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Going in, I wasn't exactly sure what this book would be about, but now I can say it's about time - specifically the time or times of language, and the deformations to which language subjects time: the way in which the past(s) of language inheres in its present, and so puts precisely that presence of the present in question. Absolutely gripping.

"Expectation creates anæsthesia. Æsthetics tastes improbability. If you wish to live freely, drink singularly. If you wish to live singularly, drink freely."

//

"Taste is a kiss that our mouth gives itself through the intermediary of tasty foods. Suddenly it recognizes itself, becomes conscious of itself, exists for itself."

"Eurydice! What is life to me without her? I sought to create a body, here, now; all I have left is pure abstraction, this soft product of the voice: Eurydice, Eurydice, Eurydice, I so wanted to give you life and all I can do is write philosophy".

Come for the study of sensation. Stay for the discussion of what counts as human and the rich discussion of animals within. Also that is a turtle on the cover!!

A brisk stride through the problems of Western philosophy, as read with an existentialist bent. Wahl is a bit of syncretist, taking bits and pieces from different thinkers and showing what he reckons is necessary from each.

This book is astonishing actually.

I think this book is making me understand The Order of Things better.

"Doesn't all poetry consist in liberating the word from its context? Doesn't all philosophy consist in putting it back?"

They don't let you publish books like this any more.

"'I love you' — a proffering, which has no scientific place: I-love-you belongs neither in the realm of linguistics nor in that of semiology. Its occasion (the point of departure for speaking it) would be, rather, Music. In the manner of what happens in singing, in the proffering of I-love-you, desire is neither repressed (as in what is uttered) nor recognized (where we did not expect it) but simply: released.

"A squeeze of the hand — enormous documentation".

Happy Valentine's!

Preechy Kierkegaard is worst Kierkegaard.

"Nothing is easier to teach than joy – alas, one only needs to be truly joyful oneself. But alas, this "alas" means that this is in fact not so easy – that is, it is not so easy always to be joyful oneself, for it is easy enough to teach joy when one is joyful: nothing is more certain than that".

"Oh, the scholars are proud of the calculations of the infinite, but here is the philosophers' stone: the least little expression of love is infinitely greater than all sacrifices, and all sacrifices are infinitely less than the least little bit in part-payment on the debt [of the infinitude of love]."

"The life of that man is truly poetical, he solves the great riddle: to live in eternity yet so to hear the parlour clock strike that its striking does not shorten but prolongs his eternity – a contradiction no less profound, but far more glorious, than the the story of the unfortuanate of whom it recounts that he woke up in hell and shouted 'What time is it?', to which the devil answered 'An eternity'.'

OK time to sit down and read this classic work of proto-existentialism and hopefully learn about faith and authenticity and — oh good God it's the horniest philosophy book I've ever read.

Last update for the year. HNY all :)

This is a book with a lot of heart and learning. It speaks, in subtle and moving ways, of the experience of devastation and loss. Its language is a language that might be increasingly necessary in the world - of lack of it - to come. And yet! It inscribes it all in a vocabulary of hope that's - I think - a failure of nerve. A recuperative move that's - I'm sorry for this - more cope than hope.