Anachronistic Kantian Dialogue

On Autonomy
What is autonomy?
• That I give myself a law, which I act upon. Auto : Self. Nomos : Law.
Can you give yourself any law you choose?
• Yes, of course. That’s why its autonomy.
Can you give yourself a law that is unjust?
• Yes. I’m autonomous.
Should someone submit to/obey an unjust law?
• Of course not.
If someone can’t be expected to obey a law, and in fact, should not, is it even a law?
• No.
So, if autonomy is the giving of one’s self the laws of one’s actions, then to give one’s self an unjust law wouldn’t be autonomy would it?
• I don’t follow.
You are giving the law, so the pre-fix “auto” applies, yes?
• Of course.
But if an unjust law is no law at all, then the greek suffix “nomos” would not apply. Do you agree?
• I’m still not following.
The autonomous person gives themselves the law of their action, and what is being given by the self here is NOT a law. The self and the giving remain, but the law would be excluded by the injustice “prescribed,” correct?
• Ah, yes, indeed.
So, the autonomous person must be just? Insofar as one is unjust, one fails to be autonomous?
• But that seems a constraint upon the autonomous person!
Indeed, but isn’t it only a constraint of rationality in the most basic sense?
• How do you mean?
The principle of non-contradiction is an indemonstrable first principle of reason. By it, we know that an unjust law is not a law, because justice is analytically contained in the concept of law. It cannot both be a law and not-a-law (unjust) at the same time and in the same respect.
• Oh…right. But its still a constraint upon my autonomy, however minimal, necessary and basic.
If the autonomy of every possible person falls under the same “constraint,” as you call it, wouldn’t that constraint be the bounds of the universal. Though definite, it would be absolute. Could there be any “beyond” into which to go, unrestrained by the PNC?
• Well, one would bound into nothingness, it seems.
So, would you like to have the freedom to give a nothing-law to yourself? To give a not-law? That, too, would be not-autonomy, for there would be neither a law to give, nor a self to give it, nor giving.
• No, I suppose that nothing is opposed to autonomy.
Indeed!

Keep On Doing What You're Doing.

I can, very often, conceive of how one would engage some task excellently. Unfortunately, the comprehensiveness of that conception is often enough to scare me off of actually pursuing it. Who has the time? Who has the patience? Who has the resources?

Conversely, and with likewise misfortune, a task which I have no earthly idea how to approach is rarely completed. Indeed, even begun!

And though I do spend a lot of time on facebook, I actually spend a remarkable amount of time...well, you know; doing things.

What sorts of things? I'm glad you asked.

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The Smart Set is the tentative name for the new music project I'm embarking on with my boy, Johnny B. We're aiming for a 5 song e.p. in the next few months. Songs that tell stories, basically. Attempts at humanizing our concepts through lyric and melody.

Our first task is to address commerce as a motivating principle of personal identity. Here goes...

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Accompanying the above is an attempt to work out a theoretical apparatus for how narrative is pragmatically more persuasive than "pure" argument in human life and especially human life together or what we vulgarly call "politics." I've hinted at it here before, but what is fundamentally necessary for action is faith. The mimetic (imitative, in a sense) nature of narration and the faith required to engage a narrative premise more closely access the sort of being that chooses its actions for reasons. The reasons are not always explicit and almost never simple or direct, but can be communicated in a holistic and felt way through the tactics of fictive persuasion, which are multiple and simultaneous.

In Milchian/Kierkegaardian terms, I'm going to work out the dialectical calculus as a means of releasing the movement of Spirit in my overly-reflective mind.

Hopefully that will help me write what God has for me to write.

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Lurking out there is a script I will finish before May. I will, I will, I will!

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Quasi-officially, I'm working on Blondel's thesis from 1893, Action, as well as Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and a whole host of hermeneutical approaches to theology with Fred Lawrence, a Lonerganian who teaches at BC. Also, reading through the Republic over a couple of weeks w/ friends to prep 2nd year-ers for Comps.

Gotta try to get some scholarships for next year as well. This place is wildly expensive.



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Other little projects?:
- start making my own fancy coffee at home
- get my apartment likewise fancy.
- finish off the last tid-bit of credit card debt.
- get another (big) tattoo
- don't fuck it up w/ a girl
- TBA

Godspeed, everybody.

shitbird impurity of motive

"I'm not very good at acting out of duty; if I don't want to do something, I tend not to ever get to it."

I've said this a few times now, to (relatively) recently made friends. Now, one could understandably interpret this to mean that I'm some sort of hedonist or sensualist. That I just do what I want, thoughtlessly and at the mercy of my inclinations. That I've eschewed question of right and wrong in favor of whatever feels good.

That's not quite what I mean. Rather, I find that those courses of action or particular tasks that have as their ONLY appeal in duty, I lack the strength of will to carry out. Or, more often, I find I am paralyzed in the face of them, because I have no organic impulse towards them, and so my standard for completion or success is an unrealistic notion of "perfection."

"When the Tao is lost, men begin to speak of Good and Evil." Or Right and Wrong. Duty and Inclination.

Instead, I find that if I am to have hope of carrying out the good action, I need to have cultivated the sort of character, such that I desire more organically to do what is right, because it pleases me in some respect. Indeed, the speculative enterprise I engage in, when facing complex questions of purpose and action, is usually so convoluted that pure knowledge of the dutiful action is nigh impossible to come by. Instead I have to act on what seems feasible and instead I feel my way along, like a person with only enough light for the next step through a dark and treacherous cavern.

What principles or "maxims" am I acting from when I engage in this sort of agency? Intentions and motivations are not so easy as that. The ways in which I spin against my existential drives keep the waters of my motivations churned and murky. Clarity only comes in a narration after the fact.

which is perhaps why forgiveness and repentance are so important. We have little hope of doing it right before hand. The logic of mercy is the only logic that is safe.

This is quick and sloppy. maybe I'll clean it up later, but I've got to go install a harddrive now.

When In (Self-)Doubt

Recently, my relationship to this 'blog has been a nice little microcosm of the rest of my life. I've got so much to do that I can't quite get a handle on how I'm going to do all of it. Its not that its actually more than I can get done, its just that its more than I can visualize getting done. I make to-do lists that are so long I can't even marginally memorize them. I can't picture them and the tasks they enumerate. So, with characteristic authenticity, I don't do anything. I just ignore all of it and try not to feel my building anxiety.

Likewise, I've had so much to write about, I couldn't picture myself sitting down to write any of it. So, I didn't. Simple as that.

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Pure knowledge is never enough to move us because it does not take hold of us in our entirety. In every act, there is an act of faith Maurice Blondel, Action (1893)

If the above is true, then the mimetic character of narration, of story-telling is more adequate to the task of persuasion than argument-as-pure-knowing. Our encounter with it might be a receptive act of faith. After all, Coleridge's "suspension of disbelief" is just a double-negative for "faith." The faith we can exercise in the reception of a narrative, I suspect, is a similar faith exercised when we enact our own narration through agency. The stories we hear/see shapes the sorts of stories we can tell through our mimesis(1).

Story telling grips our whole person. It moves our whole selves.

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"You think I can maybe call you sometime soon?"

"Will you have coffee with me?"

"We're going to The Pill tonight and I was hoping I'd see you there."

"I promise I'm not normally flaky."

I just can't help but give her a second chance. My friends must think I'm an idiot.

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No, really, I'm glad I put up a bit here, but now I really must get back to work. I'll try not to let my perfectionism keep me from you, though.

Promise. Godspeed.

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(California) Dream Girl?

False Starts and Unfinished Business

I'm waiting, in the cold, outside of what used to be the Selwyn Theater. It is now rather vulgarly named the "American Airlines Theater," and I'm hoping to buy some rush tickets for tonight performance of Hedda Gabler. It's an Ibsen play about a strong willed woman who's conflicted nature about her own best interest lead her into a trap of a marriage. Its starring Mary-Louise Parker, as you can see above. MLP is delightful and ought to be seen being so, so I though the tickets a must have. (On a scale of 1-gay, how was that previous sentence?) Besides, the damn things are only 21.50 if you can get your hands on them. And since I was one of 3 people waiting for tickets, my odds seemed pretty damn good.

I strolled past the theater, initially, since no one else was there waiting (I was, after all, there nearly an hour before the box office opened. I can be thorough that way.) I went into a starbucks and ordered a double shot latte, in hopes it would taste like a latte...well, anywhere else. No such luck. Triple, next time I'm reduced to Starbucks, it seems. If I'm going to have coffee, I'd prefer it taste like...well, coffee, yes? (Note: Pete's suffers no such scorn from me. Sufficiently potent, I find their lattes.) In any case, I've consumed my low-fat coffee cake and I'm sipping my coffee, leaning against the entrance to the AA theater, when a lincoln towncar pulls up. Black, with tinted windows, no less. I'm curious who might be piling out. This is near Times Square and Broadway, after all.

A large coat and a pair of awful lime-green-and-gold track pants unfolds from the back seat, and when the hood raises up, I see a familiar face. More focused and stern than I usually see it, but its unmistakable. I watch as Will Ferrell walks past my right shoulder and into the studio building next door. Its then that I recall he has a show opening on Broadway in 10 days or so. I walked around the block later and snapped a shot so you could all enjoy its pithy title:

So, I'm thinking, "well, not even 24 hours in New York and I manage a celebrity sighting! Isn't that something!" I finish my weak-ass latte, and walk over to throw away the cup. I stroll back, and lean again against the doors of the theater. A pretty brunette woman walks out of the cafe-type restaurant next to the AA theater and I recognize her too! It's Lauren Graham, who (as you should all know!) played the mother on Gilmore Girls, which is among my favoritest shows ever. She actually looks at me, so I attempt my best "yes, I know who you are. Yes, I know you're awesome and why. No, I won't bug you, but thanks for existing!" nod-and-smile. I hope it was effective. She, too, went into the studio space next door. I proceeded to plotz.

Oh yeah, and I got the cheap-ass tickets to Hedda Gabler and then went to see it last night. Quite good. New translation was lively and MLP was a delight. The woman who played Julianne Tesman (Helen Carey) was also very good. In fact, probably the best actor in the show, if not as mesmerizing as the lead. I'm always amazed at what sort of a production one can create with that sort of money to throw at a show. Hedda's wardrobe was outstanding. Totally magnificent. (Seriously...so gay. How did my penis miss the memo? One wonders.)

Oh, I'm exhausted. I'm going to go to bed. I'll either update this entry or post another one tomorrow. G'night from the Big Apple

Rosy Cheeks and Diabetic Foreplay

Reading Wendell Berry in a Starbucks is so ironic it hurts. Eating Cheez-Its and reading W.B is much more my speed, as far as irony goes.

The little boy sitting at the next table over is eating the whipped cream out of his drink with his fingers. I'm so impressed and his mother doesn't seem bothered by it at all. She just keeps singing alond to some classic R&B song. "Hey Mister Postman," I think. I'm drinking my favorite, sugar-filled Starbucks concoction. If you ever want to try it; Chai Tea Latte w/ a single pump of chocolate-mocha-syrup-stuff and a dash of cinnamon. It IS going to rot my teeth right out of my noggin, but its comfortingly thick, hot and sweet.

And it is SNOWING outside! I couldn't be happier. Just one big, fluffy, flurry of snow flakery. Sidewalks are treacherous and the drivers are a little twitchy on the road, but I'm all iPod-music swagga' and winter spirit.

I even forgot for a moment that this trip through America's major cities is going to leave me broke-tee-broke. I'll be rocking the PB&J-diet for about a month upon my return to Boston.

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If anyone can explain to me why Hurricane Katrina was in the movie "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" I will be grateful. Furthermore, if you can convince me its inclusion was a good idea, I will give you $100, American.

David Fincher, you made the beautiful people even more beautiful. They were, also, emotionally incomprehensible.

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New York tomorrow. A convoluted path through public transit to get to Manhattan from JFK. By myself, with two big-'ole bags. Could be interesting. I'm a tad nervous, to be honest.

Then a few days staying with some wildly wealthy friends of my dad. I'm curious to see what that's like. Could be awesome. Could be uber-weird.

But this is all about the adventure, right? All about the adventure, yes.

Got any NYC musts? Let me know.

The Wind Nips Your Nose; The Cold Takes Your Toes

One of us has dark chocolate in her drink. Two of us know all the words to a Dr. Dre track, except its 90's night and this was on The Chronic: 2001. Duh. One of us wants to write creatively. Childrens fantasy, but there's no money in it, so maybe some autobiographical stuff that would disabuse one of us of our friends. Another one of us keeps cutting in, all v-neck t-shirts and rose-y cheeked. or is it nosed? One of us needs a haircut.

Later, on facebook, there's a picture of my butt. I tagged it, of course. You can go check.

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Its amazing how I am the person I am in places always in those places. Or, more simply, where I am matters for who I am. I like who-I-am in Boston a lot. At least so far.

I'll be glad to get back.

I don't think I'm going to make any new years resolutions until I get back to Boston. It wouldn't be the same me making them from Chicago. Or New York, especially. (did I mentioned I'll be in New York for a bit? weird, eh?)

In fact, I'm going to make "Goals for 2009" instead of "New Years Resolutions," because New Years resolutions are getting the cart in front of the horse as far as habituation goes. Set the goals. Pursue them. See what habits develop.

Virtues make your Method. Telos makes your Virtues.

I'll let you know.

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