“Kafka’s Angel”

I came across this interesting essay, “Kafka’s Angel: The Distance of God in a Post-Traditional World,” in Janus Head. In June 1914, Franz Kafka found himself overwhelmed by his life. Struggling person- ally, professionally, and artistically he sat one night to compose a story in his diary of a man confronted by the Divine. In [...]

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Awesome Parallels

While reading about Emilio de Cavalieri’s claim to be the first composer to have come up with the idea for what will later be called the opera (in his case, he is thought of as the first author of oratorio, which is, I suppose, just like the opera but for the church folk), I realized [...]

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Monday Tune: Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno

Video of Handel’s 1707 oratorio from Festival de Beaune: Description Le Triomphe du Temps et de la Vérité (Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno) fut composé en 1707 à Rome, lors du voyage de Haendel en Italie. Le livret de Pamphili oppose le Temps et la Vérité qui se disputent avec le Plaisir pour [...]

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This Is Awesome

My recommendations list on the Amazon knows me better than I know myself:

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Revolution of the Giving Hand

A friend reminded me of the Sloterdijk-centered controversy and I found a blog that collected all the related links. To recall, Sloterdijk published an editorial last year challenging the various aspects of the German “welfare state” titled “Die Revolution der gebenden Hand” and caused a number of German intellectuals to respond. Having just finished Sloterdijk’s [...]

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Maimon Reading Group: Chapter 10.

This is a summary of the final chapter of the Essay, although the chapter is fairly short and hardly requires summarizing, so in addition to the summary, I think it would be fair to say a few words about the book as a whole. The chapter discusses in a somewhat disjoined manner two topics: the question [...]

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Maimon Reading Group: Chapter 9 – Truth, Subjective, Objective, Logical, Metaphysical

Another fairly brief chapter but again very rich. Maimon’s aim is to distinguish and clarify various ways in which the word ‘truth’ can be used (the chapter’s title lists these) as well as to reflect on the objectivity of the forms of thought delineated in the Essay, all the time continuing certain broadly Kantian observations [...]

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The Wolfendale Maneuvre II (Updated)

UPDATE: [Part III added to Pete's response - read it and weep!] Pete Wolfendale is back with a monumental post (Part I, Part II and Part III) on his recent engagement with Levi Bryant. Not to get our attention away from Maimon, but there’s plenty of ideas there to chew on. Although it’s only Part [...]

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Maimon Reading Group: Chapter 7 Rejoinder.

This rejoinder is meant to add some of my observations to those already made by Utisz. Hopefully this will be helpful, these are the sorts of issues I found interesting in Chapter 7. Generally, these reflections are an attempt to tackle Utisz’ question: How far, if at all, is Maimon disagreeing with Kant or taking [...]

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Useful Resource: Hans Ehrbar’s Annotations to Marx’s Capital

[Das Kapital, special edition with gold-edge... I simply had to have it!] This 3178 page document (yes, that is correct) is a treasure for anyone reading Capital. I was looking for a good English equivalent to Schatzbildung (translated as “hoarding” in Capital, chap.3:3) and came across it. The best part is that it’s easy to [...]

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