Wednesday, August 28, 2013

From the Archives: Part 46 of The Self and its Sources




Gabriel Marcel: “The subordination of the self to a superior reality, a reality at my deepest level more truly me than I am myself”.

In an introduction to Max Picard’s The Flight from God (now out of print), Gabriel Marcel says Picard is "among the few who appear capable of redirecting the thinking elite toward an awakening of reason, without which it is impossible not to despair of mankind.

Monday, August 26, 2013

From the Archives: Part 45 of The Self and its Sources




There is a mystery about identity that goes to the heart of personality itself.

Personality is not possible without faith
– Paul Tillich

The only true self is the converted self
– Renè Girard

Saturday, August 24, 2013

From the Archives: Part 44 of The Self and its Sources




Continuation of a contemporary example of the novel as autopsy: Avant-garde and madness

“When I came to know her better, I thought of her as a new disease…”

Thursday, August 22, 2013

From the Archives: Part 43 of The Self and its Sources




A contemporary example of the novel as autopsy: Avant-garde and madness

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

From the Archives: Part 42 of The Self and its Sources




The imperative of the novel is autopsy....it is documenting a slow death.

Sunday, August 18, 2013

From the Archives: Part 41 of The Self and its Sources




The novel has run out of subjects…it has lost its subjectivity.

Friday, August 16, 2013

From the Archives: Part 40 of The Self and its Sources




The novel is a chronicle of the collapse of transcendence in the modern world and the rise of internal mediation.
Ortega y Gasset:
“When we are fascinated by a novel it is not because we a curious to know what happened to Mr. So-and –So. The subject of any novel can be told in a few words and in this form holds no interest. We want the novelist to linger and to grant us good long looks at his personages, their being and their environment until we have had our fill. The interest in the outer mechanisms of the plot is today reduced to a minimum. All the better. The novel must now revolve around the superior interest emanating from the inner mechanism of the personages.”

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

From the Archives: Part 39 of The Self and its Sources




Caiaphas: “It is better that one should die than the whole nation be destroyed” - the economy of violence in the old sacred system. Primitive religion was indeed the opiate of the people…

Monday, August 12, 2013

From the Archives: Part 38 of The Self and its Sources




The social leveling which is the inevitable product of the Biblical revelation can only take place without catastrophe in a world that has discovered another way of experiencing transcendence. This is why the "Greatest Commandment" - to love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, and mind - is so essential. A graphic example from the French Revolution.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

From the Archives: Part 37 of The Self and its Sources




The crisis of distinction or the crisis of degree: From Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida Act 1, Scene 3...the speech of Ulysses: “Take but degree away, untune that string, And, hark, what discord follows!”

Pascal: Whom shall we choose as ruler of the state…?

Thursday, August 08, 2013

From the Archives: Part 36 of The Self and its Sources




Is this about the ‘novel’ or anthropology? The imitator and the model: Girard's concept of 'internal' vs 'external' mediation. This is exemplified in Shakespeare & Cevantes who were late 16th century contemporaries. Every Shakespeare play deals with, in some way, what Kierkegaard described concerning resentment. Cf. speech of Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida

Tuesday, August 06, 2013

From the Archives: Part 35 of The Self and its Sources




Sacrality is on the wane…and with it transcendence itself. Fascination is now only with the human order. But as the Hebrew prophets knew so well…we will either worship God or we will create idols. We will have an object of ultimate concern – the only question is, ‘who will it be?’ Kierkegaard announces the beginning of this process in the mid-nineteenth century: Resentment is the constituent principle of the modern age. “Resentment happens when the world moves from the happy love of admiration to the unhappy love of envy”.

Sunday, August 04, 2013

From the Archives: Part 34 of The Self and its Sources




Kingship participated in the distinction between the sacred and the profane. The old sacred system is compromised by the effects of the Gospel. The novel as an early symptom of modernity reflects these effects.