phrase regimen: endows addressor, addressee and referent with a unique charge that makes translation to another phrase regimen impossible. Examples: declarative, prescriptive, interrogative, performative, exclamatory.

genre of discourse: gives rules for phrase linkage. Has a unique stake or aim. Examples: dialectical, rhetorical, technical, tragic, comic, artistic, scientific, anthropological.

the philosophical genre of discourse: seeks to discover its own rules, and does not mind "wasting the time" in doing so.

§A. What realities there are begin, in every case, with a phrase, an occurrence, an Ereignis, a simple utterance or perhaps not even that: the twitch of a cat’s tail suffices (§123). In this phrase there resides unspoken potential which is drawn out, in part, by the phrase that follows, whose potential, in turn, is drawn out by its next phase (§94-96). The exact extent to which the most recent phrase belongs within the sequence of phrases is never clear but never entire (Protagoras Notice): phrase linkage is never complete, totality is impossible, there always remains that which is unpresented.

§B. Reality emerges when the referent of ostension in the current phrase is carried over into a different, now current phrase, whose deictic context (the “I”-“here”-“now” nexus) has shifted. There we stand before a red flower, and after some time we move on, we walk around the corner, all the while talking about its color. Maybe by comparing it to other red objects we know. Maybe, if we are adepts in the language of electromagnetic radiation, we will talk about it in terms of wavelength (§61), which is in turn a measure of comparison with all other visible objects. 

§C. By this point in our walk, with the flower no longer in sight, “red” has become a name. See how it, as name, perdures across significations, exhibiting formal rigidity (§60), even as it attracts new significations, regardless how many (§74-5).  In the cognitive genre: red like a lingonberry, a fire engine, a fire button; in the exclamatory genre: what I see now in my anger; in the normative genre: that to which our economy ought or ought not aspire (§77-79).  But to show the reality of this named thing, we must return to ostension, combining it with the name and the signification we have in mind. Reality is thus established (§65,§82).

§D. —What do you mean, “reality emerges” and “reality is established”?  It’s already there.  All you have to do is look! (§49) —If you look, how can you tell that you are seeing appearance rather than reality? Is the moon really disappearing, or is it waning?  Is there an eclipse?  —Because I happen to know a thing or two about astronomy… —On the other hand, if you assume that what you see is real, how can you know which parts to include in that reality that escape your current perspective? How can you say the moon is real, if you know nothing of its dark side? —Again, because of my knowledge of astronomy… —Whose every object, on your understanding of reality, is based on what might turn out to be mere appearance or upon a partial vision of a whole whose complete nature, if revealed, might overturn your concept of what it is that you see (§63).  And even if you satisfy yourself with the coordination of these partial glimpses, that coordination would only be possible by the names that persist over time and the significations they gather.

§E. —What about picture of reality, made of simple signs, each of which maps to an element of reality? —But to judge the soundness of the correspondence, you need to compare reality with your picture of it, which requires holding a picture of reality up against…a picture of your picture of reality?  And so your judgment of a picture’s goodness rests on the assumption another picture’s goodness (§55)? —But certainly the reality of the object I am pointing to right now is a property of that object, if it is to be, well, real (§47,§67)? —But mere ostension doesn’t suffice (Wittgenstein’s chess king, Philosophical Investigations, §31), nor does adding a description: an empty designator needs to bind these two and situate them in a network of names (§67).

§F. The spontaneous understanding of reality is overturned. The important upshot of this is that reality is not fixed or unitary, but is rather like a phrase — radically open to the future — open to the swarm of significations that attract to a name. (§82,§88) Of course, in being open, reality is also open to doubt: “its assertion is subject to the rules for establishing reality…”(§101). Reality never detaches from the rules of its establishment.  And reality is irreducibly plural, a set of lines passing through the single point that is the phrase.

§G. Anaximander Notice. What realities there are begin, in every case, with a phrase, an occurrence, an Ereignis.  What of this phrase, this agitated indeterminacy that we wait upon in anxious vigil, what of this, might we say, ἄπειρον?

"I see men as trees, walking." What a strange response! Here’s the original, with some alternate renderings:

• καὶ ἀναβλέψας ἔλεγεν· Βλέπω τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὅτι ὡς δένδρα ὁρῶ περιπατοῦντας.
• Und er sah auf und sprach: Ich sehe Menschen gehen, als sähe ich Bäume. (Luther)
• et aspiciens ait video homines velut arbores ambulantes. (Jerome)
• And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” (New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition)
• He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” (New International Version)

Clearly his vision is not so good yet, but how far off is it? Is it just that he sees men who look like trees, or is it that the men look like walking trees? What is the ὅτι in ὅτι ὡς? What’s the difference between βλέπω and ὁρῶ? No translation gives both “I see” instances, except Luther, who slips in a subjunctive, which is not in the original.

How does a man just cured of blindness -- and not even completely yet -- know what trees look like? How does he know how to differentiate men and trees?

Why does Jesus need to ask whether he sees correctly? Why does Jesus ask? Does he suspect the healing was not complete? (omniscience?)

Why doesn’t Jesus completely fix his vision on the first try? (omnipotence?)

Why does he lead the man out of the village? Image of trust — the sighted leading the blind?  Were there other people around? Probably. Were there trees around? 

Why did he tell the man to go straight home and not through the village? Was there something wrong with Bethsaida?  

How did the man find his way home? Did he know where he was?

In the car these days: The Emperor of all Maladies, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, which I only picked up because it was on sale at Audible.  And because I do enjoy delving into something I know nothing about—pure gain, even if I end up forgetting most of it.  So far, as I expected: (1) harrowing tales of mastectomy from the days before anesthetics and antisepsis, (2) the stylistic sheen of an anonymous professional editor, including, at the beginning of each chapter, (3) quotations of classic and lesser works the author (and the editor, for that matter) doubtfully ever read.  And, of course, (4) lots of technical jargon, including metastasis, the process by which cancer shows up here and there throughout the body.

I thought I might chase down the origins of metastasis.  The Middle-Liddle gives μετάστασις as 

• a removing, removal
• a being put into a different place, removal, migration
• a changing, change, as in Sophocles' θυμῷ μετάστασιν διδόναι, to allow a change to one's wrath, i. e. suffer it to cease
• a change of political constitution, revolution

Lots of ancient authors used the term. But the big question, of course, is how it shows up in Plato's dialogues.  It occurs twice in the Laws.

No surprises here.  But check out the Timaeus 82a, which is worth quoting at some length:

It doesn't take much to see in Plato's four elements a precursor Galen's four humors.  And in Plato's explanation of sickness as a false distribution of elements an anticipation of Galen's understanding of disease.  In fact, Galen understood cancer to be the metastasis of black bile, concentrated into a hardened nodule or whatnot.

So how did Joseph Récamier strike on metastasis to describe his findings in 1829?  Was the term just floating in the ether?  Was it currently in use to describe something else?  Was he a philological hobbyist?  Did he, after a particularly gory day at work, dismayed by the reappearance of a presumedly vanquished tumor, pour himself a drink, reach for his beloved set of classics, and strike upon this specimen of teleological anatomy?  Now that would make for the nice opening of a novel.

My current audiobook is Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel.  An episodic and rambling work, it puts the advances, retreats, the periods of R&R, death, mayhem, narrow escapes from randomly landing shells, friendly encounters with comrades, enemies and civilians, hostile engagements, and all the emotional circumstances of war on roughly the same narrative footing.  The emotion can be profound, such as when Jünger learns that his brother has been wounded and looks to his care, but I have yet to hear any sustained higher level reflection or soul searching.  The one time the cause and significance of the war is raised — by a civilian couple during a meal in their house in Cambrais — it serves as nothing more than an introduction to some of the local humor. It is as if Jünger wants to show us that his avoidance of the topic is deliberate.  

This overall character of Storm of Steel commonly draws comparison with that All Quiet on the Western Front, which weaves a clearly anti-war narrative out of similar material.  Some (on the Left, it is said) go so far as to call Storm of Steel a glorification of war, but I don’t really see how.  Perhaps Jünger’s lack of coherence and overview is emblematic of the war itself, marked as it was by the blinkered vision from the trenches and the constant play of chance.  Or perhaps Jünger’s aim is to simply gather facts from his war diaries much as he had collected beetles during his free time in the trenches, to present them to us, as it were, like a detached entymology of war, its specimens long having ceased to wriggle, letting us make of it what we will.

This last possibility is in a way similar to one my reader Eliah made in response to my entry on Big Red Son, David Foster Wallace’s report of his visit to the AVN awards in Las Vegas. Perhaps, Eliah speculates, Wallace avoids mention of his own moral evaluation in order to "march scenes and facts past the reader which make moral reflection unavoidable".  Now to my thinking, this might not be possible.  Specifically, any close description of porn is itself an act of porn.  It peddles in the same prurient fascination as its subject, obscuring objectivity.  And so it is different than, say, a weather report: the description of a hailstorm does not itself pelt the reader with ice.

If there is a valid Left-leaning reaction to Jünger, I imagine it would have to be along these lines: does a story of lost limbs and lives that withholds moral evaluation, e.g. outrage, disgust, etc., not ipso facto promote that sort of barbarism?  I am tempted to say: only to the extent that such a description tends to excite interest doing the same.  But why assume that throwing in that evaluation helps matters?   As it was recently put in the Los Angeles Review of Books:

However, of more interest to me in listening to Jünger is his depiction of martial virtue: first of all, that amidst all the random shelling it should have a chance to show itself at all.  And then that it propagates as it does, most powerfully from the commander down, who inspires courage in his troops through his own actions and example.

This makes me reconsider the nature of martial virtue and its relation to virtue in general.  Our modern concept of virtue reaches back to the Greek arete, which in Homeric times specifically described excellence in war, ares (hence “arete").  This is perplexing, considering what all has come to fall under the category of “virtue” since then.  As early as Aristotle, virtue included not only courage, but temperance, wit, humility, generosity, practical understanding and contemplation.  Today what virtues there are, if they are recognized as such, have even displaced martial virtue, effecting a complete mutation of the term.   For the pacifist-minded, excellence in battle translates to carnage and perhaps even the perpetuation of battle and thus more carnage.  On this understanding, virtues like coolheadedness and diplomacy are the antithesis, even antidote, to Homer’s arete. 

But listening to Jünger I have come to wonder whether there is a common thread running through virtue in its original and later senses.  Granted, it would be naive to assume there to be an essence lurking behind every polysemous term.  But it would be similarly naive to assume there isn't.  So I suggest the following: virtue is the willingness to put something other than the self first.  For Jünger, this “something other” is most immediately the comrades whose fate lies in his own hands: when he puts them first, risking life and limb, he does so in the most credible possible way.  Jünger clearly cares about his platoon in a way that would be difficult to ascribe to self-interest.  And he knows when he's been outdone in this regard: 

That the self-sacrifice of the above mentioned men has nothing to do with the love of violence for its own sake is clear in what Jünger says when English sharpshooters start picking off German stretcher-bearers:

Now if this is the underlying attitude that that makes warlike man virtuous, then perhaps we have the master key to virtue.  Substitute, in place of comrades, the family, the community, the ideal, knowledge, God.  On this approach, we might resolve the vexing question of the two halves of the Nichomachean Ethics, why Aristotle's sustained treatment of social virtues should morph into a call to contemplation.  

C.S. Lewis made a similar observation in Mere Christianity:

It also might guide us in re-evaluating the findings, or "findings", of anthropologists like Margaret Mead who deny universals in morality.  Observed differences of moral codes between cultures certainly should prompt us to question the nature of morality, but not necessarily to dismiss hope of deeper reconciliation.  After all, if what Richard McKirahan says in Philosophy Before Socrates is right, it was precisely the Milesian's exposure to the profound variety of cultures around the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the farther East, combined with a rationally tempered understanding of law, that led Thales, Anaximander and Anaxamines to get the ball rolling--which process ultimately led to the moral objectivity of later philosophers of Athens, a city which was no stranger to the ethical variety of the wider world, either.

Naturally, you wouldn't have to find, or "find", any deeper harmony between moral systems to defend moral objectivity.  To say that the observed lack of moral consensus suggests we shouldn't try for one is plain fallacious, even self-defeating.   But it certainly would be tidier if we could show that the underlying drive to morality is holds cross-culturally, whatever the variety in its regional expression.  

After that, it would only remain for us to expose the hollowness of the "selfish gene" argument in matters of human deliberation.  And I don't expect that would be too difficult...

After I finished listening to the biography of Jack London on my commute, I turned to Witness to Hope, George Weigel’s well-known biography of JPII. What a towering figure — and what utterly vapid writing! I laid the book aside several years ago and now I remember why.
 
One interesting note: during Karol Wojtyla's years as bishop in Poland the government set about building up the Nowa Huta district of Krakow according to their utopian vision. The result was an array of "human filing cabinets", as Weigel describes them, apartments physically arranged so as to minimize direct contact between their inhabitants. The idea was to discourage the development of any community that would come between the state and the individual. For this reason, too, no church was built and Wojtyla had to campaign hard to get one. Plus, Weigel contends, as early as the 1950's the government promoted the sexual revolution and made abortion easy, and for similar reasons: the strong religious identity of the Poles was taken as a rival to state control. The question of who has the ultimate power - the state, the market, science & technology - and what if anything stands between this power and the individual has to be one of the most foundational issues in politics. Perhaps I shall elaborate on this at some point. 

For now, however, if anyone knows of a better JPII biography, do let me know! This one was downright painful to listen to at times.

So to make up for it I moved on to a dramatized production of Goethe's Faust with a cast including Derek Jacobi.  Anything with Derek Jacobi is going to be pretty stellar — an opinion I have held ever since I saw Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, jaw-agape, on a high school field trip.  And this Faust is not exception.  Absolutely top-notch! Maybe the most enjoyable audiobook I've ever heard...and I've heard quite a few in my time.

I just finished listening to Wolf: The Lives of Jack London by James L. Haley on my commute.  I had known nothing about London except that he was pretty outdoorsy.  Turns out he was an ardent and outspoken socialist, too. He had grown up amidst the unspeakable hardships of the lower class in San Francisco, taking on ever greater risks to eke out a living among sailors and, in Alaska, prospectors. Driven by a sense of justice, he went so far as to live and work for a spell in London’s East End, workhouses and all, in order to get the first person view of the lower classes there.  He lived hard and drank hard, declining already in his thirties and ultimately succumbing to a self-administered morphine overdose.  The description of working class San Francisco in the 19th century alone would have made the book worthwhile.

I scarcely imagine it possible that 1500 years of readership failed to draw this connection, but here’s what I’ve got:

Athens was the cultural center of the world in Plato’s time; Rome in Augustine’s.  The Piraeus is the port town of Athens (9 km, says Google); Ostia of Rome (26 km).  In the Piraeus Socrates gives his Allegory of the Cave (Republic, VII) narrating the soul’s metaphysical ascent from appearance to reality; in Ostia Augustine and Monica join in a mystical ascent (Confessions, IX).

I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine how conscious Augustine himself might have been of the Piraeus-Ostia connection and whether he then wittingly or unwittingly uses it to compare/contrast pagan and Christian metaphysics.  And indeed what many things the compare/contrast yields - as a poetic evocation, I imagine there is no limit.  To get things started, I throw in my own observation of what I see as a primary, if not the primary, distinction: For Augustine and Monica the ascent was one of truth and communion, whereas with Plato’s cave (forget for a moment dialogical direction of the Phaedrus and the Seventh Letter), a truth achieved is achieved alone.

I mention this by way of introduction Huysman’s En Route, which as a conversion narrative naturally enough invites comparison with Augustine.  The overall difference: the one talks with God; the other with himself, and I submit that this has everything to do with why we have a St. Augustine and not a St. Joris-Karl.

Shoe factory workers, meat processors… let’s go with coal miners.  Say that coal miners, merely by virtue of going down the shaft, that is, of doing precisely that which makes them coal miners, all but inevitably expose themselves to a certain kind of sickness.  An incurable one, say, and highly contagious.  Now throw in some recurring symptoms: headaches, fever, blisters maybe.  Interruption of normal reproductive function.  Now say this were to come to light.  Again,  it could just as easily be tuna canning, I don’t care.  But wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect that the public outrage would run down the covers of the Washington Post for weeks?  Worker exploitation is indeed a loathsome thing.

But here’s an entire dimension missing in David Foster Wallace’s “Big Red Son”, his journalistic foray into the AVN awards, and the first entry in his Consider the Lobster and Other Essays.  I call attention to its absence in order to throw the purview of his writing into high relief, and consider how it is that he summons such force in this piece.  For the essay runs precisely on what it omits.  Much more so than its high virtuosity and clammy voyeurism, mooks and all, it is the post-moralistic tone that provides the power.

Now Wallace actually does mention that the purveyors of these goods have herpes basically without exception.  Hence the thought experiment above.  And that the industry is twice the size of Hollywood, with a lobby all its own - and this in 1998!  But these are brief asides in the narrative flow of near-bionics and awkward fascination.  

His silence on these matters insists - aggressively - that the post-moral view is the new norm.  Once the domain of moral hunchbacks, these human commodities have emerged from the twilight of past taboo, and we behold the spectacle in all its surreality.  They take their place, publicly and matter-of-factly, in the artificial light of a major convention center where so many gadgetfests are held.  With three clicks, even in those days, we knew them and their deeds.

Look beyond the spinning wheel and see the sparks shoot forth!  Where did the moral outrage of yesteryear go, the invocations of “filth” and “perversion”?  To the grave, with those gone generations?  Did we ever have a debate?  Was it another case of “they have the guns but we have the numbers”?  Wasn’t there a time when feminists, too, decried such objectification?  Has moralism been exposed as another face of jingoism?  Or is this post-hoc justification for what we naturally slipped into somewhere in youth?  Do we fear a charge of hypocrisy more than having our weakness exploited?  What of human trafficking and work conditions?  Is the body so alienable?

And by the way: what exactly does it look like when a member of said lobby approaches the senator of, say, California?