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Aristotle and the demise of philosophy
The other night, after drinking a little too much wine, Brian and I got onto a conversation about philosophers. Yup. Because we’re just that crazy when we drink a few drinks together. We talk about...
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A few notes on Candide.
Since I believe I will be presenting on Candide for class (along with the Book of Job), I am going to confine myself here to some simple notes which will help trigger me when it comes to forming the...
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The Machiavel?
Not being a student of the stage, I only recently became acquainted with the concept of the “Machiavel” in Elizabethan theatre. This (according to the best defnition I’ve found) is “primarily a person...
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Mersault’s meaning.
I shook off my sweat, and the clinging veil of light. I knew I’d shattered the balance of the day, the spacious calm of this beach on which I had been happy. But I fired four shots more into the …...
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The perils of passion.
Although Emma Bovary is hardly a sympathetic protagonist, Madame Bovary is still one of my favourite novels. A little melodramatic in spots perhaps, but I assume that is the effect Flaubert was looking...
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Sublimity and mountaintops.
(Sadly, you can’t experience the sublime through a photograph.) I’ve spent a fair bit of time hiking in and around mountains over the last several years – not as much as I would like, but enough to...
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Job and the problem of evil.
(My classes start again tonight and I am really looking forward to being the first presenter of the semester. What follows is my presentation on Job to lead discussion). The Book of Job appears in the...
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Travels with Mary.
I am mulling over Waiting for Godot while listening to Max Richter’s The Blue Notebooks, and watching the snow fall outside the window. A combination which seems destined to produce an upwelling of...
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Leaving a less-than-beautiful corpse. (Dorian Gray)
My recent reading has been all worshippers of the individual from the 19th century – Kierkegaard and Nietzsche most recently – but not until I read Oscar Wilde’s A Picture of Dorian Gray did I quite...
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The monster in us.
The last time I read Frankenstein was in high school and I don’t quite remember it being as wonderful as it is. In fact, I think I must have skimmed most of the book in an attempt to get through …...
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Individual suffering for the common (but not lowest common denominator) good.
I have included the above video in these presentation notes for my class because I think that Zizek is advancing a Kierkegaardian argument about abstraction in “The Present Age” but with different...
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A manifesto, an action, a radical moment.
Job’s coffin looks down At the day you shut your power down You must out-create that destructive tendency Let your fire starter hear the fury Job’s Coffin, Tori Amos Last night was the Kierkegaard...
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Prosthetic Gods
Man has, as it were, become a kind of prosthetic God. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs he is truly magnificent; but those organs have not grown on to him and they still give him much trouble at...
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The little I have to say about Nietzche.
Though class last night was interesting, I still can’t write about Nietzsche with any insight. Part of the issue with Human, All-Too-Human is that it is a collection of aphorisms which at variably...
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Oh, Hedda! What ever did you mean?
Last night Brian went out for drinks and I stayed home with Hedda Gabler and some other books for company. Not only that, I ate lentils and did laundry – so productive was I in my solitude! Welcome...
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Matches struck unexpectedly in the dark…..
First of all – this post about Umberto Eco’s children’s book from the 1960s is worth a gander if you like beautifully drawn children’s literature (with a good moral message) but more importantly, the...
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Brief notes on God.
(Some disjointed thoughts from reading The Belief Instinct, and Varieties of Religious Experience. Themes I have thought very much about in the past several years of my life and would like to return to...
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Who’s afraid of the brave new world?
I am supposed to be writing about Brave New World this week, but each time I sit down to do so, I am put off by the task. Perhaps because I’ve read it too many times? Because what I would … Continue...
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Quite passive, recording, not thinking,
I finished The Berlin Stories this morning on my way to work, turning my commute into the last days of freedom in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power. I don’t know if this is a function of age, or...
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Oh! The childish poor!
I have to say, I’m really disappointed that The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy is the only Canadian work chosen in my program – not only is it a questionable choice in terms of its parochial approach to...
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