Log24

… In gratitude for his book Real Presences—

Will and Idea:

A related shell game:

Ad for a talk at Harvard by Nick Bostrom in April 2010—

Click ad for background on the April 10 , 2010, symposium.

See also Bostrom on the The Simulation Argument
and the Log24 April 12, 2010, Shell Game post above.

Note the black diamond logo of Bostrom's Oxford institute.

From this journal on December 7th, the first night of Hannukah 2023 —

From zdnet.com two days earlier —

Midrash —

* A phrase of George Steiner.

Actually, that should be sister  (so Leopardi).

Related material —

The title is that of  a classic 1968 New Yorker  essay
by George Steiner. See previous posts on this topic.

The first two pages of a 1989 book by George Steiner—

(Click to enlarge)

See also yesterday's posts The Field of the Possible
and Abstraction. 

Compare and contrast with Socrates in the Meno 
quoting Pindar then discussing with a slave boy 
the duplication of the square.

Was Socrates a great philosopher or, as the above
figure seems to indicate and as some say of Steiner,
too clever by half ?

George Steiner —

"Man is, in Lévi-Strauss's view, a mythopoetic primate
(it's a difficult phrase but we don't have a better one)…."

Wikipedia —

"Primate is a title or rank bestowed on some bishops in certain Christian churches." 

Pope Benedict XVI at the 2012 Easter Vigil on April 7 —

"The great hymn of the Exsultet, which the deacon sings at the beginning of the Easter liturgy, points us quite gently towards a further aspect. It reminds us that this object, the candle, has its origin in the work of bees. So the whole of creation plays its part. In the candle, creation becomes a bearer of light.

But in the mind of the Fathers, the candle also in some sense contains a silent reference to the Church. The cooperation of the living community of believers in the Church in some way resembles the activity of bees. It builds up the community of light."

http://twitter.com/#!/skdh —

* Title courtesy of George Steiner.
   For the "thought" part, see Plato's diamond
   in last night's Mathematical Imagery.

Those impressed by George Steiner's remark on Hegel in the previous post may consult…

(Click to enlarge.)

(The Christian Examiner.  Volume LXXX. New Series, Volume I.  January, March, May, 1866.
New York: James Miller, Publisher, 522, Broadway.  Boston: Walker, Fuller, & Co.

No. CCLIV, Art. IV.– THE SECRET OF HEGEL.
By C. C. Everett, pp. 196-207.

A review of…

The Secret of Hegel, being the Hegelian System in Origin, Principle, Form, and Matter.
By James Hutchinson Sterling. In two volumes.
London: Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green. 1865. 8vo, 2 vols.)

On Hegel, from the review—

"He starts not from the beginning, but from the heart, of the world.
There never was a time when this pure Being— which, in its
undivided absoluteness, is indistinguishable from nothing;
as pure, unbroken light is indistinguishable from darkness—
was by itself alone; but this absolute Being is yet the foundation
and the groundwork of whatever is."

For more on Hegel's logic, see Marxists.org.

See also Steiner on chess and Lenin in The New Yorker
(September 7, 1968, page 133).

Perception vs. Inception

Question—

"Where philosophy and literature mesh, where they are litigious toward one another in form or matter, these echoes of origin can be heard. The poetic genius of abstract thought is lit, is made audible. Argument, even analytic, has its drumbeat. It is made ode. What voices the closing movements of Hegel’s Phenomenology  better than Edith Piaf’s non de non , a twofold negation which Hegel would have prized?

This essay is an attempt to listen more closely."

— George Steiner, The Poetry of Thought 

Answer—

Edith Piaf's rien de rien . See also Is Nothing Sacred?

George Steiner, interview in The Guardian of April 19:

“No culture has a pact with eternity,” he says. “The conditions which made possible the giants of the western poetic, aesthetic, philosophic tradition no longer really obtain.” Steiner doesn’t believe “there can be a Hamlet without a ghost, a Missa Solemnis without a missa,” and if you say that the questions addressed by religion are “nonsense or baby talk or trivial, I don’t believe that certain dimensions will be available to you. Particularly today, when the atheist case is being put, if I may say so, with such vulgarity of mind.”

The “Weblog” link is to a Log24 page containing the last five entries dated Sept. 22, 2002, or earlier.

The first impression one has on clicking “Weblog” is that the visitor was interested in George Steiner, C. S. Lewis, and a game of chess with God– appropriate topics for today, Palm Sunday.

This, however, is just the top entry of the five on the page.  A check of the referring link shows the visitor to have been interested in neither chess nor God, but rather in sombreros– an appropriate topic for today, April Fools’ Day.

Intersections

1. Blue Ridge meets Black Mountain,

2. Vertical meets horizontal in music,

3. The timeless meets time in religion.

Details:

1. Blue Ridge, Black Mountain

“Montreat College is located in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina…. The Black Mountain Campus is… three miles from the main campus in the historic town of Black Mountain.”

Black Mountain College was “established on the Blue Ridge Assembly grounds outside the town of Black Mountain in North Carolina in the fall of 1933.”

USA Today, May 15, 2005, on Billy Graham:

“MONTREAT, N.C. — … It’s here at his… homestead, where the Blue Ridge meets the Black Mountain range east of Asheville, that Graham gave a rare personal interview.”

See also the following from June 24:

“No bridge reaches God, except one…
God’s Bridge: The Cross.”

— Billy Graham Evangelistic Association,
according to messiahpage.com

For some remarks more in the spirit of Black Mountain than of the Blue Ridge, see today’s earlier entry on pianist Grete Sultan and composer Tui St. George Tucker.

2. Vertical, Horizontal in Music

Richard Neuhaus on George Steiner’s
Grammars of Creation:

 “… the facts of the world are not and will never be ‘the end of the matter.’ Music joins grammar in pointing to the possibility, the reality, of more. He thinks Schopenhauer was on to something when he said music will continue after the world ends.

‘The capacity of music to operate simultaneously along horizontal and vertical axes, to proceed simultaneously in opposite directions (as in inverse canons), may well constitute the nearest that men and women can come to absolute freedom.  Music does “keep time” for itself and for us.'”

3. Timeless, Time

A Trinity Sunday sermon quotes T. S. Eliot:

“… to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint.”

See also The Diamond Project.

Big Dreams

“For more than a century, Los Angeles has been synonymous with big dreams. The Australian writer and critic Clive James said it this way. ‘Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like… The fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there.'”

— Today’s inaugural address by Mayor Villaraigosa

See also the previous entry.

Update of 2:24 PM July 2:

Yesterday afternoon I picked up a copy of George Steiner’s Grammars of Creation I had ordered.  A check of Amazon.com to see what others had to say about this book yielded the following:

“Steiner’s account of Hope as something exclusively transcendental and relative to the future is poor and superficial: the person who hopes is not only walking ‘towards’ Eternal Life, but is already walking ‘in’ Eternal Life, walking the Kingdom.”

— Matías Cordero, Santiago, Chile

See also an entry of April 7, 2005, Nine is a Vine.

His Way

Suggested by George Steiner’s phrase in the previous entry, “as in inverse canons”–

1. A revision of Theme and Variations to include a midi of Bach’s variations on the Goldberg ground
2. The following from the screenplay of Cold Mountain—

   EXT. BLACK COVE FARM. DAY. A beautiful day, the farm peaceful. Inman walks up the path to the farmhouse…. He knocks on the door. Monroe answers.             MONROE      Mr. Inman.             INMAN      Reverend.             MONROE      What can I do for you? Inman hovers, awkward. Ada appears, awkward.             INMAN      I have some sheet music.      Belonged to my father.      No use to me. Ada comes forward, takes the package. ****** LATER ******* INT. PARLOUR.  BLACK COVE FARM. DAY. At the piano, Ada unwraps the package of music.  Inside the first book of music, there’s a picture of Inman.  Some of the music has left its imprint on the picture, the notes like a melody over Inman’s face. Ada picks them out on the piano.

3.     Bach, BWV 1087 (midi)

   (Fourteen Canons on the First Eight Notes of the Goldberg Ground)

4.         Bach in the original —
     
      

5.        “Bach in the Original” —