work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
3313,Mind and Body,Reading Curtius European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (302),2005-04-24 00:00:00 UTC,"All the things which man expresses freely and naturally are life relations; now, the Arab is as intimately connected with camel and horse as is body with soul; nothing can happen to him which does not at the same time affect these creatures and vitally connect their existence and activity with his own.
",,8580,"","The ""Arab is as intimately connected with camel and horse as is body with soul""","",2009-09-14 19:33:39 UTC,""
5613,"",Reading,2003-08-14 00:00:00 UTC,"A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because of its volition, that is, it is good in itself and, regarded for itself, is to be valued incomparably higher than all that could merely be brought about by it in favor of some inclination and indeed, if you will, of the sum of all inclinations. Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose--if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course, as a mere wish but as the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control)--then, like a jewel, it would shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself. Usefulness or fruitlessness can neither add anything to this worth nor take anything away from it. Its usefulness would be, as it were, only the setting to enable us to handle it more conveniently in ordinary commerce or to attract to it the attention of those who are not yet expert enough, but not to recommend it to experts or to determine its worth.
(4:394, p. 50)",,15001,"• Reading: my reading group preparation (for Fichte)
•Moving toward the proposition that the highest good is a will that is good in itself.
•Nature may be the will's stepmother?
•The simile is extended in what follows: usefulness is this jewel's setting. The setting attracts notice to the jewel and allows us ot handle it more conveniently.","""Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose--if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course, as a mere wish but as the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control)--then, like a jewel, it would shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself.""","",2011-12-21 18:31:24 UTC,Section 1
5613,Dreams,My reading group preparation (for Fichte),2003-08-28 00:00:00 UTC,"Hence everything empirical, as an addition to the principle of morality, is not only quite inept for this; it is also highly prejudicial to the purity of morals, where the proper worth of an absolutely good will--a worth raised above all price--consists just in the principle of action being free from all influences of contingent grounds, which only experience can furnish. One cannot give too many or too frequent warnings against this laxity, or even mean cast of mind, which seeks its principle among empirical motives and laws; for, human reason in its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions (which allow it to embrace a cloud instead of Juno) it substitutes for morality a bastard patched up from limbs of quite diverse ancestry, which looks like whatever one wants to see in it but not like virtue for him who has once seen virtue in her true form.
The question is therefore this: is it a necessary law for all rational beings always to appraise their actions in accordance with such maxims as they themselves could will to serve as universal laws?
(4:426, p. 77)",2003-10-23,15002,•Another personification. What to do with my protocol? Ignore it when the personification is complex enough to merit inclusion?,"""One cannot give too many or too frequent warnings against this laxity, or even mean cast of mind, which seeks its principle among empirical motives and laws; for,human reason in its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions (which allow it to embrace a cloud instead of Juno)""","",2009-09-14 19:42:31 UTC,Section II
6077,"",Reading for Philosophy and Literature group,2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"Instead of the inner life and self-movement of its existence, this kind of simple determinateness of intuition--which means here sense-knowledge--is predicated in accordance with a superficial analogy, and this external, empty application of the formula is called a 'construction'. This formalism is just like any other. What a dullard a man must be who could not be taught in a quarter of an hour the theory that there are asthenic, sthenic, and indirectly asthenic diseases, and as many modes of treatment; and, since till quite recently such instruction sufficed, who could not hope to be transformed in this short space of time from an empirical into a theoretical physician? The formalism of such a 'Philosophy of Nature' teaches, say, that the Understanding is Electricity, or the Animal is Nitrogen, or that they are the equivalent of the South or North Pole, etc., or represent it--whether all this is expressed as baldly as here or even concocted with more terminology--and confronted with such a power which brings together things that appear to lie far apart, and with the violence suffered by the passive things of sense through such association, and which imparts to them the Notion's semblance but saves itself the trouble of doing the main thing, viz. expressing the Notion itself or the meaning of the sensuous representation--confronted with all this, the untutored mind may be filled with admiration and astonishment, and may venerate in it the profound work of genius. It may be delighted, too, with the clarity of such characterizations, since these replace the abstract Notion with something that can be intuitively apprehended, and so made more pleasing; and it may congratulate itself on feeling a kinship of soul with such a splendid performance. The knack of this kind of wisdom is as quickly learned as it is easy to practise; once familiar, the repetition of it becomes as insufferable as the repetition of a conjuring trick already seen through. The instrument of this monotonous formalism is no more difficult to handle than a painter's palette having only two colours, say red and green, the one for colouring the surface when a historical scene is wanted, the other for landscapes. It would be hard to decide which is greater in all this, the casual ease with which everything in heaven and on earth and under the earth is coated with this broth of colour, or the conceit regarding the excellence of this universal recipe: each supports the other. What results from this method of labelling all that is in heaven and earth with the few determinations of the general schema, and pigeonholing everything in this way, is nothing less than a 'report clear as noonday' on the universe as an organism, viz. a synoptic table like a skeleton with scraps of paper stuck all over it, or like the rows of closed and labelled boxes in a grocer's stall. It is as easy to read off as either of these; and just as all the flesh and blood has been stripped from this skeleton, and the no longer living 'essence' [Sache] has been packed away in the boxes, so in the report the living essence of the matter [Wesen der Sache] has been stripped away or boxed up dead. We have already remarked that this way of thinking at the same time culminates in a style of painting that is absolutely monochromatic; for it is ashamed of its schematic distinctions, these products of reflection, and submerges them all in the void of the Absolute, from which pure identity, formless whiteness, is produced. This monochromatic character of the schema and its lifeless determinations, this absolute identity, and the transition from one to the other, are all equally products of the lifeless Understanding and external cognition.
(§51, pp. 30-1)",,16086,"• Hegel takes shots at Schelling's Naturphilosophie. Note that Hegel doesn't call this metaphor, as I would. It's ""superficial analogy.""","""The formalism of such a 'Philosophy of Nature' teaches, say, that the Understanding is Electricity, or the Animal is Nitrogen, or that they are the equivalent of the South or North Pole, etc., or represent it.""","",2011-06-10 15:44:03 UTC,Preface
6077,Mind's Eye,Past Masters; Reading for Philosophy and Literature group,2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"The task of leading the individual from his uneducated standpoint to knowledge had to be seen in its universal sense, just as it was the universal individual, self-conscious Spirit, whose formative education had to be studied. As regards the relation between them, every moment, as it gains concrete form and a shape of its own, displays itself in the universal individual. The single individual is incomplete Spirit, a concrete shape in whose whole existence one determinateness predominates, the others being present only in blurred outline. In a Spirit that is more advanced than another, the lower concrete existence has been reduced to an inconspicuous moment; what used to be the important thing is now but a trace; its pattern is shrouded to become a mere shadowy outline. The individual whose substance is the more advanced Spirit runs through this past just as one who takes up a higher science goes through the preparatory studies he has long since absorbed, in order to bring their content to mind: he recalls them to the inward eye, but has no lasting interest in them. The single individual must also pass through the formative stages of universal Spirit so far as their content is concerned, but as shapes which Spirit has already left behind, as stages on a way that has been made level with toil. Thus, as far as factual information is concerned, we find that what in former ages engaged the attention of men of mature mind, has been reduced to the level of facts, exercises, and even games for children; and, in the child's progress through school, we shall recognize the history of the cultural development of the world traced, as it were, in a silhouette. This past existence is the already acquired property of universal Spirit which constitutes the Substance of the individual, and hence appears externally to him as his inorganic nature. In this respect formative education, regarded from the side of the individual, consists in his acquiring what thus lies at hand, devouring his inorganic nature, and taking possession of it for himself. But, regarded from the side of universal Spirit as substance, this is nothing but its own acquisition of self-consciousness, the bringing-about of its own becoming and reflection into itself.
(§28, pp. 16-17)",2011-06-10,16087,Spirit runs through its past as a student reviews fundamentals before ascending to a higher discipline,"""The individual whose substance is the more advanced Spirit runs through this past just as one who takes up a higher science goes through the preparatory studies he has long since absorbed, in order to bring their content to mind: he recalls them to the inward eye, but has no lasting interest in them.""",Eye,2013-06-11 21:09:36 UTC,Preface
6267,"",Past Masters,2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"If we consider mind more closely, we find that its primary and simplest determination is the 'I'. The 'I' is something perfectly simple, universal. When we say 'I', we mean, to be sure, an individual; but since everyone is 'I', when we say 'I', we only say something quite universal. The universality of the 'I' enables it to abstract from everything, even from its life. But mind is not merely this abstractly simple being equivalent to light, which was how it was considered when the simplicity of the soul in contrast to the composite nature of the body was under discussion; on the contrary, mind in spite of its simplicity is distinguished within itself; for the 'I' sets itself over against itself, makes itself its own object and returns from this difference, which is, of course, only abstract, not yet concrete, into unity with itself. This being-with-itself of the 'I' in its difference from itself is the 'I's infinitude or ideality. But this ideality is first authenticated in the relation of the 'I' to the infinitely manifold material confronting it. This material, in being seized by the 'I', is at the same time poisoned and transfigured by the latter's universality; it loses its isolated, independent existence and receives a spiritual one. So far, therefore, is mind from being forced out of its simplicity, its being-with-itself, by the endless multiplicity of its images and ideas, into a spatial asunderness, that, on the contrary, its simple self, in undimmed clarity, pervades this multiplicity through and through and does not let it reach an independent existence.
(§381, p. 11)",,16575,"•REVISIT. I'm leaving off here. It is too packed up with ""mind."" I need to check a hard copy out of the library.","""But mind is not merely this abstractly simple being equivalent to light, which was how it was considered when the simplicity of the soul in contrast to the composite nature of the body was under discussion.""","",2009-12-17 04:55:48 UTC,Introduction: What Mind (or Spirit) Is
6675,"","Reading Allen W. Wood's Kantian Ethics. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2007. p. 184.",2010-02-04 22:21:31 UTC,"Conscience is practical reason holding the human being's duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under a law.
(MS 6:400)",,17698,"Note, Wood says Kant's court metaphor is not ""as metaphorical as it might seem"" (184).","""Conscience is practical reason holding the human being's duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under a law.""","",2010-02-04 22:21:31 UTC,""
6675,"","Reading Allen Wood's Kantian Ethics. Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2007. p. 184.",2010-02-04 22:24:13 UTC,"Every concept of duty involves objective constraint through a law (a moral imperative limiting our freedom) and belongs to a practical understanding, which provides a rule. But the internal imputation of a deed, as a case falling under a law (in meritum aut demeritum), belongs to the faculty of judgment (iudicium), which, as the subjective principle of imputing an action, judges with rightful force whether the action as a deed (an action coming under a law) has occurred or not. Upon it follows the conclusion of reason (the verdict), that is, the connecting of the rightful result with the action (condemnation or aquittal). All of this takes place before a judicial proceeding (forum). — Consciousness of an inner court in the human being (""before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another"") is conscience.
(MS 6:437-8)",,17699,"","""Consciousness of an inner court in the human being ('before which his thoughts accuse or excuse one another') is conscience.""",Court,2010-02-04 22:24:38 UTC,""
6267,"","Reading Katrin Pahl, Tropes of Transport: Hegel and Emotion (Northwestern UP, 2012), 41. Text from Past Masters.",2013-04-22 16:13:22 UTC,"(2) The image is of itself transient, and intelligence itself is as attention its time and also its place, its when and where. But intelligence is not only consciousness and actual existence, but qua intelligence is the subject and the potentiality of its own specializations. The image when thus kept in mind is no longer existent, but stored up out of consciousness.
To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, the germ as affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree. Inability to grasp a universal like this, which, though intrinsically concrete, still continues simple, is what has led people to talk about special fibres and areas as receptacles of particular ideas. It was felt that what was diverse should in the nature of things have a local habitation peculiar to itself. But whereas the reversion of the germ from its existing specializations to its simplicity in a purely potential existence takes place only in another germ—the germ of the fruit; intelligence qua intelligence shows the potential coming to free existence in its development, and yet at the same time collecting itself in its inwardness. Hence from the other point of view intelligence is to be conceived as this subconscious mine, i.e. as the existent universal in which the different has not yet been realized in its separations. And it is indeed this potentiality which is the first form of universality offered in mental representation.
(§ 453, p. 204)",,20132,Fascinating discussion of interiority in Pahl.,"""To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, the germ as affirmatively containing, in virtual possibility, all the qualities that come into existence in the subsequent development of the tree.""","",2013-04-22 16:13:22 UTC,"C. Psychology: Mind, (αa) Recollection, § 453"
8245,"","Reading Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia (London and New York: Verso, 2005), p. 153.",2017-12-15 14:35:56 UTC,"[Note, p. 358] The following remark may assist those for whom it is not too subtle to understand clearly that the individual is only the phenomenon, not the thing in itself. Every individual is, on the one hand, the subject of knowing, i.e., the complemental condition of the possibility of the whole objective world, and, on the other hand, a particular phenomenon of will, the same will which objectifies itself in everything. But this double nature of our being does not rest upon a self-existing unity, otherwise it would be possible for us to be conscious of ourselves in ourselves, and independent of the objects of knowledge and will. Now this is by no means possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt, and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cause is not to be found in it, and whereas we desired to comprehend ourselves, we find, with a shudder, nothing but a vanishing spectre.",,25111,"","""Now this is by no means possible, for as soon as we turn into ourselves to make the attempt, and seek for once to know ourselves fully by means of introspective reflection, we are lost in a bottomless void; we find ourselves like the hollow glass globe, from out of which a voice speaks whose cause is not to be found in it, and whereas we desired to comprehend ourselves, we find, with a shudder, nothing but a vanishing spectre.""","",2017-12-15 14:37:21 UTC,Book 4