James Dempsey > Recent Status Updates

Audio traipse. Strong and judicial historical writing. Regius authorship.

chapter five

chapters 2, 3 and 9 so far ze best.

the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding about which we are serious as arbitrary or open to doubt

there should be a Netflix drama on the pazzi conspiracy

traversing great ground. Studying with assiduity. Measuring the landscape but taking time to smell the flowers too.

15 pages to go. All coming to a jittering climax, Gretchen growing wary, brother Valentine dead; Mephistopheles cool as per.

Living, laughing and loving my way through Goethes Magnum Opus, and vicariously through our antagonist Mephistopheles! I am heeling over this fine rendition, though the page numbers don’t seem to match my update track. I will plant the very many quotes of worth in my mind, and water each of them with shaky recitation in the hope that they grow oak like and forever, through my life until the end; da capo al fine.

Prologue great. Faust and Wagner giving out about life and dogs. Two souls in man, one bound to ideas the other the natural world - landscapes and rivers and watered shrubbery and so forth. Yet to meet Gretchen.

I am really putting off this off

naturally queasy in his views of woman,and their ability to attain glory.Nietzsches views on this subject are borne directly, as the title suggests, out of the views of the ancients, out of the hellenism of the Iliad and the odyssey.Achilles as man is the protagonist and embodiment of this great virtue,but Nietzsches importation of these ideals and his wish to press them on the morality of the day I find disagreeable

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.

Re going. Prelude the stage and prologue in Heaven complete. We kick about these 130 pages tomorrow. Glide throughout, an easy flight this read.

Given by Will Durant. The syllogism, astronomy, biology and politics. A system of ethics. Nicomachean, as given by the name of his son, or his father, both of whom were called Nicomachus. Cheerful overview of the teachings of Aristotle, an overview is all one really needs. Unless reading his works in full, many of which are quite dry, then a synopsis of the whole is all that is necessary.

beginning again, post Ulysses.

beginning Cyclops tomorrow.

the sighing voice of sorrow sang

I discovered singer through effective altruism. Nice to begin this work on hegel, a man with who’s person I am much familiar but with whose works I am greatly unfamiliar. I don’t ever plan on reading the phenomenology, and I understand that Hegel makes for frightfully horrid reading; unclear and uninviting. I hope Singer soundly rectifies this, and synopsises in brief these grand concepts and forms.

Bought today

Powering through Sirens, drunkenly, ironically. As Bloom falls bibulously inside of his own mind, so too do I read on his thoughts, falling. The rhythm of joyce makes so much more sense when on the path to inebriation. One must always remember that Joyce, classic Irish man that he is, always struggled throughout his life with Drink; the scourge blessing of this nation, my country, Ireland. Emerald Mattress Erin.

Audiobooking this @ 1.5x.

A useful companion help to the great leviathan work.

The Stephen to my Leo.

I just finished Epidoe 10, Wandering Rocks. I am making great haste with this single day odyssey.

For the first, I have read the blurb. It states that “ulysses offers the reader a life changing experimce.” This, so far, I am certainly feeling. My life changing, page by page. New thoughts and visions, revisions and thoughts anew.

Delivered as a lecture series. Natural development of clear explanation; as times you think, wow - to just as questions! The key to psychoanalysis is clear communication - detached, though poignant.

Telemachus
Nestor
Proteus
Calypso
Lotus Eaters
Hades
Aelos - Learned Convo With the professor and JJ. Enjoyed most, after Nestor.

“Only a very superficial critic will think that Carlyle was misanthropic because he was surely.”

“the real defect in his nature was an impatience with others men’s ideas.”

“Wagner.. a will to power such as no man has ever possessed… an inexorable bravery”

Nie tracing his departure as a Wagnerian apostle is interesting.It is also very interesting how he criticises german culture abroad; it “ruins” itself, he claims.This assertion clearly juxtaposes the lebensraum ideology later propagated by the Nazis, many of whom stood, backwardly, on his philosophy; turning it on its head, and warping it about theirs.There is however much parallel between fascism and ubermensch.

“My humanity does not consist in the fact that I can understand the feelings of my fellows, but that I can endure to understand.”

So assured. It is quite weary this self belief (he mentions how he has never doubted himself) but I suppose this assuredness fits his philosophy. Nietzsche leaves no space for vacillation, for vacillation be a sign of weakness. You believe in something and own this belief,cest la vie