Who are your favourite philosophers?

[constant escape]

And believe it or not, those trance-like dives can be integrated more or less smoothly into a wider psychic framework of unperturbedness. Imagine working to spend psychic restless energy in a way that was efficient and consolidational, rather than just leaking this energy here and popping that energy there, recklessly.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

@suspendedreason @beiser thx

obv he didn't "solve art" but you've elucidated the basis on which such a (presumably only half-serious) hyperbolic claim could be made

I had no idea he was such a key figure (it seems) in the shift from a modern to postmodern conception of art

you've convinced me to put Art of Experience on my reading list

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

Almost universally, people enjoy music when played forwards more than backwards

that line immediately me me think of playing things backwards as a studio or DJing technique

Macca's backwards guitar solo on "Tomorrow Never Knows"

the story about an off his face George Clinton improvising "Atomic Dog" over a rewinding tape so they just left it that way

Ron Hardy famously contriving techniques to play records backwards at the Muzic Box

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples

tho that's not really what beiser was talking about tbf

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

"so when the track come on it's backwards...I'm trying to play it off like I knew what the fuck was happening...so I start talking, this story of a famous dog"

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

know that I think about it, in re philosophy and funk

you could definitely link George Clinton's version of James Brown's "The One" to monism

James Brown=Socrates, Bootsy=Plato, George=Aristotle on hella drugs (not in terms of monism, just as originators of the philosophy of funk)

 

[woops]

well yeah there's obviously loads of songs that use backwards noises but they're always oddities aren't they. novelties



of course, there is one backwards track that transcends novelty to become one of the most ecstatic moments in music ever

 

[versh]

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

but they're always oddities aren't they

idk backmasking and reversing stuff seems like a relatively common technique in pop music

if there are enough novelties at a certain point it's no longer a novelty

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

like I said that's not really what he was talking about

but one interesting thing is how backmasking was at the center of all that Tipper Gore/PMRC bullshit in the 80s

classic rock and metal bands with all their supposed backwards subliminal messages telling teens to worship Satan and/or kill themselves

in re "people enjoy music when played forwards more than backwards"

 

[beiser]

@beiser
What would you say, if you remember, were the primary iffy-zones of that translation of yours? The three points were all impactful for me.

I think the big part is that it just doesn't cover what's in the other 360 pages very much at all–processes by which art is made, the experience of perception, how one can have an experiences of understanding or working with an idea, and how works of art can function by inducing that, issues with other theories of art—and especially ones involving 'forms' that exist otherwise from experience, how art forms progress from lively to 'academic', the common roles of things like rhythm and symmetry, differences between mediums, the equatability of different instantiations of a particular emotion, interpretation, and so forth.

 

[beiser]

Almost universally, people enjoy music when played forwards more than backwards

its true

 

[beiser]

@suspendedreason @beiser thx

obv he didn't "solve art" but you've elucidated the basis on which such a (presumably only half-serious) hyperbolic claim could be made

What I mean is that he solved (an awful lot of) the mystery of what art is, and how it functions in humans, in the general case rather than for specific mediums—one of those things that perhaps should have happened earlier, but I don't think it ever did. You have many people in history trying to explain what art is by poetic analogy, or how it works in the similar way, and many drew from similar insights, but I think Dewey did better than everyone before him at breaking the thing open.

 

[beiser]

And believe it or not, those trance-like dives can be integrated more or less smoothly into a wider psychic framework of unperturbedness. Imagine working to spend psychic restless energy in a way that was efficient and consolidational, rather than just leaking this energy here and popping that energy there, recklessly.

you can tell he's peeked inside Dewey because everyone starts speaking like this immediately after. nearly incomprehensible, talking about consolidation of energy and "perturbations", relating everyday experience to the actions of the living creature in its environment.

 

[constant escape]

Do you think its possible to recognize/appreciate stuff like this, right off the bat, without being familiar?

(edit: familiar with the particular author, that is)

Not that that is what is happening with my case - I feel like perhaps I've picked up some techniques used/purveyed by those who were influenced by Dewey, such that I'd have a running start in interpreting him. But that sort of thing is rather common, I'd imagine.

That said, the particular post you quoted could've been from before I even looked at your Dewey post, the fact of which could be testament to the kind of influence he seemingly had on much of western aesthetic discourse.

Also wanna get to know Black Mountain College some more. Interesting potential connection point along the history of the geodesic dome, seeing as Gropius and Fuller were there at the same time, if I'm not mistaken.

 

[versh]

They've got Han in the New Yorker now:

The Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher

Byung-Chul Han, in treatises such as “The Burnout Society” and his latest, “The Crisis of Narration,” diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age.

www.newyorker.com

https://archive.ph/Zdrzw

 

[versh]

“I’m like queening out reading this,” she told me, using Gen Z slang for effusive enjoyment—fangirling.

 

[luka]

love how version is turning into a grumpy old man aged 31

 

[versh]

To be honest, it's the New Yorker writer explaining the slang that's worse than the slang. It doesn't need explaining.

 

[versh]

To be honest, it's the New Yorker writer explaining the slang that's worse than the slang. It doesn't need explaining.

He's around 35 and writes like this:

"To that, the Internet-addled brain simply wants to respond: “Yas queen!!! Byung-Chul Han, run me over with a truck.” If you are a denizen of social media, to read Han is to feel both dragged and affirmed. His status as a kind of philosophy daddy to a younger generation is reinforced by the scant glimpses that readers get of his personal image."

Depressing idiots like this get hired.

 

[dilbert1]

He’s the philosopher they deserve