Well, I haven’t gotten around to reading anything save for the drinks menu at the bars and clubs I’ve been frequenting lately 
but soon I will read…
I start The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch on Tuesday.
I’m just about to order Jean-Luc Nancy’s L’Expérience de la liberté. I’m still battling my way through Infinite Jest, though.
Wow, I didn’t know anyone was reading that. I went through a whole course on The Experience of Freedom. I think it addled my brain. It’s one of the most linguistically dynamic pieces I’ve ever tried to read. I was not prepared for it. It requires having Kant (third antimony), Heidegger (on Kant, ontology of Being), Nietzsche (Nietzsche), Sartre (existentialism, being-in-itself, being-for-itself, being-for-others) Derrida (deconstruction) and lots of other odds and ends under one’s belt.
My professor had us do a lot of excellent secondary reading to make meaning of Nancy. If you want to know some specific background readings that make Nancy more understandable I’d be happy to give you a list.
I’m quite familiar with Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, but please do share.
“The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe—even a positivist one—remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world.”
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (The Phenomenon of Man)
You have told me, O God, to believe in hell. But you have forbidden me to think…of any man as damned"
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
He recognized with absolute certainty the empty fragility of even the noblest theorizings as compared with the definitive plenitude of the smallest fact grasped in its total, concrete reality."
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Hymn of the Universe)
The whole life lies in the verb seeing."
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
“Blessed be you, mighty matter, irresistible march of evolution, reality ever newborn; you who, by constantly shattering our mental categories, force us to go ever further and further in our pursuit of the truth.”
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Hymn of the Universe)
Reading a work by a philosopher such as Chardin who was also a scientist, is like eating Reese’s peanut butter cups - the perfect marriage of philosophy and science as to the perfect marriage of chocolate and peanut butter. Both yummy
Currently Reading…
“A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking.
“Exile and the Kingdom” by Albert Camus.
Camus is one of my favorite writers. but this one isn’t so good.
Battle Royale - Koushun Takami
I’m thinking about diving back into my Unadbridged Poe. Yeah…I’ll do that tonight.
Inside the 3rd Reich – Memoirs of Albrecht Speer. A fascinating read offering a lot of insight into authoritarian states and the people they appeal to.
star stuff contemplating star stuff …
Carl Sagan, on humankind
Yep, that’s us.
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. So”
Just imagine it!!!
SNAFU.
Hello friend,
Speaking of narcissism, one mine want to read Ovid’s poem on just that. The story of Echo and Narcissus. I always found it extremely symbolic how he turns into a beautiful flower-- all the beauty, but none of the vanity.
Hello friends,
I am currently on Book 22 of 24 of Homer’s Iliad, the Fagles translation. It’s beautiful. I read the Lattimore trans. a few years back, that is more scholarly. Fagle’s goes smoother for me though.
Major themes: honor and glory; mortalitly vs immortality; fate; the most despicable condtion, the lawless, stateless, hearthless man; true love. I could do on forever, any great work is going to have many major themes.
Hello Good People,
I Finished The Iliad. Now I’m reading Plato’s Republic. Translated by Allan Bloom. What did everyone think about it? I’ve read it once before so you wont spoil it for me.
‘Frankenstein’ again. I’m sure I missed a typographical error in there somewhere. 
Hello Maryshelley,
What is your favorite theme or quote from the book Frankenstein?
-Dr. F.
The book in its entirety, a slim volume of only 223 pages, is worthy of reading but if I must quote something then this penultimate paragraph, for me, is timeless:
“I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.”
Nice quote Maryshelley!
Man’s burning question of what happens after death. Also, a little ways above your quote the monster says, “he is dead who called me into being” The created came to master his creator. Very Nietzchean, in a sorrowful way.
This is my favorite passage from Volume 1 Chapter 4 paragraph 3 from Frankenstein.
“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardor that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and the breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”
I thought that so many themes and messages are within these couple sentences alone. I love it. The romantic sense of play and our authentic self at work is opposed when we take a passion and turn it into a career. When we turn our passions into a job, it loses its aesthetic appeal. The mentioning of rest also goes back to god and how god even took time to rest when creating us. Even further, the sole purpose of creating life shouldn’t be merely to create life, but also to cultivate the mind-- with poetry and art.
Cheers, Frankenstein.