Icarus of Trafalgar Square

January 9, 2012 at 2:08 pm (Banks, Captivation, Creativity, Death, Finance Capitalism, Financial Crisis, freedom, Innovation, Occupy Britain, Occupy Together, Occupy Wales, Occupy Wall Street, philosophy, Poetry, Syria, Time, Wall Street)

The sublime sun beckons

burning out the eyes

of those who

dare to gaze

into its depths

The abyss of light -

Yet, you were already

blind to the light

of Terra, of Earth,

long gazed into

this luminous event

the mere distance

of the gaze is

no longer enough

for your joy -

you seek to fly – seduced

by the sun of your

voluptuous desires

you fly higher and higher -

climb the column of the sun -

you throw down the motes of light

the ropes that tie even the gods -

You fly toward the scalding apex -

calling those below to grasp

hold of the motes of light -

to pull it all down – back to the Earth -

the hordes upon the surface

respond to the call, harvesting

the motes that cling to the sun itself -

the ties that bind – the masses pull

with the kinetic exertion of panic -

Prometheus smiles at the grand

effort of his children toward

the implosion of a world -

of light recurring upon the earth -

All at once -

shattering cracks, explosion -

the moaning phallus of marble

lusts for the embrace of the Earth -

the depths of the abyss -

Icarus, already burns -

descends riding the phallus to the Earth -

Crash, exaltation – into the shadows of sleep -

wandering upon the banks of the Thames -

waiting for the return of the sun -

a different sun, one of joy,

upon the Earth of a different world

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Heidegger’s Early Philosophy – Introduction

December 11, 2011 at 9:44 pm (Banks, Captivation, Creativity, Death, Financial Crisis, freedom, Heidegger, Innovation, Marxism, philosophy, Poetry, Time)

Heidegger’s Early Philosophy

The Phenomenology of Ecstatic Temporality

Introduction

*****

Prologue: Toward an Understanding of Heidegger’s “Sein und Zeit” Project

One of the most significant gestures of the published fragment of Being and Time is that a radical phenomenological investigation must have an ontic, factical, ‘fundament’.  This gesture not only concerns the conditions of emergence for any self-interpretation of the being for whom being is an issue, but also intimates the irreducible thrown-ness and embeddedness of any philosophical inquiry.  In other words, the pretension that thought can extricate itself from temporality, existential spatiality, etc. – in a word, from finitude – is for Heidegger, an illusion “founded” upon non-original conceptions of existence and being. As Nietzsche expresses in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil, such other-worldly hypotheses, in this case of the ‘good as such’, denies perspective, and thus, life itself.  An honest phenomenology cannot take refuge in idealist or realist ontologies without forsaking the significance of phenomenology as a desire for the truth of things themselves.  Dishonesty would entail a retreat from the phenomenon into a theory of consciousness and its objects, an escape that suppresses and conceals its own radical temporality.

It is within this horizon that I have approached Heidegger’s attempts to articulate a fundamental ontology – or radical phenomenology – in the 1920’s, and its transmutations to come.

To read the rest of this piece, please visit Heidegger’s Early Philosophy – Introduction.

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Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration – Introduction

December 11, 2011 at 9:28 pm (Banks, Captivation, Creativity, Death, freedom, Heidegger, Innovation, philosophy, Poetry, Time, Wittgenstein)

Introduction: The Poetic Topos of the Doctrine of Transmigration

Pythagoras and the Recurrence of the Tragic

Nietzsche briefly refers to Pythagoras in The Birth of Tragedy, as one of the exemplars, prior to Aeschylus (himself attributed by Cicero in Tusculanae Quaestiones to be a follower of Pythagoras) of tragic sixth century Greece.  The pregnancy of this reference seems, however, to have been lost on Biebuyck, Praet and Vanden Poel in their important essay, ‘Cults and Migrations: Nietzsche’s Meditations on Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and the Greek Mysteries’. For, while it is clear that Nietzsche savagely castigates Pythagoras (and Orphicism) as a precursor to Plato and as a proto-Christian, the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration could, from the perspective of The Birth of Tragedy, be interpreted as a variant of tragic pessimism, which abides, at its heart, an affirmation of the eternal recurrence of the All.   In this light, the significance of Pythagorean philosophy could be seen under a radically different aspect, the basic features of which have not been questioned since Guthrie’s monumental History of Greek Philosophy in the 1960’s.  The work of Guthrie, while he to a significant extent merely repeats the ascetic picture of Pythagoras, served to begin to undermine basic features of the dominant interpretation, such as that of Cornford (and of Nietzsche himself), which had sought to quarantine the mathematical, ‘scientific’ aspects of Pythagorean philosophy from its dispensable and baroque ‘mystical’ shell.  Radicalizing the work of Guthrie, the present interpretation will seek to re-contextualize the status and place of mathematics and science in Pythagorean philosophy (and philosophy as such), as aspects that participate (though do not dominate), alongside art, music and practical techniques of the self, in the articulation and the sheltering of an esoteric teaching.  In this instance, the teaching is that of the tragic myth– just as mathematical limit intimates and reflects the deeper ultimacy of tragic fate, of the mortal singularity and limits of existence.

To read the rest of this piece, please visit Pythagoras and the Doctrine of Transmigration – Introduction.

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occupy, or a subversion of definition

October 29, 2011 at 9:35 pm (Banks, Captivation, Creativity, Death, Finance Capitalism, Financial Crisis, freedom, Heidegger, Innovation, Marxism)

occupy, or a

subversion of definition,

of the restricted economy of control -

beneath surges music and dance…

love and rage….

[ok-yuh-pahy]

oc·cu·py

[ok-yuh-pahy]

verb, -pied, -py·ing piper.

verb (used with object)

It is not to ‘take or
merely fill up (space, time, etc.)’

or to idly ‘engage or employ the mind,

energy or attention’

It is neither to be a ‘resident or

tenant’ of industrial ‘housing’ -

It is not to ‘take possession and

control of a place, as by military

invasion or to hold (a position,

office, etc.).’

It is peaceful -

verb (used without object)

It is to take back that
which is always already
disclosed as our world…
to create a joyous ethos in
which we can dwell together

to squat amidst the indigence

of our holy makeshift freedom

occupy

[ok-yuh-pahy]

oc·cu·py

[ok-yuh-pahy]

verb, -pied, -py·ing.

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London Riots – or, Thatcher’s Children

August 16, 2011 at 3:43 am (Captivation, Creativity, Death, freedom, Heidegger, Innovation, philosophy, Poetry, Syria, Time, Uncategorized, Wittgenstein)

So this is what you got -

consumers with attitude -

Thatcher still smiles….

Give an amnesty

to these wanderers,

for their crimes

give birth

to our perverse ways

of novel life -

as disperate as

this may seem ….

(2011)

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Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’ – A Reading

March 9, 2011 at 7:34 am (Captivation, Creativity, Death, freedom, Heidegger, Innovation, philosophy, Poetry, Time, Uncategorized, Wittgenstein)

The ‘Letter on Humanism’ is a work that was written in response to a series of questions by Heidegger’s French Colleague Jean Beaufret (10 November 1946) with regard to Sartre’s address, given earlier that year, Existentialism is a Humanism.  Heidegger’s letter, originally finished in December 1946, was formally published in the following year, having been expanded into an essay.  In the following pages, I will analyse Heidegger’s Letter, not only as a free-standing essay, but more specifically as a direct response to Sartre’s attempt to characterise existentialism as a form of humanism.  In this difficult piece, it is important to read each sentence slowly and carefully in relation to the ongoing train of thought, but also in relation to the essay as a whole.

To read this essay, please visit Heidegger’s ‘Letter on Humanism’

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Dawn

November 28, 2010 at 8:15 am (Captivation, Creativity, Death, freedom, Heidegger, Innovation, philosophy, Poetry, Time, Uncategorized, Wittgenstein)

Where the Hesperides -

lovely nymphs of

the evening -

dance -

this

joyous play – light, darkness

on the street,

the coxswain beats his drum

beginning… ending –

cockcrow… deathknell -

transition – inexorable

faces of indefinite-ness  –

Dawn is the beginning of the day …

journey to the end of the night –

Dawn is war peace, disease health, hate love…

Evening is the beginning of night, the end of days.

Day passes over into night, night into day.

Dawn is one of the Twilights

Twilight precedes dawn, evening,

betwixt day night, night day –

Twilight descends into night,

ascends toward dawn.

The sun rises – it also sets.

Ascends descends.

Day is the place, event, happening of light –

Night is the place, event, happening of darkness -

Day night, dawn evening, indefinite return, spiral of light darkness –

The inexorable day night, place, light darkness, dawn evening.

(Being becoming, One Many, Aletheia)

There is no pure light or pure darkness in the play of light darkness.

Twilight is the place of – between light darkness.

Twilight – in – between ascension descension of sun, light darkness.

Play of light darkness – with day, light rules – with night, darkness rules.

(The ‘grammar’ of light and darkness, the ‘game’ with inexorable ‘rules’).

Without darkness, light would not birth relief, perspective, space, body, place

In the Open, lightning needs a dark sky.

The Open is the place of day night, light darkness.

Darkness does not need light, but is never free of light –

Darkness surrounds, engulfs the light.

(There is only pure darkness for us in the deepest caves,

concealed from the light of day night).

The moon, stars inhabit a sky of darkness light, night day.

With the descent of the sun, eclipse of light,

Evil abides in his recession to the eclipse.

Dawn, day nearly precedes the rise of the sun,

Beckons this return of light into the Open,

(although darkness is always there).

Evening, night is the eclipse of the sun,

return of moon and stars –

return – disclosure of darkness into the Open –

(We see the moon, stars during the day,

though they are eclipsed in obscurity).

The ‘West’ does not exist.

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The Way That Is Not: The Motif of Différance

October 31, 2010 at 5:28 am (Uncategorized)

Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.

Friedrich Schlegel

Derrida introduces the motif ‘différance’, of the purposive misspelling of the word difference, for purposes of ‘strategy’.[1] The playfulness associated with its usage is meant to be disruptive, subversive and adventurous (note Beaufret’s third question to Heidegger in the Letter on Humanism, regarding turning philosophy itself into an adventuress).  Différance, according to Derrida, is neither a concept nor a word, but a motif which intimates a play that, he claims, is prior to Being, and the ontological difference between beings and Being.  This motif that is neither a word nor a concept is instead a trace of that which does not itself have being, or presence.  Derrida informs us moreover that he intends the essay with its nameless name to proceed through the intensification of the play of the sign which, with regard to our customary expectations, is a misspelling – or perhaps a child’s game of no immediately useful significance.

To read the rest of the essay, please visit The Way That is Not: The Motif of Différance.

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“星之残骸——我从这些残骸建造了一个世界

June 8, 2010 at 2:44 am (Banks, Captivation, Creativity, Death, Finance Capitalism, Financial Crisis, freedom, Heidegger, Innovation, Marxism, Occupy Britain, Occupy Together, Occupy Wales, Occupy Wall Street, philosophy, Poetry, Syria, Time, Uncategorized, Wall Street, Wittgenstein)

Chinese translation of ‘The Wreckage of Stars: Nietzsche and the Ecstasy of Poetry’,  published in the Chinese Social Sciences Quarterly in Spring 2011.  Translated by Wang Shunning, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

只有愿意和懂得说谎的诗人，才能言说真理。“通过狄奥尼索斯的酒神颂歌的圆环”，诗103.[1]

“星之残骸——我从这些残骸建造了一个世界”，[2]尼采在一首诗中的某行里如此表达。

他肯定这残骸、这些废墟和错误（好像“我们”漫游在“我们的”错误中，从一个错误向另一个错误），通过他对同一的永恒轮回的肯定——或许，这些错误、真理、谎言中之最伟大最卓越的那个。

查拉图斯特拉耳语着，如是我意欲着它……爱命运

To read the rest of this piece, please visit “星之残骸——我从这些残骸建造了一个世界 – The Wreckage of Stars: Nietzsche and the Ecstasy of Poetry

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Marx and the Revolution of the Sacred

October 17, 2009 at 4:59 am (Captivation, Creativity, Death, freedom, Heidegger, Innovation, philosophy, Poetry, Time, Uncategorized, Wittgenstein)
Tags: , , ,

Marx and the Revolution of the Sacred

Marx and the Sacred

 

Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions.[1]

 

Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, its universal source of consolation and justification.  It is the fantastic realization of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality.  The struggle against religion is therefore indirectly a fight against the world of which religion is the spiritual aroma.[2]

Perhaps the most formidable obstacle in the task of retrieving a sense of the sacred in Marx consists in his repeated, and often polemical, statements against religion – or the edited selections of his editors and guardians.  Indeed, such an obstacle may in the end be one of our own making, as we are trapped within the labyrinth of our own historical understanding.[3] Yet, assuming, for the moment, that religion and the sacred are the same phenomena, if we take his pronouncement that religion is the opium of the people – which I purposely left out in the opening quotation – in isolation, we may be lead to believe that Marx felt that at best religion – and thus the ‘sacred’ – is a narcotic, which while it may be utilized to alleviate pain, remains an illusory amelioration for a situation of humiliation and despair.  Religion is an opiate in that it not only implies sedation from the pain of a life of exploitation, but also – ambivalently – suggests a systematic and strategic attempt to deaden or absorb any critical impulse to liberation.  In this sense, Marx’s characterization of religion as an opiate is a forerunner of many of the most radical criticisms of religion and ‘negative’ theology in last century – Gutierrez, Miranda, Bultmann, Heidegger, Derrida, and Bataille.  Each of these thinkers, in his own way, articulated a sense of the sacred in the wake of Marx and his deconstruction of religion as an ‘ideology’ – despite, perhaps,his own blindness to the regulative status of his own ideas.

The kinship which is shared by each of these thinkers is a disdain for mere religion in favour of the ‘sacred’.[4] Religion simultaneously constructs a ‘picture’ (Bild) for contemplation (Anschauung) and an organization that cultivates our captivity to that ‘picture’ (Wittgenstein).  The sacred, on the contrary, intimates ‘love’ (Badiou), ‘binding commitment’ (Heidegger), an engaged and affirmative eruption of liberation amidst finite existence.  Religion constructs its eternal church as an everlasting perpetuation of the ‘picture’, of an idol – a captivating grammar of existence – while the sacred exults in this moment of lived existence,[5] in the haeccitas of Duns Scotus.  If religion is a ‘rational’ and ‘systematic’ orchestration of feeling and phenomena, the sacred is an attempt to seek access to a phenomenon beyond the array of objectification towards traces of the numen.  Indeed, for Otto, one need only begin amidst this singular event.

In light of this preliminary distinction between religion and the sacred, it will be the task of Marx and the Revolution of the Sacred to excavate and disclose in the writings and historical activism of Marx an affirmative sense of the sacred which is alterior to his inherently negative conception of religion.  With Marx’s empathy in his ‘sigh of the oppressed creature’, we can glimpse a sense of the sacred dissociated from a religious leviathan that merely serves to perpetuate suffering – we can begin to glimpse a sacred that exists as a radical commitment to liberation.  In this way, I will contend that Marx’s criticism of religion as an ideology of oppression and sedation in no way forecloses on a possible relationship between his work and Twentieth and Twenty-First Century attempts to articulate a sense of the sacred in the world.  There emerges in these latter attempts the possibility of an openness which discloses a topos for an encounter with a sense of a sacred not mediated by ‘ideology’ (or positive theology).

In this way, that which will be disclosed as the ‘unity’ and coherence in these encounters of Marx with different strands of contemporary theology and philosophy is the inner kernel of ‘love’ and ‘commitment’, of affirmation, against nihilism and oppression — it is this ‘inner kernel’ that is an openness to the sacred.  That which is sought is an indication in Marx’s writings and advocacy of a personal expression and articulation of the sacred which transcends both scientific prognostication and political advocacy.  What we seek is the deeper ground of the sacred in Marx.

To read the rest of this essay, please visit: Marx and the Revolution of the Sacred

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