Category: de umbris idæarum
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7. Vico, Language, Barbarism
I mentioned yesterday that, for Vico, the degradation of civilization was tied to a sort of forgetting which began in the corruption of language. I promised to elaborate, so here we are. Recall that the foundation of civil society is exteriorized memory, preserved in things such as grave markers, statues, the structure of cities, and, […]
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6. Burial and Memory
“The human mind rethinks its prior modes of synthesis and carries them over into its subsequent modifications” – Vico Vico writes that places and on places, society, are founded upon the dead. In his account, it is the act of burial that marks a place as a place and from this marking comes the claim […]
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5. Place and No-Place
I’m really not happy with this one, struggled to get started, had too much to say, and my thoughts were too jumbled to express all I had to say. Were it not for the dictates of the challenge I’ve set for myself, I would have let it percolate for a few days and tried again. […]
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4. Exhortation
Something I wrestle with a lot, often to the point of exhausted inaction, is communication. The problem when you’re dealing with ideas like Being-with-a-capital-B, the transcendent, etc. is precisely the capital B, the fact of transcendence. The transcendent, by definition, transcends us. It can’t be captured in words, concepts, and the like, because if it […]
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2. Existence
“I exist” is unique and indubitable, there is no possible rival belief. On top of this, we seem compelled to believe that others exist as well. We claim, at least some claim, we can doubt* this, but can we? We go on speaking regardless. More, what is the self without other selves? We come to […]
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An Additional Consideration on the Death of the Author
There is a distinction between a classic a work that is merely very good. The classic unfolds. It offers us a glimpse into the inexhaustible depths of Being. Concretely, every time you turn to the Iliad or Dante or Emma you find something new, and it is the exhilaration of that discovery, the sense of it unfolding within […]
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Creation and Literary Form
Scripture and Creation are the pre-eminent revelations of God, or rather the pre-eminent revelations that aren’t confined to a historical moment, i.e. the Incarnation and the various theophanies that have occurred throughout time. Creation can thus be understood as a sort of book in its own right. As such, there is a surface level of […]
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Death of the Author
The death of the author is akin to the rejection of God’s immanent role in creation, of the nature of creation as a reflection of its Author. How can we say that it is not the hand of the creator that guides the work? Choosing our own interpretation without reference to the Creator is sin, placing […]
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Distraction
Apologies for skipping last week. I have too many posts in too-protean a form. Working to rectify the situation. Human beings are torn between wretchedness and greatness. Great because we contain within us terrific potential, a mind that can encompass the whole of the cosmos. Wretched because we are mired in sin and death. Great […]
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Between Two Worlds
Key to understanding the self is the recognition that we are mediating beings, interposed between two worlds, spiritual and material, infinite and temporal. Created as we are in imago Dei, we mirror the hypostatic union of apparent opposites. This union is the root of our despair but also the grounds of our greatness. The possibility […]
Dan Yingst 