Aug
25
For Mignon and Aaron Thurow, with faith, hope, & of course love
In the past, Mignon has devoted considerable energy to examining the virtue of hope. Aaron has spoken at length of how our age refuses to believe people can act for a cause, can be motivated by faith more than self-interest. It is our privilege to be in a room filled with the third theological virtue. This has come about because these two were open to finding each other, and that is their greatest gift to us.
As they are colleagues of mine, they are also teachers of mine. Their comments in the core classes have helped me fill notebooks and sometimes papers; they have been open about their experiences, willing to share the good and the bad and think through aloud what they have learned. They honor their communities and strengthen their students merely by being themselves. This leads us, perhaps, to reflect on how exceptional they are.
Only - they wouldn’t permit such praise. They teach not only to build others but so they too can learn. They yearn for the day where we are equal towards each other because we measure up - as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, for God saw that it was good. Our work here is tireless not because we are incomplete, but because what is truly good must perpetuate.
Aug
22
Sketch for a Song, Part 1
Filed Under love, personal | Leave a Comment
She wants to be carried away, and it isn’t unreasonable, even though it is literally unreasonable. Her life has been pain caused by a number of indecisive men and their desire to possess her, she thinks. The pain is real; the tyranny of awful expectation is real. Perhaps it is the fact that they’re holding back that marks them as less than worthy, though: we all want to possess, why can’t they act like men aiming to conquer?
Of course, true love might not be about possession or conquest. It might be about two people being there for each other, providing support, being open, and being willing more than demanding. In which case: love can’t be about being carried away right away. It can’t be a romance which just “is” happiness and all ends happily ever after when it begins. It would have to be friendship, where two people find concord, and then move into romance and those powerful, sweet all-encompassing moments later, the ones not meant to impress in the short term but rather to express what is eternal.
Aug
3
For New and Old Readers - Some Housekeeping Issues and Various Musings:
Filed Under blogging, love, personal | 3 Comments
This site will probably undergo several design changes before I settle on a theme I really like and is easy to maintain. Jennifer and Hazel have been hugely helpful with their input, and I’m sold on two concepts:
- This site requires a strong graphical element. Ideally, I would like to show off the work of all the visual artists I know on the web in the very architecture of this site.
- A “magazine” type format, where previous posts on various topics are front and center along with the latest content, would be awesome. Right now those themes are serious work to maintain and I’d rather be focusing on content.
In the absence of #2 currently, I’m working on “pages” for this site - I’m creating a fairly elaborate blogroll to honor the readers of this blog (please say something if I miss you when it is complete, I will be happy to add your site), and I’m going to add another page of entries I think readers of this blog might want to be familiar with, as well as an index entry linking to the detail work this blog does so often.
My job is not simply to beg for readers, or sit around and muse like as if I’m the philosopher-king. My job is to help you be happy while you learn, share and discover. Wisdom is the greatest good simply.
Asserting that, of course, means I have to talk about my personal life. If wisdom is the greatest good, how come I am torn up right now about a potential relationship? If I am wise in any way, why is it that I make mistakes even in meaning well?
I don’t know the answer to either question, although I have said that thought is a form of love, if not love itself: it is literal concern for another. We note frequently the complications of philosophy as eros in this blog; I am noting them now on a very real level every day. There are prudential issues always, and wisdom does not always allow one to grasp them clearly.
A good example of where wisdom and prudence diverge is why this blog has a new site. There was no way, unless my previous host threatened to kick me off, that I was going to switch to any other site unless I had the audience I wanted exactly. There was too much invested in the last blog - many entries ranked high in Google search exactly the way I would like; plenty of people knew the URL and it was all over the Internet in one way or another. The plan, as long as the previous host “did no evil,” was sound from my point of view: just get the audience, then go where you like. One’s best chance of getting an audience lies in making do with what one has already promoted an enormous amount.
There’s nothing unwise about the plan. The problem is that it depends on some very limited and limiting knowledge. Anyone with eyes could see that Wordpress is simply a better platform and more suited to my efforts; anyone can see that the potential of this blog can be that much greater, precisely because I have more control. But there’s nothing in wisdom per se that allows one to say “control” is a more important criteria than “audience” when one is saying what one likes and being heard. Wisdom is indifferent to the issue of whether this blog is successful or not; it would rather be talking about Nietzsche or Dickinson.
The same sort of logic holds regarding love. Wisdom works to make sure that despite my faults, I do love, I make sure I am actually in love. It takes little or no precaution about how the other feels even in giving as much as possible. The priority is against the holder first, for the logic is that of Socrates in the Republic - the just man does “no harm” at the least.
May
12
Beyond Time and Place: On Emily Dickinson’s "Love - is anterior to Life…" (917)
Filed Under dickinson, love, poetry | 3 Comments
Special thanks to Heloise Musset for her thoughts, reflected in the comment below.
“Love - is anterior to Life…” (917)
Emily Dickinson
Love - is anterior to Life -
Posterior - to Death -
Initial of Creation, and
The Exponent of Earth -
Comment:
1. “Anterior” and “posterior” can refer to both place and time. That means, on the one hand, Life can be thought of as a span of time, and Death a moment. It also means we can think of Life as being/becoming and Death as not-being.
2. The temporal reading is very strange: Love is temporally prior to Life? This makes sense if we assume there is a God, and we will need to continue assuming God’s existence in order to make any sense of Love existing beyond Death. But the complications continue: “Initial of Creation?” Love is before the beginning and now also the moment of Creation? Perhaps the first thing created?
To make things almost fatal for an interpretation: “Exponent” can be someone who advocates or interprets. I need not inform you how large a gap there is between those two definitions.
3. If we consider Love to be outside of being and not-being, then what is it? We cannot say for sure it is divine: accidents* can be purely potential. But if Love is an accident, in what does it inhere? It would seem that Love would have to define what is “Initial of Creation” and “the Exponent of Earth,” and that first being in his origination would be an advocate and interpreter of Love.
It is too simple to posit “Man” as the first being. Creation’s end is Man, the only creature in the cosmos who can choose how he moves. Creation properly speaking starts with Light.
4. Human reason more than human nature places Man in the realm of becoming. A perfected human nature that is wholly rational is in the realm of being. But being reasonable is what we aspire to, not what we are always. And our self-awareness is what allows us to see our own nature in the first place, and see the steps we have to take for completion.
Heloise has pointed out how there is an “intense relation” in this poem where love is omnipotent, moving the course of time. I think that sense of totality is what we need to bring this poem’s spatial and temporal readings together. We understand Love as discrete moments, devoid of content, but residing in divinity. We also understand it as an attribute describing what is within Life and what is without. Nowhere is the idea that Love is essential stated.
And that’s Dickinson’s point exactly. A totality can not be substance merely, as Spinoza understood full well. The totality has to be common to all opinions, fundamental to thought. Whether that thought is of Providence, where God rules over Time, or concerns a more sensual notion of being, where Light shining upon bodies allows for one to be an “exponent,” it is clear why this poem is truly as celebratory as its tone. Some things never change, because they aren’t things, strictly speaking.
*I have to look up this “accident”/”essence” thing to make sure I’m using the words correctly. It’s been a long while since I played with this distinction.
May
2
These thoughts are insane. This is more of a discussion prompt than anything else. I am ready to take back nearly anything and everything below.
1. I don’t talk about happy things very often, and I regret that, because one reason why I push this “let’s all know more” thing is that I’m hoping knowledge can make people happier. Even sad love poetry discussed at length lets one know that there’s nothing that can be felt that hasn’t been felt before. One doesn’t have to feel alone if one doesn’t want to.
2. And yet it seems that an emphasis on knowledge creates giant obstacles to happiness. We recall that Dickinson poem where it looks like asking too many questions about a lover will destroy love. The problem goes deeper than potential nitpicking, of course: it looks like, regarding any lover, that the hopes one has invested in a lover and the lover her/himself are always in conflict. Our hopes for someone refer us to something like Providence: we make them greater than they are, we hold them up to standards that their everyday selves couldn’t possibly achieve. We think all will be well in due time. Nevermind that Providence can be an exceptionally cold thing, so much so we may not care how much the object of love loses as long as they’re satisfying our expectation.
It would seem that to rid ourselves of this problem, we can rid ourselves of such hopes. But no one wants to be loved so basely - even God believes and trusts in us. To take someone as they are truly is to take in who they want to be and who (we think) they’re going to be. Our hopes matter, and when we love, our hopes are connected with their hopes, even if there is some distance between the two sets.
3. If you’re wondering where I got the above discussion from, I got it from thinking about an anime for pre-teen girls called Inuyasha. I’m not kidding: the title character once had a girlfriend who died when the two were tricked into attacking each other. She hit him with an arrow that would eventually put him asleep eternally; he being not quite as nice mortally wounded her. The series starts with him waking up because of a future incarnation of her spirit, and while those two start getting feelings for each other, it turns out - don’t ask how this works, I said the anime was for 9 year olds - someone wasn’t really dead. What provoked this line of thought was when the original girlfriend, who has somehow become more powerful than ever before and leads the old boyfriend indirectly, attacked the reincarnation so as to kill her.
4. So you’re probably looking at the Wikipedia page linked above and realizing how ridiculous and girly this series is, and wondering where my sense of shame went. The worst thing is that I haven’t seen the whole series yet, so it could go in a direction that makes these thoughts invalid as regards its own themes.
But I’m wondering right now how crazy this world is, where thoughtfulness is where one would least expect it. There’s something about knowledge which approaches the mystical as it tries to make sense of this tragic girliness, where love is a drama where people who govern nations, rescue others, hold their ground in combat all fail to make any sense of it. Something about knowledge changes, where it can’t be predicated on apprehending lots of very particular things, perhaps the product of gossip or a skewed vision, in order to love someone. It has to involve a sense that everything will work out well, and that unity with another is worth it. A greater Providence emerges, which has just as many risks as not loving at all.