1.31.2003

Yes. I felt a bit stale too. Sometimes it makes sense to back away & then come back refreshed, or at least with a different set of preoccupations. Interesting that you should begin by bringing up aesthetic & ethical concerns. I just have a moment this morning & will say more later, but some of my students & I have been struggling with what happens once one recognizes the freedom of rhetoric. That is, language can be played so many way, but language is amoral. That is, there is nothing "in language" that prevents one from going on television & erecting a structure of monstrous lies. But at the same time, the rhetorical art allows us to not be bamboozled. More anon.

1.27.2003

Josh blog: someone else interested in Wittgenstein & Bob Dylan--who knew?

1.13.2003

Part II? Well, Chris, we have taken a fairly long break from our investigations of the Investigations. Perhaps it is time to start up again. I was moved by the description of your friend Larry DeCamp & of the philosopher's life. Poetry & philosophy are sometimes said to be at war with each other, but from another viewpoint, I think that both poetry & philosophy are about justice. Not in the narrow sense of "the justice system," though that's part of it--justice, rather, as akin to temperament in music: an adjustment toward the human & particular, away from the abstract.

So, if you'll put something in this space re: Wittgenstein, I will respond & we can try to build some momentum.