Giambattista Vico: "The New Science" (1725)

Occupante Concede: History Demands a Coherent Narrative

A History of Epistemes and Paradigms

"Custom is like a King, and the Law, like a Tyrant"

- Dio Chrysostom (Natural Law being adopted by social custom, not novel Legislation)

Natural law contrasts with legal positivism, which views laws as solely based on societal rules or the will of the legislature.

Excerpts from video above:

This natural law was born of human customs, which sprang from the common nature of nations, which is the universal subject of my science. And this natural law preserves human society, for there is nothing more natural, because more pleasing, than observing natural customs. Consequently human nature, which is the source of human customs, is sociable.

So we can see that this idea of natural law is a function of human customs. We create what we see as essential in human development and action. And nevertheless, Vico is going to try to say, and I'm really not sure of the validity of this, that behind human custom is a fundamental human nature, a commonality to all humans which among other things is our sociality, which acts as the basis by which we can enter a common historical development. That we can see ideas develop in various paradigms that connect to each other in a temporal sequence.

---

Vico attempts to develop a sort of common grammar or logic by which society develops. He says, that we observe that the barbarous and civilized nations of the world, despite their great separation in space and time and their separate foundations, all share these three human customs: which is all have some religion (and he sees this as the proof of the historical revelation and presence of divine providence), second all contract solemn marriages (which he sees as the proof of the family as the fundamental social unit), and third all bury their dead (which he sees as the proof of the eternal nature of the human Spirit).

And thus the notion of humanity is constantly recursively developing itself through history in every nation, no matter how savage and crude, no rights are celebrated with more elaborate ceremonies or more sacred solemnities than those of religion, marriage, and burial. So he's trying to find some sort of common conceptual vocabulary that we use to frame our actions.

Thus the philosophers, he says, have made a fundamental error by avoiding the historical development of these concepts. He says that the philosophers should have discussed Providence, as revealed in the economy of civil institutions. This is clear from the proper meaning of the word Divinity, which was applied to Providence. This noun derives from the Latin verb "divinari", to divine. In other words, to understand either what is hidden from men, meaning the future, or what is hidden within them, meaning their conscience.

All right, so this idea of the future, of the unfolding of ideas, of a sense of becoming that Hegel is going to develop, and this idea of conscience, of a developing historical consciousness, which is going to become for Hegel self-consciousness, and thus the resplendant truth of the development of a dialectical unfolding of Geist, of Spirit for Hegel.

My new science, he says, is therefore a demonstration, as it were, of Providence as a historical fact. That is, it must provide a history of the orders and institutions which provide bestowed on the great polity of humankind without the knowledge or advice of humankind and often contrary to human planning. For although by its creation our world is temporal and particular the orders which Providence establishes in it are universal and eternal. So essentially, governing and managing the immense variety of experiences, ideas, and peoples is a series of definite orders, which are these you know, Ages of the Divine, the Heroic, and Mankind; which are going to frame the historical development of our species and thus of civility itself.

Now there's a lot more that I could say about this. He's going to talk about the development of language from monosyllabic grunts and song, as well and its' relationship to mythology. There's some interesting stuff in here, and a lot of it, we know now, is incorrect. A lot of his etymologies are wrong. They are in fact, made up. But I think that there's a slight magic in this, which is, that we're seeing a break in the way we conceive of history from a simple tabulation of facts, to a conception of narrative and coherence that blends us through a development of ideas that are recursively and self-reflexively understanding their relationship to the past, and the future. so I think that this is a very incisive moment in the history of philosophy and in the philosophy of history

Out of Beer!

Machiavelli, On Why Most "Leaders" Suck

Byung-Chul Han. "Vita Contemplativa'

"Depression arises not from lack, but from excess. It is a result of too much possibility, too much pressure, too much self."

- Byung-Chul Han

Don't be a Grub Street Scribbler!

On the Ethics of Bad Art (Kitsch)

Robert C. Solomon, "On Kitsch and Sentimentality"

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession:

The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! 

The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankiind, by children running on the grass! 

It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch!

As the notion of "truth" requires "falsity," the very notion of "taste" in art necessitates the existence of "bad taste" and, consequently, bad art... These days, it is far wiser for an aspiring young artist to offend or disgust the viewer rather than evoke such gentle sentiments as sympathy and delight.... So this is just what is particularly interesting from a philosophical point of view, about the peculiar variety of "bad art" called "Kitsch", and, in particular, the variety of kitsch sometimes called "sweet kitsch".. that appeals to the sweeter sentiments.

Is the "Sentiment" of Kitsch a 2nd Order Observation? 

 Rick Anthony Furtak, "A Review of Robert C. Solomon's 'In Defense of Sentimentality'"

This volume is the second in a series collectively entitled The Passionate Life, which promises to bring together a definitive edition of Robert Solomon's essays in the philosophy of emotions. While its chapters (most of which have previously been published in one form or another) deal with a range of topics in aesthetics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of religion, the common thread from beginning to end is a focus on the affective dimension of life. If this qualifies as a philosophical category in its own right, it is largely due to the work of Solomon himself, who over the past thirty years has arguably done more than anyone else to establish the philosophy of emotions as a major area of inquiry.

One of the chief aims of the book is to defend the importance of being emotional: against those who harbor distrust toward particular emotions or toward emotion in general, Solomon mounts a counterattack meant to demonstrate that emotional sensitivity is an ethical virtue, valuable in itself and essential to any meaningful human existence. This goal is especially prominent in the first and last essays of the collection, which (according to the author's preface) serve to lay out the concerns of the volume as a whole. "In Defense of Sentimentality" and "On Kitsch and Sentimentality," the two chapters in question, are united in their denial that the term "sentimentality" ought to have negative or pejorative connotations. This goes against the practice of using the word to describe emotions that are inauthentic, facile, excessive, self-deceived, or distorted. According to Solomon, this critical use of the word "sentimentality" is nothing but a convenient way of expressing a more comprehensive bias against emotion as such, and especially against a class of emotions variably described as the "sweet" or "tender" sentiments. He puts forward the remarkably strong claim that, in spite of prevailing opinion to the contrary, "there is nothing wrong with sentimentality" (4).

In taking this unapologetic stand against those who have argued that sentimentality involves a wistful turning away from reality, or an objectionable misrepresentation of the world, Solomon puts himself in the position of having to defend any and every instance and type of emotion that has typically been stigmatized as sentimental. A reader who is sympathetic to his project in many respects may reasonably feel that such a position cannot be rendered plausible and coherent, or at least that Solomon does not succeed in proving his extreme thesis that all opposition to sentimentality is unjustified. After all, he makes reference throughout the book to the Aristotelian ideal of appropriate emotional response. If it makes sense to speak of being angry at the right person, for the right length of time, and to the right degree, then it must be possible for our emotions to "go wrong" (244) -- that is, by virtue of being inappropriate in a given situation. It would be strange to suffer more grief over the death of a goldfish than over the death of a close friend (81), and there is something wrong with a person who "romanticizes" the raw experience of grief in abstraction from its object (87). Likewise, our feelings toward the natural world ought to include an awareness of its violent side (151), not only of such properties as the cuteness and innocence of prairie dogs. These are just a few of Solomon's own examples of what another philosopher might describe as sentimentality. His examples of flawed emotion are proof that Solomon is not as indiscriminate as his thesis would lead us to believe. Why, then, should he maintain that the very attempt to distinguish more and less defective instances of emotion is motivated by a generic prejudice? On the contrary, anyone who acknowledges the intentional content of emotions (as Solomon does) has a reason to care about the difference between cases in which our emotions go wrong and cases in which they are right on target.

A philosophical defense of the emotions does not have to be such an all-or-nothing affair, and Solomon himself clearly appreciates the need for Nietzsche's distinction between those emotions that are worth having and the ones that weigh us down with their stupidity. It is a frustrating strategy, then, when he continually punts to making vague allegations about the pervasive bias against emotion -- a conversation stopper if ever there was one, since it only changes the subject and does nothing to explain why a particular kind of criticism should not be made. One may be convinced by Solomon's essay defending the desire for vengeance as an emotion that arises from a tacit sense of justice, but this is no reason to abandon the belief that there is such a thing as patriotic kitsch, in which non-tender emotions (such as hatred for "the enemy") are sentimentally evoked. When Solomon reports his own "suspicion" that a specific criticism of sentimental emotion is based on an anti-passionate bias in the critic, this should not change the mind of anyone who suspects that the criticism is valid (242). There is a difference between interpreting things in the best possible light and seeing only what one wishes to see, and Solomon should not be so quick to concede that all emotions involve a distortion of the world, or that "what love sees and thinks is mostly nonsense" (173). We are guilty of a kind of deception when we project onto the world whatever qualities would justify the emotions that we most enjoy having. This is subtly but crucially different from viewing the world in light of our concerns: in the former case, we invent a pretext for feeling what we have already decided to feel. In the latter, emotional attunement provides the framework through which we experience situations that are not themselves subject to our will.

Although emotions, like other intentional states, must in some sense be answerable to mind-independent reality -- as Solomon points out, I cannot be angry at you for stealing my car if I know that my car has not been stolen -- it is also true that our experience of the external world is affected by the emotional state of mind with which we approach it. In other words, our emotional comportment toward the world has a decisive influence on the nature of our experience: even though it would be naïve to imagine that we have the power to "create" our own reality, the lens through which we are looking goes some way toward determining what it is that we see. This dialectic between the subjective and the objective aspects of emotional perception is among the more intractable facts that must be explained by any philosophical account of the passions. On this topic, Solomon has some insightful remarks to offer, although these are not very well represented by the title of his book. At one point he distinguishes between idealization and illusion, the former being a kind of glorification of the object, the latter a falsification of it (227). This is a welcome alternative to the idea that all emotions are equally distorting, and it captures the sense in which love provides us with a kind of knowledge that is not available to the dispassionate observer. When I love someone, it is likely that I am especially able to appreciate her good qualities, because these are glorified in the light of my radiant gaze; and this is not equivalent to admiring a falsified image of her while failing to see who she really is. Love does not "make anything true," but it does transform our whole perspective, enabling us to see things that were previously hidden from us. To be passionately engaged, then, is to adopt "a positive attitude in which all sorts of possibilities open up that may not have been so evident before" (160). For this reason, gratitude for existence is a good emotion to cultivate, regardless of whether or not it can be "objectively" justified.

The Wave's not Real...

...and other modelling and mathematical theoretical "artifacts".

Palantir, from the Outside

The New Society of Control

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Now Get Back to work Producing Content, Cloud Serfs!

Why the Universe Matters!

from Wikipedia:

The Ambassadors is a 1533 painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. Also known as *Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve,[1] after the two people it portrays, it was created in the Tudor period, in the same year Elizabeth I was born. Franny Moyle speculates that Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, then Queen of England, might have commissioned it as a gift for Jean de Dinteville, the French ambassador, portrayed on the left.[2] De Selve was a Catholic Bishop.

As well as being a double portrait, the painting contains a still life of meticulously rendered objects, the meaning of which is the cause of much debate. An array of expensive scientific objects, related to knowing the time and the cosmos are prominently displayed. Several refer to Rome, the seat of the Pope. A second shelf of objects shows a lute with a broken string, a symbol of discord, next to a hymnal composed by Martin Luther.

It incorporates one of the best-known examples of anamorphosis in painting. While most scholars have taken the view that the painting should be viewed side on to see the skull, others believe a glass tube was used to see the skull head on. Either way, death is both prominent and obscured until discovered. Less easily spotted is a carving of Jesus on a crucifix, half hidden behind a curtain at the top left.

The Ambassadors has been part of London's National Gallery collection since its purchase in 1890. It was extensively restored in 1997, leading to criticism, in particular that the skull's dimensions had been changed.

*Dinteville's motto was Memento mori, meaning "Remember thou shalt die."

...and if Time ran backwards in the anti-matter Universe?

from the Jowett summary of Plato's "Statesman"

No, not that; but another part of the story, which tells how the sun and stars once arose in the west and set in the east, and that the god reversed their motion, as a witness to the right of Atreus. 'There is such a story.' And no doubt you have heard of the empire of Cronos, and of the earthborn men? The origin of these and the like stories is to be found in the tale which I am about to narrate.

There was a time when God directed the revolutions of the world, but at the completion of a certain cycle he let go; and the world, by a necessity of its nature, turned back, and went round the other way. For divine things alone are unchangeable; but the earth and heavens, although endowed with many glories, have a body, and are therefore liable to perturbation. In the case of the world, the perturbation is very slight, and amounts only to a reversal of motion. For the lord of moving things is alone self-moved; neither can piety allow that he goes at one time in one direction and at another time in another; or that God has given the universe opposite motions; or that there are two gods, one turning it in one direction, another in another. But the truth is, that there are two cycles of the world, and in one of them it is governed by an immediate Providence, and receives life and immortality, and in the other is let go again, and has a reverse action during infinite ages. This new action is spontaneous, and is due to exquisite perfection of balance, to the vast size of the universe, and to the smallness of the pivot upon which it turns. All changes in the heaven affect the animal world, and this being the greatest of them, is most destructive to men and animals. At the beginning of the cycle before our own very few of them had survived; and on these a mighty change passed. For their life was reversed like the motion of the world, and first of all coming to a stand then quickly returned to youth and beauty. The white locks of the aged became black; the cheeks of the bearded man were restored to their youth and fineness; the young men grew softer and smaller, and, being reduced to the condition of children in mind as well as body, began to vanish away; and the bodies of those who had died by violence, in a few moments underwent a parallel change and disappeared. In that cycle of existence there was no such thing as the procreation of animals from one another, but they were born of the earth, and of this our ancestors, who came into being immediately after the end of the last cycle and at the beginning of this, have preserved the recollection. Such traditions are often now unduly discredited, and yet they may be proved by internal evidence. For observe how consistent the narrative is; as the old returned to youth, so the dead returned to life; the wheel of their existence having been reversed, they rose again from the earth: a few only were reserved by God for another destiny. Such was the origin of the earthborn men.

'And is this cycle, of which you are speaking, the reign of Cronos, or our present state of existence?' No, Socrates, that blessed and spontaneous life belongs not to this, but to the previous state, in which God was the governor of the whole world, and other gods subject to him ruled over parts of the world, as is still the case in certain places. They were shepherds of men and animals, each of them sufficing for those of whom he had the care. And there was no violence among them, or war, or devouring of one another. Their life was spontaneous, because in those days God ruled over man; and he was to man what man is now to the animals. Under his government there were no estates, or private possessions, or families; but the earth produced a sufficiency of all things, and men were born out of the earth, having no traditions of the past; and as the temperature of the seasons was mild, they took no thought for raiment, and had no beds, but lived and dwelt in the open air.

Such was the age of Cronos, and the age of Zeus is our own. Tell me, which is the happier of the two? Or rather, shall I tell you that the happiness of these children of Cronos must have depended on how they used their time? If having boundless leisure, and the power of discoursing not only with one another but with the animals, they had employed these advantages with a view to philosophy, gathering from every nature some addition to their store of knowledge;—or again, if they had merely eaten and drunk, and told stories to one another, and to the beasts;—in either case, I say, there would be no difficulty in answering the question. But as nobody knows which they did, the question must remain unanswered. And here is the point of my tale. In the fulness of time, when the earthborn men had all passed away, the ruler of the universe let go the helm, and became a spectator; and destiny and natural impulse swayed the world. At the same instant all the inferior deities gave up their hold; the whole universe rebounded, and there was a great earthquake, and utter ruin of all manner of animals. After a while the tumult ceased, and the universal creature settled down in his accustomed course, having authority over all other creatures, and following the instructions of his God and Father, at first more precisely, afterwards with less exactness. The reason of the falling off was the disengagement of a former chaos; 'a muddy vesture of decay' was a part of his original nature, out of which he was brought by his Creator, under whose immediate guidance, while he remained in that former cycle, the evil was minimized and the good increased to the utmost. And in the beginning of the new cycle all was well enough, but as time went on, discord entered in; at length the good was minimized and the evil everywhere diffused, and there was a danger of universal ruin. Then the Creator, seeing the world in great straits, and fearing that chaos and infinity would come again, in his tender care again placed himself at the helm and restored order, and made the world immortal and imperishable. Once more the cycle of life and generation was reversed; the infants grew into young men, and the young men became greyheaded; no longer did the animals spring out of the earth; as the whole world was now lord of its own progress, so the parts were to be self-created and self-nourished. At first the case of men was very helpless and pitiable; for they were alone among the wild beasts, and had to carry on the struggle for existence without arts or knowledge, and had no food, and did not know how to get any. That was the time when Prometheus brought them fire, Hephaestus and Athene taught them arts, and other gods gave them seeds and plants. Out of these human life was framed; for mankind were left to themselves, and ordered their own ways, living, like the universe, in one cycle after one manner, and in another cycle after another manner.

Enough of the myth, which may show us two errors of which we were guilty in our account of the king. The first and grand error was in choosing for our king a god, who belongs to the other cycle, instead of a man from our own; there was a lesser error also in our failure to define the nature of the royal functions. The myth gave us only the image of a divine shepherd, whereas the statesmen and kings of our own day very much resemble their subjects in education and breeding. On retracing our steps we find that we gave too narrow a designation to the art which was concerned with command-for-self over living creatures, when we called it the 'feeding' of animals in flocks. This would apply to all shepherds, with the exception of the Statesman; but if we say 'managing' or 'tending' animals, the term would include him as well. Having remodelled the name, we may subdivide as before, first separating the human from the divine shepherd or manager. Then we may subdivide the human art of governing into the government of willing and unwilling subjects—royalty and tyranny—which are the extreme opposites of one another, although we in our simplicity have hitherto confounded them.

Noether's Theorum

Noether's theorem states that every continuous symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservation law. This is the first of two theorems (see Noether's second theorem) published by the mathematician Emmy Noether in 1918.[1] The action of a physical system is the integral over time of a Lagrangian function, from which the system's behavior can be determined by the principle of least action. This theorem applies to continuous and smooth symmetries of physical space. Noether's formulation is quite general and has been applied across classical mechanics, high energy physics, and recently statistical mechanics.[2]

Salvatore Garau, "Aphrodite Crying"

An Italian Artist Auctioned Off an ‘Invisible Sculpture’ for $18,300. It’s Made Literally of Nothing

“It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination,” Salvatore Garau said of his sculpture.

The Italian sculptor Salvatore Garau has “installed” one of his “sculptures” in front of Federal Hall, right at GW’s feet, and I have never found a better use for snarky air quotes than in this context. (Thanks to Jolene Howard for the heads up.) “Aphrodite Crying” is in a circle marked on the cobblestones at the corner of Wall and Broad.

I’m all for high concept but this one has got me. Still, the video is a lovely tribute to Fidi (despite the time lapse that has all the passersby jogging) and the buildings that surround the sculpture. And the more you think about it, the more you realize that he may be on to something: I am not sure I will ever pass this spot again and not think of Aphrodite. (This also happens to be the site where the city wants to relocate Charging Bull, the work of another Italian sculptor with a radical bent.)

There’s one flash of an image of a sculpture in the video, which I caught here as a still.

The press this week revolved around his sale of another sculpture of, well, nothing for $18,000. “It is a work that asks you to activate the power of the imagination,” Garau told the Spanish news outlet AS. “After all, don’t we shape a God we’ve never seen?”

The video has subtitles that have the occasional English translation:

“You don’t see me but I exist, right above this white round shape.

“I am Aphrodite, an intangible sculpture made of air and spirit.

“Still don’t see me? And yet I am here, in front of you.

And I cry because I am beauty and love which is disappearing.”