The Barber’s Ferry

Notes on Wolfram Eilenberger, Zeit der Zauberer, Das großte Jahrzehnt der Philosophie 1919-1929: 

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox

Reading Eilenberger’s Zeit der Zauberer. In the chapter on the vagaries of the lives of Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Heidegger and Cassirer in 1919, there’s not a single ref to the Kansas aka Spanish influenza, whence 2 1/2 times more died than in WW1.

Heidegger’s and Derrida’s rhetoric is a classic self-conscious case of the very undeterminacy thet invoke, carefully constructed word games, verbal traps which “capture” thought and thus are persuasive of the assertion that all language is a trap. Thisxrhetoric is itself a trap.

There is something of “wokeness” about Heidegger’s conviction that he was erwacht.

Heidegger compared to Wittgenstein (104-105)

“War ist, Cassirer hat eine tiefe Verankerung in die Kultur der universitäten Phlosophie nie als Eischränkung oder gar entfremdende Verstelleng empfunden” (p  125).

Das zentrale gedanke von Cassirers Projekt besteht in eer Tat in der Einsicht, dass das, was wir den “menschlichen Geist” nennen, “erst in seiner Außerung zu seiner wahrhaften und vollkommenen Innenlichkeit gelangt. Die Form, die sich da Innere gibt, steimmt auch rückwirkend sein Wesen une seinen Gehalt” (p 128). // The central idea of Cassirer’s project is in fact the insight that what we call the “human spirit” “only comes to its true and perfect interiority when it is expressed. The form that is given inside also retroactively changes its essence and content “(p 128). 

Nicht unser geist richtet sich demnach nach den Gesetzen der Dinge, sondern die Dinge sich nach den Gesetzen unseres Geistes (p 129). / Accordingly, it is not our minds that follow the laws of things, but things that follow the laws of our minds (p 129).

Cassirer nennt diese angenomne Form am Grunde aller Sprachen die “reine Sprachform” (p 134 – viz Chomsky)…. Als Cassirer sich tiefer und tiefer in die vorliegenden sprachwissenschaftlichen Studieum vertieft wird ihm die tragende Grundannnahme seines Projeks zweifelhaft (p 134).

On November 8, 1923, things came to a head in Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller when Adolf Hitler, protected by a large shock troop of his AS militia, interrupted a speech of von Kahr’s by firing a shot into the ceiling, forcing him to flee the hall, and—following the glorious example of Mussolini and his Fascist movement in Italy—called on the crowd to “march on the capital” the next day.

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What the philosopher Cassirer wanted: Cast off your anxiety as creative cultural beings, liberate yourself from your original constraints and limitations.

What the philosopher Cassirer wanted: Cast off your anxiety as creative cultural beings, liberate yourself from your original constraints and limitations.

— Eilenberger, p 333

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https://www.ft.com/content/9db1fbc4-1bc2-11e3-94a3-00144feab7de

https://www.ft.com/content/9db1fbc4-1bc2-11e3-94a3-00144feab7de

 

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Time of the Magicians by Wolfram Eilenberger review – philosophy’s great decade?

Time of the Magicians by Wolfram Eilenberger review – philosophy’s great decade?