skandalon

The man who works recognizes his own product in the World that has actually been transformed by his work: he recognizes himself in it, he sees in it his own human reality, in it he discovers and reveals to others the objective reality of his humanity, of the originally abstract and purely subjective idea he has of himself. By this act of finding itself by itself, then, the [working] consciousness becomes its own meaning-or-will; and this happens precisely in work, in which it seemed to be alien meaning-or-will.

✖ Via Introduction to the Reading of Hegel by Alexandre Kojève, Cornell University Press, [1947]1980, p. 27

Here’s the original French version:

L’homme qui travaille reconnaît dans le Monde effectivement transformé par son travail sa propre œuvre: il s’y reconnaît soi-même; il y voit sa propre réalité humaine; il y découvre et il révèle aux autres la réalité objective de son humanité, de l’idée d’abord abstraite et purement subjective qu’il se fait de lui-même.] Par cet acte-de-se-retrouver soi-même par soi-même, la Conscience [travaillante] devient donc sens-ou-volonté propre; et elle le devient précisément dans le travail, où elle ne semblait être que sens-ou-volonté étranger. (Introduction à la lecture de Hegel, éd. Gallimard, Paris, 1947, p. 31)

A complete PDF copy of this book is available online. A French version of the ‘Introduction’ of this book is available here.

• Oct 02, 2010 link notes tagged: technology work world production subjectivity other self alienation slave master Hegel Kojève philosophy consumption consumer capitalism creation art

academia phd knowledge epistemology self humor visualization guide big_picture boundaries

✖ Via Matt Might: “The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.”, slide no 10 [PDF, French version]

Every fall, I explain to a fresh batch of Ph.D. students what a Ph.D. is. It’s hard to describe it in words. So, I use pictures. Read below for the illustrated guide to a Ph.D. (read on)

Matt Might is assistant professor at the University of Utah’s School of Computing.

First spotted via Stüff Stuff

• Aug 14, 2010 link notes tagged: academia PhD knowledge epistemology self humor visualization guide big picture boundaries

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed but not in despair.

✖ Via Bible, 2 Corinthians 4:8:

As quoted in the third installment of Errol Morris’ essay on anosognosia (published in The New York Times). Part 3 is all about the debilitating stroke President Woodrow Wilson suffered on October 1919 and his subsequent refusal to acknowledge that there was something wrong with him. Morris tells the story:

For Levin, Wilson’s inability to perceive his own incapacity had truly devastating consequences for the nation and world he helped to lead. Perhaps even more troublingly, the reaction to Wilson’s anosognosia on the part of his close associates raises the possibility of an even more problematic impairment — a social anosognosia. Can a group of people, perhaps even society at large, devolve into a state of destructive cluelessness?

Wilson expressed it best of all. On hearing the news of the Senate vote — essentially, the end of the League fight — Wilson asked Grayson to read a verse from the Bible, 2 Corinthians 4:8:
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed but not in despair.
Wilson then said, “If I were not a Christian, I think I should go mad, but my faith in God holds me to the belief that He is in some way working out his plan through human perversity and mistakes.”[52]

Amen. (more)

• Jun 28, 2010 link notes tagged: communication cognitive bias cognition anosognosia knowledge consciousness society critic despair anxiety history self pathology incapacity representation collective social community

The things that made him who he was could hardly be identified much less converted to data, the things that lived and milled in his body, everywhere, random, riotous, billions of trillions, in the neurons and peptides, the throbbing temple vein, in the veer of his libidinous intellect. So much come and gone, this is who he was, the lost taste of milk licked from his mother’s breast, the stuff he sneezes when he sneezes, this is him, and how a person becomes the reflections he sees in a dusty window when he walks by. He’d come to know himself, untranslatably, through his pain. He felt so tired now. His hard-gotten grip on the world, material things, great things, his memories true and false, the vague malaise of winter twilights, untransferable, the pale nights when his identity flattens for lack of sleep, the small wart he feels on his thigh every time he showers, all him, and how the soap he uses, the smell and feel of the concave bar make him who he is because he names the fragrance, amandine, and the hang of his cock, untransferable, and his strangely achy knee, the click in his knee when he bends it, all him, and so much else that’s not convertible to some high sublime, the technology of mind-without-end.

✖ Via Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, New York: Scribner, 2003, p. 207-208

Let’s say for the moment that this quote relate to the general problem of the representation of the self: of the innumerable and diverse experiences I had, in my lifetime, how and under which conditions am I able to elaborate a stable representation of myself. Or, to put it in other words : How did I came up with a sense of my own identity?

Compare it with David Hume’s thoughts on mankind, Derrida’s view on the grammar of dreams (after Freud), who Pablo Neruda think he is (along with an excerpt from Paul Valery’s Mr. Teste), Quadrophenia, and finally the problem of translation from the perspective of media theorist Friedrich A. Kittler.

Previously on Skandalon: Don DeLillo

• Jun 18, 2010 link notes tagged: author book novel art technology communication translation computer machine DeLillo Cosmopolis identity self network event effect reality life subject subjectivity apparatus node

I have become an enigma to myself. So said Saint-Augustine. And herein lies my sickness.

✖ Via Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, New York: Scribner, 2003, p. 189

The reference is Saint-Augustine’s Confessions, book X, chap. 33 (§50) :

“But do you hear me, O Lord, my God: look upon me and see, have mercy and heal me, for in your eyes I have become an enigma to myself, and herein lies my sickness.” (google books preview)

Previously on Skandalon: Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo

• Jun 13, 2010 link notes tagged: art,n ovel book author DeLillo Cosmopolis enigma confusion anxiety identity knowledge self becoming Saint-Augustine

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

✖ Via The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant, 1926, Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VII: Ethics and the Nature of Happiness [Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, p. 76]

The quote is MISATTRIBUTED to Aristotle:

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; ‘these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions’; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: ‘the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life… for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy’”.

The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7. The misattribution is from taking Durant’s summation of Aristotle’s ideas as being the words of Aristotle himself. (Wikiquote)

The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant on Google Books (no preview available) and on Amazon.

Spotted in Tumblr’s Radar. It was reblogged from Tomorrow Museum.

• May 26, 2010 link notes tagged: philosophy self identity action repetition Aristotle book author

Dans le passage conclusif de sa thèse, consacré à la recherche d’une définition de l’acte éthique, Simondon évoque ce qui en serait le revers, et qu’il nomme « l’acte fou ». L’acte fou est l’acte monadique, qui consiste en lui-même, incapable de réticuler, incapable d’étalement transductif. « L’acte en lequel il n’y a plus [un] indice de la totalité et de la possibilité des autres actes […], l’acte qui ne reçoit pas cette mesure à la fois activante et inhibitrice venant du réseau des autres actes est l’acte fou, en un certain sens identique à l’acte parfait. […] Cet acte fou n’a plus qu’une normativité interne ; il consiste en lui-même et s’entretient dans le vertige de son existence itérative » (IGPB, 247). L’acte éthique, à l’inverse, est celui qui, fondamentalement, inconsiste, c’est-à-dire est à même de faire réseau avec d’autres actes. « L’acte qui est plus qu’unité, qui ne peut résider et consister seulement en lui-même, mais qui réside aussi et s’accomplit en une infinité d’autres actes, est celui dont la relation aux autres est signification, possède valeur d’information »

✖ Via “L’Acte Fou” by Bernard Aspe & Muriel Combes, Multitudes 4/2004 (no 18), p. 63-71.

Muriel Combes wrote Simondon. Individu et collectivité. Pour une philosophie du transindividuel in 1999. You can read it online (French only). Learn more about Gilbert Simondon on Wikipedia.

• May 17, 2010 link notes reblogged from leftoverfest [via] tagged: technology philosophy lost loser ethic network others self destruction end mean Simondon

In March 2003, Rumsfeld engaged in a little bit of amateur philosophizing about the relationship between the known and the unknown: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.” What he forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the “unknown knowns,” the things we don’t know that we know-which is precisely, the Freudian unconscious, the “knowledge which doesn’t know itself,” as Lacan used to say. If Rumsfeld thinks that the main dangers in the confrontation with Iraq were the “unknown unknowns,” that is, the threats from Saddam whose nature we cannot even suspect, then the Abu Ghraib scandal shows that the main dangers lie in the “unknown knowns” - the disavowed beliefs, suppositions and obscene practices we pretend not to know about, even though they form the background of our public values. Thus, Bush was wrong. What we get when we see the photos of humiliated Iraqi prisoners is precisely a direct insight into “American values,” into the core of an obscene enjoyment that sustains the American way of life.

✖ Via “What Rumsfeld Doesn’t Know That He Knows About Abu Ghraib” by Slavoj Zizek, May 21st, 2004

First heard of this text via Errol Morris Twitter account. Errol Morris is still thinking about the Dunning-Kruger effect.

• May 08, 2010 link notes tagged: Agamben America Freud Iraq United-States communication homo sacer ignorance knowledge life philosophy science self torture unconscious value zombie cognitive bias Dunning-Kruger

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my dashing being,
out comes the same old lazy self,
and so I never know just who I am,
nor how many I am, nor who we will be being.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

✖ Via “We Are Many” by Pablo Neruda, in We Are Many (poems), translated by Alastair Reid, Cape Goliard Press, 1967, Grossman (New York, NY), 1968.

More of Neruda’s poems online over at PoemHunter.com

Compare with An Evening With Mr. Teste by Paul Valery (French poet, essayist and philosopher):

“Stupidity is not my strong point. I have seen many persons; I have visited several nation; I have taken part in divers enterprises without affecting them; I have eaten nearly everyday; I have tampered with women. I now recall several hundred faces, two or three great events, and perhaps the substance of twenty books. I have not retained the best nor the worst of these things. What could stick, did.
This bit of arithmetic spares me surprise at getting old. I could also add up the victorious moments of my mind, and imagine them joined and soldered, composing a happy life… But I think I have always been a good judge of myself. I have rarely lost sight of myself; I have detested, and adored myself―and so, we have grown old together.

(from the Selected Writings of Paul Valery, tr. byJackson Mathews, New Directions Publishing, 1964, p. 236)

See also The Who’s album Quadrophenia

• Jan 24, 2010 link notes tagged: art experience identity individu individuation life philosophy poem poet self subject representation

Without question, the most socially and economically significant technological event of the last quarter-century has been the invention of the surrogate. As this paper will show, never before in human history has the consumer been offered a product capable of delivering such a dramatic personal change. The ramifications of the surrogate’s rapid assimilation into everyday living can be witnessed in virtually every facet of culture, particularly in the United States where in the twenty years since their introduction the portion of the adult population that either owns or has operated a surrogate has risen to an astounding 92%. With surrogate technology in a constant state of refinement, there is no evidence to suggest this trend will be reversed. The improvements and transformations enjoyed by the operating public are here to stay, which leaves us with the question: What, if anything, remains to be overcome?

✖ Via aphelis : Paradise Found. Possibility and fullfilment in the age of the surrogate. Full paper in PDF.

” “Paradise found…” is a fictional paper appearing in the first volume of the comic book series The Surogates, created and written by Robert Venditti. The film was recently adapted into a film by Jonathan Mostow, starring Bruce Willis.”

Previously on SKandalon.

• Sep 25, 2009 link notes [via] tagged: technology art comic film movie future science fiction science virtual cybernetic individuation self man body evolution double avatar surrogate

Whether The Surrogates is about the positive or negative aspects of technology’s rapid growth is a question for each individual reader. Personally, I don’t know where the line is drawn between good advancements and bad. To reflect that, I tried to populate the story with characters that represent both sides of the surrogate issue. Some are for surrogates and some are against them, and it’s the up to the reader to decide which group is more sympathetic.

✖ Via Pop Thought: “THE SURROGATES An interview with writer Robert Venditti” by Alex Ness (May 20th, 2005)

Regarding the upcomming film The Surrogates directed by Jonathan Mostow and adapted from a comic book series created and written by Robert Venditti.

• Sep 24, 2009 link notes tagged: art communication technology film movie comic future science fiction science surrogate avatar virtual virtuality self double man evolution

But setting aside some metaphysicians of this kind, I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.

✖ Via A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume, I, 4, iv, §4.

• Mar 09, 2009 link notes [via] tagged: book philosophy writer identity self network event life representation