To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.
—
Charles Baudelaire, from ‘Artificial Paradises’ (via letheane)
when you get a masters degree youre allowed to respond to your professors emails with “ok love you”
The further physics has gone in the actual mathematization of the intuited, pre given nature of our surrounding world, the more mathematical-scientific propositions it has at its disposal, the further the instrument destined for it, the mathesis universalis, has been developed : the greater is the range of its possible deductive conclusions concerning new facts of quantified nature and thus the range of indicated corresponding verifications to be made. The latter devolve upon the experimental physicist, as does the whole work of ascending from the intuitively given surrounding world, and the experiments and measurements performed in it, to the ideal poles. Mathematical physicists, on the other hand, settled in the arithmetized sphere of space-time, or at the same time in the formalized mathesis universalis, treat the mathematical-physical formulae brought to them as special pure structures of the formal mathesis, naturally keeping invariant the constants which appear in them as elements of functional laws of factual nature. Taking into account all the “natural laws already proved or in operation as working hypotheses,” and on the basis of the whole available formal system of laws belonging to this mathesis, they draw the logical consequences whose results are to be taken over by the experimenters. But they also accomplish the formation of the available logical possibilities for new hypotheses, which of course must be compatible with the totality of those accepted as valid at the time. In this way, they see to the preparation of those forms of hypotheses which now are the only ones admissible, as hypothetical possibilities for the interpretation of causal regular only real world, the one that is actually given through perception, that is ever experienced and experience able-our everyday
life-world.
—
Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology (via theframedmaelstrom)
We are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which synthetic judgements a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us; that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely imagined world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live—that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, negation to life. To recognize untruth as a condition of life; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.
—
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (via intellectualpoaching)
“You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image: you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.”
– Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes
“As Spectator I was interested in Photography only for “sentimental” reasons; I wanted to explore it not as a question (a theme) but as a wound.”
— Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”
– Susan Sontag, On Photography
But what does the Latin verum mean? The stem ver is Indo-Germanic, as is the stem fall of σφάλλω, fallere, “fall.” The stem ver appears unequivocally in our German word wehren [“to resists”], die Wehr [“defense”], das Wehr [“dam”]; therein lies the moment of the “against,” resistance": “the resistant”—the dam against … Italic-Oscic veru, the gate—which shuts off passage and entrance–verostabulum—vestibulum—vestibule, the space before the properly separating entrance, which stands ver, against, it, (stabulum), the space in front of the door. But the standing-against is not the only moment in the ver. For in that case the word Ab-wehr [“resistance,” literally, “defense-from”] would be a mere tautology; Wehr [“defense”] is not already in itself and only defense-against. In “Parcifal,” ver does not mean resistance; instead, it means to defend oneself, maintain oneself: resistance-for. Thus ver means to keep one’s position, hold one’s place. To be sure, resistance always belongs here in a certain sense, yet this resistance is one that has to derive from a steadfastness. Ver means to be steady, to keep steady, i.e., not to fall (no falsum), to remain above, to maintain oneself, to keep one’s head up, to be the head, to command. Maintaining oneself, standing upright—the upright. Thus it is from the essential domain of the imperial that verum, as counter-word to falsum, received the sense of established right. Thereby from the original word ver a meaning has been extracted that clearly comes to the fore in the old Latin veru in the sense of gate and door, but also in the German das Wehr [“dam”], the gate that shuts and locks, the dam that seals off. The original element in ver and verum is that of closing off, covering, concealing, and sheltering, but it is not die Wehr [“defense”] as resistance. The corresponding Greek word of this Indo-Germanic stem is ἔρυμα—the defensive weapon, the covering, the enclosure. Ἔρυμα–to which the Roman word verum is immediately connected–means in Greek, however, precisely the opposite of the Greek word for “true,” i.e., it is the opposite of ἀλήθεια. Verum, ἔρυμα—the eclosure, the covering; ἀλήθεια—the dis-covering, the dis-closing. But how else could an opposition hold sway here unless they both shared, though in a concealed way, the same essential dimension? The Roman word for “the true,” ver, has the root meaning of closing-covering and locking up, a meaning which was, to be sure, obliterated, or at least never expressly and purely liberated. The opposite to ver, verum, as the enclosing, is the non-enclosing. This “opposes” the verum. “Opposing,” acting against the ver, is op-verio or ap-verio, whence the Latin aperio: “I open.” The main sense of opening, understood in the Roman way, is “non-enclosing.” In the word aperire, “to open,” the original verum speaks. According to the verbal structure, the participle of aperio, apertum, the un-enclosed, corresponds to the Greek ἀληθές, the unconcealed. The pertum canceled in a-pertum is the verum. This corresponds to the Greek λαθόν (λαθές). The original ver-, verum, means the same as the Greek λαθόν, hence precisely the opposite of ἀληθές. The Roman verum, strictly speaking, should then be taken as equivalent to the Greek ψεῦδος, if the latter is indeed the counter-word to ἀληθές. But the Roman verum not only does not coincide with ψεῦδος, it is precisely the opposite of ψεῦδος as understood in Latin, i.e., falsum. If we reflect on this, then mysterious ways of language and of the word show themselves in the realm where the essential possibility of the word itself, i.e., the essential possibility of the truth of its essence, is decided. With regard to the Latin name for the true, verum, we shall keep two incidents in mind:
1. Verum, ver-, meant originally enclosing, covering. The Latin verum belongs to the same realm of meaning as the Greek ἀληθές, the uncovered—precisely by signifying the exact opposite of ἀληθές: the closed off.
2. But now because verum is conter to falsum, and because the essential domain of the imperium is decisive for verum and falsum and their opposites, the sense of ver-, namely enclosure and cover, becomes basically that of covering for security against. Ver is now the maintaining oneself, the being-above; ver becomes the opposite of falling. Verum is the remaining constant, the upright, that which is directed to what is superior because it is directing from above. Verum is rectum (regere, “the regime”), the right, iustum. For the Romans, the realm of concealment and disconcealment does not at all come to be, although it strives in that direction in ver, the essential realm determining the essence of truth. Under the influence of the imperial, verum becomes forthwith “being-above,” directive for what is right; veritas is then rectitudo, “correctness,” we would say. This originally Roman stamp given to the essence of truth, which solidly establishes the all-pervading basic character of the essence of truth in the Occident, rejoins an unfolding of the essence of truth that began already with the Greeks and that at the same time marks the inception of Western metaphysics.
—
Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (via belacqui-pro-quo)
Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
—
Albert-Camus, Notebooks (via jasmin-von-bathory)
All men are joyous and beaming,
As though feasting upon a sacrificial ox,
As though mounting the Spring Terrace;
I alone am placid and give no sign,
Like a babe which has not yet smiled.
I alone am forlorn as one who has no home to return to.
—
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (via hyperboreanvoyager)
If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
—
Naomi Shihab Nye, from “Hidden,” Fuel (via petrichour)