Brian McAndrews wrote:
>
> I was rereading Marjorie Perloff's 'Wittgenstein's Ladder: Poetic Language
> and the Strangeness of the Ordinary' and paused after I read this quote:
>
> "When we think of the world's future, we always mean the destination it
> will reach if it keeps going in the direction we can see it going in now;
> it does not occur to us that its path is not a straight line but a curve,
> constantly changing direction."
>
> Wittgenstein, "Culture and Value"
[snip]
We?
There are exceptions in addition to there being the rule (Brecht).
Certainly such thinkers as Edmund Husserl and Robert Musil,
along with such others as America's own William Ellery Channing
(the text of whose 1819 "Baltimore Sermon" appears below)
and Edward Hall, and others,
when they thought of the world's future, *hoped* that it
would transfigure into something radically incommensurable
(mathematically, not just a *curve*, but a *discontinuous /
non-differentiatable function*: the
ever again recommenced radical praxis of
self-reflection in the self-accountable
re-new-al of the human Lifeworld in all its aspects, including
those aspects which still remain largely in the darkness of
unreflected ethnicity and its unwitting semiotic-viral replication in
each new generation, e.g., childrearing in all its aspects,
competition, etc. (See, e.g., Alain Resnais' film: Mon Oncle
d'Amerique.)
They spoke and wrote to try to make that future happen.
I believe it was Clemenceau who said (as quoted in
the highly literate CBS News TV series: World War I),
at the outbreak of
World War I: "The lights are going out all over
Europe. We shall not see them back on again in our lifetime."
And, today, still "History continues. . . ." (Elsa Morante,
_History: A Novel_).
Things are not good, but (to rescue George Bush's
image, which Ivan Morris used, at least as early as 1964,
to refer to "The world of the shining prince" (Genji),
i.e., 1,000CE Kyoto: Here and there in the darkness,
there flicker, for a moment, before they
vanish again into the darkness: *points of light*.
And, to rescue also Ronald Reagan's image (which, e.g., graces a
Masonic poster I have:) We have at least the idea of
a radiant city on a hill (Rabelais' Theleme, e.g.).
\brad mccormick
--
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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