Status Updates From The Great Political Theorie...

Rereading Marx and J.S. Mill. V. interested in the experience or sensation of "I'm getting this/these concepts are familiar to me and I'm expanding my understanding of them/I am learning." To what extent am I experiencing this simply because I've encountered them before? Am I wrapping my mind around a concept or am I only learning how to parrot a particular vocabulary?

Reading Carlyle. Suddenly interested in how rhetoric masquerades as reason. Formal argument can be so difficult to follow whereas rhetoric goes down so easy — it feels true. You can come away from a text feeling as though you've been quite convinced of something, but you wouldn't be able to work out why, not logically. The reactionary De Maistre says "Human reason in individuals is useless..." and he believes it.