Ryan Li

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on the atlas — 36

highlights — 247

Ego will find these reasons, and it will then declare that the reasons have created the feelings, when the opposite is true, as it nearly always is.
Self & Unself; Introduction - Darren Allen
People miss that escaping this meaningless servitude to our own capital was Thoreau’s main point in Walden. You don’t actually need the money; in reality, the money needs you to give it a worthy purpose, but everyone gets this backward.
Quit Your Job
What he must have in mind, when he says that virtue makes the goal right, is that deliberation typically proceeds from a goal that is far more specific than the goal of attaining happiness by acting virtuously. To be sure, there may be occasions when a good person approaches an ethical problem by beginning with the premise that happiness consists in virtuous activity. But more often what happens is that a concrete goal presents itself as his starting point—helping a friend in need, or supporting a worthwhile civic project. Which specific project we set for ourselves is determined by our charac…
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Aristotle thinks of the good person as someone who is good at deliberation, and he describes deliberation as a process of rational inquiry.
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Aristotle describes ethical virtue as a “hexis” (“state” “condition” “disposition”)—a tendency or disposition, induced by our habits, to have appropriate feelings
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
It should be evident that Aristotle’s treatment of virtues as mean states endorses the idea that we should sometimes have strong feelings—when such feelings are called for by our situation. Sometimes only a small degree of anger is appropriate; but at other times, circumstances call for great anger. The right amount is not some quantity between zero and the highest possible level, but rather the amount, whatever it happens to be, that is proportionate to the seriousness of the situation. Of course, Aristotle is committed to saying that anger should never reach the point at which it undermines …
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Perhaps, then, he realizes how little can be accomplished, in the study of ethics, to provide it with a rational foundation.
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, and what little he can accomplish will not be of great merit. To some extent, then, living well requires good fortune;
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
He says, not that happiness is virtue, but that it is virtuous activity.
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
using reason well over the course of a full life is what happiness consists in
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
No one tries to live well for the sake of some further goal
Aristotle’s Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
There can be no more than a handful, if any, people in the West today who lead lives of intellectual leisure, so we cannot limit our search to such people. On the other hand, maybe there are more than we think—after all, among the largest audiences for podcasts are blue-collar workers, forklift operators and truck drivers.
On the Marble Cliffs (Ernst Jünger) • The Worthy House
A related subtext of this book is the Aristotelian idea that only those who lead a life of leisure, for at least part of their lives, can live fully.
On the Marble Cliffs (Ernst Jünger) • The Worthy House
The answer is to make man the master of technology, not technology the master of man
The Foundationalist Manifesto: The Politics of Future Past • The Worthy House
What women do is, in some ways, more important, but it will never be as visible.
The Foundationalist Manifesto: The Politics of Future Past • The Worthy House
Nonetheless, Foundationalism will directly encourage virtue and discourage vice, and forbid certain especially pernicious negative behaviors and reward, or make a condition of national advancement, certain positive behaviors.
The Foundationalist Manifesto: The Politics of Future Past • The Worthy House
it will represent the nation as it should be, not reflect the general will
The Foundationalist Manifesto: The Politics of Future Past • The Worthy House
But actions tending to transhumanism or any that denies human dignity, or the laws of God or of nature, will be directly and indirectly suppressed, and pseudo-sciences, including most of what currently passes for so-called social science, will be held in contempt.
The Foundationalist Manifesto: The Politics of Future Past • The Worthy House
Why a wholesale destruction and replacement, rather than incremental corrections, what we are told is the prim and proper conservative solution to problems? Because Foundationalism does not aim to conserve. It is a wholesale rebellion against the powers of the modern world, which realizes that those powers must be shattered, the world must be broken, to clear the way for new growth.
The Foundationalist Manifesto: The Politics of Future Past • The Worthy House
Foundationalism is the politics of future past; it is a new thing, for a new time, informed by the wisdom of the past. Foundationalism is not restorationism. There is no return; the way is shut. What is instead needed is a new thing, just as the Enlightenment was a new thing, and as the flourishing of Western medieval thought was a new thing. Erase the errors and begin again; Foundationalism ushers in the new dawn.
The Foundationalist Manifesto: The Politics of Future Past • The Worthy House
Foundationalism is grounded in what is universally known to be true, or what was once universally known to be true; it does not invent new truths. Thus, it contains a strong bias toward traditional Western knowledge and modes of thought, without calcification of application. The asteroid miner who knows his Aristotle and his Aquinas, and extracts metals to build great works with a picture of Henry the Navigator in his rocket ship—he is a Foundationalist.
The Foundationalist Manifesto: The Politics of Future Past • The Worthy House
We notice that there is little or no attempt at subjectivism or abstraction, no attempt at metaphysical generalisation.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
Mr. Joyce recognises how inadequate ‘doubt’ is to express a state of extreme uncertainty, and replaces it by ‘in twosome twiminds’.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
And it is worth while remarking that no language is so sophisticated as English. It is abstracted to death.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
You are not satisfied unless form is so strictly divorced from content that you can comprehend the one almost without bothering to read the other.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
n historical statement of fact, of actual contemporary phenomena, actual in the sense that they were created out of necessity by primitive minds, and firmly believed.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
In such direct expression, form and content are inseparable.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
The first men, unable to conceive the abstract idea of ‘poet’ or ‘hero’, named every hero after the first hero, every poet after the first poet.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
The root of any word whatsoever can be traced back to some pre-lingual symbol. This early inability to abstract the general from the particular produced the Type-names.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
Poetry is essentially the antithesis of Metaphysics
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
The figurative character of the oldest poetry must be regarded, not as sophisticated confectionery, but as evidence of a poverty-stricken vocabulary and of a disability to achieve abstraction.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
transition from the Human to the Theocratic
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
Humanity is divine, but no man is divine.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
History, then, is not the result of Fate or Chance - in both cases the individual would be separated from his product - but the result of a Necessity that is not Fate, of a Liberty that is not Chance
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
Thus we have the spectacle of a human progression that depends for its movement on individuals, and which at the same time is independent of individuals in
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
And all things are ultimately identified with God, the universal monad, Monad of monads
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
no difference between the infinite circle and the straight line.
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
Theocratic, Heroic, Human (civilized), with a corresponding classification of language: Hieroglyphic (sacred), Metaphorical (poetic), Philosophical (capable of abstraction and generalisation)
Samuel Beckett, ‘Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce’, in Finnegans Wake: A Symposium - Our Exagmination Round His Incamination of Work in Progress (Paris: Shakespeare & Co. 1929)
We spent the last century or so ripping this cultural lattice from our psyche and replacing it with the jury-rigged modern economic culture. These systems we ripped out were not an afterthought; humanity co-evolved with them. Should we be so shocked that birth rates plummeted and mental health problems skyrocketed when we ripped out a component our brains evolved to work with? Should we be so surprised that as cultural orphans with faded cultural memory, we search for meaning in the half-baked ideologies of Goop, Effective Altruism, and other modern guru-spheres? We don’t need to tread the exa…
Fertility Collapse Demands New Cultures
for every hundred South Koreans there will be 4.3 great-grandchildren at their 0.7 fertility rate,
Fertility Collapse Demands New Cultures
Given the differential birth rates and the heritability of certain traits, we may see a standard deviation shift in political attitudes towards theocratic dictatorialism within the next 75 years or so.
Fertility Collapse Demands New Cultures
Some imagine that AI or some other technological breakthrough can act as a deus ex machina to ameliorate the economic challenges of population decline by substituting for human workers in the economy. But even in the optimistic case this will not solve all of it, and it may cause its own very serious problems. At the very least, AI will only help the supply side of the incoming economic disaster because it does not consume in the same way humans do. AI wealth may not help at all with infrastructural maintenance, or may even cause it to be even more neglected as it removes the economic imperati…
Fertility Collapse Demands New Cultures
Napoleon articulated well that coevalness, that deep sense of empathy with genius, and the collapse of the centuries to the point that his reflections are held subspecie aeternitatis. Like for Clovis, Christ is a peer for Napoleon—one he simply cannot outdo.
Journey to the Golden Age
Despite his flaws, Volney was at least erudite and courageous enough to take the leap. He represented most perfectly the spirit of the Age of Reason. The accounts he made of the Levant, as well as his classification and ethnologies, were the most accurate of the day. Yet in that erudition, he did not possess the vitality and the genius to pierce beyond a simple collection of facts.
Journey to the Golden Age
This process of iterative purification can take centuries but is necessary. As the age purifies itself, it develops a greater empathy and understanding of the preceding ages. As the necessary biological, social, and spiritual elements are infused with vitality, the golden ages of the past become more legible and clearer, and then enter into conversation with the living.
Journey to the Golden Age
To be able to empathize with the various high points of the past, you have to be animated by the same vital energy as those men and societies and see yourself as the same kind of person.
Journey to the Golden Age
The more obtuse minds of the age join in a Panglossian unison, claiming that they live in the best of all historical worlds, seeing the past as a wretched dark age. Meanwhile, the sharper wit feels the absence of greatness in his own time and, being of an intense sensibility, falls into a deep and paralyzing state of mourning.
Journey to the Golden Age
The relation of a genius to his age is that which exists between strength and weakness and between maturity and youth: the age is relatively always very much younger, thinner, less mature, less resolute and more childish. The genius, the providential man—or the providential wit or artist—comes from an older, more mature time because he is inscribed within that very long thread and the existing age is not. The specific point in time in which he appears is inconsequential. What matters is his coevalness and continuity with all the other golden ages and their heroes.
Journey to the Golden Age
Alexander himself was contemporary to Achilles. Augustus was literally contemporary to Caesar, then Charlemagne became contemporary to Augustus, and Napoleon to Charlemagne. One can easily read this as simple inspiration, but the golden ages have strange relationships to time.
Journey to the Golden Age
One of the most enduring stories of Caesar was that he wept at the statue of Alexander the Great because he had accomplished so little at the same age by which the Macedonian had conquered the world.
Journey to the Golden Age