Month: December 2020

• Counterfactualities?

  Remember Plato’s Cave allegory? In his Republic he describes a scenario in which some people have spent their lives chained in a cave so they can only see the wall in front of them. There is a fire behind them that casts shadows on the wall that they have no way of knowing are only […]

  gozzter

  December 30, 2020

  Uncategorized

  Aeon.co, Arthur Schopenhauer, counterfactuals, depression, depressive realism, depressogenic thoughts, Joseph Forgas, Julie Reshe, Martin Heidegger, Plato’s Cave Allegory, psychotherapy, Sigmund Freud, University of Tyumen in Siberia

• Imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown

  The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination.            […]

  gozzter

  December 23, 2020

  Uncategorized

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aeon.co, art, biosemantics, cave art, Columbia College, counterfactuals, imagination, language, Mark Johnson, metaphor, poetry, Richard III, Shakespeare, Stephen T Asma, task grammar, University of Oregon

• Does the love of heaven make one heavenly?

  Why do find myself so attracted to articles about religion? I am not an adherent -religion does not stick to me- nor am I tempted to take the famous wager of the 17th century philosopher, Pascal: dare to live life as if God exists, because you’ve got nothing to lose if He doesn’t, and everything […]

  gozzter

  December 16, 2020

  Uncategorized

  Alain de Botton, BBC Future, Catholicism, Charon, Christianity, Constantine, Edict of Milan, Edict of Thessalonica, God, Hinduism, Karl Marx, Linda Woodhead, Pascal’s Wager, polytheism, religion, Sigmund Freud, Sumit Paul-Choudhury, the River Styx, Theodosius, University of Lancaster, Voltaire

• Is the thing translated still the thing?

  When I was a student at University, translated Japanese Haiku poetry was all the rage; it seemed to capture the Zeitgeist of the generation to which I had been assigned. I was swept along with others by the simple nature images, but -much like the sonnet, I suppose- I failed to realize how highly structured […]

  gozzter

  December 9, 2020

  Uncategorized

  Aeon.co, Alison Anderson, Haiku, literature, Mark Polizzotti, metaphrase, Muriel Barbery, paraphrase, poetry, Rilke, Rumi, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translation, translators

• To hold, as it were, a mirror up to Nature

  Who am I? No, really -where do I stop and something else begins? That’s not really as silly a question as it may first appear. Consider, for example, my need to remember something -an address, say. One method is to internalize it -encode it somehow in my brain, I suppose- but another, no less effective, […]

  gozzter

  December 2, 2020

  Uncategorized

  Aeon.co, Alan Watts, aphids, bacteria, boundaries, Derek Skillings, growth, identity, individuals, individuation, microbiome, reproduction, Shakespeare, skin, symbiosis, University of Pennsylvania