In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of ‘world history’ – yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.Friedrich Nietzsche
I struggled with Nietzsche (and not just the spelling of his name), he was introduced at a most unfortunate time in my life when I was 16 and philosophy was taught at 2 pm. I vividly remember struggling to not fall asleep in class. I was a poor student with poor grades but I did have a couple of brilliant ideas at around that time and possibly also later on, but definitely before I started school when there was knowledge sprouting out of every crack around me and all I had to do was watch and ask. That time when I thought that people basically grow up, not just in size but also in knowledge and understanding and that I was going to be one of them, eventually.
Ha!
But despite the fact that Master Nietzsche was convinced that a woman who has scholarly thoughts must be sexually frustrated, he had a point there about the star with the clever animals. OK, so he got the thing about the temperature slightly wrong but basically, clever counts for nothing.
Today, January 15th 2020, the temperature rose to 14°C, a first for January. In the garden, calendula, Sweet William, assorted roses etc. have been flowering since last June. The fruit and nut trees are budding. There has not been enough rain this winter.
In other news, I am mentally preparing myself to return to work tomorrow. Physically, I am not yet convinced but what could go wrong.
Totally unrelated, here are today's contents of our bread basket.
Best wishes to you for work tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteThank you, I survived the day by the skin of my teeth.
DeleteI love that Nietzsche quote. I went and found more of it online. I had no idea he had such a perspective.
ReplyDeleteI think I may have mentioned before that I consider myself a "bread-a-holic"... I love bread, and the varieties you have here look delicious. Yum.
Good luck at work tomorrow, Sabine!
He was a mixed bag of amazing genius.
DeleteI wish I could share the bread with you.
Philosophy taught in high school? Not here. Which explains a few things.
ReplyDeleteYour bread is beautiful.
Well, I don't think it helped me much.
DeleteThis is just baker's bread, your gorgeous bread is home made, such a difference.
Your bread is lovely.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be nice if we could all sit together and eat it?
DeleteI never took philosophy, as Ms Moon says, they don't teach it here in public school probably because of the tight hold religion has on our society and they think it will cause children to question their religious teachings (that's just my opinion) and I never took it in college either.
ReplyDeleteour high today was 78˚, right now it's 76˚. in mid-January. even for the coastal plains of Texas, that is unseasonably warm.
I am not a great fan of philosophy, the stuff we learned in school was all these men explaining things from their angle. Some was good, some was way above my head.
DeleteIt's even warmer today.
I just read a quote by Voltaire and thought I should share it with you:
ReplyDelete“If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum.”
Ouch, thanks Robin.
DeleteThe Groves of Academe were done with me by age 16 and I was learning what it was to earn a living. Actually, I fib. I was living at home with my Mum and my weekly salary of thirty shillings (about 3 euros) was converted into coins and distributed into about half-a-dozen tins, one of which had contained cough drops. The tins were labelled Holidays, Clothing, etc, although they were hardly realistic. I believe my mother subsidised these pious hopes. As to Nietzsche at 16, we have a saying: One does not feed the baby on gin.
ReplyDeleteFormal education had ended and replaced by a series of questions for which I was finding it difficult to gain answers. What is politics? What is economics? And - more germane to your post - what is philosophy? Beware those who start babbling about the Greek roots of the word ("Love of wisdom" - I ask you) for their knowledge ends at that point. Since I was simultaneously learning how to become a reporter (the possibility that I might become a journalist didn't crop up for another twenty years) it is not surprising that one of the subset of questions I had for the world was: Are philosophers paid for what they do? Since I still don't have the answer perhaps you could, as it were, bathe me in Sonnenschein on this matter. I think we can rule out those who appear on telly, labelled (like my tins) "Philosopher". The quotes are the give-away. Such puffballs belong to that dubious category known as "Celebrity".
The school my father decided on as the one for his kids was founded in the 16th century by Philipp Melanchthon, a philosopher, alchemist and astrologer. He was a friend of Martin Luther and just as Luther, he wanted to reform old concepts and open the world of education to free thinkers.
DeleteThis background leaves little breathing room when you are ten years old and for the next eight years will walk every morning past an enormous mural of Platon's cave allegory. It's a benign form of brainwashing. You are spoonfed philosophy from every angle and for a while it can be very enlightening until it becomes obvious that it's not an answer to everything that matters, especially to teenagers. I have little time for philosophy now - maybe understandably so. But I enjoy even the puffball celebrity guys (always male, aren't they?) for their entertainment value.
And yet, at some stage in my later life I had to admit that debating Platon's cave allegory, Kant's categorical imperative and Pascal's wager did shape me. But the best of them all, the one that I hold high is Adorno:
"It is no different with happiness than with truth: one does not have it, but is in it. Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the warm security of the mother. That is why no-one can know that they are happy. In order to see happiness, they would have to step out of it: they would be like a newborn. Whoever says, they are happy, lies, by evoking it and thus sinning against happiness. Only those who say: I was happy, are true to it. The only relationship of consciousness to happiness is that of gratitude: this constitutes its incomparable dignity."
I never introduced anything that had even the slightest whiff of philosophy into my daughter's life. Yet, for reasons I still try to understand she went and got a degree in it.
Thanks for the Sonnenschein. Things stuck, I see, and whatever your misgivings you are the better equipped for enduring 2020 and what follows. I have a lot to say about happiness and its delusions but not now. Did you a mother a child who was taught to test everything - including the exhortation to test everything. That's proper parenthood.
DeleteI like what Robin wrote about the insane asylum. I am inclined to agree, and there is an inmate at the helm in the US sadly. I never studied philosophy in the school but Eastern religions was very interesting.
ReplyDeleteA lot of men seem to think women are sexually frustrated which begs the question, why aren't men doing a better job at sexually satisfying women:) Just a thought.
I hope work goes okay.
Oh I share your thought, and I think a lot of these Western male philosophers had the weirdest relationships with the women in their lives - mothers to begin with.
DeleteLovely breads (my toast was Pumpernickel this morning)...I love saying that. My college philosophy class must have been at the same time...very little stuck in my brain, though I've heard you can learn while you're asleep! Hope you enjoy work!
ReplyDeletePumpernickel toast is delicious, isn't it.
DeleteI don't have much patience with nihilism, or philosophy in general. I never took a philosophy class and every time I've read any philosophy I come away with the feeling that philosophers just think WAAAAY too much. I'm not sure what that says about me. Maybe I'm shallow.
ReplyDeleteYou have some beautiful bread, at least!
Philosophy makes me sleepy. I laways needed to stifle yawns, that's why I just go for snippets now and again.
DeleteAnd you are not shallow!