Rolling Philosophy

so just started In the Dust of This Planet and it's even more interesting than I anticipated because I think one of the things he's trying to gesture towards is an idea of a kind of nihilistic or negative mysticism, an experience of the "nothingness" beyond the limits of thought/philosophy. not for nothing does it open with epigraphs from Schopenhauer and The Cloud of Unknowning. There's basically no quicker way to get my attention than that kind of juxtaposition!

also some mentions of Nishitani towards the end, i see. Ok i should actually read this now..

"What an earlier era would have described through the language of darkness mysticism or negative theology, our contemporary era thinks of in terms of supernatural horror."

This actually strikes me as an interesting claim because the traditional religions have seemed to push out mystical or antinomian ideas for the sake of an enforced fundamentalism.

and non-traditional, new agey type religions aren't so much concerned with an unknowable God so much as the revelation of personality or self.

ok so he's now talking about Keiji Haino!

i think i'll end up reading this at some point

just preordered the huge zizek book that's coming out in april

is that the promised opus on Hegel?

I finished the Thacker book, it was good. It was short and more suggestive than sustained and argued, but if you enjoy those themes (as mentioned above) it's pretty interesting.

yes yes! look!: http://www.amazon.com/Less-Than-Nothing-Dialectical-Materialism/dp/1844678970/

yeah, from something you said upthread it sounds like it'll be my kind of book

ok, may have to read this. reading group?

Yeah, I'd be up for that. I expect it won't be an easy read- the little Hegel I've read is heavy stuff.

yeah, this'll probably be more like Zizek's Parallax View than Living in the End Times, re: complexity

There are some posts about the book at http://ernstbloch.wordpress.com/, including a table of contents.

not a huge Zizek guy, but it sounds good! i still think Hegel is very fertile ground.

the first post on that blog touches on all manner of things that interest me, but what i usually get from sources like from George Spencer-Brown or Peirce or Niklas Luhmann. very cool.

i'd be up for an ilx hegel reading group

the dialectic requires markers to be down for it

kinda looks like "finally, zizek's hegel book" really means "finally, zizek's most thorough unfolding of his own thought". but yeah could be interesting. i understand that he had an editor for the first time in many years for this one, so it shouldn't be stricken with the chronic laziness that's characterised a lot of his recent work.

incidentally, i'm in the middle of marking a big pile of essays on hegel right now. it's kinda fun.

I'd be up for both a new-Zizek or Hegel ilx reading group, hell yeah!

what if the group took place in an infinite loop? :P

Haha, fair play, I'd be down with that too

http://onwhatmatters.tumblr.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Coordination-Interpretation-Daniel-Klein/dp/019979412X

43 bucks

i kno :(

if i wanted to read all of nietzsche's books in translation, in order, which translator should i go with? are kaufmann's translations the ones to read?

from what i remember kaufmann and hollingdale are the two big ones. dont know if one is preferred. kaufman has a reputation for being a little looser, but more readable.

the one exception is that i read this genealogy of morality (translated by Maudemarie Clark and Alan J. Swensen) and thought it was great. but i dont think they translated any other nietzsche.

http://www.amazon.com/Genealogy-Morality-Friedrich-Wilhelm-Nietzsche/dp/0872202836

im reading strikethrough banging my head against strikethrough sturggling w/kant atm

I don't think there is any other way to read kant tbh

i think the general consensus is that Kaufmann's are to Nietzsche what Constance Garnett is to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. ie, questionable accuracy but by far the most famous and readable translation.

yo kant is clarity incarnate. if you're confused it's bc your brain is all twisted up from life + shit.

I remember going through Being and Time painstakingly, almost line by line, with a notepad trying to put things in my own terms. those were some long afternoons in the library.

@markers - fwiw kaufmann and hollingdale are the ones i have as well. this guy agrees with max on the clark/swensen

man I don't know anybody who still reads the constance garnett translations! but kaufmann is still widely used afaict

i was at a dissertation defense a few weeks ago where one of the professors went on quite vociferously about how crappy the new translations were (the married couple) and how much better Garnett was. but she is probably a minority opinion.

I'm not a terribly big fan of the married couple

theyre translations are really good imo

I can't remember who I contraristan for above them though, I'll have to check my contraristan log, I've definitely expressed this opinion elsewhere on ILX

i think the Garnett translations are almost their own thing at this point, with their own cultural relevance, given when they came out and the number of writers who first encountered D and T in that form.

i do this all the time but i also really cannot recommend this book enough as a secondary

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-New-Nietzsche-David-Allison/dp/0847689794

Pre-ordered the Zizek too. Up for reading group.

count me in on that

just got Simon Critchley's new one in the mail: http://www.amazon.com/Faith-Faithless-Experiments-Political-Theology/dp/1844677370/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328075101&sr=8-1

and speaking of Critchley and Zizek, here's essay response to Zizek by Critchley on politics and violence. I found it interesting and it articulates some of my reservations about Zizek:

http://nakedpunch.com/articles/39Violent

way too long but my two initial thoughts:
1. i think he misunderstands zizek's "ultraviolence" which could easily be the violence he describes (and for many activists, even the smallest suggestion of violence becomes this revolutionary historic moment, ie Occupy Wall St)
2. kinda feels like a secret defense of obama + the doctrine of marginal gradual change tbh

i don't think i can read the whole thing tho. i bailed out after his reading of Benjamin and i realized that despite stating his case four or five times already i still had 3/4ths of the article to go

I think 2 is the gist of Zizek's disagreement with Critchley. I am in broad disagreement with Critchely. I think. I do know Zizek's rhetoric bothers me, and i also don't really think Marxism/Leninism is really the only game in town as far as thinking outside Capitalism goes.

oops. I am in broad AGREEMENT with Critchely, i meant to say.

(especially since you'd think Zizek would be the first to admit that kind of rhetoric doesn't really escape from the domain of Capitalism anyway. he's got nostalgia for an "outside" that's not really accessible anymore. then again i'll shut up since im dumb about political philosophy.)

yo kant is clarity incarnate. if you're confused it's bc your brain is all twisted up from life + shit.

...