Essays and Thoughts
—This was written before sleep. Hence the melodrama, and the sense of (false?) pathos in the words. It's originally advice for my good friend Josh who has, recently, fallen prey to Football Manager 2021. I extended it but tried to keep the style consistent. Do not fall into the hell of Football Manager. For hell … Continue reading Josh, Stop Playing Football Manager
Kierkegaard: "Hope is a pretty girl, who slips away from one’s grasp." And again (!), "He who will only hope is cowardly. He who wants only to recollect is a voluptuary. But he who wills repetition, he is a man, and the more emphatically he has endeavoured to understand what this means, the deeper he … Continue reading Hope Contra Kierkegaard
The most mysterious founding myth of the West is the fall. "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: … Continue reading The Temporality of The Fall (Genesis III)
Courage is to understand all that is horrible in the world and still love it. Courage is to experience all the evils in men but still embrace them. Courage is to be hurt again and again, but still keep on trying. It is different from naivety. The naive and the courageous act the same. But … Continue reading Courage or Naivity?
(This will be, as usual, a loosely scattered set of reflections. But I hope you thoroughly enjoyed the featured image.) Hegel tells a Dick joke in the Phenomenology, illustrating how the contradiction of the spirit is that the most sublime resides in the most base. He goes—the penis is both for urination (the most basic … Continue reading The Beautiful (and the profane)
Hegel's lesson from the fall is that the worst thing is to treat an other as harmless, as incapable of evil. This very consideration of innocence deprives them of their humanity, their ability to do good. The fall creates the condition for human striving towards the divine; without the fall there is no human. Anyone … Continue reading Be (Respectfully) Violent
Mutual recognition, as a Hegelian term, has been misunderstood greatly. It is not something great, it is not static, but it is precisely in mutual recognition that differences emerge. Fight Club revolves around recognition. The first scene with Bob and the narrator hugging together exposes already the hidden inauthenticity in recognition—the two parties are recognizing … Continue reading Fight Club & Mutual Recognition
For Hegel, consciousness craves recognition. I want to be recognized by others for who I am. This is a tricky concept, since to figure out recognition we have to know what is the I, the self, that is being recognized. The self is not: Just the thing that we refer to when we say 'I'. … Continue reading Consciousness’ Mutual Recognition in Confession (Hegel&Žižek)
Warren's Brain Dumps 