From Fliegende Blätter (1928)

 Brief Wiki gloss HERE.

Encounter with depth perception (heading-driven, packaged, focus-centring syntax code response - without labelling, can illusionary visual stimuli compare to an utterance?)

Andrea Pavan

Christopher Hitchens - Why Women Still Aren't Funny

Yes and no.

The question remains whether one can or cannot heap so much generalised characterisation upon a distinction (male/female) that is, yes, topological, but also is expressed through so many variations that both conform to and break away from those self-same typologies, and sometimes miraculously?   If Hitchens were still alive, I should suggest he find a woman whom he finds funny--and also very attractive. Such a solution solves all the problems about which he is evidently concerned, though unfortunately introducing a few others...  

The whole thing is obviously of a "promotional" nature, though interesting (maybe, I was unable to sit through the entire video, and switched it off).  Highbrow?  Not really.

Highbrow reflections from Emily Brontë (But too sober, too abstract, so as to forfeit the "highbrow" designation? Hmm. Could be. Highbrow is properly of a happy, and, very importantly, of a sociable nature; that is, by its essential character bringing people together to pursue Aristotelian goals unencumbered by distracting metaphysical excursions, Q.E.D.)

                       Lines

I die but when the grave shall press 

The heart so long endeared to thee 

When earthy cares no more distress 

And earthy joys are nought to me. 

Weep not, but think that I have past 

Before thee o'er the sea of gloom. 

Have anchored safe and rest at last 

Where tears and mouring can not come. 

'Tis I should weep to leave thee here 

On that dark ocean sailing drear 

With storms around and fears before 

And no kind light to point the shore. 

But long or short though life may be 

'Tis nothing to eternity. 

We part below to meet on high 

Where blissful ages never die.

                         ― Emily Brontë

More? Please click HERE.

Charlotte, Anne and Emily Brontë

The Shining, 1980 - a print on the wall of the Overlook Hotel reception office.

Postcard image of the print on the wall of the Overlook reception office. The original was a framed collage by Valentine Hugo titled "Surrealisme," dating from 1932; the B&W print on the wall likely came from the 1978 book What is Surrealism, which collected essays by Breton and was published by Pluto Press in 1978. 

 Why is it on the wall?

"Should we view Wittgenstein as enhancing British Philosophy, or British Philosophy as enhancing Wittgenstein?" - continued

I have received a back-channel response to my September 6 Highbrow post "Should we view Wittgenstein as enhancing British Philosophy, or British Philosophy as enhancing Wittgenstein?"  Here is the substance of that post, the back-channel response, and my subsequent remarks. 

The original post:

Should we view Wittgenstein as enhancing British Philosophy, or British Philosophy as enhancing Wittgenstein?

I support the former, though I should stipulate (specify or "spell out") that in addition to Locke and Bacon, I'd argue the "thrust" of "British Philosophy", as it were, is construed most clearly along a literary line, beginning with the Greek satirists, and from there to Robert Burton, Milton, Swift, Fielding, Peacock, Irving (Washington Irving), Poe, Hawthorne, Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain), Melville, Huxley, Orwell, Nabokov, Kubrick, and so on. "British" because it is convenient, and has some historiographic validity; though if you look at the historians and the historians of literature past fifty years, they are rather smug and reductive concerning "Whig"  (or "Whiggish") historiography, as they style it. 

As for Whiggish historiography being overly-optimistic in the face of the reality of the Human Condition?  Well, considering "Whiggish" historiography emerged from Calvinism, and small-c Calvinists like Milton, Locke, and so on, I can't for the life of me imagine much optimism or upbeat anticipation being advanced through that view of human nature. But mark this. Is it possible  that what the new historicism actually finds insufferable about Whiggish positions, is the unwelcome Whiggish--or Calvinist, both large-C and small c--habit of shining a bright light on fraud?

Which brings us back to Wittgenstein. He is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to turning on that spotlight.

The back-channel response:

The question seems fatuous to me, but also remarkably un-Wittgensteinian... W stands at a very peculiar (meant positively) juncture between German and British philosophy if (and only if) they are distinctive enough to deserve those labels at all. Two of the most enthusiastic borrowers of his ideas I know were Japanese...

My initial remarks:

Hmm. Do you mean "fatuous qua fatuous", "fatuous, as such", or "fatuous, as it were"? 

On a more serious note, is it not appropriate to review possible interdisciplinary perspectives, and uncover what might be useful--in terms of philosophic and cultural understanding--as such intersections are explored, or are you suggesting that the field of Philosophy and Literature is, erm, "Fatuous"?

 

Meanwhile, if you review what in the past fifty years the historians and literary historians have been doing in respect to the "dismissal" or "mitigation" of "whiggish" historiography (that is, a potted description of "whiggish" historiography), well, things begin to get interesting. I don't think it is at all fatuous to suggest there are ample exemplars in literature (construed along the lines of the list of authors above, as a beginning of a broader survey) that some significant and challenging questions might be raised.

My additional remarks:

"...juncture between German and British philosophy if (and only if) they are distinctive enough to deserve those labels at all." 

Compare: "Are German and English literature distinctive enough to deserve those labels at all?" 

From another direction, something might be made writing up the "German Wittgenstein" and (vs.) the "English Wittgenstein." Another, related project could be surveying the history of philosophy for antecedents, cognates and correlatives to W's thought. 

Millionaires and billionaires are not privy to the important thoughts we are examining and, importantly, recirculating, in the university, and as I might hazard to suggest, that is precisely why they have rounded us up and placed us in the university, where we won't do much harm. cf. Swift in the Preface to A Tale of a Tub. 

Traditionally, though it might not be popular today--and, as one could argue, it is merely a specimen of the English penchant toward eccentricity and enthusiasm--maybe it's the soft nature of the English aristocrat, or some foible of some faulty culture logic under-girding a nation of shopkeepers--but the phenomenon is rooted in fact: English intellectuals have traditionally enjoyed the privilege of talking "like" Swift or otherwise their aristocratic "betters", which has not been traditionally indulged in the more scientific and thus "correct" nations of Europe, where monarchs enlightened by scientific truths (moreover carefully-vetted "scientific truths" advanced by important professors) have so wonderfully kept a lid on people speaking their mind. Thankfully, these days Britain is catching up, ahem. 

Anyway, more (perhaps) persuasive (and less corrosive) than Swift's arguments are found in Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Posey, where the academic magisteria are described, well-ordered and fitted, or one might argue, and I am of the mind Sidney's advice is germane to the question of a "British" (or anyway English) philosophical "type". And while we're in that century, something might be made in a review of Elizabeth's Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, and the Golden Speech. At that time, was anyone in Europe taking like this? 

A few remarks from an historian of literature: 

British Philosophy 

"It is often maintained by historians of philosophy that England has had only one school of philosophy, or rather, that it has had none at all, for its philosophy is a perpetual protest against Scholasticism. A faith in experimental science, based upon empirical evidence of the senses, and a complementary distrust of scholastic and rationalistic a priori speculation, may be said to form the cornerstone of the English philosophical tradition. Although Swift developed no systematic philosophy--this absence, too, seems to be characteristic of the tentative and experimental English mind--a peculiarly English and to some degree Lockeian nexus of assumptions underlies one major area of his satiric technique."

 

Rejection of Mechanism in Nature 

"[Jonathan Swift strikes] at the affectation of those who, by formula and artifice, impose some rigid subjective perception upon the world and then pay honor to this graven image as truth and to themselves as its discoverers. The folly of man's refusal to see things as they really are is thus consistently translated by Swift into symbolic representations of man as a mechanism. Inflexible, blinded to external truth by his own conceit, contentious in his assumption of the infallibility of his subjective responses, man becomes a puppet in life's Punch-and-Judy show of artifice, system and self-delusion." 

Source: Bullitt, John M. Jonathan Swift and the Anatomy of Satire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1953. (124).

Finally, in response to the original post, another scholar writes: "Interesting! Two names I would be excited to see mentioned in relation to your text are Oswald Spengler and Quentin Skinner.

Etching of a Sámi drum from the Dutch edition of Johannes Schefferus’ *Lapponia* (1682).

"Made of reindeer-hide such drums were used to support divinatory, trance-like states, allowing the shaman (noaidi) to leave his body."

More?  Please click HERE.

Antony Williams - Alice falling - Oil on canvas

Mandrake Haiku

ah! ah! ah! ah! ah!

ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! ah! 

ascend please mandrake

Terry Gilliam - Storytime (1968)

Not very interesting? But it's for television, I assume. Does it "work" in that context?

Clever?

Michael Butterworth News

The website of Emanations contributor and International Authors Board member Michael Butterworth has been updated to reflect his 2026 activities, including Mr. Butterworth's work in the recently published Emanations 12:

In its twelfth annual edition Emanations contained ‘The Little Arundalean’, Part 1 of a three-part memoir of my time at St Christopher School. Due to an interest in boarding education, Emanations editor Carter Kaplan virtually commissioned me to write this, although it had always been planned to form the opening of Driven by Anger, the new book length memoir above mentioned. Parts 1 and 2 are scheduled to appear in Emanations #13 and #14.

‘The Little Arundalean’ and its sequels are an exercise of memory in which I try to capture the boarding school St Christopher, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, as it was in 1957 when I first attended sixty-six years ago, and an attempt to describe how its then radical progressive co-educational teaching methods saved me from an unhappy fate in the ‘Army-style’ orthodox school system of the time.

I boarded there for six years from the age of ten. ‘St Chris’ was an unusual school even for its time. Founded in 1915 by Theosophists but Quaker-run when I attended, the school was not as liberal as Summerhill – lessons were compulsory – but it had a democratic foundation, was inclusive of the voice of its pupils, and over the years became the incubator of many who went on to be prominent creatives – Michael Winner, Jenny Diski, Paul Hamlyn, Elizabeth Jenkins, Prince Rupert Zu Loewenstein, to name a few.

From an artistic perspective there may be an interesting conjecture to make. After leaving school and becoming a contributor to New Worlds, Charles Platt then became the magazine’s designer (and finally its editor) and brought with him a certain gestalt. During the later large-format phase of New Worlds he hired onto the team a fellow St Christophean, the late author-designer Nigel Francis (Simon Francis as he became), to help cope with the increased workload. St Chris had a very particular atmosphere, and it could be said that with three practitioners, including me, having been drawn from it, the UK New Wave of Science Fiction owed something to its culture. To an old St Christophean like me, the magazine’s 1967-70 heyday stylistically as a whole is partly infused with the school’s unmistakable voice, at least the voice of St Chris as it was during our time there.

 Click HERE (or the photo of Mr Butterworth) to visit the site.  

 

Should we view Wittgenstein as enhancing British Philosophy, or British Philosophy as enhancing Wittgenstein?

Should we view Wittgenstein as enhancing British Philosophy, or British Philosophy as enhancing Wittgenstein? 

I support the former, though I should stipulate (specify or "spell out") that in addition to Locke and Bacon, I'd argue the "thrust" of "British Philosophy", as it were, is construed most clearly along a literary line, beginning with the Greek satirists, and from there to Robert Burton, Milton, Swift, Fielding, Peacock, Irving (Washington Irving), Poe, Hawthorne, Samuel Clemons (Mark Twain), Melville, Huxley, Orwell, Nabokov, Kubrick, and so on. "British" because it is convenient, and has some historiographic validity; though if you look at the historians and the historians of literature past fifty years, they are rather smug and reductive concerning "Whig"  (or "Whiggish") historiography, as they style it. 

As for Whigigish historiography being overly-optimistic in the face of the reality of the Human Condition?  Well, considering "Whiggish" historiography emerged from Calvinism, and small-c Calvinists like Milton, Locke, and so on, I can't for the life of me imagine much optimism or upbeat anticipation being advanced through that view of human nature. But mark this. Is it possible  that what the new historicism actually finds insufferable about Whiggish positions, is the unwelcome Whiggish--or Calvinist, both large-C and small c--habit of shining a bright light on fraud?

Which brings us back to Wittgenstein. He is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to turning on that spotlight.

Subject continued HERE

The Wittgenstein family in Vienna, Summer 1917, with Kurt (furthest left) and Ludwig (furthest right) in officers' uniforms

"Satirical and Ironic Dissolutions of Art: Duchamp's Synthesis" by P. Winston Fettner

"From a Hegelian perspective, Duchamp’s place in the development of the contemporary involves a synthesis of the satiric and ironic modes of art’s previous moments of dissolution. A Hegelian understanding of satire and irony, which are the specific forms taken by the dissolution of Classical and Christian art, will allow us to grasp historically, as a replaying and a synthesis of art’s previous dissolutions, the meaning of the peculiar narcissism, hermeticism and emptiness that afflict the contemporary artworld. That reading reworks the theme of art’s dissolution into an analytic tool, and saves the concept of “the end of art” from being a mere slogan, one charged with nostalgia and despair, but of little value as a term of art-historical and aesthetic understanding."

More HERE

Duchamp leaving with his rejected painting by André Raffray

Yes, "neatly done." Shows "craft." But is it highbrow? Is the "theological" title a gimmick? Must a theological title necessitate theological content? Must a theological title necessitate the statement of theological propositions(s)? Or can a theological "utterance" suffice, and to what purpose? Does this purpose attend the title, or does the title attend the purpose? Is it exploitative? Outside of seeking answers to these questions, I can hardly stand to look at this painting for more than fifteen seconds.

La chute de l'ange ~ The Fall of the Angel by Max Ernst, ca1923 Oil on canvas 130,8 cm x 129,8 cm Private collection

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." - Ludwig Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations

Source

"What was the source of the stranger's incredible power?" is not a prose poem

Badger books, 1964

("'Answer: unknown' is a prose poem, but why?" is a prose poem, but why?)

"Teaching Was Fine Until We Fixed It: some thoughts on pedagogy..." by Secret Academic

Something happened at Cambridge recently. You may have noticed. We have, naturally, developed entire academic disciplines devoted to understanding education. Cambridge even had a Professor of Sociology of Education. Look how well that turned out. 

Anyway. It reminded me of something I’ve known for years. We have ruined education. And, while we’re at it, we’ve done a fairly decent job of ruining the students as well. Not because students suddenly became stupid. Or lazy. Or incapable of independent thought. Well … some did. But they didn't manage this entirely on their own. 

Universities created this. The pedagogues helped. The virtuous academics cheered them on. Management put it into a framework. And between them, they produced an education system so obsessed with support, outcomes, satisfaction, accessibility and success that they gradually removed many of the things education actually requires. Difficulty. Uncertainty. Failure. Disagreement. The possibility that you might have to work something out for yourself. Quite an achievement, really. 

We now have pedagogy. Innovative pedagogy. Inclusive pedagogy. Critical pedagogy. Transformative pedagogy. Student-centred pedagogy. Probably trauma-informed pedagogy...

 More HERE

Source image: Adobe Stock

Musing out loud

John Schoenherr, 1962

One of the structures of Casa Sperimentale near Rome, photo Oliver Astrologo

Sr.N4 Hovercraft photo essay

Click here for the Wikipedia Article on the SR.N4

Perpareing for the Highbrow analysis of Thomas Jefferson's Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

We shall begin our consideration of the law in a week or so. To get the most out of that analysis, please review the following Highbrow posts:

Moral Philosophy in Context

The Declaration of Independence

Philosophical Remarks on the Declaration of Independence: Sections 1 & 2

Philosophical Remarks on the Declaration of Independence: Sections 3, 4 & 5

Declaration of Independence, the deleted passage

American Political Philosophy - The Basics (a variety of related discussions)

Questions to consider:

What are the relationship among St. Thomas Aquinas's concepts (or are they simply accurate descriptions?) of Revealed Theology and Natural Theology and Natural Law?

What  are the political and legal ramifications of considering human beings to be "God's Property" (via John Locke, by way of an exemplar of argumentation along these lines)?

What constitutes a "False Religion" in the Virginia Act of Religious Freedom, according to Jefferson?  

Do "False Religions" under Jefferson's definitions have any claim to protections, exceptions, emoluments, privileges or even a place in American society, law, and culture?

Until we return to this topic, Highbrow posts will continue as usual, exploring the frontiers of ephemera, aesthetic discriminations, and the activity of dispelling Philosophical Credulousness through the clarification of grammar.

Aristotle studying in his youth

A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom