What I am trying to say is that, beyond our own determination and capriciousness, there is the determinism and caprice of nature (facts and acts) and culture (beliefs and desires).
Monday, September 21, 2026
Acts are known only through their effects on the facts. But these effects are not governed by our intentions. We simply do, and see what happens.
Facts are mastered only as we affect them by our acts. But our affects are not curious about our expectations. We look around, and see, there, what we have done.
That is, we control neither what facts result from our acts, not what desires emerge from our beliefs.
But, of course, our acts do affect the facts; and our beliefs affect our desires.
It's just that experience intervenes only empirically, between the facts and our beliefs about them, and normatively, between our acts and the desires that drive us to them.
Never between the fact and the act, nor the belief and the desire.
The intellect intervenes between the fact and the belief. (Facts don't make themselves known.) Volition intervenes between the desire and the act. (Acts do not master themselves.) To desire is not to intend and to believe is not to expect. We have some influence on these moments, some responsibility for them.
An image is a concept backed by emotion or an emotion backed by a concept. It either provides a surface that grips and moves you, i.e., an emotional experience, or an appearance that you grasp to steady yourself, i.e., a conceptual experience.
Philosophy is conceptual notation; poetry is emotional notation. They are the means by which we bring our concepts and emotions to presence so that we may make them more precise, affording clear thinking and intense feeling.
They improve our contact with experience: from the facts to our beliefs about them, from our desires to the acts that live them out.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
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