning,
    tool of discovery and
      philosophical template."
     
    -- Chiasmus in the
    Drama of Life

    Part III: O's --

    A Cartoon Graveyard
    in honor of the late
    Gene Persson †

    Today's Garfield --

    Garfield cartoon of June 24, 2008

    See also
    Midsummer Eve's Dream:

    "The meeting is closed
    with the lord's‡ prayer
    and refreshments are served."

    † Producer of plays and musicals
    including Album and
    The Ruling Class

    ‡ Lower case in honor of
    Peter O'Toole, star of
    the film version of
    The Ruling Class.

    (This film, together with
    O'Toole's My Favorite Year,
    may be regarded as epitomizing
    Hollywood's Jesus for Jews.)

    Those who prefer
    less randomness
    in their religion
     may consult O'Toole's
    more famous film work
    involving Islam,
    as well as
    the following structure
    discussed here on
    the date of Persson's death:

    5x5 ultra super magic square

    "The Moslems thought of the
    central 1 as being symbolic
    of the unity of Allah.    "

  • ART WARS --

    Plato's Cave, continued:

                         ... we know that we use
    Only the eye as faculty, that the mind
    Is the eye, and that this landscape of the mind


    Is a landscape only of the eye; and that
    We are ignorant men incapable
    Of the least, minor, vital metaphor....

    -- Wallace Stevens, "Crude Foyer"

                                                   ... So, so,
    O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail
    Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning
    Again and again,
                             while history is unforgiven.

    -- Delmore Schwartz,
      "In the Naked Bed, in Plato's Cave"

    The Echo in Plato's Cave:

    Somewhere between
    a flagrant triviality and
    a resplendent Trinity we
    have what might be called
    "a resplendent triviality."

    For further details, see
    "A Four-Color Theorem."

  • Philosophy at 4:13 --

  • Critique of Paradise:

    Crude Foyer

    Thought is false happiness: the idea
    That merely by thinking one can,
    Or may, penetrate, not may,
    But can, that one is sure to be able--

    That there lies at the end of thought
    A foyer of the spirit in a landscape
    Of the mind, in which we sit
    And wear humanity's bleak crown;

    In which we read the critique of paradise
    And say it is the work
    Of a comedian, this critique;
    In which we sit and breathe

    An innocence of an absolute,
    False happiness, since we know that we use
    Only the eye as faculty, that the mind
    Is the eye, and that this landscape of the mind

    Is a landscape only of the eye; and that
    We are ignorant men incapable
    Of the least, minor, vital metaphor, content,

    At last, there, when it turns out to be here.

    -- Wallace Stevens

  • And continues...

    George Carlin
    Dies at 71

    Comedian George Carlin died
    yesterday in Santa Monica at
    about 6 PM PDT (9 PM EDT).

    Earlier this month, told he would
    receive this year's Mark Twain
    award for comedy, Carlin said,

    "Thank you, Mr. Twain.
    Have your people
    call my people."

    7 AM yesterday:

    Philadelphia stories: Catholic and Protestant versions, starring Grace Kelly and Katharine Hepburn

    11 AM yesterday:

    Heaven's Gate
    continues:

    A Sermon
    by and for
    Kris Kristofferson,
    who is 72 today:

    By   For

    ... and Of --

    George Carlin
    in the Air Force:

    George Carlin in the Air Force

    Photo from
    georgecarlin.com

    Arthur Harttman, Air Force veteran and Bowery resident, in NY Times April 30, 2006

    New York Times video
    April 30, 2006

    Arthur Harttman, Air Force veteran
    and resident of the Bowery's recently
    refurbished Andrews House

  • Heaven's Gate continues:

    A Sermon
    by and for
    Kris Kristofferson,
    who is 72 today:

    By   For

  • Theology Today:

    Salvation by Grace

    Today's New York Times has an
    obituary of Henry Chadwick    , an Anglican priest and expert on church
    history who believed strongly in ecumenism.

    Church history and ecumenism may interest few Americans, who have not
    recently suffered the sort of conflicts familiar to Northern Ireland.

    Nevertheless, here are some thoughts on the matter.

    From a statement
    of "the five points of Calvinism"--

    Irresistible Grace

    "'Irresistible grace' refers to the grace of
    regeneration by which
    God effectually calls His elect inwardly, converting them to Himself,
    and quickening them from spiritual death to spiritual life. 
    Regeneration is the sovereign and immediate work of the Holy Spirit...."

    Calvinism is, of course, a deeply serious and
    powerful approach to spiritual matters.

    (See 6/3/08
    and 2/20/05.)

    Still, I prefer the following visions of grace:


    How does one stand

    To behold the sublime,
    To confront the mockers,

    The mickey mockers

    And plated pairs?

    -- Wallace Stevens, 1936

    Philadelphia stories: Catholic and Protestant versions, starring Grace Kelly and Katharine Hepburn


    On the left, a Catholic answer.
    On the right, a Protestant answer.

    For further details, see 10/16/05.

    The above two
    Philadelphia stories
    have met in a different
    vision of Grace:

    Grace Kelly and James Stewart in 'Rear Window'

    Click image for a (much) larger version.

    This tableau, in the larger version showing details in the background buildings, seems to me an apt, if more Calvinist and less Catholic, version of what Paul Simon, in his Graceland album, has memorably called "angels in the architecture."

    Let us hope that the late Henry Chadwick now has a place among such angels.

    Related material:

    Yesterday's entries and
    what T. S. Eliot might call
    their "objective correlatives"
    in the Pennsylvania Lottery
    and in this journal:

    PA Lottery Saturday, June 21, 2008: Mid-day 529, Evening 501

    5/29

    5/01

  • Annals of Philosophy:

    For Mary
    Gaitskill

    (See Eight is
    a Gate     and
    Faith, Doubt,
    Art, and
    The New Yorker    .)

    A structure from
    today's previous entry:

    Gates of Rick's Cafe Americain, abstract version

    September 2,
    2006    :

    From Notre-Dame de
    Paris    :

    "Un
    cofre
    de gran
    riqueza   
     Hallaron dentro un
    pilar,    
     Dentro del, nuevas banderas
     Con figuras de espantar."  


    "A coffer of
    great richness
     In a pillar's heart they
    found,
     Within it lay new banners,
     With figures to astound."

    For some further details,
    see the brief Log24 narrative "Indiana Jones and the Hidden Coffer" as well as Symmetry Framed and the design of the doors to Rick's Cafe Americain:

    Rick's Cafe Americain