sus

Moderator
“Thrice happy are they who, inhabiting some yet undiscovered island in the midst of the ocean, have never been brought into contaminating contact.”
 

sus

Moderator
But I like the idea that it's fascist for indigenous people to wish they'd never made contact with Europeans. That's really good.

"You don't like Columbus? What are you, some kind of xenophobe?"
 

sus

Moderator
I think dialectic is an important contribution, probably if you could only keep a dozen philosophical concepts dialectic should be one of them.

But also it's not really his, it's one of those ideas that's so in the water, really he fishes it out and puts it on display which TBF is very useful.

You see it in Spencerian strength by opposition, or Blake's progress by contraries. You get it in biological sex certainly. There are mystical and numerological traditions in which 2 naturally or almost automatically gives way to 3, since the third is the relationship between the first and second.
 

sus

Moderator
I've heard it said many times that American Pragmatism is more or less a tidying up of Hegel. That may be true, I don't know, if it is I prefer the tidy naturalism.
 

version

Well-known member
His focus on world history as the process of God going about assembling itself is bizarre/fascinating. I'd always had an image of him as quite a dry, serious sort of figure, and perhaps he was, but that's the kind of thing I'd expect to hear from a crank or mystic. It's like Land claiming capitalism sent itself back from the future.
 

version

Well-known member
Deasy, the schoolmaster in Ulysses, takes a Hegelian view of history.


-- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.​
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?​
-- The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.​
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:​
-- That is God.​
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!​
-- What? Mr Deasy asked.​
-- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.​
 
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sus

Moderator
His focus on world history as this process of God going about assembling itself is bizarre and fascinating. I'd always had an image of him as quite a dry, serious sort of figure, and perhaps he was, but that's the kind of thing I'd expect to hear from a crank or mystic. It's like Land claiming capitalism sent itself back from the future.

Also incredibly Blakean.

There's an image I have. The Universe as a flower unfolding.
 

sus

Moderator
Lo, soul, seest thou not God's purpose from the first?
The earth be spann'd, connected by network
The oceans to be crossed, the distant brought near
The lands to be welded together

(Whitman, Leaves of Grass)

The cells assemble. Monads into evermore complex assemblages until at last, God!
 
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