Disobedience is like misunderstanding
but begins with a command
instead of a statement.

Some statements are difficult
to understand, and
some commands are hard to obey.

Our obedience, like our understanding,
sometimes demands art.
And our failures, too, may be artful.

Reason predicts the causal order.
Passion recalls the moral.

Rationality is
to reason
as hilarity
to passion.

It is
what
it is.

You are
who
you become.

Statements indicate facts and we try to understand them.

Commands indicate acts and we must try to obey them.

A Supplement to Brandom

Inference and reference are to reason and our concepts
as
preference and deference are to passion and our emotions.

We think a proposition is true or not.
We feel a proposal is just or not.

The thought conflates our inferences with our references.
The feeling conflates our preferences with our deferences.

Philosophy extricates our concepts from our reasons.
Poetry extricates our emotions from our passions.

They extricate us from the world and the history in which we are implicated.

Thus we make ourselves explicit.

Intellect, reason, rationality.

Volition, passion, hilarity.

Passion is to poetry as reason to philosophy.

In philosophy, reason provides both the object and the method of our studies.

In poetry, passion provides both the subject and the mandate of our striving.

If not for
the body,
the heart
would crack
the mind.

If not for
the body,
the mind
would break
the heart.

"The texture of thought can rub people the wrong way." (Steve Fuller)

How it feels
to think
(when we think
to feel):

The structure
of a feeling
can get
things wrong.

Your love helped me
to understand
the next one
a bit too late —
the one after that,
just in time.

Our thoughts
must answer
to our motive
for truth,
like feelings
are governed
by our sense
of justice.