NoraSawyer.com

For once, my result doen’t match Bibliogal’s or Aaron’s. Hm.

Could it be I’ve come into my own?

By the way, this

I’m so tired of my tendancy to overshare. I need to cultivate an air of mystery, darnit.

Happy Easter!

What a craptacular day. I wan to go home, crawl into the tub, and read me some Bonhoeffer.

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to
preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!

How grammatically sound are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

In his examination of the Greek psyche, Bruno Snell adapted this theory to account for the rise of the individual in Greek society. In Snell’s view, self-awareness, what he calls the “discovery of the mind” comes into being when desire is frustrated.

. . Love which has its course barred, and fails to reach its fulfillment, acquires a particularly strong hold over the human heart. The sparks of a vital desire burst into flame at the very moment when the desire is finally blocked in its path. It is the obstruction which makes the wholly personal feelings conscious . . . [the lover] seeks the cause in his own personality (Snell, 1952, p 53).

Literary theorist Anne Carson takes this idea further, suggesting that formation of self also results from literacy. “Reading and writing change societies,” she writes,

As an individual reads and writes he gradually learns to close or inhibit the input of his senses, to inhibit or control the responses of his body, so as to train his energy and thought upon the written words . . . In making the effort he becomes aware of the interior self as an entity separable form the environment and its input, controllable by his own mental action . . . Literate training encourages a heightened awareness of personal physical boundaries and a sense of those boundaries as the vessel of ones self. To control these boundaries is to posses oneself. For individuals to whom self-possession has become important, the influx of sudden, strong emotion from without cannot be an unalarming event (Carson, 1985, pp 44-45).

Dante was the embodiment of this literate lover. In his youth, He fell in love with a young Florentine woman his own age. He wrote of his first encounter with this woman, “who was called Beatrice (she who blesses) by many who knew not what to call her” in his book Vita Nova, or The New Life. Dante described not only the inception of his love for Beatrice, but also the turmoil this love created within him.

Dante first encountered Beatrice when they were both nine years old. At the instant at which he caught sight of her, Dante felt his life changed, and his very soul cried out. First, “the spirit of life, which dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart,” spoke these words: “Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi,” (behold a god stronger than I, who, in coming, shall rule over me). After the spirit of life had spoken, the “spirit of the soul,” which “dwells in the high chamber to which all the spirits of the senses carry their perceptions,” called out “Apperuit iam beatitudo vestra” (now the joy and blessing which is yours has appeared). Finally, the “natural spirit,” which “dwells in that place where our nourishment is supplied,” cried out, weeping, “Heu miser! quia frequenter impedus ero deinceps” (Alas, poor me! For from now on I often will be hindered). The arrival of Beatrice announces the overmastering of Dante’s ego, of his basic appetites and desires; Dante is now beholden to something higher.

The literate mindset craves control, of self and of fate. For good or for ill, the literate mind would rather master the helm of its own fate than leave its course to external controls. Tragedy comes when we lose that control, or, perhaps more accurately, when we are reminded that control is no more than vain illusion.

In his Poetics, Aristotle defines the proper length of a tragedy as being sufficient for “the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, [to] admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.” Notice here that a tragedy is defined as being any change in fortune, whether from good to bad, or bad to good. The change itself, the uncontrollable movement of fortune, is tragic.

But I could be wrong.

Its always fun to argue with Brian. Limbic and Reptilian brains. Reason vs. desire. My faith in religion and philosophy vs his faith in science. Rochefort #8 vs Westmalle triple.

The reptilian brain is ’so far from the mind that ‘it doesn’t even know the head exists.’ Rationality only moves us so far. Dante must leave Virgil behind at the gates of Paradise. Aristotle’s ‘correct habit’ wins out over logic.

Blogida blogida blofida. Happy anniversary, Brian

So I think I might have seen a ghost yesterday morning. I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before (the hippies downstairs were talking long into the night – outside my bedroom witndow), and when the alarm went off, I lifted my head in that semi-somnulent, prehistoric-beast-rising-from-the-deep-to-fight-Godzilla way that bad mornings start out.

In the corner of my eye, I saw a woman, standing by the closet door. Pale, with dark hair and sort of faded clothes. I turned towards her, and there was nothing there. Not even a pile of clothes or a hanging bathrobe. ‘Hm, a ghost,’ I thought, turned off the alarm clock, and went back to sleep.

So there you go. Probably a dream, but maybe not.

“It is the constructive task of a philosophy of a philosophy of mind to provide a set of terms in which ultimate judgements of value can be very clearly stated”

- Hampshire, Thought and Action

Wrassling with moral judgement is such a tricky task. On the one hand, we each posess (barring mental illness or injury) a definite, immutable sense of right and wrong – the gut feeling that tells you murder is wrong, betrayal distasteful. On more day-to-day scale, we all have opinions – feelings that go deeper than feeling and define who we are in and of the world.

But moral judgement itself can be distasteful. I mean really – the whole gay marriage debate? “Our” condemnation of Islamic nations and other ‘evil doers?’ Can we have a philosophy – ‘a moral philosophy’ – that does not impose upon us value judgements in the guise of ‘human nature?’

Why am I so simple?

Maybe I should go to bed.