Cereal is Not a Soup, A Pop Tart is Not a Sandwich, and Die Hard is Not a Christmas Movie, Shut Up, Shut Up, Shut Up

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and I feel as though I’ve spent enough time complaining about “Last Christmas” to people, so it’s time to tackle serious cultural issues. And by “tackle”, I mean “throw into a trash bag, throw the bag in the river, and light the river on fire.” On the… Read More Cereal is Not a Soup, A Pop Tart is Not a Sandwich, and Die Hard is Not a Christmas Movie, Shut Up, Shut Up, Shut Up

2 Dec 2022 AndrewLeave a comment

Epictetus, Aversion, and the Escape From Cosmic Demand

Libraries are wonderful resources. Several times at my local Barnes & Noble, I’ve scoured the local philosophy section (Shiny new Foucault but no Baudrillard, bleh), looking at the stoics. I’ve read some Seneca, and most of the Meditations, but one wants something a little more systematic, a little more Aristotelian in it’s presentation. The parables… Read More Epictetus, Aversion, and the Escape From Cosmic Demand

24 Jun 202223 Jun 2022 AndrewLeave a comment

The True Audience of Art is God

Provocative idea found in an old Zero HP Lovecraft essay in The American Mind: What does the divine care for “new paradigms,” for gay portrayals of “the human condition?” Art which has Man as its object is folly, and this is the reason for its permeating ugliness; Man without God is ugly, and the only… Read More The True Audience of Art is God

15 Sep 2021 AndrewLeave a comment

Doing Things For a Reason: Miller’s Crossing and the Friend/Enemy Dynamic

Carl Schmidt was a German jurist and political philosopher of the Weimar and Nazi eras. True to the time, his writings contain very strong critique of what he called “the liberal critique of politics.” He phrased it that way because to his mind there was no such thing as true liberal politics, as the essence… Read More Doing Things For a Reason: Miller’s Crossing and the Friend/Enemy Dynamic

30 Mar 202122 Apr 2021 AndrewLeave a comment

The Need of Myth

We are used to hearing about Myth as untrue, and also as “a special kind of truth”. I like the religious definition of “a story that tells a sacred truth,” as this cuts to the heart of it. That’s really, one suspects, what Tolkein was getting at with Middle-Earth: telling a story that told deep… Read More The Need of Myth

6 Jan 2021 AndrewLeave a comment

Logic and Word Games

Over at Rotten Chestnuts, a post on Hegel and Marx that underlines the giant Problem of Philosophy. One reason “underpants gnome metaphysics” appeals, of course, is that Hegel et al had a point. Classical logic has some huge gaps, as the Classical Greeks — i.e. the guys who developed it in the first place —… Read More Logic and Word Games

31 Dec 2020 AndrewLeave a comment

The Three Tiers of Aesthetics

A long essay, but worth your time, which dovetails nicely with other things I’ve written on the subject. Our Cranky Professor lays out three “approaches” to aesthetics/beauty: The Psychological Approach – In which one experiences beauty as an individuated response to the appearance of a thing. A Flower is Beautiful. The Rational Approach – An… Read More The Three Tiers of Aesthetics

29 Dec 2020 Andrew1 Comment

Lucretius’ Poetic Epicureanism

There once was an Epicurean Roman named Titus Lucretius Carus, who lived in the 1st Century BC. I say “Epicurean” as a follower of the philosophy of Epicurus. Epicureanism began as a combination of an empirical epistemology (we can know things only insofar as we can observe them), atomistic materialism (there is nothing but atoms… Read More Lucretius’ Poetic Epicureanism

14 Dec 2020 AndrewLeave a comment

Storming Mottes & Baileys

A very long essay on Medium.com by Gerald Crayon, describing how the pretentious rhetoric of the Academy, their overheated logorrhea (which differs from Corpo-Babble only that it is more polysyllabic), serves to empty the culture of its meaning. The logic goes like this: Academic Jargon is deliberately obfuscatory, in order to gatekeep the positions. Crayon… Read More Storming Mottes & Baileys

28 Nov 202029 Nov 2020 AndrewLeave a comment

Ovid, Virgil, and Lucretius Walk Into a Palace…

Back when I first conceived The Meditations of Caius Caligulia, I had a list of books I wanted to read to give me inspiration and background. Writers have to be readers, and I had the broad strokes of what I wanted to do, without the details. Details are key. So I needed to read, at… Read More Ovid, Virgil, and Lucretius Walk Into a Palace…

28 Nov 2020 Andrew1 Comment