Appearance and Reality

Today, again in the UL, the place where all my observations take place, a man appeared next to me at the reception desk. He was wearing a black beret and was holding a copy of Revue de la Philosophie. When he spoke, he said 'Awwright?' in a distinct cockney accent.

Anthony Kenny was in College today for a conference that had been kept very quiet. Here is a picture of his head:



On a walk on Midsummer Common today I came across some of these. How lovely:

Experiment

Interesting experiment described on the radio this morning in connexion with Cern. I tried part of it for myself and here is the result:

I've always found it slightly disturbing that nothing can be seen to be emitted from the little bulb in the end of a remote control - now, with the aid of a digital camera, it can!

On a different note, my wife and I watched L'Ennui yesterday evening. I found it very absorbing to begin with but am of the opinion that the ending ruined it. Up to that point, it had been an almost meditative film (in the vein of Caché) on the theme of obsession, romantic jealousy and the like. It felt, at the end, that all this was undermined for no better reason than to introduce a bit of plot. How unlike French cinema! More positively, the film made me aware of the quality of Charles Berling's acting. Not only was it marvellously frenzied and totally convincing but also very different from L'Heure d'été, the last film I happen to have seen him in on the local Silver Screen.

As I write, I am drinking ([un]bottled) Guinness for medicinal purposes.

Heresy

Interesting piece in The Guardian yesterday, arguing that Christianity is a religion of deception. I confess (God help me) that I found myself sympathetic with Mr Bradnack's arguments (and there is evidence that I am not the only blogger-ordinand in this position).

His arguments apply only to the specific expression of Christian doctrine that is the creed - but how influential an expression! Some people I know doubt the value of using the creed liturgically but, as we all know, liturgies are not immune to development and change. Thus, if the Liturgical Commission accepted arguments like Mr Bradnack's, it would surely have excised the creed from the (modern) liturgy. Many people take the view he describes in his final paragraph and interpret some of the claims as metaphor. But how could such people, as they persist in saying the creed as part of the liturgy, respond to his accusation that they "mouth the words to deceive the gullible that they must believe them"? One does not need to know exactly who 'the gullible' are, or how many of them there are in one's congregation, to be pretty sure that some people will in fact be taking the credal claims literally. I can't see any easy answer to Mr Bradnack's charge.

I can recommend that anyone plagued by these questions (and who doesn't mind them multiplying) read the novella San Manuel Bueno, Mártir (1930) by the Spanish philosopher and writer, Miguel de Unamuno. (There's an online version, alas only in Spanish, here.) Speaking of Unamuno, there's an interesting contrast between his views and those of Mr Bradnack. Whereas Bradnack takes the Church's opposition to Galileo and Darwin as instances of its committment to bad science, Unamuno (in his Tragic Sense of Life, p. 72) interprets it as a defence against the rationalism which, in his view, badly distorts our understanding of the nature of human being. He interprets it as the defence of 'life' in all its irrationality. I can't help thinking that Unamuno goes too far. Defending the non-rational dimension of human nature is one thing (so far, so good); being out and out anti-rational is quite another.

On a more mundane level, I spent too much money today in Heffers Sound and Heffers. I bought Bach's complete sonatas and partitas for violin and a history of psychiatry.

Curtains

Well, as promised to all those fans of soft-furnishings, here's some evidence of how much of a difference a change of curtains can make to one's flat.

Here is what we had before:

Horrid, aren't they? Words should have failed me but instead my wife and I put up with this pair of monstrosities for almost a year. They were too long, wasted space and just look at the way they were fitted (I apologize in advance for this one):

My parents very kindly came up today and helped to create this veritable nirvana:

Yes, the curtain has literally been drawn aside to reveal that depth behind all things and beyond all things, especially curtains.

Two totally unrelated issues. Here, firstly, is one of my better cups of Monsoon Malabar, though the splodge in the middle hardly counts as 'art':


Secondly, I'd like to share with you a comment from a comic genius, a perceptive satire on the nature of religion. Listen to it here.

Cottingham Festschrift

Today, in the University Library, I had a look (in the West Room) at John Cottingham's very recent Festschrift in the hope of some enlightenment about his philosophy of religion, a critique of which presently comprises a chapter of my thesis. Both happily and frustratingly, his work was not criticized along my lines. Cottingham's own contribution to this volume, however, furnished me with some interesting ideas and pleasing quotations. I cannot resist reproducing my favourite. Cottingham is discussing the difference in style between 'analytic' and 'continential' philosophy; analytic philosophers behave, he says,

as if locutions like 'it seems to me as if I may now be being appeared to red-ly' must automatically trump declarations like 'the conceptuality of rednees posits itself phenomenologically in the domain of subjectivity'. Both sorts of jargon tend to make me see red.

[Reference: 'The Self, the Good Life and the Transcendent' in N. Athanassoulis and S. Vice (eds.) The Moral Life: Essays in Honour of John Cottingham (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 231-274, 233.]

If any of my coterie of readers has an overbearing interest in soft furnishings, they should look out for tomorrow's post. 'tis the Eve of the Curtain Saga!