work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
6400,"","Reading Stephen Toulmin's ""The Inwardness of Mental Life,"" Critical Inquiry. 6:1 (Autumn, 1979). p. 9.",2005-09-06 00:00:00 UTC,"Like the notes of an old violin,
Thoughts talk to me within
My mind, that shuttered room [...]
Old friends whose charity shone
For me, be memory-mine.",2006-10-30,16889,"I'm 90% sure this is the correct citation, but I'm unable to confirm it - PNH","""Thoughts talk to me within / My mind, that shuttered room.""",Rooms,2009-09-14 19:48:20 UTC,""
6490,"","Reading Josephine Miles, Poetry and Change. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. p. 19.",2009-02-27 00:00:00 UTC,"It is obvious that this school of writing is not what it is because of the inability of its practitioners to write well. They simply follow an altogether different style. They use parentheses, qualifying clauses, inversions, and complex rhythmic devices in their polyphonous sentences. Ideas are synchronized rather than serialized. At their best, they erect a grammatical artifice in which mental balconies and watch towers, as well as bridges and recesses, decorate the main structure. Their sentences are gothic castles. And Max Weber's style is definitely in their tradition.
(p. vi)",2009-12-02,17262,"","""At their best, they erect a grammatical artifice in which mental balconies and watch towers, as well as bridges and recesses, decorate the main structure.""","",2009-12-02 20:11:38 UTC,Preface
6643,"",Reading,2009-12-22 22:36:32 UTC,"Good-bye, we say, good-bye, the ship steers off
where waves give in to one another's waves
and clouds run in a warmer sky.
Icebergs behoove the soul
(both being self-made from elements least visible)
to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.
(p. 5, ll. 28-33)",,17596,"","""Icebergs behoove the soul / (both being self-made from elements least visible) / to see them so: fleshed, fair, erected indivisible.""","",2009-12-22 22:36:32 UTC,""
6644,"",Reading,2009-12-23 01:52:55 UTC," The long, long legs,
league-boots of land, that carry the city nowhere,
nowhere; the lines
that we drive on (satin-stripes on harlequin's
trousers, tights);
his tough trunk dressed in tatters, scribbled over with
nonsensical signs;
his shadowy, tall dunce-cap; and, best of all his
shows and sights,
his brain appears, throned in ""fantastic triumph,""
and shines through his hat
with jeweled works at work at intermeshing crowns,
lamé with lights.
(p. 14, ll. 1-13)",,17597,"","""his brain appears, throned in ""fantastic triumph,"" / and shines through his hat / with jeweled works at work at intermeshing crowns, / lamé with lights.""","",2009-12-23 01:53:37 UTC,""
6645,"",Reading,2009-12-23 02:01:22 UTC," Each night he must
be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.
Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie
his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,
for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,
runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease
he has inherited susceptibility to. He has to keep
his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.
(p. 16, ll. 33-40)",,17598,"","""Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie / his rushing brain.""","",2009-12-23 02:01:22 UTC,""
6673,"",Reading,2010-02-03 20:29:55 UTC,"Nor must it be supposed that the reports which a person makes to himself upon his own doings, or the regimes which he imposes upon his own conduct are inevitably free from bias or carelessness. My reports on myself are subject to the same kinds of defects as are my reports on you, and the admonitions, corrections and injunctions which I impose on myself may show me to be as ineffectual or ill-advised as does my disciplining of others. Self-consciousness, if the word is to be used at all, must not be described on the hallowed para-optical model, as a torch that illuminates itself by beams of its own light reflected from a mirror in its own insides. On the contrary it is simply a special case of an ordinary more or less efficient handling of a less or more honest and intelligent witness. Similarly, self-control is not to be likened to the management of a partially disciplined subordinate by a superior of perfect wisdom and authority; it is simply a special case of the management of an ordinary person by an ordinary person, namely where John Doe, say, is taking both parts. The truth is not that there occur some higher order acts which are above criticism, but that any higher order act that occurs can itself be criticised; not that something unimprovable does take place, but that nothing takes place which is not improvable; not that any operation is of the highest order, but that for any operation of any order there can be operations of a higher order.
(pp. 194-5)",,17690,Metaphor negated. ,"""Self-consciousness, if the word is to be used at all, must not be described on the hallowed para-optical model, as a torch that illuminates itself by beams of its own light reflected from a mirror in its own insides.""","",2010-02-03 20:29:55 UTC,VI. Self-Knowledge
6673,"",Reading,2010-02-03 20:32:26 UTC,"Nor must it be supposed that the reports which a person makes to himself upon his own doings, or the regimes which he imposes upon his own conduct are inevitably free from bias or carelessness. My reports on myself are subject to the same kinds of defects as are my reports on you, and the admonitions, corrections and injunctions which I impose on myself may show me to be as ineffectual or ill-advised as does my disciplining of others. Self-consciousness, if the word is to be used at all, must not be described on the hallowed para-optical model, as a torch that illuminates itself by beams of its own light reflected from a mirror in its own insides. On the contrary it is simply a special case of an ordinary more or less efficient handling of a less or more honest and intelligent witness. Similarly, self-control is not to be likened to the management of a partially disciplined subordinate by a superior of perfect wisdom and authority; it is simply a special case of the management of an ordinary person by an ordinary person, namely where John Doe, say, is taking both parts. The truth is not that there occur some higher order acts which are above criticism, but that any higher order act that occurs can itself be criticised; not that something unimprovable does take place, but that nothing takes place which is not improvable; not that any operation is of the highest order, but that for any operation of any order there can be operations of a higher order.
(pp. 194-5)",,17691,Analogy? Comparison?,"""Similarly, self-control is not to be likened to the management of a partially disciplined subordinate by a superior of perfect wisdom and authority; it is simply a special case of the management of an ordinary person by an ordinary person, namely where John Doe, say, is taking both parts.""","",2010-02-03 20:32:26 UTC,VI. Self-Knowledge
8357,"",Reading,2022-06-02 19:45:25 UTC,"(a) A malfunction, a disorder of the senses and the brain which has become conscious and more or less normal (especially among intellectuals). The physiological functions of the ‘modern’ man’s nervous and cerebral systems seem to have fallen victim to an excessively demanding regime, to a kind of hypertension and exhaustion. He has not yet ‘adapted’ to the conditions of his life, to the speed of its sequences and rhythms, to the (momentarily) excessive abstraction of the frequently erroneous concepts he has so recently acquired. His nerves and senses have not yet been adequately trained by the urban and technical life he leads. Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited. And so the ‘modern’ intellectual, an extreme example and a complete product of this situation, is no longer able to abstract the concept or idea which is both within things and different from them, and to per“ceive it as on another stage or level of consciousness. In his perception the abstraction and the thing are mixed together, merged, the concept is like the thing’s double – distinct, ideal, ‘mysterious’. Furthermore, it is a second-rate abstraction, not a way of knowing, a rational element, but a ‘signifying’ of things, a symbol, a second thing, a façade. The elements of consciousness, its ‘functions’ or its ‘stages’, are at once separated and reunited in a false, confused unity in which their relations, their order and their hierarchy are lost. (pp. 294-5)",,25309,Marked as metaphor,"""Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited""","",2022-06-02 19:45:25 UTC,""
8357,"",Reading,2022-06-03 16:49:08 UTC,"Turned back upon himself, secure within some imaginary inner fortress, he is the plaything of every hallucination, every spontaneous or deliberate ideological illusion. The 'thinker', self-taught or not, concocts his own little personal philosophy; the 'non-thinker' interprets what he reads in books (or preferably in newspapers) as best he can; and then one day individualism begins to collapse (and not as a result of a crisis of ideas or 'world views', but because of a material crisis, both economic and political), and these erstwhile individualists rush headlong to form a crowd, a horde, urged on by the most insane, most loathsome, most ferocious 'ideas', leaving the last vestige of human reason behind, caught up in a collective mental fever: and we have Fascism, the Fascist 'masses' and Fascist 'organization'.",,25310,"","""Turned back upon himself, secure within some imaginary inner fortress, he is the plaything of every hallucination, every spontaneous or deliberate ideological illusion.""","",2022-06-03 16:49:08 UTC,""
8357,"",Reading,2022-06-04 22:05:21 UTC,"And in life itself, in everyday life, ancient gestures, rituals as old as time itself, continue unchanged – except for the fact that this life has been stripped of its beauty. Only the dust of words remains, dead gestures. Because rituals and feelings, prayers and magic spells, blessings, curses, have been detached from life, they have become abstract and 'inner', to use the terminology of self-justification. Convictions have become weaker, sacrifices shallower, less intense. People cope – badly – with a smaller outlay. Pleasures have become weaker and weaker. The only thing that has not diminished is the old disquiet, that feeling of weakness, that foreboding. But what was formerly a sense of disquiet has become worry, anguish. Religion, ethics, metaphysics – these are merely the 'spiritual' and 'inner' festivals of human anguish, ways of channelling the black waters of anxiety – and towards what abyss?",,25311,"","""Religion, ethics, metaphysics – these are merely the 'spiritual' and 'inner' festivals of human anguish, ways of channelling the black waters of anxiety – and towards what abyss?""","",2022-06-04 22:05:21 UTC,""