The greatness and the misery of an era—each of them probably containing both in similar proportion—can certainly be measured in different ways. One such way consists in examining the richness or poverty of its ideas not only with regard to their number, but also to their complexity; and this, in turn, depends, at least in…
Butō and Art’s Future
It is incredible that, after about 700 years of discussing on art’s essence and pushing its boundaries further and further – sometimes in extremely interesting ways, other times in less compelling fashion – we have ended up in turning art into either allegory or imitation.(*) For both are merely forms of re-presentation, and re-presentation has…
Thought as Music (1): Sappho
μάτρι ἀγάπατᾳ μοι In this concise two-part essay, I explore how specific prosodic qualities do not merely influence but fundamentally construct content in early (i.e., archaic or pre-classical) Greek thought – whether musical-poetic (Sappho) or aphoristic-philosophical (Heraclitus). In Sappho’s case, by prosodic qualities I mean, in particular, metric length and breathing, rhythmic phrasing and musical…
Aphrodite’s Wounded Hand
Ancient Greek pair of eyes made of bronze, marble, frit, quartz, and obsidian. 5th century BCE or Later. Metropolitan Museum, New York. Object 1991.11.3a, b I A fresh look at Greek mythology requires perhaps that we view its gods (θεοί) both as those who offer us a deeper “insight” into things – for with just…
On Contingency & Worlding
Assuredly, reality’s laws, which Meillassoux interprets exclusively through physics’ lens (thereby bracketing biology) could be otherwise. But partly. Here, they are X; elsewhere, they are Y or Z or something else. Yet in their making many different factors, and types of causes, coalesce, some of them being contingent, others being necessary instead, and they do…
Four Notes on Plato… Upstream
Hypercomplex: there is probably no better adjective to describe Plato’s thought; and this explains, too, why it is so very easy to lose sight of what it invites us to reflect on and ponder, which is nothing different from thought’s endless beginning, meandering itineraries, and inner paradoxes. But then, how can one speak of essentialism…
On Truth, neither Universal nor Particular, but Infinitesimal or Transversal
Let’s suppose four worlds (W1, W2, W3, W4). World 1 contains mothers (x), maternal aunts (r), and fathers (z), but not shamans (k): W1 = (x = x) ∧ (r = r) ∧ (z = z) ∧ ∄k World. 2 also contains mothers (x) and aunts (r), but (as it happens, e.g., among the Iroquois;…
Plato… minus Platonism (with a Note on Guattari and Deleuze)
It is with Heraclitus that the “thinkable” becomes the very object of thought – and I am tempted toassert that it is only then that philosophy properly begins. The apocryphal anecdote concerning the death of Homer contained in frag. DK B56 (to which I have already alluded here) hints at this in a lovely manner…
Of Human Thought as an Iridescent Interface
What does it mean to say that we are at once auto- and allo-poietic, endo- and exo-consistent, different and non-different from what is in one sense, but in another sense no longer remains, external to us? And, even more importantly perhaps, what does it mean to realize that we are unceasingly sliced and spliced between…
How Does an Animist Ontology Look Like?
Fig. 1. Animism viewed as a “flat ontology” through a still-convalescent counter-modern lens (after Anna Tsing’s notion of “piling”). Fig. 2 Any animist ontology viewed from its own standpoint: polyvocal but articulated, rather than flat.