Indeed you are of course correct. My peculiarly British ' tongue in cheek' habit rather overcame me. 😉 Thank you for this.. I shall look forward to exploring further!
Joel, you write: “And so, in a triangle animated by such extrinsic forces, in which each individual is condemned to see themself through the cracked lens of their respective tormentor, the Hell of which Sartre writes soon becomes real enough to deserve the designation.”
Oh, how it hurts to see you use “themself” and “their” after the antecedent “each individual.” But relax, as I’m not asking you to pick that particular hill to die on; I’ll stand in for you! :-)
Well spotted, good sir! I shall leave it unedited, a monument to my eternal shame...while I scout the horizon for another hill on which to redeem myself. Cheers!
Ah indeed! I would say that you are spot on with your observation of the exorbitant cost of higher education often failing to meet expectations. I was fortunate enough to enjoy my years at university unencumbered by student debt which, for me at least, allowed me to study my favourite subjects and sleep at night.. I know just how lucky I was.
I studied Huis Clos at A level and was left none the wiser at the end! However I did get some serious brownie points at university when I would nod wisely and gave the impression that I understood it all! Sartre's main aim was to obfuscate and confuse - as all good intellectual Frenchmen are wont to do...
Funny you should mention this... I am just now enjoying Stefan Zweig's autobiography "The World of Yesterday." In his chapter on tertiary education, titled Universitas Vitae, he makes the following observation (please excuse the lengthy quotation):
"I even had a secret distrust, which has not yet left me, of all academic pursuits. Emerson's axiom that good books are a substitute for the best university still seems to me to be accurate, and I am convinced to this day that one can become an excellent philosopher, historian, literary philologist, lawyer, or anything else without ever having gone to a university or even grammar school. In ordinary life I have found confirmation, again and again, that in practice second-hand booksellers often know more about books than the professors who lecture on them; art dealers know more than academic art historians; and many of the most important ideas and discoveries in all fields come from outsiders. Practical, useful and salutary as academic life may be for those of average talent, it seems to me that creative individuals can dispense with it, and may even be inhibited by the academic approach..."
Seems to me a quality book club, a good faith exchange of opinions and an open mind are worth more than the exorbitant tuition fee to most places of so-called "higher learning."
Indeed you are of course correct. My peculiarly British ' tongue in cheek' habit rather overcame me. 😉 Thank you for this.. I shall look forward to exploring further!
Joel, you write: “And so, in a triangle animated by such extrinsic forces, in which each individual is condemned to see themself through the cracked lens of their respective tormentor, the Hell of which Sartre writes soon becomes real enough to deserve the designation.”
Oh, how it hurts to see you use “themself” and “their” after the antecedent “each individual.” But relax, as I’m not asking you to pick that particular hill to die on; I’ll stand in for you! :-)
Well spotted, good sir! I shall leave it unedited, a monument to my eternal shame...while I scout the horizon for another hill on which to redeem myself. Cheers!
Ah indeed! I would say that you are spot on with your observation of the exorbitant cost of higher education often failing to meet expectations. I was fortunate enough to enjoy my years at university unencumbered by student debt which, for me at least, allowed me to study my favourite subjects and sleep at night.. I know just how lucky I was.
I studied Huis Clos at A level and was left none the wiser at the end! However I did get some serious brownie points at university when I would nod wisely and gave the impression that I understood it all! Sartre's main aim was to obfuscate and confuse - as all good intellectual Frenchmen are wont to do...
Funny you should mention this... I am just now enjoying Stefan Zweig's autobiography "The World of Yesterday." In his chapter on tertiary education, titled Universitas Vitae, he makes the following observation (please excuse the lengthy quotation):
"I even had a secret distrust, which has not yet left me, of all academic pursuits. Emerson's axiom that good books are a substitute for the best university still seems to me to be accurate, and I am convinced to this day that one can become an excellent philosopher, historian, literary philologist, lawyer, or anything else without ever having gone to a university or even grammar school. In ordinary life I have found confirmation, again and again, that in practice second-hand booksellers often know more about books than the professors who lecture on them; art dealers know more than academic art historians; and many of the most important ideas and discoveries in all fields come from outsiders. Practical, useful and salutary as academic life may be for those of average talent, it seems to me that creative individuals can dispense with it, and may even be inhibited by the academic approach..."
Seems to me a quality book club, a good faith exchange of opinions and an open mind are worth more than the exorbitant tuition fee to most places of so-called "higher learning."
Thanks for reading!
Alice, you write: “Sartre's main aim was to obfuscate and confuse - as all good intellectual Frenchmen are wont to do...”
All good intellectual Frenchmen? I offer up Raymond Aron and Jean-Francois Revel as just two of the counterexamples.
What a joy! Thank you Luisa
Why, thank you, kind reader. It is a joy to put these little scribbles together. Thanks for your audience.
Brain Rot(Alzheimer’s)
She sits alone in her wheelchair
staring out the window
in her lonely conclave;
her dysfunction concealed beneath
a dispiriting impenetrable trance,
as she shares this small denizen
with her imaginary friends of endless prattle,
her rambling brays and dissociative fugue
amuse the scattering ghosts;
for her once calculative mind
could compute in an instant what now
is a tottering chore,
her encomium of memories float
upon a fogged pane of glass,
forever wiped from her conscience, now
she calls me Frank each visit that's
not even close to my baptismal name, but we
laugh together like it's an inside joke shared between
two old friends, and as I depart from this psych ward each day
I leave her to extricate her private soliloquies.
- John Hardesty
I have come to realize heaven and hell are all around. I have assumed “a peace the world can not give.”