Category: Verandah

Still working on itStill working on it

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:16 am

“We shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful.” – Booker T. Washington, “1895 Atlanta Exposition Address”

How to spend ’em if you got ’emHow to spend ’em if you got ’em

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:20 am

“This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: To set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and, after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.” – Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth”

Hence the rise of starsHence the rise of stars

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:36 am

“In a very deep sense mythical symbols are unavoidable for humans because reality transcends all types of representation and because our formulations cannot dispense completely with concrete phenomena. . . . Although over time particular symbols and myths may become referentially opaque, the realities symbolized do not cease to exist, which is evidenced by the fact that invalidated myths and symbols are replaced by new or revitalized ones.” –  John Bussanich, “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”

So thereSo there

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:33 am

“Every concrete symbol is true insofar as it envisages the truth, but none is completely true insofar as the truth about being is essentially beyond human reach.” – Eric Voegelin (quoted by John Bussanich in “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy of Myth”)

The man who fell to artThe man who fell to art

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:07 am

“The most interesting thing for an artist is to pick through the debris of a culture, to look at what’s been forgotten or not really taken seriously. Once something is categorized and accepted, it becomes part of the tyranny of the mainstream, and it loses its potency.” – David Bowie (interviewed by Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times)

Free to be unfreeFree to be unfree

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:28 am

“My being non-alienated cannot be the same thing as what I would naturally do, not at least if what I would naturally do is supposed to mean what I would do anyway. ‘What I would do anyway’ is an incomplete phrase, and therefore, one without determinate sense. ‘Anyway’ means ‘in the absence of preventing factors or influences’, so the sense of ‘what I would do anyway’ depends on which factors or influences we are supposing to be absent. But it is just incoherent to suppose that all factors and influences could be absent; since something like this supposition is nonetheless resiliently an ingredient, albeit often a covert ingredient, of all sorts of thinking about autonomy, freedom, and the voluntary, we might call that supposition ‘the fantasy of freedom an sich’. For the supposition is indeed a fantasy: necessarily and universally, human action always pushes against some resistance. Moreover, it always pushes against some particular resistance: there is no more resistance an sich than there is freedom an sich. In the absence of either, then, there is no such thing as the pure and ahistorical state of unalienated nature, either.” – Sophie-Grace Chappell, “Rôles and Reasons” (footnote omitted; emphases in original)

And that’s the reasonAnd that’s the reason

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 6:26 am

“To understand a practice is to come to grasp the reasons that that practice gives you—reasons that are not intelligible from outside the practice. Induction into the rôle of participant in the practice entails induction into the reasons characteristic and definitive of the practice. So by adopting the rôle I learn—and before that, commit myself to learn—to have the reasons. Not necessarily quickly or easily, either; induction into a practice can be, indeed usually is, hard work. By such induction I ‘systematically extend’ my own capacities to achieve the various kinds of excellence; and that means, too, that I systematically extend my own repertoire of reasons.” – Sophie-Grace Chappell, “Rôles and Reasons” (emphasis in original)

Nothing and everythingNothing and everything

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:38 am

“Nothing is so beautiful, marvelous, ever new, ever surprising, so full of sweet and continual delight, as the good. Nothing is so barren and dismal, monotonous and boring as evil. That is the way with real good and evil. Fictional good and evil are quite the opposite, though. Fictional good is boring and flat. Fictional evil is varied, interesting, attractive, profound, and seductive. This is because in reality, there is a necessity, like gravity, governing us that is missing in fiction.” – Simone Weil, “Literature and Morals”

Light up your scienceLight up your science

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:47 am

“There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle. There is not a law under which any part of this universe is governed which does not come into play, and is not touched upon, in these phenomena.” – Michael Faraday, “The Chemical History of a Candle”

AssemblageAssemblage

Tetman Callis 0 Comments 5:20 am

“We become ourselves by wanting other people: not only wanting to have them, but wanting sometimes more urgently to become them, to feel as we imagine they feel, to think or create or whatever else we wish to do as naturally as we imagine they do. We take assignments in being by adopting as our ideals the things other people never were, or failed to become, and then never stop doubting whether what we are is theirs or ours.” – Jedediah Purdy, “Maybe Connect”