In any case, the Aristotle reading group has been quite fun. Aristotle turns out to be quite human, and his “Metaphysics” is not quite the “system” I feared. This fear of Aristotle was largely fuelled by encounters with Anglophones (analytic philosophers – analytic – another rotten “a” word). I have decided Analytic Philosophers are the descendents of Aquinas and the Scholastics. Analytic Philsopers continue projects like this legendary quest: “How many angels can sit on the head of a pin?” Actually, I could get excited about angels sitting on the head of a pin. I imagine them wearing kaftans, sporting dreadlocks and singing Kumbaya, accompanied by guitar strumming and bongo drumming. I simply can’t do anything with symbols of formal logic of the analytic project. I think I am a “formal logic dyslexic”, and whenever I am confronted with formal logic I grow faint and break out in a cold sweat for fear of being discovered, labeled and ostracized because of my dyslexia. These physical responses often transfer to philosophers closely associated with scholastics or the analytic project, (like Aristotle) and his stern, stony countenance (see below) does nothing to appease my fear. Socrates at least had the decency to be stout, ugly, smelly and annoying – all blessedly human characteristics.
In any case, the Aristotle reading group has been quite fun – though I still have no idea what the Metaphysics is about. Words turn up mysteriously on strange pages. Words like being, substance, category, necessary, accident, definition, quality, quantity, form, matter. These words are randomly exchanged and interchanged by Aristotle, until we are left feeling rather short-changed. If we were looking for a “system”, that is. And I much prefer disorder and chaos when reading works by stern stone busts.
Now where was I? Oh yes, the reading group has been quite fun. Mainly because I have met an interesting person. This person is hmmm… how shall I describe him? Let me count the ways….. merry, marvelous, magnificent, multi-talented, melodious. OK, the last may be a stretch. The "m" words are deliberate because on his blog he calls himself “Mal” - short for Maladjusted. Sidenote: should Maladjusted ever want a “mal” alternative he may choose from - malcontent (my favourite), malfunctioning, malady, malaise, malformed, malevolent (in case Maladjusted should ever have revolutionary inclinations…), malicious – all words that start with the prefix “mal” and - Latin for bad, wrong, evil, abnormal, defective. So “Mal” might see himself as the primary substance to which he can attach any number of secondary qualities – Aristotle, eat your heart out.
The story continues. Maladjusted writes a blog called – Drowning in Vitriol. Click on it to go there and get ready to swim. You are at risk of drowning, but not in vitriol. There is little anger, malice or fury. That would be the writings of Malevolent.
My suggestions for alternative titles – “Drowning in Vigor”, “Drowning in Vilitas” (appears to mean worthlessness. Hmmm…), “Drowning in Vindico” (may be so after Mal feels the need to punish those who should sully his good name and his fine blog), “Drowning in Virility”, (steamy…) “Drowning in Virgo” (or should that be virgos?), “Drowning in Viscus” something to do with flesh, internal organs, bowels and entrails. Yummy.) My number one suggestion – "Drowning in Vita”.
Reading "Drowning In Vitriol" is a little like being taking for a stroll along the promenade by Maladjusted a la the Chagall painting below (from Mal's blog). This painting also aptly reflects my attempt to write an honour's thesis on Kierkegaard. Yes, I am the lady in pink. Wish I could've worn the pants writing my thesis....
Marc Chagall. The Promenade (La promenade). 1917-18
"Mal", by the way, has this to say about my blog –
“In addition, I've recently stumbled across the blog of another real person that I know, this being, Petra of "Petra's ponderings", whose frequently poetic theologically inclined blog continually exudes the feeling of opening the window on a spring day feeling and bathing your head in the breeze. It goes without saying that I would advise any of the readers of the notorious D.I.V. to get down to both of these blogs NOW, while there is still life and joy to be had in the written word.”
Let me just say that again – “the feeling of opening a window on a spring day feeling and bathing your head in the breeze.”
And one more time – “the feeling of opening a window on a spring day feeling and bathing your head in the breeze.”
What can I say? I have a fragile ego that craves approval… Would it be too much to have a sidebar on my blog with such recommendations? I might make some up. That would be fun. Possibly slightly desperate??? OK, I’m only kidding. Really!
Here is some of Mal’s writing - random bits of flotsam and driftwood floating in Mal’s Sea of Erudition. These appealed to me. I collect flotsam (see the Mal quote below) and driftwood- discarded human refuse smoothed and sculpted by the nature into objects of beauty. Call me a romantic fool. I trail the beach for human refuse transformed by grace.I haven’t put links to the exact blog entries by Mal. Go find your own driftwood from the Sea of Erudition. Stand on the shore and wait for the tide. Or wade in and swim – you might not be satisfied with driftwood and desire greater treasures. I won’t stand in your way.
Fragments from Drowning in Vitriol
“If you would rather slowly drown in your own bile than visit a single nightclub, if you hear the horrible creak of thumb-screws everytime someone talks about "having fun", or "enjoying/affirming life", we embrace you as one of Our Brethren; you are our ne'er do well brothers and sisters. You are -- if I may quote "Fight Club" -- the "all singing, all dancing crap of the world." If I may quote Thomas Pynchon: the passed over. You are one of a million spiritual slum-dwellers exiled from the light by uncoolness, anxiety, and fatigue at the desire to pass the threshold into self-satisfied self-respect. And if you're not such a person, why are you here, at a blog clinging to the flotsam of a shipwrecked culture?" “But in the mean time, be well everyone: we'll have one last masquerade ball (Carnivale style) before the midnight moment where we all stand revealed to each other.”Overtones in some of these fragments from Kierkegaard’s aesthete, particularly the delightfully weird and slightly creepy essays by the Sumparanekromenoi, or the fellowship of the dead, in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. I have a soft spot for the misunderstood aesthete. What can I say? I'm an incurable romantic.
“one of the things that distinguishes the human being from the mindless apparatchik is the ability to say: there are things in this world, that are beautiful, or great, or true, even and especially where they do not conform to my prejudices, my lifestyle, or to the struggles that I feel myself presently obliged to join.” “One of the reasons I find myself attracted to writers of a religious disposition (e.g. Charles Taylor, Rowan Williams and John Milbank, Alasdair Macintyre) is that I tend to find these kinds of people to be rare in combining the longing for justice (for a better world) that I find in the best parts of the left, with the belief that not everything old is to be condemned as such. But I do not understand why this combination should be so rare? Why can we not say that though the good is not equal to the ancestral, there are some things that have emerged in the long history of humanity that are good without being "the thing we're up to right now."
“nightswimming in the serene waters of a genuine democracy.”
“ we can fight over academic honours, like we can over all honours. And most academics are resentful bastards. But truth itself, the goods of the mind, are things that we can share perfectly. This is why Aristotle thinks friendship is based on 'homonoia', not (as the partisans think) on the necessity of agreeing with each other about everything, but because we have a capacity to share goods that are infinitely divisible precisely because they are infinite."
From Hacks of Academe: Mal's Guide to Getting a Higher Degree in Australia (in 5 easy steps)
“Step 2a) Gratuitously append a (ahem) “theoretical” section to the bit that satisfies the empirical-fetish. So: You’ve just got your data on social relations amongst medical receptionists or your questionnaires from farmers about GM food. Having done your months of reading, you then mention (triumphantly) that some of the things said in the questionnaires/or recorded about your ‘personal research experiences’ are really quite a lot like stuff that Bourdieu/Foucault/your supervisor said about…er….society or something. (Use footnotes wherever possible.) You then write that the things said by the ‘theorist’ are quite a lot like the kind of things that you found in your empirical research. (Who would have thought?!) And yet (here comes your "original contribution"!) , they are, while similar, NOT EXACTLY THE SAME. (Human knowledge advances because of such gestures.) In a funny kinda way what this means is that your research was far from redundant, no?”
“No time to post anything at the moment, as I'm in the midst of a flurry of activity which (like most flurries) doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere or achieving much: kind of like I'm the 5th clown from the left in my own personal circus…The result is that I'm suddenly waking up in a strange bed, with different hair, a traffic cone, and Anna Karina who's saying something vapid (but oddly attractive) about the Soviet Union in French. In fact, I'm so busy I don't even have the time to assure myself as to the exact meaning of the word 'flurry' (as used in the first sentence of this psot) which gives me many a guilty pang and sets up many hours of pennyroyal tea drinking indigestion."
“instead of being the Paris Hilton of the blogosphere, I'm the least charismatic Trainspotter at the dance party; urinating on the dance floor and screaming at all the nubile young things to shut the hell up lest I confuse the 9.15 to Mentone with the 9.27 to Blackfriars.”
“No one is free, as long as any of us have to affirm anything or accept anything to justify ourselves.”
Fortunately I am also beginning to know the real person behind the persona of Malcontent. And he is not so much weird or creepy as thoughtful, delightful, fun and maybe a little eccentric. And yes, the hair is quite fabulous. To the real person behind the Malcontent Persona – you pretty much ROCK! (Sorry, but that is probably the greatest compliment anyone named Petra can come up with.)
Well, that’s it for me for about a week. I am surrounded by boxes. And while I like my chaos and disorder in Aristotle, I need the comfort and reassurance of systems in real life! So will turn all my attention to moving house this week. Wish me luck.
