Saturday, October 30, 2021

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.

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Reason predicts the causal order.
Passion recalls the moral.

Monday, October 25, 2021

Rationality is
to reason
as hilarity
to passion.

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Statements indicate facts and we try to understand them.

Commands indicate acts and we must try to obey them.

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

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.

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

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.

Saturday, October 16, 2021

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

Friday, October 15, 2021

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

Saturday, October 09, 2021

"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.

Tuesday, October 05, 2021

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

Sunday, October 03, 2021

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