From The Animal Side (2007; translated 2011) by Jean-Christophe Bailly, p. 14-15:
"And yet, sometimes a silent animal looks up at us and silently looks through us."
[-- Rilke, from the eighth of the Duino Elegies]
[...]
The world of gazes is the world is signifiance ["the term signifiance refers to the semiotic modalities and processes of making and conveying meanings" (p. 80)], that is, of a possible, open, still indeterminate meaning. For the percussive impact of difference that is produced by discourse, the gaze substitutes a sort of dispersal: the unformulated is its element, its watery origin. The gaze gazes, and the unformulated is, in it, the pathway of thought, or at least of a thinking that is not uttered, not articulated, but that takes place and sees itself, holds itself in this purely strange and strangely limitless place which is the surface of the eye.
Thus it is even among humans, who compensate, however, through discourse for this lack of determinacy and of articulation. But among animals, the absence of language means there is no compensation for the lack, and this is why their gaze is so disarming when it settles on us, which happens, as Rilke's line says, sweetly and soberly. In the face of that which is and can only be for us neither question nor response, we experience the feeling of being in the presence of an unknown force, at once supplicating and calm, that in effect traverses us. This force may not need to be named, but where it is exercised it is as though we were in the presence of a different form of thought, a thought that could only have ahead of it, and overwhelmingly, the pensive path.
This pensivity on the part of animals, in which some have been willing to see only stupor, is in any case made manifest in a thousand different ways, according to species, individuals, and circumstances. It seems to me that certain people have seen this, have approached it, and that others, who may have glimpsed it, have turned away at once. There are important and serious divisions here.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Saturday, August 2, 2014
From The Animal Side (2007; translated 2011) by Jean-Christophe Bailly, p. 4:
Speaking of animals. I have become aware, stratagems and efforts notwithstanding, that declarations of intense feeling on the subject of animals quite often not only fall flat but give rise to a sort of embarrassment, rather as though one had inadvertently crossed a line and gotten mixed up in something untoward, or even obscene.
Speaking of animals. I have become aware, stratagems and efforts notwithstanding, that declarations of intense feeling on the subject of animals quite often not only fall flat but give rise to a sort of embarrassment, rather as though one had inadvertently crossed a line and gotten mixed up in something untoward, or even obscene.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Click to see full image.
This strikes me as a funny picture.
From Comparative Cognition and Behavior Reviews
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Another excerpt (p 21) on philosophy and philosophizing from The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (a seminar-lecture course from 1929/30) by Martin Heidegger:
Insight into the multiple ambiguity of philosophizing acts as a deterrent [abschreckend] and ultimately betrays the entire fruitlessness of such activity. It would be a misunderstanding if we wished in the slightest to weaken this impression of the hopelessness of philosophizing, or to mediate it belatedly by indicating that in the end things are not so bad after all, that philosophy has achieved many things in the history of mankind, and so on. This is merely idle talk that talks in a direction leading away from philosophy. We must rather uphold and hold out in this terror [Schrecken]. For in it there becomes manifest something essential about all philosophical comprehension, namely that in the philosophical concept [Begriff], man, and indeed man as a whole, is in the grip of an attack [Angriff]---driven out of everydayness and driven back into the ground of things. Yet the attacker is not man, the dubious subject of the everyday and of the bliss of knowledge. Rather, in philosophizing the Da-sein [there-being] in man launches the attack upon man. Thus man in the ground of his essence is someone in the grip of an attack, attacked by the fact 'that he is what he is', and already caught up in all comprehending questioning. Yet being comprehensively included in this way is not some blissful awe, but the struggle against the insurmountable ambiguity of all questioning and being.
Insight into the multiple ambiguity of philosophizing acts as a deterrent [abschreckend] and ultimately betrays the entire fruitlessness of such activity. It would be a misunderstanding if we wished in the slightest to weaken this impression of the hopelessness of philosophizing, or to mediate it belatedly by indicating that in the end things are not so bad after all, that philosophy has achieved many things in the history of mankind, and so on. This is merely idle talk that talks in a direction leading away from philosophy. We must rather uphold and hold out in this terror [Schrecken]. For in it there becomes manifest something essential about all philosophical comprehension, namely that in the philosophical concept [Begriff], man, and indeed man as a whole, is in the grip of an attack [Angriff]---driven out of everydayness and driven back into the ground of things. Yet the attacker is not man, the dubious subject of the everyday and of the bliss of knowledge. Rather, in philosophizing the Da-sein [there-being] in man launches the attack upon man. Thus man in the ground of his essence is someone in the grip of an attack, attacked by the fact 'that he is what he is', and already caught up in all comprehending questioning. Yet being comprehensively included in this way is not some blissful awe, but the struggle against the insurmountable ambiguity of all questioning and being.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Excerpt (p 4-5) on philosophy and philosophizing from The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (a seminar-lecture course from 1929/30) by Martin Heidegger:
The negative result is this: philosophy does not permit itself to be grasped or determined by way of detours or as something other than itself [i.e., as science, worldview, art, religion, or history]. It demands that we do not look away from it, but apprehend it from out of itself. Philosophy itself---what do we know of it, what and how is it? It itself is only whenever we are philosophizing. Philosophy is philosophizing. That does not seem very informative. Yet however much we seem merely to be repeating the same thing, this says something essential. It points the direction in which we have to search, indeed the direction in which metaphysics withdraws from us. Metaphysics as philosophizing, as our own human activity---how and to where can metaphysics as philosophizing, as our own human activity, withdraw from us, if we ourselves are, after all, human beings? Yet do we in fact know what we ourselves are? What is man? The crown of creation or some wayward path, some great misunderstanding and an abyss? If we know so little about man, how can our essence not be alien to us? How can philosophizing as a human activity fail to conceal itself from us in the obscurity of this essence? Philosophy---as we are presumably superficially aware---is not some arbitrary enterprise with which we pass our time as the fancy takes us, not some mere gathering of knowledge that we can easily obtain for ourselves at any time from books, but (we know this only obscurely) something to do with the whole, something extreme, where an ultimate pronouncement and interlocution occurs on the part of human beings. For why else would we have come along here? Or have we arrived here only because others also come along, or because we happen to have a free period just between five and six when it is not worth going home? Why are we here? Do we know what we are letting ourselves in for?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dutch Book From 1692 Documents Every Color Under the Sun: A Pre-Pantone Guide to Colors
The negative result is this: philosophy does not permit itself to be grasped or determined by way of detours or as something other than itself [i.e., as science, worldview, art, religion, or history]. It demands that we do not look away from it, but apprehend it from out of itself. Philosophy itself---what do we know of it, what and how is it? It itself is only whenever we are philosophizing. Philosophy is philosophizing. That does not seem very informative. Yet however much we seem merely to be repeating the same thing, this says something essential. It points the direction in which we have to search, indeed the direction in which metaphysics withdraws from us. Metaphysics as philosophizing, as our own human activity---how and to where can metaphysics as philosophizing, as our own human activity, withdraw from us, if we ourselves are, after all, human beings? Yet do we in fact know what we ourselves are? What is man? The crown of creation or some wayward path, some great misunderstanding and an abyss? If we know so little about man, how can our essence not be alien to us? How can philosophizing as a human activity fail to conceal itself from us in the obscurity of this essence? Philosophy---as we are presumably superficially aware---is not some arbitrary enterprise with which we pass our time as the fancy takes us, not some mere gathering of knowledge that we can easily obtain for ourselves at any time from books, but (we know this only obscurely) something to do with the whole, something extreme, where an ultimate pronouncement and interlocution occurs on the part of human beings. For why else would we have come along here? Or have we arrived here only because others also come along, or because we happen to have a free period just between five and six when it is not worth going home? Why are we here? Do we know what we are letting ourselves in for?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dutch Book From 1692 Documents Every Color Under the Sun: A Pre-Pantone Guide to Colors
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Van Morrison - It's All In The Game/You Know What They're Writing About ...
Van Morrison - It's All In The Game/You Know What They're Writing About
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