Ummagumma

[ Read Part One ] So, I've reviewed how Copleston interprets Saint Thomas Aquinas and I think it is a useful way to consider the man's mind. There are some things I find very appealing about Aquinas. The system of Aquinas has a basic physicality, an embodied understanding similar to what we find in Aristotle. He starts with the physical world. Matter and form, potency and act, things that change. Not the self or memory or some inward turn toward God the way Saint Augustine begins the Confessions . Aquinas starts with what's standing in front of him, and works outward from there. Nothing is in the intellect that wasn't first in the senses. That's a useful insight whether or not you buy anything else in his works . A concept isn't the object of knowledge. It's the means. When I know a tree, the concept is how I reach the tree, the actual thing standing in the yard. The senses come first, and the mind builds on top of what they hand it. He carries the same ...

Frederick Copleston was my first guide through most of western philosophy. I read his whole series The History of Philosophy a couple of years before I traveled to India in the mid-1980s. Library copies. I bought my own nine-volume set much later when I could afford such things and I still go back to different sections of it every year to brush-up on something. Copleston introduced me to Sartre, Nietzsche, Kant, Hume, Plato and Aristotle, Aquinas and Ockham. In almost every case I met the philosopher through Copleston before I either read him directly or ran into some other major interpretation. William Barrett's Irrational Man was another early door into Nietzsche and Sartre, for example. But Copleston gave me the whole history, the Greeks to the mid-twentieth century. I made a New Year’s resolution to reacquaint myself with Thomas Aquinas. Don’t ask me why. There are a lot of great minds I could have chosen. But it has been a couple of decades since I last delved into his ph...

As I mentioned in the previous review , Memento has been one of my favorite films for decades. I have never really delved into the “deeper” aspects of the film. That is odd for me. Normally, I am profoundly drawn to such things. But, Memento is such a cool idea and is so fascinatingly told, hitting both mind and heart, I never chose to delve deeper. The film stands on its own, as is, without any further speculation. It works as a low-budget noir, as an acting showcase, as a feat of editing, as a story told backward that somehow never becomes obscure. It is surprisingly suspenseful at times. It works as ambiguity that feels like atmosphere instead of confusion. I loved it that way for years and I was right to. What follows does not make it a better film. It does not change the film's worth by a single frame. It only reveals some of the intricacies Nolan was playing with, which is why I’ve been his fanboy ever since. I have seen Memento more than two dozen times. This most recent ...

Jordan Peterson continues his presence on YouTube and elsewhere, apparently still mysteriously unwell. He (or his staff in his stead) has recently started the Jordan Peterson Academy and, to help promote that online offering, he placed a free lecture out there so people could get a feel for his "academy." It is ostensibly  an introduction to Nietzsche , packaged in a high-tech studio with dramatic lighting, graphic overlays, and the full production weight behind it. It is meant to be a promotional piece, really. Still, you have to measure up to the content you create. I became aware of Peterson several years ago through my interest in Nietzsche. My YouTube feed gave me a college professor who spends  45 minutes discussing a single paragraph  from  Beyond Good and Evil . I was impressed with the effort. I didn't necessarily think this guy had Nietzsche figured out but I admired what he had to say. As long-time readers know, I have followed Peterson ever since, with hi...

It was about this time last year I started writing what I thought would be one book entitled Harmogenics . That turned into three books with the last, Raucous Reckonings , completed in October. I was late in the “final” revision of the text when I came across Albert Camus and his remarkable affinity with what I have in mind by "cosmic indifference." Short version: don’t slit your wrists. I have known of Albert Camus's philosophy as long as I have known Jean-Paul Sartre. Decades. But while I read and studied Sartre at different times of my life, I never studied or read Camus. I just knew he originated, more or less, contemporary philosophy of the "absurd." Camus gets designated an "existentialist," which annoyed him while he was alive, and then reduced to a single slogan about Absurdity. That reduction misses the point in a very human way. Camus wasn't trying to depress anyone. He was trying to keep people honest without lying to themselves for c...