Saturday 6 December 2014
Jean-Luc Nancy - God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Four Little Dialogues
"Why have religions used this word god? Why even outside of religion is it not so easy to do without naming god in one way or another? Because it is not enough to use abstract names like Love, Joy, Mercy, or Justice in order to name this dimension of opening and going beyond. It is necessary to be able to address oneself to or to relate to this dimension. Why address oneself to this dimension or establish a connection with it? In order to be faithful to it.
What does it mean to be oneself as much as possible? It means nothing other than being faithful to this opening or to this infinite going beyond of the human by the human. It means being faithful to the sky or the heavens, in the sense I've spoken of."
Friday 5 December 2014
The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps - Jill Kraye and John Marenbon
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Marenbon advocates for a Long Middle Ages stretching from Plotinus to the mid-17C. He doesn't explain precisely why this would be, but we can assume that he's envisioning a period in which Platonic metaphysics makes up the core of elite intellectual culture. Beauty = Truth = Good = God as the centre of all thinking up until Leibniz.
Kraye is sympathetic to this notion but seems to want to claim that the Middle Ages represent a moment in which Aristotelian logic and natural philosophy came to surround and modify that core of Platonism. This would place the Middle Ages of intellectual culture between early-12C and mid-17C. The Renaissance would then name a phase in the intellectual culture of the Middle Ages in which the style and form of philosophical discussion mattered to intellectuals just as much as content did. Furthermore, the Renaissance would name a period in which philosophies other than Aristotelianism, such as Epicureanism or Pyrronic Skepticism, gained in popularity without replacing the Platonic core of most forms of thinking.
Jill is an historian interested in philosophy and John is a philosopher interested in history. They both want to contextualize the thought of their objects of study, but only John wants to think with those objects. Here in this podcast and also in a lecture given elsewhere, Marenbon suggests that we first isolate a philosophical problem that concerns us today, something that to us seems like philosophy. With that problem in hand we return to the past to see how it was dealt with then. But, in the process of doing so, we contextualize the old arguments and old solutions in order to provide contrast for the new, or to inspire new approaches to present problems.* Marenbon respects difference while prizing similarity. Jill, on the other hand, like most historians, wants to paint--to the best of her ability--a true and faithful portrait of her subject as it changes over time. Hers is the instinct of an antiquarian and a biographer and a pedant. Such an approach no doubt keeps us honest, and reveals to us the peculiarity of past minds, but it does little to sketch out how to make use of the past.
There is too much of Jill in me, and not enough of John.
*this strikes me as a benign version of Quentin Skinner's methodology. For more on him, check out this two part interview.
Wednesday 3 December 2014
War and Sci-Fi
"Clarke’s short story, Superiority, does not predict technologies that we recognize today, but elegantly describes a number of disturbingly familiar military technical failure modes. Such insights are especially helpful when thinking about new endeavors like the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Initiative, which will include both a new long-range research and development planning program and an offset strategy.
In a distant future, an unnamed dominant military power has been engaged in a lengthy space war with a technically inferior adversary. The dominant force appoints a new “Professor General.” This new leader changes the dominant power’s technology strategy from upgrading existing systems incrementally to developing and deploying new weapons, believing that “a revolution in warfare may soon be upon us.” This change in strategy sets off a series of disastrous events that ultimately leads to the dominant military power’s defeat.
Here’s how the decline unfolds. The superior force abandons the production of old weapons platforms to focus on the development of a new “irresistible weapon.” The weapon takes longer to develop than planned and can only be launched in limited quantities. During the development period, the adversary is able to build larger numbers of their inferior weapons so that even when the new weapon works as planned, it does not provide the anticipated advantage. The superior force then attempts a large-scale effort at battle management automation only to have the enemy rapidly adapt to their new concept of operations, targeting central nodes in their new order of battle to devastating effect. In response, the previously superior force develops a final new weapon only to have significant integration issues that throw their forces into disarray, precipitating their defeat within a month." (source)
Tuesday 2 December 2014
Sunday 30 November 2014
Rex Murphy and the Evangelization of Progress
This is amazing. I had no idea. Thank you Canadaland. As someone who has enjoyed Cross Country Checkup on numerous lazy Sunday afternoons and appreciated the few of Murphy's editorials that I'd seen on The National, I had always taken Murphy to be a neutral object in Canadian media. Admittedly, this was out of ignorance and selective listening. Shit like that happens when you ain't got cable and you tend not to regularly read Canadian newspapers. Often whole narratives and cycles pass me by without at all registering on my radar. But, man, I still wasn't prepared for this.
He's funny. I gotta give it to him. Murphy's oratorical skill is in full effect in the above video. I'm really impressed. And at the same time I'm very disturbed! He is preaching the virtues of energy production and consumption. He's preaching this with everything he can muster. Energy maintains civilization, he says.* Separating oil from sand and reaching the pinnacle of human intelligence are the same procedure, he says. It's a miracle, he says. Without energy there is no 'human dignity.' There is no social stability. Hell, there is no Newfoundland!
He's paid for these engagements, by the way. And then he goes on The National in favour of the oil sands. The CBC response reads like so. The National Post comments editor defends it thusly. And Rex himself writes this.
Now I am ensnared in the fucking shit show that is media and gossip and low talk. Ugh. Welcome.
*It does maintain 21C carbon democracies, so maybe he ain't wrong in his wrongness.
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