Whuhtryulukkinat?

This mule (?) seemed pretty chill, though it did have an air of quiet desperation about it. As would I, had I been given my own orange bandanna before being left at camp tied, lengthely, to a tree.
“It is still true today that our scientific and medical knowledge of madness rests implicitly on the prior constitution of an ethical experience of unreason.”

“In approximate terms, it can be said that until the Renaissance the world of ethics, beyond the great division between Good and Evil, kept its equilibrium in a sort of tragic unity, that of destiny and of providence and divine will. That unity was now to disappear, broken by the definitive split between reason and unreason. A crises in the world of ethics therefore came into being, and to the great struggle between Good and Evil was juxtaposed the irreconcilable conflict between reason and unreason, multiplyling images of the split.”
That last may be a bit much, given the setting and lateness of the hour, but it all boils down to one thing: what is reason?

I’m reading Foucault, History of Madness (Murphy and Khalfa, trans.), and the above can be found on pages 91 and 104. I’ve had a longstanding and deep-seeded suspicion of anyone or thing that purports or even looks towards human reason as being able to fully understand the world. At the same time, such a stance is too often conflated with an individual not owning up to being able to fully understand her/his own life. While it may be fact in some senses, there are ways in which an individuals life is not the world. Which goes back to the mission statement under which this blog labors.

I’ve been sleeping well recently, but having a very hard time calming my mind enough to fall asleep. A good problem to have, a promising sign.

4 responses to “Whuhtryulukkinat?”

  1. I have long meant to pass on the link to Massimo Pigluicci's blog, "Rationally Speaking". This post just solidifies the idea. I believe you would be delightfully frustrated by his post. That and I would be both educated and entertained by any dialog you would have with him (he is one of the few bloggers who actually engages his audience in the comments section). Check it out:http://rationallyspeaking.org/

  2. Well, I went over and read (most of) the 9/16 post, and then Fish's Times column. If that's a good representative example of the sort of reader Pigluicci is then I'm not interested. At all.Fish raises a fine point, though not in an especially rigorous way. Pigluicci then goes after his point with no subtlety, and no attempt to take Fish's point at its strongest (the haulmark of intellectual honest IMO). Granted, I'm currently drinking beer and snarfing nachos after an 8 hour day that ended with 60 pages of Foucault, so I'm neither at my clearest nor very inclined to be patient.

  3. ac3Love or hate, not much in between for his work it seems. I find I can't compute many of P's points because I lack the background in Philosophy. That said his arrogance is noticeable and a little shocking. He wrote a fairly popular text on Evolution and Education a few years back. One of his final points was about academics coming down off their thrones, often self-appointed. I ironically believe he is very happy in his own thrown. I find his posts hit and miss but nonetheless interesting to see what catches his personal attention. I figured you might have completely different views or approaches to the problems he attempts to dissect. I actually think his comment section is a little homogenous (I guess many blog followers can be) and could use someone like yourself who can articulate a dissenting voice. But to do so one must be interested and invested in the ideas. ;^)

  4. Dude. Hasn't anyone figured this stuff all out by now, or are we still having the same arguments they were having in Athens 2500 years ago?Don't fry your brain too much Dave.:)E

Leave a comment