My Undirected Reflections

We won trivia at The Lookout tonight. What fun!

I've been thinking about how my blog looks very scattered. How it looks like a series of undirected reflections. But I'm working behind the scenes. I have been working hard in word documents. I have 40-50 pages at work behinds the scenes.

I'm working hard on some ideas, on some things

My reading, however, is following a much less directed path. A much more confused path.

Part IV and V will hopefully take me into that confusing territory.

I want to be confused.

Please believe me.

But this part I'm working on is just too much.

I had an idea and I think I forgot about it.

I think it had to do with traces of experience and the imagination.

Whatever.

I'm very excited.

Reading Old Books Is Hard: Reading Rousseau and Thinking About Collingwood's Notion Of Question And Answer Logic

Over the last two days I've been reading Rousseau's On The Social Contract. I bought a number of old political philosophy books because my work was having a sale on Dover Classics. I got Hobbes's Leviathan, Locke's The Second Treatise On Government and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. I'm all, 'whatever, it's chill'. I'm not sure what the direction of my reading is precisely. I'm just trying to acquaint myself with the classic works. Trying to catch up on the conversation. I feel more politically concerned these days, more interested in politics, even if I'm not very much informed on politics.

But reading Rousseau one thing has become obvious: reading old books is hard. He was writing in a different time, under very different circumstances. His concerns aren't immediate clear to me. Sure, I can answer this question by reverting to vague things like 'the proper form of government' or 'the relationship between the people and the state', but that probably doesn't do it justice. I'm not sure what Rousseau was up to, what he was trying to do with this writing.

One reason I feel so strongly about this is because of Collingwood's notion of 'question and answer logic'. Collingwood believes that we can't understand a piece of philosophical writing unless we understand the precise questions that the writer was trying to answer. If we mistake the question, we may end up not understanding the answer. Collingwood's claims about question and answer logic is both methodological and epistemological. It is methodological in the sense that we should understand philosophical texts by trying to identify the questions that the author was pursuing. Our method should be the identification of the questions. But it is also epistemological in that no form of knowledge can exist without a corresponding question. For Collingwood, there is no absolute, objective knowledge, especially not in philosophy. There are only questions and attempts to answer those questions. The notion of question and answer contains both a method and an epistemology.

So I'm trying to ask myself what kinds of questions Rousseau was after. I'm trying to use this idea to understand Rousseau. But I don't feel so good at it right now. I'm not sure what questions Rousseau was after. But I'm trying.

I feel like I don't know what kind of world Rousseau was living in, what kind of world he was addressing. I need to know a lot more about history and the time he was living. I need to know about his biography and what was going on in his life. I can't know the questions he was asking unless I know about the time and place in which he was asking questions. I need to do more research to understand this book.

I talked to a friend about this a little while ago. He pointed out that understanding one text was always going to rely on help from other texts. Here, it seems, I can't understand Rousseau's text unless I go to all sorts of other texts. Historical texts, biographical texts.

Oh the sea of texts in which I must swim. I have to reach for one just to understand another. I kinda like that feeling. I very much like the notion of question and answer logic. I feel more comfortable with it as an epistemological notion. I don't yet feel comfortable with it as a methodology, however. I want to be more adept at using it as a methodology. Perhaps reading these old texts will be a good way for me to refine my methodological use of question and answer logic. Especially because modern writers often tell you their questions. Reading authors who don't tell you the questions explicitly will be a good opportunity for me to deduce questions from answers alone.

I've Woken Up

In just a physical sense. I've woken up to live today, February 6th 2011.

Wouldn't it be fun and funny if I mean that I had woken up in some profound philosophical way? Lol. I'd be all like 'I understand now, I've attained enlightenment and I'm here to live it'. Lol but no, no way.

All I mean is that I've woken up to live another day.

But today I'm going to the symphony!

What fun.

Right now I'm drinking coffee and continuing to work on AZI.

This final section, Part III.3 has turned into quite a doozy. Quite a long bit of writing. But I'm moving along. Trying to grapple with the complexity that I feel growing in it. Trying to be able to state it clearly.

I've already made many things clear. Things about habits, about their creation, so on.

I just need to keep charging ahead explicating thinkers so that I can ascertain their relationships. It just gets tiring sometimes explicating others. But that is the task.

The Journey Through The Canon

I once told a friend about how I was reading Isaiah Berlin. Berlin said something to the effect of 'At one point in my reading I naturally came to Machiavelli'. What happened to me when I read that was I became very aware of all the things that had been written so long before me, and how I would have to spend quite a long time catching up on the conversation, reading all these things that had already been read.

He said to me, 'So you are thinking about Riley's journey through the canon'. And I said yes. Yes I am.

Sometimes I go to the philosophy section of my store and I get so worked up. I look at all these books, all these names, all these things that I will have to read. How will I give them all adequate treatment?

The movement won't stop. I won't stop moving. I'll keep moving through the canon and through the non-canon. I'll keep reading famous books and I'll keep reading other books.

This reflection was prompted because I'm still working on AZI. I've been working on it on and off for most of the day. And it has felt good. I'm making quite a lot of progress. I am currently working on writing about simulation theory and the idea of synthetic experience. So I picked up Alvin Goldman's Simulating Minds. I started skimming it and I was flooded with excitement.

I read this book in April of 2010. It contains a strong argument and lots of strong thoughts.

Also I'm listening to The-Dream right now and its awesome. Good job everyone.

Back to work.

I just had to stop and reflect about how I get freaked out about how many canonical books I have left to read.

Authors and books that pop out at me: Heidegger's Being And Time, Hegel's Phenomenology Of Spirit, some kind of Freud, some Lacan, Rousseau's Emile, Foucault's Madness and Civilization, Nietzsche's The Will To Power, Marx's Capital, Zizek's In Defense Of Last Causes, Sumida's In Defence Of Naval Supremacy.

Some of them are not canonical. But whatever. Reading and learning sure is an endless project.

It reminds me of that story a friend told me about. Chipping away at a wall for an entire life just to see a golden feather that may or may not symbolize truth.

What is the point of such an endless quest when death constantly looms? Is it personal? Is it for something like justice? Or is that just an illusion? Most things remain unclear.

I Repeat

I repeat like you repeat.

There is nothing here to get.

I'm only reverting to ordinary metaphors

And common sayings that occupy me

Swirling, spinning, other things

That don't make much sense.

I'm working on AZI right now. It is going well. I'm feeling caffeinated. I want to feel less distracted. Because I'm feeling quite distracted. Unsure of what to do with myself. Both in the immediate sense and in the larger sense. 3:21 and it is dimming outside. I could do dishes. But for some reason I have so little patience with domestic tasks. I'd so much rather be writing or reading or spacing out.

Fuzzed

I'm feeling fuzzy. Just had a bus ride back to my neighborhood.

Want to settle down and write today.

Very excited by a book I bought and by the general direction of my reading.

Still need to keep pushing forward. Still feel daunted sometimes.

Still feel aimless most of the time.

I wonder what this business of control is all about.

I was at work the other day behind the counter. Standing inside my little cafe square. I started to wonder if other people felt trapped. I wonder how other people cope with these feelings of confinement.

I wonder about my experiences and what I can do to get beyond them while staying within them. Limit-experiences, Focuault might say. I wonder what he meant by that.

I wonder about a lot of things.

I wonder what I'll have for lunch.

I wonder how my writing will go after I eat.

Because I need to eat before I write.

Curse this need for food. Curse it all.

In Praise Of Friends

A quick post.

The last two days I've been ruminating pretty constantly on the next sections of AZI that I'm trying to write. I'm excited by this idea of purposefully creating habits for myself. Especially because I can feel it in my life sometimes. I feel myself intuitively acting in certain ways because I have written about wanting to act those ways, because I have spent time thinking about acting in those ways.

I don't want to deceive myself. But I do believe that I can create habits for myself. I just think it takes vigilance.

I was excited to come home tonight and explore this idea further, to really explore its pragmatics. I'm pleased with the way I explicated the idea in general as it relates to the idea of an aesthetic existence. But now I need to see if I can explain how to do it, or how I'll try to do it. An interesting exploration it will be.

But yeah my friends called. They are going out of town. Of course I'm going to hang out with them instead. That is where I'm off to right now. Soon.

Of course I will defer to friends. Such an interesting thing, the tension between writing and socializing. I'll typically choose socializing. But sometimes I just need to write, just need to get it all out there. But this isn't one of those times. These ideas can stand to stew a few more days. Hehehehe.

In praise of friends.

Here is to you.

In praise of deference.

Here is to that.

In praise of yielding.

Here is to waiting.