In Conversations with Goethe With Johann Peter Eckermann, Goethe says, People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us and goes on to the end. What can we call our own except energy, strength, and will? If I could give anContinue reading “Goethe On The Artist’s Supposed ‘Originality’”
Tag Archives: Goethe
‘Prison Literature: Constraints And Creativity’ Up At Three Quarks Daily
My essay, ‘Prison Literature: Constraint and Creativity,’ is up at Three Quarks Daily. Here is an introduction/abstract: In his Introduction to Hegel’s Metaphysics (University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp 30-31), Ivan Soll attributes “great sociological and psychological insight” to Hegel in ascribing to him the insight that “the frustration of the freedom of act results in the search ofContinue reading “‘Prison Literature: Constraints And Creativity’ Up At Three Quarks Daily”
Blade Runner 2049: Our Slaves Will Set Us Free
Blade Runner 2049 is a provocative visual and aural treat. It sparked many thoughts, two of which I make note of here; the relationship between the two should be apparent. What is the research project called ‘artificial intelligence’ trying to do? Is it trying to make machines that can do the things which, if doneContinue reading “Blade Runner 2049: Our Slaves Will Set Us Free”
Goethe On The ‘Inexhaustible’ Poet
In Marx’s Concept of Man, Erich Fromm credits Goethe as having “developed the idea of man’s productivity into a central point of his philosophical thinking….all decaying cultures are characterized by the tendency for pure subjectivity, while all progressive periods try to grasp the world as it is, by one’s own subjectivity, but not as separate fromContinue reading “Goethe On The ‘Inexhaustible’ Poet”
Irène Nèmirovsky On The Failure To Recognize Failure
In The Fires of Autumn (Vintage International, New York, 2015, p. 186) Irène Nèmirovsky writes: Mankind can only easily get used to happiness and success. When it comes to failure, human nature puts up insurmountable barriers of hope. The sense of despair has to remove those barriers one by one, and only then does penetrate to theContinue reading “Irène Nèmirovsky On The Failure To Recognize Failure”
Gramsci And Nietzsche As Philosophers Of Culture
In ‘Socialism and Culture’ (reprinted in The Gramsci Reader, Selected Writings 1916-1935, David Forgacs ed., New York University Press, 2000) Antonio Gramsci writes: We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopaedic knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts,Continue reading “Gramsci And Nietzsche As Philosophers Of Culture”
Kundera On Virtuous and ‘Timid’ Centers
In Immortality, (HarperCollins, New York, 1992, pp. 75) Milan Kundera writes: Goethe: the great center. Not the center in the sense of a timid point that carefully avoids extremes, no, a firm center that holds both extremes in a remarkable balance… There is something Nietzschean about the kind of center that Kundera has in mind.Continue reading “Kundera On Virtuous and ‘Timid’ Centers”
Freud, Pointing to Poets
Some distinctive features of Sigmund Freud‘s writings are: a clarity of exposition–at least in works intended for more general audiences–which offset the density and novelty of the subject matter; a tendency to philosophize while simultaneously disdaining philosophical speculation; an unswerving overt commitment to science, scientific probity, virtue, and methodology; and lastly, and most entertainingly, a keenContinue reading “Freud, Pointing to Poets”
Constraints, Creativity, and Programming
Last year, in a post on Goethe and Nietzsche, which invoked the Freedom program (to cure Internet distraction), and which noted the role constraints played in artistic creation, I had referred obliquely to a chapter in my book Decoding Liberation, in which ‘Scott Dexter and I tried to develop a theory of aesthetics for software,Continue reading “Constraints, Creativity, and Programming”
Freud, Goethe and Burke on Happiness, Pleasure, and Satiation
Defining ‘happiness’ is hard; how are we to know what to do to be happy, if we don’t have a good handle on what happiness is? And thus, the persistent efforts through the ages, of philosophical minds–and more recently, grimly determined social scientists and psychologists alike–to provide some delineation of the concept. (Even David BrooksContinue reading “Freud, Goethe and Burke on Happiness, Pleasure, and Satiation”
Samir Chopra 