David Bather Woods

@davidbatherwoods.bsky.social

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friendly neighbourhood Schopenhauerian • part time Proustian • associate professor @philoswarwick.bsky.social

I suggested that we invite artists to Ernst Pöppel's research centre near Cologne, in Jülich, where there were hundreds of scientists and laboratories. The idea was to create a contact zone where something could happen but nothing had to happen. And so the 'conference' we organized at the research centre, 'Art and Brain', had all the constituents of a colloquium except the colloquium. There were coffee breaks, a bus trip, meals, tours of the facilities, but no colloquium. The artists made their contacts, and having made them, they could go into town to produce works and collaborate with the scientists. At the end we made a little film, where everybody spoke about their impressions, and published a set of postcards. Now other activities are developing at the research centre without any need for more centralized organization.
As a sequel to telegraph discontent, the Post Office authorities are now threatened with a petition from the lady telegraphists. The objection is to compulsory work after 8 p.m. Here again, we think, is & legitimate grievance; for even Schopenhauer himself would have admitted the hardship of unmarried girls having to go home unattended in the small hours of the morning.
SIMONE WEILL FORMATIVE WRITINGS 1929-1941 Edited and Translated by DOROTHY TUCK MCFARLAND and WILHELMINA VAN NESS Simone Weil First and Last Notebooks
bearers of the spirit. The section held its regular debates and read papers regularly in its own circle. On one of these evenings I, straight from school, made my debut with a paper on " Schopenhauer and Nietzsche" which created some stir. As the bitter and fanatical adherent of Schopenhauer that I then was, and as such I considered the slightest contradiction of the tenets of the philosopher I worshipped as nothing less than lese-majesty, I spoke of Nietzsche quite simply and baldly as a " swindler" (I have, by the way, remained to this day true to my antipathy to Nietzsche, even if with reservations and in a different sense.) After this paper Kafka, who was a year older, saw me home. He used to take part in every meeting of the " Section", but until then we had hardly taken any notice of each other. It would indeed have been difficult to notice him, because he so seldom opened his mouth, and because his outward appearance was above all deeply unobtrusive even his elegant suits, which were mostly dark blue, were as unobtrusive and reserved as himself. But that evening something about me seems to have attracted him, he was more communicative than usual; anyhow the endless conversation that went on while seeing me home began with a strong protest against the extreme uncouthness of my way of putting things.
Kant was a strong defender of the rule of law as the ultimate guarantee, not only of security and peace, but also of freedom. He believed that human societies were moving towards more rational forms regulated by effective and binding legal frameworks because only such frameworks enabled people to live in harmony, to prosper and to co-operate. However, his belief in inevitable progress was not based on an optimistic or high-minded view of human nature. On the contrary, it comes close to Hobbes's outlook: man's violent and conflict-prone nature makes it necessary to establish and maintain an effective legal framework in order to secure peace. We cannot count on people's benevolence or goodwill, but even 'a nation of devils' can live in harmony in a legal system that binds every citizen equally. Ideally, the law is the embodiment of those political principles that all rational beings would freely choose. If such laws forbid them to do something that they would not rationally choose to do anyway, then the law cannot be: (1) regarded as reasonably confining human liberty (2) viewed as a strong defender of the justice system (3) understood as a restraint on their freedom (4) enforced effectively to suppress their evil nature (5) accepted within the assumption of ideal legal frameworks If you've made it this far, the correct number is 3
The association between the black rat and bubonic plague is as old as the plague itself. When he was still in Oran, Camus received what he jokingly called his "pestiferous books" — a package of scientific works that a friend, Lucette Maeurer, had sent him from Algiers." Among these works was one by Proust - not that Proust, but instead Marcel's father Adrien Proust, a well-known epidemiologist who in 1897 published La défense de l'Europe contre la peste. In his wide-ranging survey of plague epidemics, Proust noted an "interesting fact": pestilences were often announced by invasions of dying rats. In Canton, for ex-ample, neighborhoods counted as many as 20,000 dead rats, the advance sign of what was in store for the unhappy residents.
Hegel's adherents are quite right when they claim that the influence of their master on his contemporaries has been incalculable. An entire generation of scholars intellectually completely paralysed, made incapable of any thought, indeed driven so far as not knowing any longer what thinking is, but taking for philosophical thought the most wilful and at the same time most absurd play of words and concepts or the thoughtless preaching about conventional subjects of philosophy, with claims taken out of thin air, or completely meaningless sentences, or ones consisting in contradictions - that has been the lauded influence of Hegel. If despair overcomes you, always remember that we are in Germany where we have been able to do what would have been possible nowhere else: namely to proclaim as a great mind and profound thinker a mindless, ignorant, nonsense spreading philosophaster who, through unprecedented, hollow verbiage, thoroughly and permanently disorganizes their brains. I mean our dear Hegel.
CHRISTOPHER JANAWAY SELF AND WORLD IN SCHOPENHAUER'S PHILOSOPHY CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD