FIRST PART HERE On Apollonian Temperance Γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnothi seauton): “Know yourself.” These words connected to the Delphian Apollo are, above anything else, a recommendation about the assumption of one’s mortal condition, hence about the awareness of one’s limits against any ὕβρις (hybris, “excess”); thus too the Delphic lemma: Mηδὲν ἄγαν (meden agan), “Nothing in…
Author: polymorph
We, Platonists (I)
We want to talk about Plato. Of Plato as a modern taboo. Hence also about ourselves. About Plato and us. But first we are going to talk about horses. About apparitions and sculptures. Otherwise – we fear – we would only be able to repeat commonplace views on Plato. And we have had enough of…
What Is Language?
Certainly not primarily a communication tool. Nor a particular subset of learned behaviour. Nor a cognitive outcome of human evolution. Nor a set of sentences whose truth value could be quantified. Nor a socially-agreed-upon system of sounds and written phonemic symbols or ideograms to which meaning would be conventionally attached too. Nor a disciplinary apparatus…
Is the Earth Round?
“The earth is round.” It would be possible to contest this commonplace affirmation and to claim that the earth is flat instead, like a disc. Yet today almost nobody would contest the fact that the earth is round. Still, if it may be true that the earth is round, it is not clear whether the…
On Conceptual Noise and De-territorialisation
Due to human inactivity during the lockdown, in late March mountain goats were seen roaming the streets of a Welsh town. Events like this have provoked four different types of reaction in the social media. Some (A) celebrate such events (too naively?) as a return of nature to places from where it had been exiled….
Chaos, Rhythm, and Forms
Schizophrenics are like unstable points inside machinic circuits, thus their frequent drawings and narratives on the “influencing machines” they are, in their perception, connected to and controlled by. Generally, these “machines” reflect the technological status of the historical period in question: they can be immaterial (e.g. religious or theological) machines, mechanical machines with gears and…
Endemic Pandemic Pandemonium
SPANISH VERSION HERE A devastating plague dominates Thebes. Sophocles (Oedipus Rex, first intervention of the chorus, vv. 158-215) has its people call on the gods: First we call on Athena, deathless daughter of Zeus, / and Artemis, earth upholder, […] / and Phoebus [Apollo], the far shooter, / come to us now […] / Our…
On Science, Economy, Politics, and Thought
The number of publications dealing with the embodied nature of all knowledge and, therefore, with the latter’s sensual roots, has increased exponentially over the past two decades. Simultaneously, a so-called “affective turn” seems to be gaining momentum in the panorama of contemporary thought. All this is very remarkable of course, as the relation between mind…
What Socialism Owes to the Tupinamba
In 1550 the Tupinamba travelled to France to take part as French allies in the Royal Entry Festival of Henri II in Rouen. A few years later, in 1562, they visited Rouen again, invited by Charles IX. Montaigne wrote extensively on them in Chapter 31 of his First Book of Essays, published in 1580. This…
Cosmogenesis and the Capturing of the Invisible
As Paul Klee writes, a good painting puts into effect a process of cosmogenesis. Everything starts with “chaos,” or with a “grey point.” Chaos is the origin of all visible things, and all colours are contained in it. Colours form the world of any painting. Chaos, then, is the unlimited flow of invisible possibilities –…