Monsoon Malabar

[Insert prefix here]speak

2010-03-02T13:40:00.007Z

Interesting Guardian article here, which I read a while ago now, about 'artspeak'.

The point made I think has wider application. I have always been aware of the existence of a specific kind of religious language which could, by analogy, be dubbed 'religispeak'. The point of the language of 'calling' and 'vulnerability' by which I am perniciously surrounded could equally be expressed in plain terms. The problem then would be that the language would be robbed of its authoritative power. The sentence 'I am called to be a priest' would not sound so noble and ponderous if it were translated as 'I've failed at most other things in my life and have finally found the path that will provide me with social status, despite my obvious lack of talent or intelligence'. Alright - some bias has been injected into the 'translation'. But that is no less true of the sentence which it translates.

The analogies between art and religion are interesting and manifold. But what I had not considered is that both contribute to institutions or 'worlds' (as in 'the artworld') which are open to abuse. Elitism and exclusion abound in both. But this does not owe to the nature of art and religion but rather to the nature of the human institutions in which the artistic and religious impulses become entombed. Compare van Gogh's description of

a drawbridge with a little cart going over it, outlined against a blue sky

with some of Christ's more morally edifying statements. They are uncomplicated and 'earthy'. They are both miles apart from the respective '-speaks' created by the institutions which, all too often, sap them of their lifeblood.

Doctors and Philosophers

2010-01-08T22:48:00.004Z

I have long appreciated the work of Raymond Tallis and can excuse some of his philosophical oversights on the grounds that he's had plenty of other things keeping him occupied. The arguments of Merleau-Ponty, for instance, are convergent with Tallis's but M.-P. is conspicuous by his absence from Tallis's work.

Having recently come across a review by Mary Midgley of Iain McGilchrist's new book on brain hemispheres and culture, I began to think that there are a number of very interesting philosophers who are also trained doctors. Jonathan Miller's another one. As seen below, he can cram a great deal into five minutes. Contrary to what might be expected, these people tend to resist reductive accounts of human existence: something that's sorely needed in philosophy at the moment. I find the arguments of the recently fashionable 'neurophilosophers' facile and fatuous.

Terrorism Laws Gone Mad; Terry Pratchett

2009-12-19T11:07:00.004Z

Interesting piece in The Guardian today about an artist questioned by police for painting a watercolour near London City Airport.
Inside half an hour two Metropolitan police officers from the specialist unit based at the airport arrived in a patrol car and demanded to know what he was doing, saying he had been spotted on a CCTV camera.

"I told them, 'I'm hardly a terrorist, I'm watercolouring'. One policeman said, 'you're not painting the airport, are you?' I told him I was painting the sugar factory. He said 'no one paints factories'. I told him Lowry painted loads of factories and made a mint. He got a bit touchy then."

For 15 minutes, O'Farrell said, one officer checked his identification on a radio while another searched his bag. "They said I had 'weird paraphernalia' with me. I said 'it's a flask of coffee and an iPod'."

O'Farrell said he had returned to the same spot a week later to complete the work and was interrogated again, by two other officers.

"I told them I was just doing a watercolour of the sugar factory. One of them said 'no one does watercolours of factories'. I told them about Lowry – it was groundhog day. It was extraordinary.

"Then one said 'I can see what you're doing now, I'd be a bit more concerned if you were painting the airport'. I remember from my art history that centuries ago in China artists were murdered in case they [painted] maps and roads. But in the days of digital photography I hardly think a watercolourist painting an airport would be some sort of international threat." The experience left him baffled. "I've been painting in Moscow, in Vietnam, Ukraine, and all I get round me are bunches of kids. If the police come by they're just curious about the painting. It's extraordinary what happened to me."

Apologies to those who are fans, and his work may be brilliant, but the novelist in this video comes across as obnoxious and stupid, playing up to a crowd of sycophants.

Brighton

2009-12-07T12:02:00.002Z

I went to Brighton and drank cocktails. I went to a party. Now I'm back.

Christmas shopping, reading, and writing await me.

I'm now reading Schnitzler's La Ronde which, when it first came out, caused riots in his native Vienna. Planning to write a piece about the philosophical implications of the idea that there is a 'God-spot' in the brain.

The Chestnut-Seller

2009-11-08T00:36:00.002Z

Here's a story by one of my favourite writers. It's called 'The Chestnut-Seller' and it's by Joris-Karl Huysmans.

Listen!

Choral Evensong

2009-11-05T00:58:00.005Z

I officiated at Choral Evensong in College on Tuesday evening and m'colleague, Frost, sang. All part of my regular duties. But this time I took a recording device with me. You can listen to a five-minute clip here. The choir were on top form! Responses by Leighton, if anyone's interested.

Kierkegaardian Depression

2009-11-02T11:48:00.006Z

Thought I would share a rather poignant quotation from Kierkegaard which I found in last Saturday's Guardian Review:

I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; wit poured from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me – but I went away – and the dash should be as long as the earth's orbit and wanted to shoot myself.

Since K is hailed as the Father of Existentialism, it's perhaps not surprising that it has a reputation for being miserable.

AudioBoo

2009-10-27T16:26:00.002Z

Listen to my AudioBoos here. They are posted to Twitter, as well.

Plan B

2009-10-19T00:49:00.010+01:00

I have often considered the possibility of becoming one of those bearded men in pubs who drinks heavily and shouts at anyone who will listen. Seems like a sound Plan B to me. I am much better at drinking and shouting than I am at writing. On second thoughts, that might not be true. But I do the former more regularly.

I need to immerse myself in the double-suicide world of Karl Jaspers. (He had a Jewish wife in Nazi Germany and was prepared to kill himself if anything should happen to her.) Here are some of his words which speak to me:

Never to approach the hidden God directly is the fate which a philosophical Existenz must bear. Only the ciphers speak, if I am ready [...] only seldom will an eye seem to look at me in the dark. Day in, day out, it is as if there were nothing. In his eerie abandonment man seeks a more direct access, objective guarantees, and firm support; he takes God's hand in prayer so to speak turns to authority, and sees the Godhead in personal form - and only in this form is it God at all, while as the Godhead it maintains its indefinable distance . (Philosophy, Vol. 3, p. 133)

However attractive this philosophical world - whose attractiveness is probably enhanced by Redon's hallucinogenic visions - the world of theology imprisons me. S. John will not let me 'scape! B. S. tomorrow. I've also got to write a f*cking sermon for next Sun. Like I say, Plan B seems much more congenial!

There are stirrings in connection with Charlotte Gainsbourg's new album, IRM. You can download the first track for free here (perfectly legally, I might add). In my opinion it's a great song. And here is a video insight into the creative process. Better stop now before my better half gets jealous...

Charlotte Gainsbourg - IRM from Charlotte Gainsbourg on Vimeo.

Displacement

2009-10-17T22:14:00.007+01:00

May the proliferation continue!

I have recently decided that the free OpenOffice programme, though valuable, is not sufficient to my paranoid needs. The programme was never particularly responsive but it was whilst looking into possible alternatives that I read a remark that put the Fear of God into me from the NeoOffice web site.

NeoOffice is not perfect. Although we try very hard to make NeoOffice free of bugs and crashes, our users still find new bugs and new cases that cause NeoOffice to crash. So, if you feel that you need software that has been heavily tested, we recommend that you use a commercially-supported product like Microsoft Office or Apple iWork.

If this is true of NeoOffice, I reflected, so it might be true of OpenOffice. So, with thoughts of losing my entire thesis (thus far) buzzing around in my brain, I heeded their advice. Microsoft or Apple was the choice: Protestant or Catholic? The fact that I already have a Mac, together with the very reasonable cost of iWork (with student discount), led me to choose the latter. And Pages is very nice. I especially like its full-screen feature which, theoretically at least, blacks out all distractions from the almost ritualized colour and movement of one's Mac's display.

Some might wish to accuse me of indulging in displacement activity and, of course, there would be some truth in that. When it is disagreeable to focus on bringing about the ends, why not focus on the means? Form and method instead of content; surface instead of depth.

Lethargy prevented me from going to Hatfield to hear the legendary John Cottingham speak at the University of Hertfordshire. That and the fact that I downloaded a typescript of what he was going to say (I assume this since the paper bears the same title as the talk) from his website. I was in no mood to heckle.

Next week I plan to write up my observations on Karl Jasper's periechontology with a dual focus on his notion of 'ciphers' and his views on the role of the subject-object dichotomy. His ideas on both create ambiguity: on the one hand, ciphers are the 'language of being', they embody what is beyond the subject-object dichotomy to human Existenz - a way of being that is existential, where subject is not separable from object. But he also claims that the subject-object dichotomy is essential to the existence of human consciousness. If we are not in the dichotomy, he argues, we are unconscious. This appears to place equal weight on scientific ways of engaging with the world and 'spiritual', broadly religious, ones. The question is, How do the two relate? His concept of Existenz doesn't seem adequately to bridge the other two categories of his tripartite system: ordinary consciousness (in the subject-object dichotomy) and Transcendence (or God). I hope, at any rate to draw from him a better account of the relation of human consciousness to what is beyond itself than that provided by Tillich's account of symbols which can never escape the subject-object dichotomy. Jaspers provides us with that possibility, though perhaps not without inconsistency or ambiguity.

Why I Don't Trust Wikipedia

2009-10-14T14:20:00.003+01:00

The picture speaks for itself.

The number of posts I am making is nearing a proliferation!

So what happened, then? I don't quite know.

2009-10-11T22:10:00.005+01:00

So it has been an unconscionably long time since I last made a post: mea maxima culpa! Forgive me, gentle readers.

I spent this afternoon trying to find the source for Heidegger's statment that if he were to write a theology, the word 'being' would not appear in it. If any philosophers are reading this, they may be interested to know that it's in GA15, 436-7. It's his reply to the third question asked after his Zurich seminar in 1951. So it does exist. I suspected (and rather hoped) that it had been made up by theologians.

Then I went to Choral Evensong and dinner in College. As I left College by the back gate, I noticed a chavvy looking car with tinted windows and a loud exhaust go past. I thought nothing of it until, further down the road, I saw it coming towards me again. As it drew level, something was thrown or sprayed at me from the back window. I don't know what even now! A firework? Some kind of liquid? It made a fizzing sound, anyway. And missed. Having recovered from my surprise, I looked after the car as it drove on up the road and noticed it turning left. Thinking it might come round a third time for another pop at me, I started to leg it. Once I was on the path by the river I began to relax but I still wonder what happened. Perhaps I'll never know. I had an umbrella with me and, had I had time, would have put it to good use in deflecting the entity or substance that was directed at me. I'll remember this for the future. An Englishman's umbrella is his castle, or so they say.

2009-07-31T21:16:00.002+01:00

So I have polished off the Journals of Sylvia Plath. Beautifully written and surprisingly amusing at times. It appears that, at least as a student, she was an existential humanist.

On to the next!

2009-06-18T23:55:00.002+01:00

"They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more."

And a true saying.

German Philosophy and Wax Chandlers

2009-06-09T21:59:00.010+01:00

Evening all! It has been an unconscionably long time since I made a post so here we are again.

I have discovered the work of Karl Jaspers. Great stuff but I am presently trying to work out what's wrong with it. He makes a marvellous critique of both organized religion and mysticism forcing one to take a via media - if one dares. Nothing wrong with all that. But the theory of ciphers is doing harm to my brain - 'hieroglyphics of being' and all that. I rather suspect that the problem is that his argument requires him to say that ciphers are both subjective and objective at the same time. The problem being that they can only appear to us within that dichotomy, and therefore as one or other - revealing to us 'the Transcendent' which is beyond it. His position is subtly different from Tillich's but, I suspect, still doesn't quite make sense. If anything comes of his idea of the 'foundering' of ciphers or their 'dissolving' as objects as they become a matter of concern for Existenz, then I'll take that back. You will all, of course, be the first to know.

Disappointed about the recent 'success' of far right parties, including the BNP here. Listened to a good sermon on this by m'colleague as I officiated at Choral Evensong tonight. I also met the master of the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers. This company apparently gives two scholarships per year to the College. Weird.

Following an exchange I had on Twitter today, let me register my admiration for the former bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway. We are all agnostics. More of us should, like him, have the courage to admit the fact.

Stands Scotland where it did?

2009-05-24T14:53:00.012+01:00

So Paris went well. Delivered my paper, answered questions, went to my supervisor's paper, went to look at art. Saw some marvellous Cézannes and Redons in the Musée d'Orsay and something in the region of 100 Kandinsky paintings in the Pompidou Centre. I saw a two-volume Cézanne catalogue raisonné in a Cambridge bookshop today for £80 and am presently trying to justify buying it. It is, unbelievably, a bargain.

Went to Edinburgh, where I stayed with a friend, and thence across to a rather grim part of Glasgow for a workshop on museums. Although I got to see the store 'pods' for all the Glasgow museums, the talks were very pedestrian, despite their titles. But, back in Edinburgh, my friend introduced me to some interesting philosophers and I got to see the library of T. L. S. Sprigge. A real treat! It turns out that he had a shelf-ful of books by Santayana, on whom I may have to read Sprigge himself together with his magnum opus, The Vindication of Absolute Idealism. A far cry from his short Theories of Existence which I remember reading as an undergraduate.

I now ought to be writing my popular essay on Christmas but can't be arsed. That's why I'm writing this instead and listening to Life is Killing Me by Type O Negative to cheer myself up... And I've just bought some monsoon malabar online.

(Navet by Redon.)

Gai Paris

2009-05-12T23:31:00.004+01:00

So I'm going to Paris on Thursday to deliver my conference paper. Much good may it do me. I plan to walk one of Beckett's favorite routes, though I shall not visit his grave in Montparnasse - his work is quite depressing enough.

Listened to a sermon at Evensong tonight - God uses people who grumble, I was told. From where I stand he's been working overtime.

Read a short story by Balzac called 'The Atheist's Mass'. Raised some interesting questions but I was expecting more. Something that cut deeper.

Earning a Living by the Pen

2009-04-14T23:53:00.006+01:00

I have returned. Loved Edinburgh and would like to live there one day. Had a good trip to Durham and it was great to catch up with friends. The whole trip was pretty tough in some respects, plenty of psychoanalytic material from the depths of my psyche. As Freud once remarked, there is no such thing as an accident. Anyway, I'm back in Cambridge and spent the evening with some friends in a pub drinking some kind of stout identified by a man in a uniform on the label. No, really.

I've had a popular essay accepted, too. It turns out I'll even have a contract from Wiley-Blackwell. I suppose I can now be said, like the characters of Gissing's New Grub Street, to be earning a living by the pen - in the valley of the shadow of books. Though I hope I shall not go the way of Edwin Reardon: depression, marital breakdown, illness and death.

I hope you like my new photo: an actual image of me replaces a homage to Wittgenstein on the ineffability of coffee. The photo was taken on the platform at Edinburgh Waverly railway station by a talented friend whose blog is well worth a read.

Trip

2009-04-06T00:57:00.002+01:00

The thesis has, I hope temporarily, ground to a halt.

Off to Edinburgh on Tuesday followed by Durham. I shall be on the look-out for gentlemans' outfitters. I've decided too to have my 'Nietzsche phase' whilst away. I plan to start with an article by my former supervisor followed by The Birth of Tragedy, followed by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I shall stop short of the advice of this man to read them in the bath.

Lethargy

2009-04-03T23:02:00.002+01:00

Hut

2009-04-01T17:43:00.010+01:00

I have been reading about Heidegger's hut in a book called Heidegger's Hut. Interesting to read about the supposed relationship between H's mountain shack and his philosophy. Is inspiring me in some inarticulable way. The conference paper on Tillich is going nowhere fast but I don't care. And I've had an article on existentialist aesthetics accepted. Woot!

I plan to have my long-overdue 'Nietzsche phase' in Durham over Easter. In the words of Ian Curtis, [Where] "will it end?"

Test

2009-03-03T16:18:00.007Z

[Edit: Warning! This is a boring and stupid post. What was I thinking?]

This is ~~not~~ a test. Ceci n'est pas une pipe. For future reference: if only Magritte had had access to the (strike) (/strike) code.

Also links:

One needs to write:
(a href="http://www.my-lovely-website.com/me/how-amazing-i-am")text as which link appears(/a)

Consideration of Blogging

2009-03-02T11:40:00.017Z

I often wonder why I 'blog' and today is no exception. I can see from my little map (bottom right of the screen) that I have had 'hits' from all over the world. But are such people actively seeking out my mundanities or were they simply looking for their nearest coffee bean supplier in the anticipation of a dark, rich cup of monsoon malabar? Did they then see an apparently relevant Google result only to find themselves perusing these inane ramblings before moving on, dissapointed, disgusted and embittered?

Assuming, on the other hand, that I do have willing readers, it is difficult to know what to write about. I am of the belief that one should write in order to be read so that what one writes is partly determined by what one's readers want to read.

Gentle readers: what shall I write? The things that fill my head are of too bizarre or arcane a character to be of general interest, I fear:

I feel like a stroke victim whose brain's 'God spot' is the seat of the clot. And if that were not enough, these words from Nick Cave have been haunting me ever since I heard the suggestion that with the human capacity for great intelligence goes the tendency towards self-destruction:

Don't it make you feel so sad, don't the blood rush to your feet /
To think that everything you do today, tomorrow is obsolete? /
Technology and women and little children too /
Don't it make you feel blue? Don't it make you feel blue?

It's much better with music so, if you don't already know it, check out the album Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! As the t-shirt has it, humanity is underrated; and a true saying. But for very different reasons, it is overrated. There's plenty of humanism, which is a good thing, but there's also plenty of hubris. If only we could find the via media...

On a completely unrelated subject, I have discovered the meaning of 'cony'. I first came across the word at Ps. 104: 18, which apparently refers to a kind of hyrax (I know, sweet, aren't they?). I gather that in Old English and in some current English dialects it refers to a (sometimes young) rabbit. But cony is also, more rarely, a verb meaning 'to act the rabbit'. The OED quotes Florio in 1611 defining it thus:

Coniglieggiare, to cunnie, to play the cunnie, to bee fearefull and lurke in holes.

I look forward to hearing about what you would like to read here, gentle reader, and whether this post 'hits the spot'. Do leave a some 'remarks' or feel free to e-mail me. I am among you as one who serves.

The Inspiring Type of French Philosophy

2009-02-15T22:59:00.003Z

A quotation I came across today which I must share with you all:

"Furthermore, if one remembers the history of the word atheism, and how it has been applied even to Spinoza, the most positive of philosophers, we must admit that all thinking which displaces, or otherwise defines, the sacred has been called atheistic, and that philosophy which does not place it here or there, like a thing, but at the joining of things and words, will always be exposed to this reproach without ever being touched by it."

Marice Merleau-Ponty, In Praise of Philosophy, 46.

I could not have put it better, so I won't try.

2009-02-05T14:06:00.007Z

Found an interesting clip on youtube. Not sure about the images, but the audio is very interesting indeed.

I waded through the slush that the snow had become this morning to get my hair cut and did some laundry when I got home. I found myself thinking about Van Gogh and his coffee addiction, then I had some coffee. Then I had lunch, and some coffee, and am about to carry on with Gabriel Marcel's autobiography, perhaps over another cup of coffee. He does not, so far, appear to have been convinced by the Roman Catholicism to which he converted. He claimed to be painfully aware of the fact that applying his critical acumen to biblical texts, for instance, would destroy his faith - so he didn't. He rested assured in the knowledge that intelligent friends of his had examined the basis of their religious faith and it was still intact for them.

A deeply fascinating thinker, sadly neglected, whose life and work were of a piece. I toyed with the idea of putting on one of his plays...

P.S. One thing I forgot to mention: I saw a squirrel being bludgeoned to death yesterday. I assume it was injured and not epileptic. I hope so. Imagine being bludgeoned to death in the throes of something from which you would otherwise have recovered. Not a pretty thought for a Thursday afternoon. I think I'll put the coffee on to cheer myself up.

2009-01-23T15:30:00.002Z

I have discovered the work of PJ Harvey.
Recently been enjoying To Bring you My Love. Good album.

Computing (again)

2009-01-14T16:27:00.007Z

Partly because I think it's important to keep my readers informed, and partly in order to delay the process of thesis-writing for as long as possible, I take this opportunity to make a post and to inform you all that, further to my previous post, I have inherited a Mac. In case any of you are interested in what it looks like, here's a picture:

And here's my current desktop:

Overall, the switch from a PC has not been too irksome though I have had to convert some music files from .ogg to .mp3. It's nice to use and I have a distinct preference for this machine over the previous one. Today, I discovered growl. Open Office helps keep me as free as I can be from the clutches of Bill Gates.

I've booked tickets for this satirical operetta in London. It will be interesting to see Armando trying his hand at something new. I recall that he used a similar idea in one of his TV shows. Now he's actually written one!

And finally, here is a song by Hugh Laurie (who is apparently now very popular in America (and a Selwyn man - hurrah!)) which will get stuck in your head all too easily. Enjoy:

2009

2009-01-06T18:12:00.006Z

Happy New Year!

Here beginneth 2009. Thus far I have been getting up not exactly 'early' but in time to listen to Melvyn's In Our Time (Darwin Season). His (Darwin's, I mean) biography is very interesting - not least the time he spent training for the priesthood in Cambridge and the intellectual oppression he must have experienced. Much of this morning's programme was conducted by Melvin in what he called several times "this extraordinary museum" which is just round the corner from my house. I shall have to go and have a look at the bodies of some of the creatures he killed on his various expeditions. I saw Bill Bailey's latest performance in London during the festive period. Focusing on a specific aspect of Darwin's biography, he made us all (by which I mean the audience) say 'barnacles'.

Thinking about when religious people talk about 'the soul' and pray for "all who are ill in mind body or spirit". This must surely be based on a Cartesian view but the puzzle is that Descartes never distinguished between 'mind' and 'soul'. Whatever it was that Descartes thought was distinct from the body and which could potentially survive the destruction of the body was 'thinking substance'. So not only is a questionable dualism built into the fabric of Christianity but a bad version of it, in which a third term is invented, apparently for little more than rhetorical effect. Can anyone out there tell me what a 'soul' is meant to be and how it is supposed to be different from a 'mind'? It's maddening, the degree to which religion depends on bad philosophy.

Very sad to hear of the death of Harold Pinter on Christmas Eve. Bought Michael Billington's biography of him today, together with Wordsworth's Prelude, in all its papery loveliness.

Macquarrie

2008-12-17T16:31:00.005Z

Well, I've been carrying on with the work. I've been reading a lot of John Macquarrie this week who was an early influence on my thinking (and the writer who first got me interested in Heidegger). It is good to read a mainstream philosopher of religion and systematic theologian denying that the statement "God exists" is strictly true. It's this line of argument, and Tillich's religious symbols, that I'll be writing about in Chapter 4; I hope, over Christmas.

I've reached the conclusion that there is some good stuff in theology but you have to be very careful. Or perhaps I'm just reading philosophers of religion who deceptively call themsleves, or were deceptively called by others, theologians.

'Muffin', Language Use and Beards

2008-12-03T20:23:00.006Z

I have just eaten a muffin and this led me to reflect of the meaning of the word 'muffin'. Some web searching reveals that what I've eaten is called an 'English muffin' in North America and is also known as a 'hot muffin' or 'breakfast muffin'. Like toast and crumpets, it can be eaten with sweet or savoury accompaniment. But there is no way, in the UK, of distinguishing the two kinds of thing that are called 'muffins' - people hardly go around talking about 'hot' or 'breakfast' muffins in order to distinguish what I've eaten from the sweet, cake-like muffins which are baked in muffin tins. Yet another instance, I reflected, of language use being determined by an ongoing practice of reference and by the context in which words are used. Would the context invariably make it clear what kind of muffin I'm talking about? I rather doubt it.

On a different note, I came across this chap's website today. I was frankly alarmed! He surely cannot be serious when he writes

I suggest that a better test would be to shave half a person's beard off, but not tell them which half.

I love the fact that he is careful to use terms that are non-gender-specific. And if you do as he suggests, and click on the link at the bottom of the page to see him six weeks later, it becomes even more obvious that he has no regard for how other people might perceive him. Not only was he content to perform 'outdoor activities' (presumably in public) with half a beard, but was not at all worried about staying like that until the shaved half grew back and even then without trimming it so that the halves were even. Perhaps he imagines that the shorter half will 'catch up'.

I have found some evidence here and here that such things are considered fashionable but it's not at all clear that these people are not taking the piss.

Lakes

2008-11-27T01:59:00.005Z

Yes, yes, yes: here we are in Wordsworth Country! It makes me want to read The Prelude: I hope some kind soul will buy me a copy for Christmas. The wedding was delightful, and the 7hr drive tolerable, though we stayed in a pub called the Swinside Inn which I cannot recommend for two reasons:
a) it was shit
b) they turn the central heating off at 10pm.

I wanted ear muffs and some kind of nose-warming device! I had to buy a cumbrian jumper to keep me warm during the night.

Here is me enjoying the Wordsworthian atmosphere:

And here is my favourite kind of cityscape- humanity vs Nature all the way!:

And here's a picture of the Happy Couple:

The Lake District

2008-11-20T12:50:00.003Z

More reading: voracious reading! Human potential is more than we give it credit for.

On a different note: Choral Evensong tonight, followed by drinks. Then, I'm off to Keswick tomorrow for a wedding. I shall return with a detailed account and, no doubt, some pictures.

[Edit: I'm hoping for some visitors from California. I suspect that the mere presence of the word 'California' in this post may attract some.]

Londinium

2008-11-18T11:07:00.007Z

I'm presently in London, trying my best not to start work on the thesis again. The next stage is to read through the second and third of three lectures by William Alston. Though a different aspect of my work has been occupying my thoughts for most of today. It will have to be taken slowly and with Stoicism.

Speaking of that ancient school of philosophy, I'm very much of the opinion that philosophy is, or ought to be, improving [Edit: I'm using this as a transitive verb.]. It should not address its questions in abstraction from lived experience but should be intimately related to life, transforming. This approach to philosophy can be discerned throughout its long history but it has received little in the way of explicit articulation, especially recently. Of course there are exceptions: this book being a notable example, with its focus on a very specific period in the history of philosophy. All of us need to start doing more philosophy of this kind.

I think a similar argument could be made with respect to language. Language does far more than simply denote objects and relationships in the 'real world', rather it constitutes and cements our engagement with that world, without which the very concept of 'world' would be meaningless. I think this is roughly what Heidegger meant when he famously claimed that language 'speaks' man. Some of the best playwrights have intuited this idea. Harold Pinter, whose superb No Man's Land I was fortunate enough to see recently, makes language world-transforming in his plays and, by extension, an instrument of power. David Mamet's style is not dissimilar and I'm very much looking forward to his lecture to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 tonight.

For a more light-hearted take on the topic of language Stephen Fry's blog post, and the following clip, should entertain:

Computing Conclusions

2008-11-14T14:08:00.007Z

I have been using my Eee PC for a while now and have recently reached conclusions on how best to use it. Recall that in an earlier post I had installed Ubuntu Eee, which is a version of Ubuntu customized for the Eee by this man. The other option is to use Ubuntu with this customized kernel. My reasons for doing this were:

I wanted the freedom to install software outside the bundled package.
I wanted a more aesthetically pleasing OS. The default (a version of Xandros) is cruelly dubbed 'The Fisher-Price Desktop' in this thread.
I wanted to avoid Microsoft.

Note: None of the reasons are "I wanted to spend hours arsing around with an operating system". I wanted the machine to 'just work'.

Now I know very little about these things so it's unclear to me why Ubuntu doesn't work on an Eee when, presumably, it works on other machines. Anyway, it doesn't so I installed the customized version (which also didn't work), made necessary modifications to make that work and, after many hours, all was well. But then Ubuntu released a major update. My machine updated itself automatically but from the wrong source (i.e. from Ubuntu rather than from one of the non-generic repositories), something I (wrongly) thought I had guarded against. So the thing didn't work for the third time. I searched on the various fora dedicated to these matters and found ways of making modifications but, to be frank, I couldn't be arsed. I did not want a machine that had to be modified just to work properly every time a six-monthly update was released.

So I've reverted to the Fisher-Price Desktop - it works and does everything I would need a computer of that size to do. But the whole experience has taught me something about the whole business of software that is owned by a company (i.e. not free or open source): it has made me aware of just what one is paying for when one buys such software. One is paying for the fact that it 'just works'. And I have also learned that it would take more time and expertise than I have to make that happen myself. Now, I have not changed my opinion of Windows (which I think is horrid to use and bullying) but, I have learned from the 'Eeexperience', neither can my next main computer use a free operating system. So I shall turn to Apple when my ancient Toshiba laptop becomes extinct. By doing so I hope to acquire a machine that is aesthetically pleasing and 'just works'. I have not found that free software meets both criteria.

Entering the Artworld

2008-11-03T19:09:00.004Z

I have today entered the artworld. Wittgenstein by Eduardo Paolozzi now hangs in our flat, courtesy of Jesus College's art collection. Some (substandard) pictures follow.

2008-10-23T14:46:00.003+01:00

I haven't made a post for so long that I think it's about time. I have been doing more work on Tillich's conception of God, or rather his arguments for the impossibility of such a conception; planning to plunder John Macquarrie for similar points; trying to write an abstract for a conference on interdisciplinarity (which, the online edition of the OED informs me, is a word). But I haven't always been working, you understand; I can't always work. On that 'note', in fact, I shall be singing Evensong at Selwyn tonight to an unfamiliar set of preces and responses. It's insane, insane I tell you.

Wireless

2008-10-07T10:39:00.004+01:00

I've recently bought a marvellous new machine which is so small that it can be taken almost anywhere. A good friend of mine remvoved the operating system it came with and installed Ubuntu Eee. The advantage of this operating system is that it is marvellous when it works. The disadvantage is that it doesn't, yet, quite, work with the hardware, perhaps because it existed before my machine did. But I like it so much that I've decided that it's worth the battle. The real test will be when the update is released at the end of October.

I've also been initiated into the geeky world of Wi-Fi in which people in anoraks wander round constituting their world around wireless hotspots. I am typing this (guess where!) in the UL and, if you don't believe me:

Heidegger is turning in his grave.

Appearance and Reality

2008-09-24T13:17:00.006+01:00

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.

2008-09-16T19:16:00.005+01:00

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

2008-09-14T17:04:00.009+01:00

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

2008-09-07T16:10:00.016+01:00

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

2008-09-05T22:28:00.007+01:00

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

2008-09-04T19:15:00.008+01:00

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!