Surprise!

“Philosophers who leave their studies are likely to be surprised”

-Annemarie Mol, 2008 (The Logic of Care.  New York: Routledge.  Pg. 9)

A learned reply

“I am often asked the question, ‘Do you believe in the afterlife?’ After mumbling something stupid on a few occasions, I have now learned to reply, ‘Yes, of course I believe in the afterlife. I believe in the life of those that come after, those we love, who are few in number, and those we don’t even know, who are obviously many more, a great many in fact.’ People rarely seem impressed by this answer.

However, why should we assume that the question of the afterlife must always be answered with reference to me? Isn’t just a teensy bit selfish? What is so important about my afterlife? Why can’t I believe in others’ afterlife without believing in my own?”

-Simon Critchley, 2009 (via Flavorwire)

He’s so vain

“It is difficult for a man to speak too long of himself without vanity.”

-David Hume, 1776 (‘My Own Life’ In The Cambridge Companion to David Hume.  David Norton, Ed.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  Pg 351)

Oh snap

“On the level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the imbecile flatness of the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects”

-Karl Marx, not a fan of John Stuart Mill, 1867 (Capital volume 1.  New York: The Modern Library. Pg 568)

Theory of volume

“Anyone with a very loud voice is almost incapable of thinking subtleties”

-Friedrich Nietzsche, on ‘Danger in the Voice’, 1887 (The Gay Science.  New York: Vintage.  Pg 210)

Factory enthusiasts

“It is very characteristic that the enthusiastic apologists of the factory system have nothing more damning to urge against a general organization of the labor of society, than that it would turn all society into one immense factory.”

-Karl Marx, 1867 (Capital, volume 1. New York: The Modern Library. Pg 391)

Man-eaters

“To large extent, is not the noise of the revolver fired into the condemned man’s temple the same as the gas expelled by the autocrat in a shattering burp after a sumptuous meal?  The fact is that power, in the postcolony, is carnivorous…”

-Achille Mbembe, 2001 (On the Postcolony.  Berkeley: University of California Press.  Pg 201)

Sincerely yours…

“The contemporary proliferation of bullshit…has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticisim which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are…one response has been…a retreat from the discipline requires required by the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity.  Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns towards trying to provide honest representations of himself…he devotes himself to being true to his own nature…But it is preposterous to imagine we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake.  As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves without knowing them…sincerity itself in bullshit”

-Harry Frankfurt, 2005 (On Bullshit.  Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.  Pg 64-7)

Self-portraiture

“…if indeed the Savage exists primarily within an implicit correspondence with utopia, the specialist in savagery is in dire straits.  He does no know what to aim at.  His favorite model has disappeared or, when found, refuses to pose as expected.  The fieldworker examines his tools and finds his camera inadequate.  Most importantly, his very field of vision is blurred.  Yet he needs to come back home with a picture.  It’s pouring out there, and the mosquitoes are starting to bite.  In desperation, the baffled anthropologist burns his notes to create a moment of light, moves his face against the flame, closes his eyes and, hands grasping the camera, takes a picture of himself”

-Michel-Rolph Trouillot, 2003 (Global Transformations.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan.  Pg 24.)

Proliferating Bullshit

“Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.  Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic.  This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled – whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others – to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.  Closely related instances arise from the widespread notion conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs.  The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more sever, needless to say, for someone who believes it is his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world”

-Harry Frankfurt, 2005 (On Bullshit.  Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.)

Most Philosophers Agree…

“A lot of people, mostly people without a lot of money, say that money can’t buy everything. Especially it can’t buy happiness: people with 25 million, for example, are not perceptibly happier than people with 24; and besides, rich people are generally unhappy. Still the rich have many consolations, as Plato observed—the chief among them presumably being their money. And despite the fortitude it takes for the rich to endure their disadvantages (Rex Stout), most modern philosophers agree that money is better than poverty—“if only for financial reasons,” as Woody Allen speculates.”

-Marshall Sahlins, 2002.  (Waiting for Foucault, Still.  Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Pg 30)

Banknotes

“A descriptive analysis of banknotes is needed. The unlimited satirical force of such a book would be equaled only by its objectivity. For nowhere more naively than in these documents does capitalism display itself in solemn earnest. The innocent cupids frolicking about numbers, the goddesses holding tablets of the law, the stalwart heroes sheathing their swords before monetary units, are a world of their own; ornamenting the facade of hell.”

-Walter Benjamin’s Tax Advice, 1926 (in “One Way Street”. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926. Cambridge MA: Harvard. 1996. Pg 481.)

Books, Babies

“Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.”

-Walter Benjamin, #10 of ‘The Critics Technique in Thirteen Theses’,  1926.  (in “One Way Street”. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926.  Cambridge MA: Harvard.  1996.  Pg 460.)

Underdogs

“In the end, glorification of splendid underdogs is nothing other than glorification of the splendid system that makes them so”

-Theodor Adorno, “They, the People”, 1951 (in Minima Moralia: reflections from damages life New York, NY: Verso. 2005)