And in this lies my honour and my reward, —
That whenever I come to the fountain to drink I find the living water itself thirsty;
And it drinks me while I drink it.

– The Prophet, Khalil Gibran

While I cant vouche for the rest of his work, I am thoroughly impressed with Gibran’s The Prophet. It’s written in that typical prophetic format — a la Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra — where the prophet comes down from the mountain or out from the wilderness and shares his knowledge with the towns people who just so happen to ask the right questions. The prophet replies, usually with a rhetorical question that seems too metaphoric to help (”Is freedom not a canary yellow birdsong in the Nightingale’s trickling brook?” [not an example from Gibran]) and then moves to qualify what hes saying. It reminds me too much of Nietzsche but, well, completely the opposite — the concepts are kind and just as brilliant. While I may poke fun at the format,  The Prophet is remarkable.

I’ve posted the work in its entirety. I dont expect you to read all of it, I’d prefer you to just flip through it until you have time to actually buy it. You’ll find suggestions for every facet as I mentioned before, please have a look.

Khalil Gibran (born Gibrān Khalīl Gibrān bin Mikhā’īl bin Sa’ad; Arabic جبران خليل جبران بن ميکائيل بن سعد), (January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer. Born in the town of Bsharri in modern-day Lebanon (then part of Ottoman Syria), as a young man he emigrated with his family to the United States where he studied art and began his literary career. He is chiefly known for his 1923 book The Prophet, a series of philosophical essays written in English prose. An early example of Inspirational fiction, the book sold well despite a cool critical reception, and became extremely popular in 1960s counterculture.^[1]

– from Wikipedia

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For being one of the most influential philosophers of science, it’s hard to believe that there isn’t a single picture of Norwood Russell Hanson on google, much less a book of is under 200 dollars. Most of his work was centered around the then-(and now)-novel concept that the act and language of observation is loaded with theory and is filtered through those theories. He put is a lot better than I could:

“Seeing is an experience. A retinal reaction is only a physical state… People, not their eyes, see. Cameras, and eye-balls, are blind… there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball.”

Theology was another subject that received a lot of writings from N. R.’s pen. Check out this winning collection of essays edited by every college student’s least favorite rhetorician, Stephen Toulmin. On the hiddenness of god:

“God exists” could in principle be established for all factually — it just happens not to be, certainly not for everyone! Suppose, however, that next Tuesday morning, just after breakfast, all of us in this one world are knocked to our knees by a percussive and ear-shattering thunderclap. Snow swirls; leaves drop from the trees; the earth heaves and buckles; buildings topple and towers tumble; the sky is ablaze with an eerie, silvery light. Just then, as all the people of this world look up, the heavens open — the clouds pull apart ‚ revealing an unbelievably immense and radiant-like Zeus figure, towering above us like a hundred Everests. He frowns darkly as lightening plays across the features of his Michelangeloid face. He then points down — at me! — and explains, for every man and child to hear: “I have had quite enough of your too-clever logic-chopping and word-watching in matters of theology. Be assured, N.R. Hanson, that I most certainly do exist.” … ¶ Please do not dismiss this as a playful, irreverent Disneyoid contrivance. The conceptual point here is that if such a remarkable event were to occur, I for one should certainly be convinced that God does exist. That matter of fact would have been settled once and for all time… That God exists would, though this encounter, have been confirmed for me and for everyone else in a manner every bit as direct as that involved in any non-controversial factual claim.

Read the book online

The following completely changed my perspective on being an art Critic. It has really relaxed some of my worries about criticism as a profession even though thats where I was inevitably headed. I’m so surprised that Wilde wrote this too — considering he was around in the 1890s and lit crit wasnt even good until the mid twentieth century. If only they had listened to Wilde, criticism would have had many more year of its current form (it may have even been better than it now is).

Please read this, especially you Shipp.

THE CRITIC AS ARTIST:

WITH SOME REMARKS UPON THE IMPORTANCE OF DOING NOTHING

A DIALOGUE.

Part I. Persons: Gilbert and Ernest. Scene: the
library of a house in Piccadilly, overlooking the Green Park.

GILBERT (at the Piano). My dear Ernest, what are you laughing at?

ERNEST (looking up). At a capital story that I have just come
across in this volume of Reminiscences that I have found on your
table.

GILBERT. What is the book? Ah! I see. I have not read it yet.
Is it good?

ERNEST. Well, while you have been playing, I have been turning
over the pages with some amusement, though, as a rule, I dislike
modern memoirs. They are generally written by people who have
either entirely lost their memories, or have never done anything
worth remembering; which, however, is, no doubt, the true
explanation of their popularity, as the English public always feels
perfectly at its ease when a mediocrity is talking to it.

GILBERT. Yes: the public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives
everything except genius. But I must confess that I like all
memoirs. I like them for their form, just as much as for their
matter. In literature mere egotism is delightful. It is what
fascinates us in the letters of personalities so different as
Cicero and Balzac, Flaubert and Berlioz, Byron and Madame de
Sevigne. Whenever we come across it, and, strangely enough, it is
rather rare, we cannot but welcome it, and do not easily forget it.
Humanity will always love Rousseau for having confessed his sins,
not to a priest, but to the world, and the couchant nymphs that
Cellini wrought in bronze for the castle of King Francis, the green
and gold Perseus, even, that in the open Loggia at Florence shows
the moon the dead terror that once turned life to stone, have not
given it more pleasure than has that autobiography in which the
supreme scoundrel of the Renaissance relates the story of his
splendour and his shame. The opinions, the character, the
achievements of the man, matter very little. He may be a sceptic
like the gentle Sieur de Montaigne, or a saint like the bitter son
of Monica, but when he tells us his own secrets he can always charm
our ears to listening and our lips to silence. The mode of thought
that Cardinal Newman represented–if that can be called a mode of
thought which seeks to solve intellectual problems by a denial of
the supremacy of the intellect–may not, cannot, I think, survive.
But the world will never weary of watching that troubled soul in
its progress from darkness to darkness. The lonely church at
Littlemore, where ‘the breath of the morning is damp, and
worshippers are few,’ will always be dear to it, and whenever men
see the yellow snapdragon blossoming on the wall of Trinity they
will think of that gracious undergraduate who saw in the flower’s
sure recurrence a prophecy that he would abide for ever with the
Benign Mother of his days–a prophecy that Faith, in her wisdom or
her folly, suffered not to be fulfilled. Yes; autobiography is
irresistible. Poor, silly, conceited Mr. Secretary Pepys has
chattered his way into the circle of the Immortals, and, conscious
that indiscretion is the better part of valour, bustles about among
them in that ’shaggy purple gown with gold buttons and looped lace’
which he is so fond of describing to us, perfectly at his ease, and
prattling, to his own and our infinite pleasure, of the Indian blue
petticoat that he bought for his wife, of the ‘good hog’s hars-
let,’ and the ‘pleasant French fricassee of veal’ that he loved to
eat, of his game of bowls with Will Joyce, and his ‘gadding after
beauties,’ and his reciting of Hamlet on a Sunday, and his playing
of the viol on week days, and other wicked or trivial things. Even
in actual life egotism is not without its attractions. When people
talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to
us about themselves they are nearly always interesting, and if one
could shut them up, when they become wearisome, as easily as one
can shut up a book of which one has grown wearied, they would be
perfect absolutely.

ERNEST. There is much virtue in that If, as Touchstone would say.
But do you seriously propose that every man should become his own
Boswell? What would become of our industrious compilers of Lives
and Recollections in that case?
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Another great essay by Thomas Nagel is “What is it like to be a bat?” A piece of work that looks into the mental states of conciousness, separating them from a lot of the scientific meta-narratives that contemporary philosophy has (boringly) cooked up. This article has informed a lot of my claims about Existential Vegetarianism (ask me about it, I dare you). I dont expect you to have the time to read this but if you happen to die and go to eternity, it would be nice. It’s also great to have this up here for me eventually, because every now and then I like to print these off for people.

What is it like to be a Bat?
by Thomas Nagel

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. Perhaps that is why current discussions of the problem give it little attention or get it obviously wrong. The recent wave of reductionist euphoria has produced several analyses of mental phenomena and mental concepts designed to explain the possibility of some variety of materialism, psychophysical identification, or reduction.¹ But the problems dealt with are those common to this type of reduction and other types, and what makes the mind-body problem unique, and unlike the water-H₂O problem or the Turing machine-IBM machine problem or the lightning-electrical discharge problem or the gene-DNA problem or the oak tree-hydrocarbon problem, is ignored.

Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from modern science. It is most unlikely that any of these unrelated examples of successful reduction will shed light on the relation of mind to brain. But philosophers share the general human weakness for explanations of what is incomprehensible in terms suited for what is familiar and well understood, though entirely different. This has led to the acceptance of implausible accounts of the mental largely because they would permit familiar kinds of reduction. I shall try to explain why the usual examples do not help us to understand the relation between mind and body—why, indeed, we have at present no conception of what an explanation of the physical nature of a mental phenomenon would be. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless. The most important and characteristic feature of conscious mental phenomena is very poorly understood. Most reductionist theories do not even try to explain it. And careful examination will show that no currently available concept of reduction is applicable to it. Perhaps a new theoretical form can be devised for the purpose, but such a solution, if it exists, lies in the distant intellectual future.

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Philosophy is … infected by a broader tendency of contemporary intellectual life; scientism. Scientism is actually a special form of idealism, for it puts one type of human understanding in charge of the universe and what can be said about it. At its most myopic it assumes that everything there is must be understandable by the employment of scientific theories like those we have developed to date—physics and evolutionary biology are the current paradigms—as if the present age were not just one in the series.

—Thomas Nagel (1986)

Thomas Nagel is one of the most well known and widely read in contemporary Philosophy. In short: he’s a real genius and, even better, his papers are great to read. He’s clear, which cant be said for a lot of contemporary philosophers and (heres the kicker) hes a rationalist (as opposed to one who thinks we have to add everything up with a big equation and thus life). Anyway. This is what I’m minoring in and its all really great stuff, so, if you have the time, and want to look into some Ethics for (hahah) fun. Then please go ahead, this is one of his better papers (there is a whole bunch of them, I’m going to post a few of them when I can dig em up).

From the apathetic reaction to atrocities committed in Vietnam by the United States and its allies, one may conclude that moral restrictions on the conduct of war command almost as little sympathy among the general public as they do among those charged with the formation of U.S. military policy. Even when restrictions on the conduct of warfare are defended, it is usually on legal grounds alone: their moral basis is often poorly understood. I wish to argue that certain restrictions are neither arbitrary nor merely conventional, and that their validity does not depend simply on their usefulness. There is, in other words, a moral basis for the rules of war, even though the conventions now officially in force are far from giving it perfect expression.

from War and Massacre

[Full Essay Here]

This audio essay is a splendid discussion on the meaninglessness of words and their over-common commonality. For those who have put their stock in the word, or certain words put together, it is a little disquieting to hear tell of their overall neutrality and abstract worthlessness. Even though I agree with the authors, I feel a little silly when I am reminded that this boat in which I place myself does not hold anything at all. Together or apart, my eggs are not in any basket.

From the authors’ description:
“(just) words finds a theme in the idea of language heard and overheard. We don’t claim to be original, to find the origin of language, or even the orality of language. Instead we consider the un-originality of language by speaking of the plagiarists in our classes, on our TV screens, in our poems, art works, and daily lives–indeed everywhere in which language is (just) words.”

Listen to this 27-minute essay and treat yourself to a pleasing, professorial inquisition into the nature and existence of language as it births in your mouth and dies in your ears.

For more thoughts on rhetoric, technology and pedagogy, visit kairos.com

UbuWeb is a free independent resource of sound, text, and video files dating from 1516 to contemporary. They have hundreds of gigabytes of material. In sound alone, I’ve found Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Guy Debord, ee cummings, William Carlos Williams and more, mostly recorded by the authors themselves.

What makes this site stand out for me is how they have de-commodified the art. Everything about the site is free: they don’t accept donations, they don’t sell merchandise, they don’t advertise themselves, and they don’t sell advertising space. The archive is upheld entirely by volunteers, and web space is either given by universities or purchased cheaply. As long as a work is out of print, they upload without permission, and encourage their audience to do likewise.

UbuWeb is primarily an archive for the “outsiders,” obscure, and hard to find work that might not make it into the popular sphere. Find Patti Smith’s poetry, David Cronenberg’s opinions on Andy Warhol, Brian Eno’s video paintings, and bizarre personal ads’s taken from New York bulletin boards. This is a reminder of everything that is art, and a good place to get lost.

http://www.ubu.com/

This is really an EXCELLENT essay, please do read it if you ever get the time. [Link to the full essay here]

Excerpt from Silly Novels by Silly Lady Novelists

A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right estimate of herself. She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on slight provocation; not because she thinks that a sacrifice must be made to the prejudices of men, but because that mode of exhibiting her memory and Latinity does not present itself to her as edifying or graceful. She does not write books to confound philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight them. In conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you can’t understand her. She does not give you information, which is the raw material of culture, — she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence.

excerpt from The Subjection of Women, Chapter I

Some will object, that a comparison cannot fairly be made between the government of the male sex and the forms of unjust power which I have adduced in illustration of it, since these are arbitrary, and the effect of mere usurpation, while it on the contrary is natural. But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it? There was a time when the division of mankind into two classes, a small one of masters and a numerous one of slaves, appeared, even to the most cultivated minds, to be a natural, and the only natural, condition of the human race. No less an intellect, and one which contributed no less to the progress of human thought, than Aristotle, held this opinion without doubt or misgiving; and rested it on the same premises on which the same assertion in regard to the dominion of men over women is usually based, namely that there are different natures among mankind, free natures, and slave natures; that the Greeks were of a free nature, the barbarian races of Thracians and Asiatics of a slave nature. But why need I go back to Aristotle? Did not the slaveowners of the Southern United States maintain the same doctrine, with all the fanaticism with which men cling to the theories that justify their passions and legitimate their personal interests? Did they not call heaven and earth to witness that the dominion of the white man over the black is natural, that the black race is by nature incapable of freedom, and marked out for slavery? some even going so far as to say that the freedom of manual labourers is an unnatural order of things anywhere. Again, the theorists of absolute monarchy have always affirmed it to be the only natural form of government; issuing from the patriarchal, which was the primitive and spontaneous form of society, framed on the model of the paternal, which is anterior to society itself, and, as they contend, the most natural authority of all. Nay, for that matter, the law of force itself, to those who could not plead any other, has always seemed the most natural of all grounds for the exercise of authority. Conquering races hold it to be Nature’s own dictate that the conquered should obey the conquerors, or, as they euphoniously paraphrase it, that the feebler and more unwarlike races should submit to the braver and manlier. The smallest acquaintance with human life in the middle ages, shows how supremely natural the dominion of the feudal nobility over men of low condition appeared to the nobility themselves, and how unnatural the conception seemed, of a person of the inferior class claiming equality with them, or exercising authority over them. It hardly seemed less so to the class held in subjection. The emancipated serfs and burgesses, even in their most vigorous struggles, never made any pretension to a share of authority; they only demanded more or less of limitation to the power of tyrannizing over them. So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary, and that everything which is usual appears natural. The subjection of women to men being a universal custom, any departure from it quite naturally appears unnatural. But how entirely, even in this case, the feeling is dependent on custom, appears by ample experience. Nothing so much astonishes the people of distant parts of the world, when they first learn anything about England, as to be told that it is under a queen: the thing seems to them so unnatural as to be almost incredible. To Englishmen this does not seem in the least degree unnatural, because they are used to it; but they do feel it unnatural that women should be soldiers or members of Parliament. In the feudal ages, on the contrary, war and politics were not thought unnatural to women, because not unusual; it seemed natural that women of the privileged classes should be of manly character, inferior in nothing but bodily strength to their husbands and fathers. The independence of women seemed rather less unnatural to the Greeks than to other ancients, on account of the fabulous Amazons (whom they believed to be historical), and the partial example afforded by the Spartan women; who, though no less subordinate by law than in other Greek states, were more free in fact, and being trained to bodily exercises in the same manner with men, gave ample proof that they were not naturally disqualified for them. There can be little doubt that Spartan experience suggested to Plato, among many other of his doctrines, that of the social and political equality of the two sexes.

Do I need to preface this with anything? No, he probably wouldn’t want me to. I draw a lot of inspiration from this man  — and it isnt from his music. You’ll see why. On a lighter note — why the hell does no one notice Ginsberg?