Waggish

David Auerbach on literature, philosophy, film, etc.

Gilbert Ryle on Heidegger’s Being and Time

Arch-analytic Gilbert “Category Mistake” Ryle reviewed Heidegger’s Being and Time sympathetically on its publication in 1928. It is a beautifully clear statement of the methodological parting of the ways that was then taking place. The philosophical concerns, ...

Apr, 09 · in Quotations

Lucan’s Civil War: Last Thoughts

The last two and a half books of Civil War, while seemingly adrift and lacking the cumulative direction of the first seven, don’t make me think any less of the epic as a whole. Lucan’s ...

Lucan’s Civil War: Caesar’s Fall and the Ending

The Pharsalia … has no privileged center except for the energetic, bitter, and witty skepticism that devotes itself to demolishing the structures it erects as fast as it erects them; Lucan’s heroes lend their zestful ...

Apr, 01

Lucan’s Civil War: Cato Hates Snakes

With Pompey dead, Book IX of Civil War, the action moves to Egypt, where Caesar will ally with Cleopatra. But most of Book IX is taken up by Cato and his army. Cato was a ...

Mar, 29

Lucan’s Civil War: Pompey’s Death and Some Graverobbing

Like Caesar himself, who suddenly turns vulnerable and human in the wake of his victory, Civil War deflates after the climactic battle of Pharsalia. The waning of conflict results in the waning of tension, even ...

Mar, 27

Lucan’s Civil War: Pharsalia’s Winner and Loser

Caesar became a leviathan, a monster, a deity during the battle of Pharsalia. But Caesar’s apotheosis is momentary. Lucan takes the time to flash forward to his future death, in order to remind us of ...

Mar, 26

Lucan’s Civil War: Lucan’s Latin

J.C. Bramble has a 30-page section on Lucan in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (edited by E.J. Kenney). Bramble makes some great remarks on Lucan’s Latin, and since I haven’t been able to comment ...

Mar, 25

Next to Saul Alinsky, Bhaskar Sunkara's "radicalism" is pretty tepid. I don't get this genteel verbose radicalism. http://t.co/Mpf4j1yIiq

Decently formatted online version of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. Read it today! http://t.co/c8m1oJsPjq

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"Those who live in the present but who harbor no doubts about the structure of authority, those whose anger does not drive them to delve into the essentials, and those whose approach to their art raises no questions, all of these must renounce their status as artists."
—Masayuki Takayanagi