Author: Dan
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Book Notes I
I wrote one of these a long time ago, intending it to be a regular thing, and here I am again, trying to make it a regular thing, to fill the gaps when I’ve got nothing else to say and, hopefully, to help me think more deeply about what I’m reading. Recently Finished The Civil […]
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Notes from a reading of Charles Ogburn’s The Marauders.
I’ve never been very good about family history, despite my inclination toward history more generally and despite thinking that family, like local, history is something very important in this rootless world of ours. I’d like to blame my failings here on youth. I was relatively young when most of my grandparents passed (though not that […]
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Reflection and Ressentiment
Ressentiment is characteristic of a reflexive age, which simultaneously gives it no productive outlet (as in ancient Greek ostracism where it was a negative mark of distinction). On top of this, the pervasive hollowness of the age, it’s foreclosing of our ability to address our inner wretchedness, makes resentment all the more intense. Add to […]
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Social Belonging and Abstraction
Social belonging is largely impossible in an age of reflection, because social belonging must consist of bonds between actual, concrete individuals, not between the individual and abstractions. As always, it must be remembered that abstractions do truly not exist. In our current reflective age, the dominant abstraction is “the public.” This is an abstraction that […]
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Kierkegaard, The Present Age
Kierkegaard describes his age as one of reflection, rather than of revolution. Ironically, he wrote this in 1846. Perhaps it wasn’t ironic, I don’t know enough about 1848 to say for sure. The mere fact that a revolution, or revolutions, occur does not mean that they are truly revolutionary, nor that we have escaped the […]
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The Abstract and the Universal
True knowledge–maybe understanding would be better–comes from moving from particulars to universals. We can’t simply jump to the universal, because universals are always and only instantiated in particulars. Tree doesn’t exist in the world independent of the trees themselves. We thus come to know Tree through trees. Since the ultimate ground of universals is the […]
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Punishment
One of Dante’s great insights* is that out punishments are simply when we receive what we’ve chosen. The fact that what we’ve chosen makes us miserable is not some arbitrary punishment delivered by an authority figure, but a consequence of there being a path to happiness and peace and us stepping off that path. We […]
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Tell Him So
If you hear a kind word spokenOf some worthy soul you know,It may fill his heart with sunshineIf you only tell him so. If a deed, however humble,Helps you on your way to go,Seek the one whose hand has helped you,Seek him out and tell him so! If your heart is touched and tenderToward a […]
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The Manly Man
The world has room for the manly man, with the spirit of manly cheer;The world delights in the man who smiles when his eyes keep back the tear;It loves the man who, when things are wrong, can take his place and standWith his face to the fight and his eyes to the light, and toil […]
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Ash Wednesday
I Because I do not hope to turn againBecause I do not hopeBecause I do not hope to turnDesiring this man’s gift and that man’s scopeI no longer strive to strive towards such things(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)Why should I mournThe vanished power of the usual reign? Because I do not hope […]
Dan Yingst 