From the Archives: Part 19 of the Self and its Sources

The ontological disease - continued: Dostoyevsky’s ‘Underground Man’

Levi’s ad:

“I’m not trying to be noticed…but I won’t be ignored”

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 18

The ontological disease as exemplified by the character Hap Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman".

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 17

Mimetic Desire: 'internal' versus 'external' mediation

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 16

Sacrifical violence transcendentalizes desire.
The revelation of the truth about the sacrificial structures of human culture is found in the story of the crucifixion of Jesus

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 15

A biblical echo of sacred transcendence in Numbers 25 - the righteous sacrificial act of Phinehas

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 14

How does this sacred transcendence come about?
An example from Aztec myth.
Is there another way to create transcendence?

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 13

Examples of images of fanciful prestige that keep humans from slaughtering each other.

Lord of the Flies: British officer as representative of the sacrificial system - a form of transcendence.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 12

Democracy as the myth of the death of kings (Charles I and Louis XVI).
Plato: let no one disturb the small stone that separates friendship and enmity.
Prestige: those illusions that kept us from slaughtering one another.
The Caiaphas principle: it is better that one should die than the whole nation be destroyed.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 11

The main story of human culture – culture’s ‘plot’

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 10

More definitions of "plot": the main story.
Myth (an operative fiction with its fictionality suppressed).
Western skepticism and the scientific spirit have a moral core.
Plot: a secret plan or scheme.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 9

Sacrifice at the heart of the central monument of western culture. The ancient Greeks as “equal opportunity victimizers”?
The plot is where the sacrificial victim is buried.
The cosmos and the corpse come into being at the same instant.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 8

A new interpretation of the Parthenon frieze.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 7

Plot – the ground plan of a building - Mircea Eliade: a New Guinea ritual

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 6

Ancient historic background of the word ‘plot’ as a measured piece of land - the sacrality of the terminus.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 5

Ancient Roman practice of demarcating a plot of land.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 4

The source of primitive people’s attention. The tended plot of ground, a garden and a grave - the site of sacrality.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 3

Definitions: Myth and Plot

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 2

The problem of the Enlightenment’s romanticizing the Greco-Roman tradition.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 1

This excerpt begins a series of presentations Gil Bailie made in 1994 under the title "The Self and its Sources - Reflections on the art of the novel". The original series of recordings was made on six 90 minute cassette tapes.

The decline of religion made it necessary to invent the steam engine

from The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams

We didn’t stop burning witches because we had invented science, we invented science because we stopped burning witches.

from Things Hidden from the Foundation of the World by Rene Girard

From the Archives: Crucial Choice Part 57 - The Displaced Person

All their eyes came together in one moment and froze them in collusion for ever…no community is formed.
Mrs. Macintyre felt she was in some foreign country where the people bent over the body were natives.

This is the final excerpt from the Crucial Choice series. Both CD and MP3 versions of the complete 'Crucial Choice' series will be available soon from the Cornerstone Forum webstore.

I will be begin posting a new series of excerpts from Gil Bailie's tape archives in the coming days.