Unending free activity in us arises through the free renunciation of the absolute—the only possible absolute that can be given us and that we only find through our inability to attain and know an absolute.
---Novalis (courtesy of anton).
A normal man is one whose tendencies are, if not altogether univocal, at least concordant; that is, sufficiently concordant to serve as a vehicle for that decisive centre which we may call the sense of the Absolute or the love of God...
This type [the pariah], who lacks an axis, is capable of "everything and nothing"; he is a mimic and a born actor, always looking for a substitute for the centre, hence for a psychic homogeneity which necessarily eludes him...
...we live in a world which on the one hand tends to deprive men of their centre , and on the other offers them-in place of the saint and the hero-the cult of the "genius"...
[A genius is interesting and "authentic" to the extent that he or she is a wild card, opposed to bourgeois society and its values. i.e. in some senses: a 19th century genius. Is there a more universal type, one who is normal, balanced, virtuous?]
[A genius, with at least two heredities], lacking a true centre may easily be a psychopath-and this precisely on account of his unbridled subjectivism-whether he be a schizoid artist or a paranoiac politician.
[Whence the strange disjunction between a brilliant work of art and the character and personality of the artist]
JB reports Lucian Freud to have said:
"He talked about everything. One night we had a long conversation about anal sex.He said unless you've had anal sex with a girl she hasn't really submitted to you."
~~~
[Art for art's sake. As Arendt said (more or less) there is only 'process' now; we pride ourselves on our "truthfulness" rather than any substantive notion of the truth. What counts as a free activity? Can we think of reason independently of purposes, values? i.e. instrumentally or even more "bizarrely" (Sen) in terms of internal consistency?
What matters is the journey itself, the procedures. Departure, not arrival...one must always take leave and never arrive or even hope of arriving. Homecoming of the heart? Forget it. Where's the door? The great paradox (Arendt, again): to think of earth as our only home means we end up hating it, trying to flee it (in fantasies of escape).
Man finds nothing but himself. And he is thoroughly bored by it all. He finds nothing in himself and must, therefore, find it outside of himself. "I wasn't myself," a man says, looking back at his anger/mistakes/bitterness over his life. When are we ourselves, then? What are religion, art, friendship, ethics, love if not the possibility of transcending ourselves, a kind of second space?
Thought finds nothing but itself and is henceforth fixated by questions such as: "what can I know (of myself, of other people)?".
In economics: exchange divests the world of any "intrinsic value". From now on freedom is a process, an unending process...A space of flows..the triumph of capitalism depends on a culture and mentality which supports and justifies it}.
"Renounce centre" (Asherby). Life on the periphery. Except margins only make sense in relation to a centre.The centre is where, in some sense, nothing happens?: one just is.
~~~
It is humanistic narcissism with its mania for individualistic and unlimited production that is responsible for this ultimately useless profusion of talents and geniuses
[Britain's got talent. Back in the land in the pure almost every child is a genius or a potential genius...which makes you wonder why things have gone so wrong]
A quality is fully legitimate only on condition that in the last analysis it be linked to necessary Being, not to mere contingency, that is, to what is merely possible.
[On the other hand, there is a strain of 'thought' that would have us as nothing but mere flotsam..temporary, accidental, insubstantial beings thrown up by chance. How much of modern thought ad modern experiences works to de-centre us? Darwin, Freud, and the Camps...]
The 19th century-with its garrulous and irresponsible novelists, its creators of pernicious operas, its unhappy artists, in short, with all of its superfluous idolatries and blind alleys, leading to despair-was bound to crash against a wall, the fruit of its own absurdity, thus the First World War.
(quotations from Frithjof Schuon's 'To Have a Centre')
---Novalis (courtesy of anton).
A normal man is one whose tendencies are, if not altogether univocal, at least concordant; that is, sufficiently concordant to serve as a vehicle for that decisive centre which we may call the sense of the Absolute or the love of God...
This type [the pariah], who lacks an axis, is capable of "everything and nothing"; he is a mimic and a born actor, always looking for a substitute for the centre, hence for a psychic homogeneity which necessarily eludes him...
...we live in a world which on the one hand tends to deprive men of their centre , and on the other offers them-in place of the saint and the hero-the cult of the "genius"...
[A genius is interesting and "authentic" to the extent that he or she is a wild card, opposed to bourgeois society and its values. i.e. in some senses: a 19th century genius. Is there a more universal type, one who is normal, balanced, virtuous?]
[A genius, with at least two heredities], lacking a true centre may easily be a psychopath-and this precisely on account of his unbridled subjectivism-whether he be a schizoid artist or a paranoiac politician.
[Whence the strange disjunction between a brilliant work of art and the character and personality of the artist]
JB reports Lucian Freud to have said:
"He talked about everything. One night we had a long conversation about anal sex.He said unless you've had anal sex with a girl she hasn't really submitted to you."
~~~
[Art for art's sake. As Arendt said (more or less) there is only 'process' now; we pride ourselves on our "truthfulness" rather than any substantive notion of the truth. What counts as a free activity? Can we think of reason independently of purposes, values? i.e. instrumentally or even more "bizarrely" (Sen) in terms of internal consistency?
What matters is the journey itself, the procedures. Departure, not arrival...one must always take leave and never arrive or even hope of arriving. Homecoming of the heart? Forget it. Where's the door? The great paradox (Arendt, again): to think of earth as our only home means we end up hating it, trying to flee it (in fantasies of escape).
Man finds nothing but himself. And he is thoroughly bored by it all. He finds nothing in himself and must, therefore, find it outside of himself. "I wasn't myself," a man says, looking back at his anger/mistakes/bitterness over his life. When are we ourselves, then? What are religion, art, friendship, ethics, love if not the possibility of transcending ourselves, a kind of second space?
Thought finds nothing but itself and is henceforth fixated by questions such as: "what can I know (of myself, of other people)?".
In economics: exchange divests the world of any "intrinsic value". From now on freedom is a process, an unending process...A space of flows..the triumph of capitalism depends on a culture and mentality which supports and justifies it}.
"Renounce centre" (Asherby). Life on the periphery. Except margins only make sense in relation to a centre.The centre is where, in some sense, nothing happens?: one just is.
~~~
It is humanistic narcissism with its mania for individualistic and unlimited production that is responsible for this ultimately useless profusion of talents and geniuses
[Britain's got talent. Back in the land in the pure almost every child is a genius or a potential genius...which makes you wonder why things have gone so wrong]
A quality is fully legitimate only on condition that in the last analysis it be linked to necessary Being, not to mere contingency, that is, to what is merely possible.
[On the other hand, there is a strain of 'thought' that would have us as nothing but mere flotsam..temporary, accidental, insubstantial beings thrown up by chance. How much of modern thought ad modern experiences works to de-centre us? Darwin, Freud, and the Camps...]
The 19th century-with its garrulous and irresponsible novelists, its creators of pernicious operas, its unhappy artists, in short, with all of its superfluous idolatries and blind alleys, leading to despair-was bound to crash against a wall, the fruit of its own absurdity, thus the First World War.
(quotations from Frithjof Schuon's 'To Have a Centre')
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