Status Updates From Three Critics of the Enligh...

‘Hamann’s thought is what those who do not normally think would think if they did think.’

Herder FTW

Style is not adornment, but content. (Cont'd)

Herder had derived from Hamann his notion that words and ideas are one. Men do not think, as it were, in thoughts and ideas and then look for words in which to ‘clothe’ them, as one looks for a glove to fit a fully formed hand.

Vico is a rich, suggestive and original, but scarcely a clear or coherent, thinker. One is tempted once again to quote Bizet’s celebrated comment on Berlioz that he ‘had genius without any talent’.

Only taking the chapter on Vico. Long interested in this man of honesty, verrum esse ipsum factum. Also an introduction given by Jonathon Israel, whose recent work on the enlightenment I recently scanned but uncertainly reviewed. I didn’t review it, I think. Anyhow should be fun. To return to the German master, Goethe, after we finish.