C. W. Eckersberg, ca. 1815
(Source: Nivaagaard Collection)

Song

All these years,
you've been telling me to choose.
And all this time,
I've been learning how to lose.

If you ask me why I did it
I'll give you reasons and passions.

If you ask me why it happened
I'll resort to causes and morals.

Maybe it's not so much
that the mind seeks truth
and the heart, justice, but
that the mind seeks truth
and the heart just seeks.

Wittgenstein was right. Philosophy must be composed like poetry. But, instead of extracting what Pound called "the data of ethics," emotions at their first intensity, from the vortex of history, it must arrange the propositions of science perspicuously to reveal our concepts.

Those days are over.
Others are in store.

Wisdom of Thomas More

Keep your affairs regular,
your moods, seasonal.

Concepts are to knowledge

(the hold we have on it)

what emotions are to power

(the hold they have on us).