A guy came in and
walked up to the podium. I guessed right away that Professor Gibbs was still
recovering and that this was one of our TAs acting as a substitute. His name is
Keegan.
An attractive early
middle-aged woman came in and sat just to my left. I recognized her from the
first lecture when she three rows below me and just across the aisle to my
right. I found her to be quite striking with her long legs, her auburn hair
pulled back tightly and she also had a presence that was very noticeable. Now
that she was closer to me I noticed that she had a small white laptop and was
writing her lecture notes directly on the screen with a special pen. I wonder
if it reads the cursive and accurately changes it to print. I assume the screen
has to be touch sensitive.
I got the
impression during the lecture that she was turning her head and checking me out
a couple of times.
Our substitute
lecturer, Keegan, told us that his field of study is German philosophy,
especially Hegel, who led the German Idealists. Our first subject of study
though, Soren Kerkegaard, was an antagonistic critic of Hegelianism, which was
the rising philosophical school of the day, even though Hegel was already dead
by this time. German culture was colonizing Europe. Keegan said that unlike
most philosophers, knowing Kerkegaard’s biography is more of a key to
understanding his philosophy because his thinking was interwoven with his lived
experience.
At this point
Keegan urged us to not lose patience with his lecturing on a topic on which the
professor asked him at the last minute to speak. He added that patience is a
terrible thing to lose.
Soren’s brother
Peter was a bishop and a Hegelian. Kerkegaard positioned himself against the
Christian mainstream, which his brother represented.
Soren’s
fiancé, Regina Olsen, was another key figure in Kerkegaard’s development
because he broke off the engagement at the last minute. Regina committed
suicide. He felt guilty about this for the rest of his life and this informed
his thinking. He kept a journal of his romance with Regina and it is the part
called “The Seducer’s Diary” of his first major work, “Either Or”. He concluded
that a person that follows truth must refuse marriage. When he wrote under
certain pseudonyms he emphasized this point more. In the early 20th
Century, an interest in Kerkegaard was revived by Franz Kafka and György
Lukács. Lukács felt the same way about marriage.
Soren’s father was a melancholy and anxious minister who passed a lot of guilt down to his children. Inherited psychology, anxiety and irony became some of Kerkegaard’s themes. Soren inherited a fortune from his father and his Bourgeois background is significant, but not at this point of our study. It’s good to keep in mind though the material conditions of philosophy. Nietzsche’s dad was also a priest.
Both Kerkegaard and Marx had been students of Hegelianism. I asked, “Didn’t Marx and Kerkegaard have the exact same birthday?” Keegan said he didn’t know.
Soren’s mother is present symbolically in his writing as the Danish language. The word for mother tongue in the Danish language is important. Kerkegaard had to make a special request to write his dissertation on irony in Danish rather than Latin. Danish emphasizes the local that is never consumed completely. There is some irreducible about the local and the particular. Hegelians were particularly consumed by the universal.
Our first text of study has two titles: “Philosophical Fragments” or “A Fragment of Philosophy”. These don’t mean the same thing. One implies that the systematic whole is not engaged. Kerkegaard wrote the book under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, which means “John of the Ladder”. The name emphasizes ascent. This directional metaphor is also a Hegelian concept. But a ladder is used for construction and is also a structure in itself. A ladder is an appendage of a larger structure without being part of it. Architectural metaphors are often used in philosophy because a system of philosophy is considered to be a structure. Kant used the word “architectonic”. When reading texts that Kerkegaard wrote under a pseudonym, think about the character Kerkegaard has created separately from Kerkegaard himself. When, for instance, is Socrates himself and not a tool of Plato’s argument? But this is not to say that the character runs counter to Kerkegaard. The editor of this work by Johannes Climacus is listed as Soren Kerkegaard. An editor is a type of midwife.
The first three questions in Philosophical Fragments are: Is an historical point of departure possible for an eternal consciousness? How can such a point of departure have any other than a merely historical interest? Is it possible to base an eternal happiness on historical knowledge?
According to Hegel, history is moved by finite spirit. Thinking has a manifestation in the world and forms our history. History is contrasted by nature. Our concept of nature comes from self-understanding.
He’s saying this is not Hegel.
Of the title, “Philosophical Fragments”, a fragment is contrasted with the whole. Fragments don’t make a whole. The text is based on the idea of unity, which has form (form contains the idea) and content (extensional and intentional content). What is being unified? A fragment doesn’t have unity but is rather an anarchic collection of properties. A philosophical system is supposed to anticipate new developments but fragments don’t do that.
At this point, in trying to begin talking about the beginning of the preface of “Philosophical Fragments”, Keegan started with the words, “The beginning …” and then in a sheepish voice he asked, “We’re out of time aren’t we?” and that was the end.
As we started to gather our things up, the attractive woman to my left turned to me and said, “It seems he talked more about Hegel than he did about Kerkegaard!” I said that I guess since Kerkegaard stood against Hegel, Hegel sort of defined his thinking.
She told me that I was right that Kerkegaard and Marx had the same birthday, though they were five years apart. I told her about the idea I had to write a dialogue between Kerkegaard and Marx in the form of a Minstrel Show comedy skit. She said that was a good idea.
I introduced myself to her and she told me her name was Miriam. She wondered if we would be in the same tutorial on Friday morning. I suggested that the groupings might be according to our last names. She said that hers starts with a “B” and since mine is “C” we thought that there was a good chance. She said she had a lecture at 18:00 and so she was going to go do what every girl does, then she paused. I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking that I was going to sleep and wondered if that was what she meant that every girl does. Then she finally said, “Read”. I did not know that that was what every girl does. We said that we’d see each other the next day and said goodbye.
I went home and had time to sleep for about an hour before heading back downtown for my Short Story lecture. This time we talked about Stephen King’s “The Boogieman”, which deals with psychoanalysis; and “The Mangler” which plays with the idea of machines having a life of their own, which has been a prominent fantasy since the 1950s when home appliances became a common thing.
Andrew told us not to ever have sex in a horror film because those who do always die a horrible death. This sends a conservative message to the viewer that sex is wrong.
Andrew suggested that Stephen King is a critically under appreciated writer, along with John Irving and P. D. James, but in the future he may be held in the same esteem as Charles Dickens.
In Stephen King’s “The Boogieman” the fact that the doctor’s perspective is shown at the beginning tips us off that he is not really the Boogieman, as the patient believes at the end. Andrew thinks that psychiatry is shown here to help create and further psychotic behaviour like that of Billings. Psychosis is a creation of the medical field as shown in the diagnostic statistics manual. The Boogieman kills Billings’s children when Billings has been drinking. He blames himself but not directly. Billings dismisses religion and the law, but is drawn to psychoanalysis.
The Boogieman is a type of man.
King shatters the distinction between the supernatural and the empirical or rational. They meet and result in an end collapse. Violent psychosis is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Psychiatry replaced the geisha and the confession booth. Here, Andrew confessed that he was raised Catholic.
Billings has strong family values.
The child says “craws” because she can’t sound the “l”. The psychiatrist suggests something less violent like the beginning of “closet” but Billings knows it is “claws”. Is the psychiatrist trying to put the claws in the closet?
If you think of something long enough it will happen.
The mask is a façade and beneath it is chaos.
Andrew and some of the students began to discuss the ghost that supposedly haunts University College. During the construction, a stonemason named Ivan Reznikoff attacked another named Paul Diabolos with an axe on the site because Diabolos had seduced Reznikoff’s fiancé. Diabolos though managed to kill Reznikoff instead. He hid the body on the site and disappeared, probably heading out west with Ivan’s fiancé. Many years later, while cleaning up after a fire that gutted most of the east wing, workers found the skeleton of a man. Some claim to have encountered Reznikoff’s ghost. Andrew’s office is on the second floor between the east Hall and the West Hall. He says he’s been there late at night and it is pretty spooky.
The story, “The Mangler” features rational supernaturalism. Characters try to defeat modern technology with religious superstition. One of them is reading Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, which marries the Old and the New Testaments.
The Golden Bough is a book that attempts to rationalize mythology.
Given time, anything can happen, such as monkeys writing Shakespeare.
Exorcism is compared to nuclear fission. Exorcism is old magic and evil precedes humanity.
I told Andrew that “The Mangler” is much scarier than “The Boogieman”. I grew up around big machines on the farm and I’ve worked in factories. Any machine that is big enough to swallow a human being is pretty scary. I told him about vacuum potato harvesters back home that could rip someone’s arm off and he said, “Ewwww!” The young woman sitting next to me who was also in my Children’s Literature class, agreed with me about machines.
That night I watched an episode of Make Room for Daddy. Terry was planning a party but Danny was being a buttinsky and turning off Terry’s friends. Terry was upset and ran crying out of the room. Her little brother, Rusty exclaimed, “Girls are funny! They’ll cry even when you don’t hit them!” The band being hired to play at the party was Sheldon Fineschlabber and his Crazy Cats.
Soren’s father was a melancholy and anxious minister who passed a lot of guilt down to his children. Inherited psychology, anxiety and irony became some of Kerkegaard’s themes. Soren inherited a fortune from his father and his Bourgeois background is significant, but not at this point of our study. It’s good to keep in mind though the material conditions of philosophy. Nietzsche’s dad was also a priest.
Both Kerkegaard and Marx had been students of Hegelianism. I asked, “Didn’t Marx and Kerkegaard have the exact same birthday?” Keegan said he didn’t know.
Soren’s mother is present symbolically in his writing as the Danish language. The word for mother tongue in the Danish language is important. Kerkegaard had to make a special request to write his dissertation on irony in Danish rather than Latin. Danish emphasizes the local that is never consumed completely. There is some irreducible about the local and the particular. Hegelians were particularly consumed by the universal.
Our first text of study has two titles: “Philosophical Fragments” or “A Fragment of Philosophy”. These don’t mean the same thing. One implies that the systematic whole is not engaged. Kerkegaard wrote the book under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, which means “John of the Ladder”. The name emphasizes ascent. This directional metaphor is also a Hegelian concept. But a ladder is used for construction and is also a structure in itself. A ladder is an appendage of a larger structure without being part of it. Architectural metaphors are often used in philosophy because a system of philosophy is considered to be a structure. Kant used the word “architectonic”. When reading texts that Kerkegaard wrote under a pseudonym, think about the character Kerkegaard has created separately from Kerkegaard himself. When, for instance, is Socrates himself and not a tool of Plato’s argument? But this is not to say that the character runs counter to Kerkegaard. The editor of this work by Johannes Climacus is listed as Soren Kerkegaard. An editor is a type of midwife.
The first three questions in Philosophical Fragments are: Is an historical point of departure possible for an eternal consciousness? How can such a point of departure have any other than a merely historical interest? Is it possible to base an eternal happiness on historical knowledge?
According to Hegel, history is moved by finite spirit. Thinking has a manifestation in the world and forms our history. History is contrasted by nature. Our concept of nature comes from self-understanding.
He’s saying this is not Hegel.
Of the title, “Philosophical Fragments”, a fragment is contrasted with the whole. Fragments don’t make a whole. The text is based on the idea of unity, which has form (form contains the idea) and content (extensional and intentional content). What is being unified? A fragment doesn’t have unity but is rather an anarchic collection of properties. A philosophical system is supposed to anticipate new developments but fragments don’t do that.
At this point, in trying to begin talking about the beginning of the preface of “Philosophical Fragments”, Keegan started with the words, “The beginning …” and then in a sheepish voice he asked, “We’re out of time aren’t we?” and that was the end.
As we started to gather our things up, the attractive woman to my left turned to me and said, “It seems he talked more about Hegel than he did about Kerkegaard!” I said that I guess since Kerkegaard stood against Hegel, Hegel sort of defined his thinking.
She told me that I was right that Kerkegaard and Marx had the same birthday, though they were five years apart. I told her about the idea I had to write a dialogue between Kerkegaard and Marx in the form of a Minstrel Show comedy skit. She said that was a good idea.
I introduced myself to her and she told me her name was Miriam. She wondered if we would be in the same tutorial on Friday morning. I suggested that the groupings might be according to our last names. She said that hers starts with a “B” and since mine is “C” we thought that there was a good chance. She said she had a lecture at 18:00 and so she was going to go do what every girl does, then she paused. I didn’t say anything, but I was thinking that I was going to sleep and wondered if that was what she meant that every girl does. Then she finally said, “Read”. I did not know that that was what every girl does. We said that we’d see each other the next day and said goodbye.
I went home and had time to sleep for about an hour before heading back downtown for my Short Story lecture. This time we talked about Stephen King’s “The Boogieman”, which deals with psychoanalysis; and “The Mangler” which plays with the idea of machines having a life of their own, which has been a prominent fantasy since the 1950s when home appliances became a common thing.
Andrew told us not to ever have sex in a horror film because those who do always die a horrible death. This sends a conservative message to the viewer that sex is wrong.
Andrew suggested that Stephen King is a critically under appreciated writer, along with John Irving and P. D. James, but in the future he may be held in the same esteem as Charles Dickens.
In Stephen King’s “The Boogieman” the fact that the doctor’s perspective is shown at the beginning tips us off that he is not really the Boogieman, as the patient believes at the end. Andrew thinks that psychiatry is shown here to help create and further psychotic behaviour like that of Billings. Psychosis is a creation of the medical field as shown in the diagnostic statistics manual. The Boogieman kills Billings’s children when Billings has been drinking. He blames himself but not directly. Billings dismisses religion and the law, but is drawn to psychoanalysis.
The Boogieman is a type of man.
King shatters the distinction between the supernatural and the empirical or rational. They meet and result in an end collapse. Violent psychosis is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Psychiatry replaced the geisha and the confession booth. Here, Andrew confessed that he was raised Catholic.
Billings has strong family values.
The child says “craws” because she can’t sound the “l”. The psychiatrist suggests something less violent like the beginning of “closet” but Billings knows it is “claws”. Is the psychiatrist trying to put the claws in the closet?
If you think of something long enough it will happen.
The mask is a façade and beneath it is chaos.
Andrew and some of the students began to discuss the ghost that supposedly haunts University College. During the construction, a stonemason named Ivan Reznikoff attacked another named Paul Diabolos with an axe on the site because Diabolos had seduced Reznikoff’s fiancé. Diabolos though managed to kill Reznikoff instead. He hid the body on the site and disappeared, probably heading out west with Ivan’s fiancé. Many years later, while cleaning up after a fire that gutted most of the east wing, workers found the skeleton of a man. Some claim to have encountered Reznikoff’s ghost. Andrew’s office is on the second floor between the east Hall and the West Hall. He says he’s been there late at night and it is pretty spooky.
The story, “The Mangler” features rational supernaturalism. Characters try to defeat modern technology with religious superstition. One of them is reading Milton’s “Paradise Lost”, which marries the Old and the New Testaments.
The Golden Bough is a book that attempts to rationalize mythology.
Given time, anything can happen, such as monkeys writing Shakespeare.
Exorcism is compared to nuclear fission. Exorcism is old magic and evil precedes humanity.
I told Andrew that “The Mangler” is much scarier than “The Boogieman”. I grew up around big machines on the farm and I’ve worked in factories. Any machine that is big enough to swallow a human being is pretty scary. I told him about vacuum potato harvesters back home that could rip someone’s arm off and he said, “Ewwww!” The young woman sitting next to me who was also in my Children’s Literature class, agreed with me about machines.
That night I watched an episode of Make Room for Daddy. Terry was planning a party but Danny was being a buttinsky and turning off Terry’s friends. Terry was upset and ran crying out of the room. Her little brother, Rusty exclaimed, “Girls are funny! They’ll cry even when you don’t hit them!” The band being hired to play at the party was Sheldon Fineschlabber and his Crazy Cats.
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