Primavera

A third present, after the NHC fellowship and the SSHRC grant, was granted: a visiting fellowship at Clare College at Cambridge for the time after the residence at the National Humanities Centre in North Carolina. Thankful and humbled, honoured and centred I am. I could not have dreamt of a better place than Cambridge where I can discuss my book project on pleasure in its last stages. 
Spring has entered the city of Toronto. Access to High Park has been forbidden but one can experience the blossom of the free cherry trees in front of the Robarts Library.


Podrán mortar todas las Flores, pero no podrán detener la primavera. Pablo Neruda

Delight, Honour, Pleasure. Seeing and Knowing.

I am delighted and honoured to have received the great news that I will be the Philip L. Quinn fellow at the National Humanities Centre in North Carolina next year to work on my book project on Plato's Twofold Project on Pleasure. Prof. Quinn was both philosopher and theologian, and thus it is a special honour. To the delight, a further delight was added, the Canadian (SSHRC) Insight Grant.

A piece on the Choice of Lives in Phil. 20-22 was accepted (by Ancient Philosophy). So I am further pleased. As for the mixed seminar on Aristotle on pleasure, I think it is the best I have ever experienced so far.

To be sincere: if I would have to choose the most profound pleasure among all, I would forget all else and choose the one that is related to our seeing ourselves, not statically in a mirror but actively in a δρώμενον. On that seeing - as more fundamental than knowing - in the next project, after the one on pleasure.

Life in seeing, knowing, acting and creating develops step by step. Continuity in small steps from present to present. Presence. Centred delight and thankfulness.

A Canadian architect whose work I am fond of: Frank Gehry. He shapes buildings like ships with sails...This is a shot from the inside of the AGO.

A Hidden Life, Terrence Malick

Piece by piece I am moving on. All pieces address pleasure so it seems I am "stuck" with the topic for a while and till my book is finished.

The new Malick comes to town soon. Anticipating.

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

― George Eliot, or else and more female sounding, Mary Ann Evans, Middlemarch (Quoted at the end of The Hidden Life)

I watched the best film I have ever watched. I love many directors and quite a lot of films but tonight I watched the best of them. I do not care whether I do injustice to all those excellent films. 

It was the Hymn to the Earth that Heidegger was unable to write (his talk at the University about the Earth and his Vaterland was a disgrace to both). An appropriate hymn to the unhistorical acts (see Eliot, and keep in mind Nietzsche's definition of being unhistorical in his Untimely Meditations). Also a wink to turn our attention away from the many famous PhD holders and no PhD holders who supported the Hitler frenzy. Not in order to "show" there was resistance in the German-speaking countries but for the sake of revealing this concealed life of resistance, the resistance we are unable and unwilling to offer every time tyranny is present: in us or around us. As a good friend said, we do not need "more" democracy but greater resistance to tyranny.

The film was not political? When I read such nonsense in reviews (that was in NYT), I decide not to read more.

The technical aspects are stimulating as well. Terrence offers such shots for the first time. He focuses on the body and often does not take care of the faces, which are left completely out of the picture...

PS: Which philosophy faculty is going to award him the PhD title he so much deserves? Or, has he not accomplished the PhD he started with Gilbert Ryle on the Notion of World in Heidegger and Wittgenstein? And much more in his unique way?

Emerging Aphrodite (one of the many) in the SouthWest of the island Milos, Greece.

Μικρή Πράσινη Θάλασσα

Μικρή πράσινη θάλασσα δεκατριῶ χρονῶ
Πού θά ‘θελα νά σέ υἱοθετήσω
Νά σέ στείλω σχολεῖο στήν Ἰωνία 
Νά μάθεις μανταρίνι καί ἄψινθο

Μικρή πράσινη θάλασσα δεκατριῶ χρονῶ
Στό πυργάκι τοῦ φάρου τό καταμεσήμερο
Νά γυρίσεις τόν ἥλιο καί ν’ ἀκούσεις
Πῶς ἡ μοίρα ξεγίνεται καί πῶς
Ἀπό λόφο σέ λόφο συνεννοοῦνται
Ἀκόμα οἱ μακρινοί μας συγγενεῖς
Πού κρατοῦν τόν ἀέρα σάν ἀγάλματα

Μικρή πράσινη θάλασσα δεκατριῶ χρονῶ
Μέ τόν ἄσπρο γιακά καί τήν κορδέλα
Νά μπεῖς ἀπ’ τό παράθυρο στή Σμύρνη
Νά μοῦ ἀντιγράψεις τίς ἀντιφεγγιές στήν ὀροφή
Ἀπό τά Κυριελέησον καί τά Δόξα Σοι
Καί μέ λίγο Βοριά λίγο Λεβάντε
Κύμα το κύμα νά γυρίσεις πίσω

Μικρή πράσινη θάλασσα δεκατριῶ χρονῶ
Γιά νά σέ κοιμηθῶ παράνομα
Καί νά βρίσκω βαθιά στήν ἀγκαλιά σου
Κομμάτια πέτρες τά λόγια τῶν Θεῶν
Κομμάτια πέτρες τ’ ἀποσπάσματα τοῦ Ἡράκλειτου

Οδυσσεας Ελυτης

Borinska's Eavesdropping or the Desire to Make the Impossible Possible

Borinska in "Andrei Rublev" by Andrei Tarkovsky.

"Hearing means bowing our heads in humility which is capable of accepting what the other person is sowing on the ground of our mind and heart. Like our rich, silent, creative earth, we should offer ourselves to the Other."

Devoted to Andrei Tarkovsky and his humble listening to Andrei Roublev, to Plato and his enigmatic listening to various types of hedonists, to Christos Hatzis and his wondrous listening to friends musicians and poets, and to a few others that have been and are capable of conducting genuine dialogue that presupposes vigilant listening.

PS: The academic year has come to an end and I can take care of the items on the research list, from pieces on the Philebus and the Parmenides over to moral psychology in late Stoicism and the chapter on the Protagoras in my book on pleasure and hedonism. Additionally, one wishes to get to know more of the Canadian culture and nature. So great fun in all respects.
PPS: I cherish a gem on the early Stoa (if I have to choose only one), Malcolm Schofield's piece on the Present Moment, to which a gem on the later Stoics was recently added: Brad Inwood's 'Marcus Aurelius: What Kind of Stoic Are you?' Rarely does one come across pieces of art in interpretation of (ancient) philosophy. That undoubtedly belongs to the group.

Plasticity of the Present Moment, Marcus Aurelius

Oh, how grateful I am!!! The paper on the plasticity of and how to live the present moment in Marcus Aurelius' Meditations got accepted! There is still some work to do, of course, as ever in writing. The peer-review process proves to be an adventurous wandering (or in one word and without additional drama, πορεία) of wonderful dialogue and a stimulating learning experience once again. This paper is very precious to me, for Stoic metaphysics and ethics of time and beyond, and will be devoted to Malcolm Schofield and his gem on "the Retrenchable Present Moment" in early Stoics, as it suits.

When gifts are given in an unexpected moment, one starts thinking anew about giving presents and being given presents. Doesn't it always happen like that with the real gifts that never emerge in archaic relationships of "giving and taking" of any sort?

First things first: the paper on Plato's argument in Phil. 20-22 needs to be completed; otherwise, we will go through a hiccup of pleasure instead of a continuous one. And who but Philebus goes for episodes of pleasures and episodic eruption of sentences here and there, sentenced to his atomic privacy as he is?! We are chatting about the Philebus in this term in the upper-level seminar (to be followed by the Protagoras and the Gorgias). Ben got into the facticity and factivity of pleasure and we started touching upon installing propositional pleasures in the present moment and painting living paintings and directing films...Jon came up with nothing less than my research position (in earlier and forthcoming papers and in my current book-in-progress) about the dependence of pleasures on the relationship to pain. I do not know whether it is true that we create and are responsible for our dreams, as Freud thought, but I think that this is not a dream and, for sure, I am not responsible for this, plus I love it without any doubt: this in itself and not being responsible for this! Next session: pure pleasures are no atoms but presents. During the authentic chats we had, I realized that the most important things about pure pleasures have not been published so far.

The last days we have been feeling like our lovely friends in the North that I had the delight to visit in November. Minus 40 with the windchill...
But who cares about the weather? My best student ever so far, Ben Laskey, just got accepted by Cambridge University for the M.A. in (ancient) philosophy. As for my extraordinary Emily, Emily Breach, she was accepted by Queens (Kingston) for graduate studies that will focus on Plato. Congratulations and celebration of presents.

Photo of this fair lady by my fellow traveller, Dan Wright

That's the Spirit: Inexpressible Thankfulness (Between the Canadian and the American Thanksgiving)

I just submitted my SSHRC Insight Grant proposal for my book project under contract with Brill: Plato's Twofold Dialectic of Pleasure: Critical Dialogue with Hedonists and Critical Analysis of Pleasures.

While I am resting a bit after the submission, I am thinking about how many people, colleagues and students, I am indebted to for the articulation of this project: on the one or the other side of the Channel or the Ocean. My thanks go to many people who taught me through their example that there are no "good" and "bad" quarters in which one does Plato research, nor good or bad ideologies since all ideologies are restrictive. There are, though, authentic and inauthentic ways of doing so. It would be a long discussion to get into this matter here and now...

Last but not least, I thank Nigel for offering his time despite all possible indifferents that were getting in the way and Ben for helping me see through his own fine-grained thoughts that actually I am not interested in following any polemical tone in a critique of utilitarianism as Anscombe did, and I should really not if I sincerely wish to follow Plato in his genuine dialogue with representatives of opposite views, in the case of the above project the hedonists. Dialogue as Plato conducted it has a pride of place also when it comes to his metaphysics of pleasure and it is no dressing of a salad that we might choose to add or avoid depending on our taste or lack of it. To be "dialecticians" is a title we mostly do not live up to, in and beyond Plato research. Dialogue can have an impact. This is possible if and only if we take it seriously, as seriously as Plato did, and conduct it as paradigmatically as well.

For an attempt to talk about both Plato and Marcus Aurelius projects as therapeutic, click the following link, pp. 28 ff.: The Therapeutic Power of Genuine Dialogue. GM. COSMOS 2018

Preparing for Harlem Duet (Tarragon Toronto). 

Sir Olivier, blacked up, as Othello together with Smith as Desdemona (Othello, 1965)
How can one attend an Othello performance after experiencing this one?

http://www.tarragontheatre.com/show/harlem-duet/

Harlem Duet: The story of Othello from the perspective of his first, black wife.

Archaeology of madness: A human being (aren't all black experiences human experiences?) becomes mad in a kind of ritual in which, in contrast to evolving rituals, she considers herself to be "fixed in the emotions of all her ancestors", and, therefore, not able to live, love and move (forward). She becomes her body. Her body's organs gain a voice and sometimes a cry. Her narrative turns into the passive vehicle of these voices. For his part, he does not become his body. "He is not his skin. His skin is not him." Reminded me of Ibsen's "Ghosts" with regard to the characters' being chained to their past. Ibsen did not offer any liberation but mirrored the gloomy entanglements. Harlem Duet did offer liberation. The work itself was the liberation from chains to individual and collective dark past and to some glorious past (theatre) traditions.

Archaeology of Blackness: all the layers of history are present in each and every period of time. Time lived in full awareness of its being entangled with the past above all. A special lady, like any other lady, like any other human being, is narrating and becoming interwoven with her own narrative. "She is trapped in history. History is trapped in her." In her organs.

Great respect to the author, Ms Sears, for writing such a brilliant play: for the first time I am so interested in contemporary theatre. The winner is Canada and not Greece or Germany as one would think, considering long traditions of theatre, at least not to my experience. Kudos to Tarragon Theatre for being the truly avant-garde theatre I have not found in any other places in the world so far.

An excellent stage production of a play that shows us how to make theatre history in the present by drawing material from great theatre history. Ms Sears "beside" Mr Kurosawa (think of his RAN) "beside" Sir Shakespeare. Chains of peers, chains of pearls. Bravo, Canada.