Kratylus og den samme gamle leksa
Posted: 22/12 -09 Filed under: Norwegian Leave a comment »Kommentar til bloggposten Kratylus og sannhetens historie:
“Ordene er faste og tingene er flytende, derfor fant Kratylus ut at det var best å holde munn.”
For en herlig ekstrem reaksjon. Men det er jo opplagt andre ting vi kan bruke ord til enn å forsøke å fastsette en flytende virkelighet. Som han selv sier er jo i det minste ordene faste. Et byggverk av ord kan vel da være absolutt stabilt, så lenge vi ikke stiller det opp som virkelighetsbeskrivende. Med ord alene kan vi altså skape virtuelle “surrogat-virkeligheter” som er objektivt gyldige eller hjemlige eller hva vi skulle ønske, til den pris at vi må begrense bruken av dem til dyp innlevelse, dvs. ikke ta skrittet fullt ut til dogmatisk tro (overtro). Dette er på en måte en skuffelse, for vi skulle jo helst sett at vi kunne fullt ut begripe virkeligheten, men samtidig er det også et sterkt innslag av befrielse her, idet dogmatisk tro sperrer oss inne.
Jeg setter meg endelig litt inn i Photoshop
Posted: 17/12 -09 Filed under: Norwegian Leave a comment »Ene broren min var nettopp og besøkte den andre i Libanon. Her har han satt seg godt til rette med lokalbefolkningen:
Seneca affirms Epicurus’ teaching of fictionalist religion
Posted: 06/12 -09 Filed under: English Leave a comment »On p. 56 of the very charming book Letters from a Stoic:
New web habits
Posted: 02/12 -09 Filed under: English | Tags: posterous Leave a comment »I’m abandoning this ship in favor of a couple of posterous blogs. One is for thinking out loud, mostly about philosophy, and the other is an outlet for more personal stuff that I can’t imagine anybody except family and friends being interested in reading. The latter will probably be in Norwegian only, while on the former I will alternate between writing in English and in Norwegian.
The reason I am doing this is that I like the aesthetic and practical simplicity of posterous. It makes it feel more natural to write casually, and that’s what I would like to do. Write casually and more often.
The dark side of optimistic futurism
Posted: 01/12 -09 Filed under: English Leave a comment »We look back on our predecessors with equal part pity and ridicule. But history hasn’t plateaued, and we are not on top of things but on a steep and climbing slope. It won’t take long before our current state will appear just as pitiful and ridiculous as the primitives of the past look like to us. From the point of view of a hypothetical future peak of history, our present is just another step on a long ladder of insignificant and pitiful primitives. This is an historically new perspective, and it’s very unsettling. It’s like the future is reaching back to puncture our present dignity. A very hostile environment — albeit only for the few people who are aware of the situation.
Standing in the shadow of probable descendants is something very different from standing in the shadow of remembered ancestors. Ancestors are dead, and can only be imagined to be disappointed. Descendants, on the other hand, will at some point, possibly within the reach of our lifetimes, be very much alive and vocal in their disdain. Somehow, this makes the latter worse. We will be judged harshly. Really.
