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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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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?"
