Tuesday, October 18, 2011

natural tendencies

Each of our voices
 has something unique to say.
Not only
 should I not
 mold my life
 to the demands
of external conformity;
 I can't even find
  the model by which
  to live outside myself.
I can only find it within.

-Charles Taylor  (canadian philosopher)   

14 comments:

J said...

Does RCC approve? Or Walker Percy? OR HEGEL?

I doubt it. Soft squishy canadian left--the boodha-jeebus.
Hegel's JC wears an .... Eisencruz

But it's yr blog, of course.

jh said...

all the private magisteriums
tend quickly to banality

USAers so lost in theire
distracted mayhem
do well to attend to
the perceptions of the canadians
they see things we don't

still one would think
the text matters

why fear
a poignant case for
infinite variety and uniqueness
in these oddly conformist times

J said...

Private? well, waxing analytical for a few seconds ala Doktor Stu one could ask...does Taylor the philosopher provide necessary true arguments in his philosophy? No--AFAICT. Now, that's the case with many phil. people, including Hegel--it's speculative, conceptual etc. But traditionally that was the case--even with Aquinas (tho' TA's 'proofs"--ie, for G*d-- are empirical, based on the old Aristotelian physics). So it's sort of conceptual--then one might say per Hegel is....the greeks vs persian really "logical"? . Actually I have a Taylor text, Freres jh..on Hegel. Wordy, "postmodernist", squishy--canadian-liberal. The un-Hegel

jh said...

i can only find it within

J said...
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J said...

Scuzi a bit of...dissent.

I don't understand his complete schema--will read mo' when trabajo allows.

Taylor appears to be a language guy sort of though...perusing some material online. Actually Ive come to the realization..that the...latinate itself is important (as I may have said before). as even old southerners thought---Sic semper tyrannis

Making the crackers take spanglish even helps things a bit.

stu said...

I'm just waiting for the next Charles Taylor quote ;-).

J said...
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J said...
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J said...

Taylor's a Foucaultian as well--tho' changed his tune a bit.

That explains it! French fag rightist.

Better the moderate muslims--or intelligent secularists-- than phony pedophile xtians. Eh shallah

jh said...

j
has anyone ever used the word toxic in reference to your words

maybe this country needs word pollution agencies
you've got EPA and then there coudl be WPA
no they've already tried WPA let's say RPA rhetorical protection agency - clean smoke clean water
that sort of thing

political categories are like sieves

yo

jh

J said...

Grazi.

I was taught to ....not blindly accept thinkers/dogma but like examine writing/ideas and...offer reasoned critique. So like Taylor's point on the evils of secularism,if not Reason itself---debatable at least. And alas I can't quite join the PoMo types who insist..all the secular, western thinkers of the "Aufklarung"--say, Thomas Jefferson--are evil,misguided, soulless. He had issues but compared to..Bonaparte (catholic boy, or so he said late in life)...fairly negligible.

Dissent matters ,jh--and your devotion to blog-freedom matters (hopefully it will stay that way).

jh said...

i don't mind dissent it's the rhetoric i can't stand

not too long ago rhetorical skills were subject to consistent trial and error practices as a mode of college education
no more

everywhere i look
it shows

it's possible to be simple straightforward and elegant
stu
is a good example of that
as is sally

i like to shake things up once in awhile but i prefer to keep it in the realm of my own formulations and not fopp things off on grander epistemological or sociopolitical scheme schemes

keep on rockin in the free world
what's left of it

jh

J said...

Ah rhetoric. Rather down the list a-ways from Logos. Anyway you mean civil, I think. Are you civil? Not always. So everyone must use civil rhetoric but you? While I agree to an extent--in formal settings at least--comboxes are not dissertations, though I will try to be civil since you asked (so much for beats, rebels, gonzo etc).

Shouldn't one read for content, dear sir, not merely for what one takes to be form or style? So, re Taylor's claim on secularism--while one's loathe to bring up the dreadful subject of factchecking, would it not be subject to some type of confirmation or verification?? So the Taylorites must earn their shekels the old fashioned way, and prove it, by jove. While we might very well agree secularism does result in actual damages (say the bolsheviks' treatment of the orthodox) any sort of empirical assessment--ie a cost-benefit analysis of sec. vs religion-- would IMHO be rather difficult if not impossible, and for that matter might conceivably prove the contrary (consider the Crusades, islamic history, the catholic/WASP conquest of the west, etc).