updated_at,id,text,theme,metaphor,work_id,reviewed_on,provenance,created_at,comments,context,dictionary
2009-09-14 19:44:58 UTC,15876,"The great Mr. Locke, and several other ingenious philosophers, have represented the human intellect, antecedent to its intercourse with external objects, as a tabula rasa, or a substance capable of receiving any impressions, but upon which no original impressions of any kind are stamped. Agreeable to this hypothesis, the soul, while destitute of that knowledge we acquire by experience and observation, is a mere passive being, having no natural principles of action, no power of chusing or refusing, but entirely subjected to receive the first impressions that are made upon it, without the capacity of discovering whether they are proper or improper, whether they tend to its preservation of destruction.
(p. 313)",Blank Slate,"""The great Mr. Locke, and several other ingenious philosophers, have represented the human intellect, antecedent to its intercourse with external objects, as a tabula rasa, or a substance capable of receiving any impressions, but upon which no original impressions of any kind are stamped.""",5968,,"Searching ""tabula rasa"" in ECCO",2006-10-15 00:00:00 UTC,"",Part I. Origin of Selfishness,Writing
2014-05-20 17:09:24 UTC,16026,"These sudden eruptions of the passions of the multitude, spread, like the lava of a volcano, throughout all France, nor could men of correct judgment, who aimed only at the reform of abuses, and a renovation in all the departments, check the fury of the torrent. This confusion and terror within, and an army without, sent on by the combined despots of Europe, with the professed design of subjecting the nation, and re-establishing the monarchy of France, gave an opportunity to ambitious, unprincipled, corrupt, and ignorant men, to come forward, under pretence of supporting the rights and liberties of mankind, without any views but those of disorder and disorganization. Thus in the midst of tumult and confusion, was indulged every vicious propensity, peculation, revenge, and all the black passions of the soul. The guillotine was glutted with the blood of innocent victims, while the rapidity of execution, and their jealousy of each other, involved the most guilty, and cut down many of the blackest miscreants, as well as the most virtuous characters in the nation.
(III.xxxi, p. 407; p. 682-3 in OLL edition)","","""These sudden eruptions of the passions of the multitude, spread, like the lava of a volcano, throughout all France, nor could men of correct judgment, who aimed only at reform of abuses, and a renovation in all the departments, check the fury of the torrent.""",6042,,"Reading a chapter draft of Matt Garrett's dissertation (Chapt 1, p. 27); now published, see Episodic Poetics (Oxford UP, 2014), p. 38.",2006-03-02 00:00:00 UTC,"•INTEREST. Should search ""lava"" and ""volcano."" I bet these react to the historical (natural) environment more than many of my other metaphors. ","Volume III, chapter xxxi",""
2009-09-14 19:45:40 UTC,16083,"The skull proper has become the map, on which, just as an atlas, the regions and localities are circumscribed in which man as in a tiny world, is decribed. Nowadays one travels around man's skull as if on a globe, to seek and discover places where our perceptions, desires, inclinations, and mental abilities are housed.","","""The skull proper has become the map, on which, just as an atlas, the regions and localities are circumscribed in which man as in a tiny world, is decribed. """,6075,,"Reading Albano, Caterina's ""Seeing the Mind: Considerations on Visual Metaphors of the Mind in Western Thought (16th-18th Centuries).""",2006-05-11 00:00:00 UTC,•From the Dutch.,Presumably Albano's translation,""
2009-09-14 19:45:40 UTC,16084,"The skull proper has become the map, on which, just as an atlas, the regions and localities are circumscribed in which man as in a tiny world, is decribed. Nowadays one travels around man's skull as if on a globe, to seek and discover places where our perceptions, desires, inclinations, and mental abilities are housed.","","""Nowadays one travels around man's skull as if on a globe, to seek and discover places where our perceptions, desires, inclinations, and mental abilities are housed.""",6075,,"Reading Albano, Caterina's ""Seeing the Mind: Considerations on Visual Metaphors of the Mind in Western Thought (16th-18th Centuries).""",2006-05-11 00:00:00 UTC,"",Presumably Albano's translation,""
2011-06-10 15:44:03 UTC,16086,"Instead of the inner life and self-movement of its existence, this kind of simple determinateness of intuition--which means here sense-knowledge--is predicated in accordance with a superficial analogy, and this external, empty application of the formula is called a 'construction'. This formalism is just like any other. What a dullard a man must be who could not be taught in a quarter of an hour the theory that there are asthenic, sthenic, and indirectly asthenic diseases, and as many modes of treatment; and, since till quite recently such instruction sufficed, who could not hope to be transformed in this short space of time from an empirical into a theoretical physician? The formalism of such a 'Philosophy of Nature' teaches, say, that the Understanding is Electricity, or the Animal is Nitrogen, or that they are the equivalent of the South or North Pole, etc., or represent it--whether all this is expressed as baldly as here or even concocted with more terminology--and confronted with such a power which brings together things that appear to lie far apart, and with the violence suffered by the passive things of sense through such association, and which imparts to them the Notion's semblance but saves itself the trouble of doing the main thing, viz. expressing the Notion itself or the meaning of the sensuous representation--confronted with all this, the untutored mind may be filled with admiration and astonishment, and may venerate in it the profound work of genius. It may be delighted, too, with the clarity of such characterizations, since these replace the abstract Notion with something that can be intuitively apprehended, and so made more pleasing; and it may congratulate itself on feeling a kinship of soul with such a splendid performance. The knack of this kind of wisdom is as quickly learned as it is easy to practise; once familiar, the repetition of it becomes as insufferable as the repetition of a conjuring trick already seen through. The instrument of this monotonous formalism is no more difficult to handle than a painter's palette having only two colours, say red and green, the one for colouring the surface when a historical scene is wanted, the other for landscapes. It would be hard to decide which is greater in all this, the casual ease with which everything in heaven and on earth and under the earth is coated with this broth of colour, or the conceit regarding the excellence of this universal recipe: each supports the other. What results from this method of labelling all that is in heaven and earth with the few determinations of the general schema, and pigeonholing everything in this way, is nothing less than a 'report clear as noonday' on the universe as an organism, viz. a synoptic table like a skeleton with scraps of paper stuck all over it, or like the rows of closed and labelled boxes in a grocer's stall. It is as easy to read off as either of these; and just as all the flesh and blood has been stripped from this skeleton, and the no longer living 'essence' [Sache] has been packed away in the boxes, so in the report the living essence of the matter [Wesen der Sache] has been stripped away or boxed up dead. We have already remarked that this way of thinking at the same time culminates in a style of painting that is absolutely monochromatic; for it is ashamed of its schematic distinctions, these products of reflection, and submerges them all in the void of the Absolute, from which pure identity, formless whiteness, is produced. This monochromatic character of the schema and its lifeless determinations, this absolute identity, and the transition from one to the other, are all equally products of the lifeless Understanding and external cognition.
(§51, pp. 30-1)","","""The formalism of such a 'Philosophy of Nature' teaches, say, that the Understanding is Electricity, or the Animal is Nitrogen, or that they are the equivalent of the South or North Pole, etc., or represent it.""",6077,,Reading for Philosophy and Literature group,2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"• Hegel takes shots at Schelling's Naturphilosophie. Note that Hegel doesn't call this metaphor, as I would. It's ""superficial analogy.""",Preface,""
2013-06-11 21:09:36 UTC,16087,"The task of leading the individual from his uneducated standpoint to knowledge had to be seen in its universal sense, just as it was the universal individual, self-conscious Spirit, whose formative education had to be studied. As regards the relation between them, every moment, as it gains concrete form and a shape of its own, displays itself in the universal individual. The single individual is incomplete Spirit, a concrete shape in whose whole existence one determinateness predominates, the others being present only in blurred outline. In a Spirit that is more advanced than another, the lower concrete existence has been reduced to an inconspicuous moment; what used to be the important thing is now but a trace; its pattern is shrouded to become a mere shadowy outline. The individual whose substance is the more advanced Spirit runs through this past just as one who takes up a higher science goes through the preparatory studies he has long since absorbed, in order to bring their content to mind: he recalls them to the inward eye, but has no lasting interest in them. The single individual must also pass through the formative stages of universal Spirit so far as their content is concerned, but as shapes which Spirit has already left behind, as stages on a way that has been made level with toil. Thus, as far as factual information is concerned, we find that what in former ages engaged the attention of men of mature mind, has been reduced to the level of facts, exercises, and even games for children; and, in the child's progress through school, we shall recognize the history of the cultural development of the world traced, as it were, in a silhouette. This past existence is the already acquired property of universal Spirit which constitutes the Substance of the individual, and hence appears externally to him as his inorganic nature. In this respect formative education, regarded from the side of the individual, consists in his acquiring what thus lies at hand, devouring his inorganic nature, and taking possession of it for himself. But, regarded from the side of universal Spirit as substance, this is nothing but its own acquisition of self-consciousness, the bringing-about of its own becoming and reflection into itself.
(§28, pp. 16-17)",Mind's Eye,"""The individual whose substance is the more advanced Spirit runs through this past just as one who takes up a higher science goes through the preparatory studies he has long since absorbed, in order to bring their content to mind: he recalls them to the inward eye, but has no lasting interest in them.""",6077,2011-06-10,Past Masters; Reading for Philosophy and Literature group,2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,Spirit runs through its past as a student reviews fundamentals before ascending to a higher discipline,Preface,Eye
2011-12-02 15:59:40 UTC,17245,"To this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in which without any other discipline than that of our daily life we are fitted to take delight, the Poet principally directs his attention. He considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting qualities of nature. And thus the Poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure which accompanies him through the whole course of his studies, converses with general nature with affections akin to those, which, through labour and length of time, the Man of Science has raised up in himself, by conversing with those particular parts of nature which are the objects of his studies. The knowledge both of the Poet and the Man of Science is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and unalienable inheritance; the other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow-beings. The Man of Science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the Poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science. Emphatically may it be said of the Poet, as Shakespeare hath said of man, ""that he looks before and after."" He is the rock of defence of human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying every where with him relationship and love. In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs, in spite of things silently gone out of mind and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. The objects of the Poet's thoughts are every where; though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge -- it is as immortal as the heart of man. If the labours of men of Science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will sleep then no more than at present, but he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of Science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the Science itself. The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective Sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now called Science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man. -- It is not, then, to be supposed that any one, who holds that sublime notion of Poetry which I have attempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavour to excite admiration of himself by arts, the necessity of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed meanness of his subject.
(pp. xxxvi-xxxix)","","""He considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature.""",6480,2011-12-02,Reading,2009-02-10 00:00:00 UTC,"",Preface,Optics
2010-07-02 06:02:07 UTC,17922,"The brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile.
Le cerveau sécrète la pensée comme le foie sécrète la bile.","","""The brain secretes thought like the liver secretes bile.""",6731,,Reading William James,2010-07-02 05:58:31 UTC,REVISIT and fill out context.,"",""
2012-09-15 15:14:20 UTC,19924,"Dorriforth is introduced as a Roman priest of a lofty mind, generous, and endued with strong sensibilities, but having in his disposition much of sternness and inflexibility. His being in priest's orders presents an apparently insurmountable obstacle to his marriage; but it is got over, without violating probability, by his becoming heir to a title and estate, and on that account receiving a dispensation from his vows. Though slow to entertain thoughts of love, as soon as he perceives the partiality of his ward, it enters his breast like a torrent when the flood-gates are opened. The perplexities in which he is involved by Miss Milner's gay unthinking conduct bring them to the very brink of separating for ever; and very few scenes in any novel have a finer effect than the intended parting of the lovers, and their sudden, immediate, unexpected marriage.
(i-ii)","","""Though slow to entertain thoughts of love, as soon as he perceives the partiality of his ward, it enters his breast like a torrent when the flood-gates are opened.""",7308,,Reading in Google Books,2012-09-15 15:14:20 UTC,"","",""
2016-10-03 20:59:57 UTC,24965,"Qu'il fasse beau, qu'il fasse laid, c'est mon habitude d'aller sur les cinq heures du soir me promener au Palais-Royal. C'est moi qu'on voit, toujours seul, rêvant sur le banc d'Argenson. Je m'entretiens avec moi-même de politique, d'amour, de goût ou de philosophie. J'abandonne mon esprit à tout son libertinage. Je le laisse maître de suivre la première idée sage ou folle qui se présente, comme on voit dans l'allée de Foy nos jeunes dissolus marcher sur les pas d'une courtisane à l'air éventé, au visage riant, à l'oeil vif, au nez retroussé, quitter celle-ci pour une autre, les attaquant toutes et ne s'attachant à aucune. Mes pensées, ce sont mes catins.
(pp. 41-2)
[Rain or shine, it is my regular habit every day about five to go and take a walk around Palais Royal. I can be seen, all by myself, dreaming on D'Argenson's bench. I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to follow any idea, wise or mad, that may come uppermost; I chase it as do our young libertines along Foy's Walk, when they are on the track of a courtesan whose mien is giddy and face smiling, whose nose turns up. The youth drops one and picks up another, pursuing all and clinging to none: my ideas are my trollops.
(p. 9 in Barzun and Bowen)]
","","""J'abandonne mon esprit à tout son libertinage. Je le laisse maître de suivre la première idée sage ou folle qui se présente, comme on voit dans l'allée de Foy nos jeunes dissolus marcher sur les pas d'une courtisane à l'air éventé, au visage riant, à l'oeil vif, au nez retroussé, quitter celle-ci pour une autre, les attaquant toutes et ne s'attachant à aucune. Mes pensées, ce sont mes catins [I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to follow any idea, wise or mad, that may come uppermost; I chase it as do our young libertines along Foy's Walk, when they are on the track of a courtesan whose mien is giddy and face smiling, whose nose turns up. The youth drops one and picks up another, pursuing all and clinging to none: my ideas are my trollops].""",8174,,"Natalie Phillips, Distraction (Baltimore: JHUP, 2016), 7.",2016-10-03 20:58:39 UTC,"","",""