K80 > Recent Status Updates

Absolutely sensational

…. Here I am again. Maybe I’ll get more out of it the second time?

Just as difficult as I remember it being. Absolutely loving every second of reading it, though.

Love!

Maybe it’s a result of spending two years in a deeply analytic program before returning home to continental studies but I am so very terminally afraid of Derrida.

Will be bashing my head against this brick wall for the next several weeks. And then probably the rest of my life.

Singlehandedly reforming my beliefs about reading for fun. I’m having the time of my life. Not sure how to track my progress on this because I am skipping around a bit.

I first read Mishima Yukio’s *Patriotism* and couldn’t take my eyes off it. Nagai Kafū’s *Behind the Prison* was additionally a (crushing) pleasure to read. Very very much looking forward to continuing whenever I have time❣️

This rockssss I read the Cambridge translation ~a year ago and I’m ready to be hurt again

I think I would find this more charming and fun if I wasn’t under immense time pressure to read it

Gotta say, as someone who caught a lot of shit for being repetitive, the intro to Being and Time is kind of iconic. Yes girl, Being *is* always the Being of a being. Slay.

Spirit that’s sure of itself is so so so good I’m not kidding the Beautiful Soul speaks to me in way that Kant could never

I hate philosophy of temporality. What do you mean there’s a personification of time.

Starting to believe I’ve only experienced lesser dreads (119) in my life. Should I be worried about that?

MMP I think you’re a *little* off the shits in the cogito section.

Every chapter ends in ambiguity. I sure hope that’s not telling me something.

There’s concerningly frequent reference made to “attention” garnering, but overall very interesting and the researchers’ background in deviance is certainly valuable. They admit their demographics are mostly white and mostly female(despite psycho-medical literature to the contrary) but their lit review is solid, so I’m excited to read more :^)

Add this one to the Getting-Weird-Looks-On-The-Train list

God I was hoping to like this a lot more than I am. Don’t think I agree with MMP about hallucinations - doesn’t seem to align with most views of schizophrenia to say that individuals *know* their hallucinations aren’t real. Maybe I’m missing something?

I don’t understand the inverted world very well but omg the first few pages of self consciousness go hard!!! Desire! Life! FEAR!!! Slay Hegel!

I love MMP, even when I'm uncertain of what he's *actually* advocating for. There are so many times where I read and then go "OH, nvm, that's not his view, he's going to critique that." But I've been getting into somaesthetics recently and this is just radicalizing me further :^)

My stomach hurts and NOT just because I have to present on the preface in class today. My feelings on Hegel swing back and forth but I'm trying so hard to enjoy this and I *think* it's working. Maybe I'm just fully failing to grasp it, though. Which is, ironically, what I think Hegel encourages us to do. Earnestly fail in your attempt to understand, and then come back in five years and try again. :^)

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm an Adorno girlie. I love this.

Wowzer loving this! The romantics chapter dragged a bit, but I love the topic and I love the direction it's going in.

I have to take breaks because reading this just tanks my mood. But it’s so written with such care. An important read for the modern day, methinks

“The greatest haters in history - but also the most intelligent haters - have been priests.” (167)
WRONG. It is me :^)

I feel like De Botton has just reinvented astrology but for aesthetic preference. A lot of the casual assertions about why we prefer certain people (beyond evo bio assessment for healthiness) feel incredibly careless. 'we interpret the features of others as representative of their inner self' yeah i can see that. 'we're attracted to people (and art!) whose aesthetic form represents what we lacked as children' uh??

I’m no scholar of postcolonial thought [I’ve only read Fanon], but Julian Go’s chapter is fabulous!

During, I thought a lot about Derrida’s binary oppositions, obviously, but also Graham Priest’s work on dialetheism. How many valuable metapholosophies have been lost in favor of a Western ‘canon’?

Wish he characterized what the metaphysics of “decolonizing consciousness” looks like.

I’m tired of evolutionary biology, man.

Somewhat interesting, but [in traditional pop-philosophy style] poorly conveyed and underdeveloped. The section on eroticism/loneliness is good! But I don’t think De Botton understands fetish to any non-trivial degree.

Overall fun, and a good small book to keep in my purse and read on the bus, but not a strong/novel thesis by any stretch of the imagination.

Got through a chunk of this on Friday because I was substitue teaching for a study hall, and I have just one pressing thought so far:

Why is 80% of the biographical content between Russell and Wittgenstein always written like fanfic?

He’s such a poor little guy. Enjoying the section about pain and knowledge. Didn’t think I needed to know this much about Marcel Proust’s urinary problems.

Comes with the territory I guess.

Not sure about world-systems theory. I’m certainly not an authority, but I get the feeling that WST is somewhat reductive. Not in an awful way, and there’s nothing I can really reject (other than the assertion that the US is a “moral leader” [111], perhaps…), I just get the feeling that you can’t confront the economic force of colonialism without paying attention to its cultural impacts. Is that unfair?

Very compelled by the idea that “everything is potentially a fertile subject for art”. No subject matter is of inherently privileged quality, it is merely treated better.

Also obsessed:
“One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself”. He’s so real for that.