rotenotes @rotenotes@social.cleverlibre.org

"#Animals respond to natural & accidental #signs (smoke is an accidental #sign of fire, clouds portend rain). #Humans also have instituted signs. The difference lies in the fact that by means of the latter [#language] humans can control the flow of their own #imagination … ."

- Charles #Taylor - “The Importance of Herder” from Philosophical Arguments (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jgr6/NMT/332taylor.htm) (1995), p. 88

To learn to use the #signal is to learn to apply it appropriately in the furtherance of some non-linguistically-defined purpose or task.

[Whereas] … if we want to think of a task or goal [which must exist in a field or context or process] which would help to clarify the rightness [appropriateness, accuracy] of #words … it would itself have to defined in terms like truth, descriptive adequacy, richness of evocation, or something of the sort [that is not capable of being rendered into a simple correspondence with a putatively pre-existing “chunk” of reality].

A creature is [only] operating in the #linguistic dimension when it can use & respond to #signs in terms of their truth, or descriptive rightness, or power to evoke some mood, or recreate a scene, or express some emotion, or carry some nuance of feeling … . To be a linguistic creature is to be sensitive to irreducible issues of #rightness. * * * Whether a creature is in the linguistic dimension in this sense isn’t a matter of what correlations hold between the signals it emits, its behavior, & the surroundings — the kind of things the proponents of chimp language focus on. It is a question of subjective understanding of what rightness consists in for it, qua what word is right.

Charles #Taylor - “The Importance of Herder” from Philosophical Arguments (http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jgr6/NMT/332taylor.htm) (1995), p. 84

[Message from Leonard #Peltier: We are winning!

The Red Nation
Sep 19, 2023

A message from Leonard Peltier communicated through his legal team at the rally outside of the White House demanding #clemency.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLlRur0whWU)

[Peltier has been in prison since April 1977, when he was convicted by a federal jury in Fargo, N.D., for the killing of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He is considered by many as America’s political prisoner. He’s been eligible for parole since 1993, for 29 years. The Supreme Court has twice denied his petitions for a rehearing.](nativenewsonline.net)

«Σημείωσε πόσο φευγαλέα και ασήμαντη είναι η περιουσία του ανθρώπου — χθες ένα έμβρυο, αύριο μια μούμια ή στάχτη. Έτσι, για το εύρος του χρόνου που σου έχει ανατεθεί, ζήσε λογικά και αποχωρίσου τη ζωή χαρούμενα, όπως πέφτει η ώριμη ελιά, εξυμνώντας την εποχή που τη γέννησε και το δέντρο που την ωρίμασε».

"Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man — yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it."

- Marcus #Aurelius, Meditations, IV, 48

Artwork: [The Three Ages of Man
Artist #Titian
Year c. 1512–14
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 90 cm × 150.7 cm (35 in × 59.3 in)
Location National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Ages_of_Man_(Titian))

"#Conscience is an inner voice that warns us somebody is looking."

- H. L. #Mencken

«Δεν μπορώ να συλλάβω έναν #Θεό που ανταμείβει και τιμωρεί τα πλάσματά του ή έχει μια θέληση όπως αυτή που βιώνουμε στον εαυτό μας. Ούτε μπορώ ούτε θα ήθελα να συλλάβω ένα άτομο που επιζεί του φυσικού του θανάτου. Αφήστε τις αδύναμες ψυχές, από φόβο ή παράλογο εγωισμό, να αγαπούν τέτοιες σκέψεις. Είμαι ικανοποιημένος με το μυστήριο της αιωνιότητας της ζωής και με την επίγνωση και μια ματιά της θαυμαστής δομής του υπάρχοντος κόσμου, μαζί με την αφοσιωμένη προσπάθεια να κατανοήσω ένα μέρος, ακόμα και τόσο μικροσκοπικό, του Λόγου που εκδηλώνεται στη φύση.»

"I cannot conceive of a #God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

- Albert #Einstein, The World As I See It

Artwork: [Title The #Flood
Artist #Michelangelo
Date 1512
Medium fresco
Dimensions 305 cm x 550 cm
Art Movement High Renaissance
Current Location Sistine Chapel, Vatican]

The flood in #Bible
(Genesis 6:5-8,19)
(Genesis 6:13-14)
(Genesis 7:4)
(Genesis 7:10)

"Man has #free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain. If the will were deprived of #freedom…no praise would be given to human virtue; since virtue would be of no account if man acted not freely: there would be no justice in rewarding or punishing, if man were not free in acting well or ill: and there would be no prudence in taking advice, which would be of no use if things occurred of necessity…"

- Thomas #Aquinas

"#Gewohnheit, #Sitte und #Brauch sind stärker als die #Wahrheit."

"#Ηabit, #custom and #tradition are stronger than #truth."

- #Voltaire

"[67.] Each portion of #matter can be conceived as like a garden full of plants, or like a pond full of fish. But each branch of a plant, each organ of an animal, each drop of its bodily fluids is also a similar garden or a similar pond."

- Gottfried #Leibniz - #Monadology

"Our own #death is indeed quite unimaginable, and whenever we make the attempt to imagine it we … really survive as spectators… . At bottom nobody believes in his own death, or to put the same thing in a different way, in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality."

- #Freud, Sigmund. “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 4. London: Hogarth Press, 1953, pp. 304–305

Artowrk: [Dance of Death, leaf from "The Nuremberg Chronicle"

Michael #Wolgemut German
1493 ](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/390220)

"Our #destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our #future that lays down the law of our today."

- Friedrich #Nietzsche

"Der #Mensch ist im Grunde ein #wildes #Tier. Wir kennen es bloß im Zustand der #Bändigung und #Zähmung."

- Arthur #Schopenhauer

#man #wild #animal #taming #domestication

"Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be #dead by midnight. Extend them all the #care, #kindness and #understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again."

- Og #Mandino, The Greatest Miracle in the World (1923 - 1996)

“at least I speak to you”

N.P.: Over the years, you have repeatedly defended the view that #deconstruction is not an inherently #negative term, that it is not to be understood as criticism or destruction. And indeed in an interview you gave in 1982 and which was subsequently published in Le Monde, you even said that deconstruction is always accompanied by love. Could you comment on this “love”. Is it the same love as in “philia”?

J.D.: This #love means an affirmative desire towards the #Other - to respect the Other, to pay attention to the Other, not to destroy the #otherness of the Other - and this is the preliminary affirmation, even if afterwards because of this love, you ask questions. There is some negativity in deconstruction. I wouldn’t deny this. You have to criticise, to ask questions, to challenge and sometimes to oppose. What I have said is that in the final instance, deconstruction is not negative although negativity is no doubt at work. Now, in order to criticise, to negate, to deny, you have first to say “yes”. When you address the Other, even if it is to oppose the Other, you make a sort of promise - that is, to address the Other as Other, not to reduce the otherness of the Other, and to take into account the singularity of the Other. That’s an irreducible affirmation, its the original ethics if you want. So from that point of view, there is an ethics of deconstruction. Not in the usual sense, but there is an affirmation. You know, I often use a quote from Rosensweig or even from Levinas which says that the “yes” is not a word like others, that even if you do not pronounce the word, there is a “yes” implicit in every language, even if you multiply the “no”, there is a “yes”. And this is even the case with Heidegger. You know Heidegger, for a long time, for years and years kept saying that thinking started with questioning, that questioning (fragen) is the dignity of thinking. And then one day, without contradicting this statement, he said “yes, but there is something even more originary than questioning, than this piety of thinking,” and it is what he called zusage which means to acquiesce, to accept, to say “yes”, to affirm. So this zusage is not only prior to questioning, but it is supposed by any questioning. To ask a question, you must first tell the Other that I am speaking to you. Even to oppose or challenge the Other, you must say “at least I speak to you”, “I say yes to our being in common together”. So this is what I meant by love, this reaffirmation of the affirmation.

An Interview With Jacques #Derrida by Nikhil #Padgaonkar (https://web.archive.org/web/20080110083639/http://www.csun.edu/coms/grad/jd.nik.html)

#consumerism #marketing