IDEE FIXE

In his introduction to The Journals of Kierkegaard(1834-1854)
Alexander Dru writes that at the age of 33, from 1846 on, the whole
significance of what Kierkegaard had written "suddenly dawned on
him." "His gifts and talents," Dru went on, were to be his vocation.
He had understood his mission." It was a mission implicit in the work
he had written.  In 1846 he began a series of what he called
his "proper" Note-books a continuation of his previously haphazard
ones. Dru says that the reader can see Kierkegaard's extraordinary
destiny taking shape in these Notebooks, a destiny in the service of
an idea, an idee fixe, a destiny linked to an "idea for which he
could live and die."-Ron Price with thanks to Alexander
Dru, "Introduction to The Journals of Kierkegaard," Fontana, 4th
impression 1967, (Oxford UP, 1938), pp.7-10.

Your posterity your confidant
by means of your journal,
your most trusted confidant:
"The thing is to find a truth
which is true for me, to find
the idea for which I can live
and for which I can die......1

My posterity my confidant
as I leave behind all these
words--after I found a truth
which was true for me and
for which I have lived, found
a mission, a destiny, a service
to an idea, an idee fixe whose
time had come in this dark
heart of an age of transition
and gradually unfolded by
stages to array my life with
the fruits of consecrated joy.

1 This was written in Kierkegaard's Journal on August 1, 1835. The
entire collection of his Danish journals has been edited and
published in 13 volumes which consist of 25 separate bindings
including indices. The first English edition of his Journals was
edited by Alexander Dru in 1938.  A third official translation will
contain 55 volumes and is expected to be completed by 2009.

2   "Were I to die now the effect of my life would be exceptional,"
Kierkegaard wrote, "much of what I have simply jotted down carelessly
in the Journals would become of great importance and have a great
effect." --Journals, December 1849.

Ron Price
4 July 2007

I have often thought that Kierkegaard was manic. 'Idee Fixe' means just that in Greek. The question I have is : why did he have this fixed idea, this mania?

Nickle

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "James Rovira" <jamesrovira@...>
wrote:
>
> Ha...his father found it on a Jutland heath. He passed it on to his
son.
>
> Joakim Garff's biography from a couple years ago says that Kierkegaard
> suffered from a neurological disorder that did indeed produce a mania
--
> graphomania -- which is a symptom of a form of epilepsy K may have
had.
>
> Jim R
>


Jim,

What SK's father found on the Jutland heath was a curse for a curse and
passed it on to little Ludvig in his upbringing. What SK may have found
on that same Jutland heath was a blessing that blotted out the curse. I
would guess SK tried to communicate this to his father before he died.
Maybe he did or maybe he discovered that one cannot communicate such
things directly.

Indeed SK may have suffered from epilepsy, although he is careful not to
say so. I think his choice of the pseudonyms 'Climacus' and
'Anti-Climacus' may be cryptive names for the epileptic episode prior to
and after the 'brain storm'. Perhaps it's the lightning during the brain
storm that provides the insight and the mania to communicate it. Maybe
that's why he is so sympathetic to Socrates and St. Paul among others.

Nick O

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "James Rovira" <jamesrovira@...> wrote:
>
> I don't think SK ever made it to the Jutland heath, though, Nick. I got the
> impression he was a Copenhagener pretty well all his life except for three
> years or so in Germany.
>
> But, he did have his excursions.
>
> I agree with you about the curse, though. Seems like SK had an experience
> at the very end of his life in which he deeply felt God's forgiveness. I
> don't know that his father ever did.
>
> Jim R
>

Hi Jim, I think SK did visit the Jutland heath. Here is something I found on the web and I'm sure I've read before in the journals or real books on SK.

Nick

http://www.stolaf.edu/collections/kierkegaard/newsletter/issue45/45002.htm

"Meanwhile, SAKs wanderlust was not limited by the city limits (as it was in Berlin, where a shortage of public conveniences restricted his moves significantly! [180 f.]). During his visit to Jutland in 1839, he wanders in solitude across the heath expecting to encounter a nature of mythological gravity consistent with the home of his father. But lo and behold, he gets so confused by the actual views that a dizzying emptiness and nothingness foils his expectations and leaves him in a state of utter anxiety (141 f.). Within a few pages the anxiety has spread to a prefiguation of the chasm between his ideal and burning desires on the one side and naked reality on the other (144). Wanderlust may not be confined by city limits, but confined it is by nature. Small wonder, then, not merely that to travel meant to write in SAK's case, but that to write meant to travel, whereas plans for real life travel were rather meticulously circumvented and eventually abandoned, if at all possible (417-18). Garff's chapter about SAK changes of address (564-67) confirms in a humorous way how these settlements concern a basically unsettled person.

The American critic Rebecca Solnit, whose book Wanderlust: A History of Walking appeared the same year as SAK and therefore was unavailable to the author of the later, has a brief chapter on Kierkegaard in which she concludingly writes about him and his likes: "They were in the world but not of it.  A solitary walker, however short his or her route, is unsettled, between places, drawn forth into action by desire and lack, having the detachment of the traveler rather than the ties of the worker, the dweller, the member of the group."2 What is striking in this and similar passages of hers is not so much the eloquence and verbal precision, although they surpass even Garff's. Rather, it is the compelling manner in which it interfaces – or intertextualizes – wandering spirits, notably Kierkegaard and Rousseau, who otherwise seem strange bedfellows separated by time and geography, ideology and personal/artistic lineaments. Biographically speaking (of wholehearted persons), these are not birds of a feather flocking together in putative real life, yet biographically speaking (as agents of textual subjectivity and subjective agents of textuality) they are clearly instances walking together – intertextually and to the thought-provoking benefit of interpretationally inclined readers.

One more instance that is somewhat missing in this biography of SAK is Joakim Garff himself. Like his Danish colleague Jørgen Bonde Jensen in a book called Jeg er kun en Digter: Om Søren Kierkegaard som skribent (which is listed in SAK's bibliography),3 his subject is the Kierkegaard who is not "for fastholdere," as a well-known younger Danish poet has described himself.4 A bar of wet soap is not "for fastholdere," for you can literally not hold on to it. But metaforically speaking a person like Kierkegaard is not "for fastholdere" either, for he is, in Bonde Jensen's words, one who "falls outside all designations. Not only those of the literary tradition and the national identity, but also those of the clique, the common sense, and the notion of the natural."5 To come to terms with this slippery figure, Bonde Jensen acknowledges that Kierkegaards way of writing, his authorship, as it were, cannot be separated form his intentions, no more than Bonde Jensens writing can be separated from his. Hence, he "seeks in this context to take bearings of my own point of departure, the disparity between the intellectual left and Søren Kierkegaard."

This is one way of coming to terms with slipperiness around you: Find your own position and be as steadfast as possible as you seek to engage your slippery surroundings (before you perhaps allow yourself to slide in one or more of its many directions). But it is not Joakim Garff's way. For one thing, there is little evidence in his production of any tangible affiliation with leftist causes. But more importantly, he possesses the breadth of view, erudition, and intellectual and stylistic authority to follow – without losing his critical bearings – his slippery subject in whatever direction its biographical complex may take him; at some point he even openly admits to the psychological inevitability of "biographically reading along" (248)."

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "James Rovira"
<jamesrovira@...> wrote:
>
> Ha...his father found it on a Jutland heath.  He passed it on to
his son.
>
> Joakim Garff's biography from a couple years ago says that
Kierkegaard
> suffered from a neurological disorder that did indeed produce a
mania --
> graphomania -- which is a symptom of a form of epilepsy K may have
had.
>
> Jim R
>
> On 7/5/07, Will Brown <wilbro99@...> wrote:
> >
> >   Yo, nicklekula, I think he found it on a Jutland heath.
~~will~~
_________________________________
A neurlogical disorder, graphomania. Interesting. I looked the word
up and found the following--osted by an Andy Oakley.com:
__________________
Graphomania is not a mania to write letters, personal diaries, or
family chronicles (to write for oneself or one's close relations) but
a mania to write books (to have a public of unknown readers). ...
Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic
proportions when a society devlops to the point of creating three
basic conditions:
an elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to
devote themselves to useless activities;
a high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general
isoalation of individuals;
the absense of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life.
(From this point of view, it seems to me symptomatic that in France,
where practically nothing happens, the percentage of writers is
twenty-one times higher than in Israel.
.. The mainspring that drives her to write is just that absence of
vital content, that void. But by a backlash, the effort affects the
cause. General isolation breeds graphomania, and generalized
graphomania in turn intensifies and worsens isolation. The invention
of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the
era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite
meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of
mirrors, which allows no voice to filter through from outside. ...
One morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a
writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have
arrived.
It's the final paragraph that rings true - if everyone starts
blogging (where the level of entry is actually far lower than the
case Kundera is talking about), there will simply be too much to
read. Although aggregation and reputation can help, I can't help but
wonder whether the blogging 'revolution' is going to collapse under
its own weight before this problem gets solved. However, they said
the same about the web and then there was Google; whatever happens,
it's going to be a big challenge.
posted on Sunday, June 08, 2003 8:23 PM
________________________________
Thanks for your pointing me toward this "graphomania."-Ron Price,
Tasmania

Nicklekula, here is the quote I was using when I answered as I did. ~~

July, 1840 it is.

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "James Rovira" <jamesrovira@...>
wrote:
>
> Ooh, that's good...
>
> Garff says this about K's first sermon:
>
> "In Holmens Church, on Tuesday, Jan. 12 1841, he preached his first
sermon
> ever. The text was a passage formt he letter to the Philippians
(1:19-25) in
> which Paul speaks of being split between the earthly and the
heavenly..."
> (185).
>
> That quotation below is from 1840, isn't it?  That'd mean that,
according to
> Garff at least, K didn't follow through.  Doesn't mean he didn't,
> though--just may not be any other record of it, or any record Garff
had
> located for his bio.
>
> Jim R
>
> On 7/8/07, Will Brown wilbro99@... wrote:
> >
> >   Here is one of the entries that may interest you; did he follow
through?
> > ~~
> >
> > "I have been thinking of preaching for the first time in the church
at Sæding,
> > and it would have to be this Sunday. To my not inconsiderable
surprise I see
> > that the text is Mark 8:1-10 (feeding the four thousand), and I was
struck
> > by the words, 'How can one feed these men with bread here in the
desert?,
> > seeing I will be speaking in the poorest parish in the Jutland heath
> > area."   (40 III A 66) (134-135)
> >
> > --- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "James Rovira" jamesrovira@
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > Thanks much, Will. That's Papers and Journals, right? I have the
Hong's
> > > translation, but only volume 1 and 2, which stops around 1938.
Annoying.
> > > Joakim Garff's bio was mentioned in the article Nick posted,
though, so
> > I
> > > have that and was able to mine it for some good stuff.
> > >
> > > May try to find the other volumes in other libraries around here.
> > >
> > > Thanks again,
> > >
> > > Jim R
> > >
> >
>

Well, this morning, being this morning, and having nothing to do with the case except perhaps as a way of breaking into an intro to the song and dance that follows, I present the following collection of words as my turning over a new leaf in this matter of subjectivity. If any see anything in this collection of words that speaks to them, fine, if not, also fine. In either case, the reader is invited to react to my words in any way they see fit, and that includes the reaction of not reacting.  ~~ willy_nilly ~~

PS: Those of you who find it difficult to post because of the depth (ahem) of the subject there, may take heart in that what follows is so off the wall as to be an easy target for the humorous response, where your seriousness may enter incognito, as it were, coded in the language of humor of your own choosing, without tipping your hand to the vultures that haunt such a site, looking for easy pickings. In a word, become a vulture yourself and pick on the nonsense that follows. Enjoy! The dancing bear is here only to amuse and entertain!

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/bearwent.htm

= = == === ===== ========

There is an act in which the self given in the act also acquires the possibility of identifying itself as the doer of that act. If that identity is made, the act that gives rise to the one who identifies itself as the doer of the act is then subsumed by the identity, providing two separate perspectives from which the identity who now occupies that act may view its self-identity; the subjective and the objective perspectives.

In the subjective perspective, the act in question is now seen as thinking about oneself, or self-reflection. Since thinking requires something to think about, an image of the self to be thought about must be present before the act of self-reflection may be completed. There are two categories of image that may be found to complete that act, the inner and the outer; the inner being grounded in what may be called the me, the experiential self, the self of experience that accrues with experience, and the outer being grounded in the body, where the body as my body is then placed in the world as the objective, where the objective category is formed out of the subjective category as my world.

In other words, the subjective perspective derives from the act of identifying the self as the doer of the act in which the self is given. If the act in which the self is given is the act that is reflection, and the reified self, as the doer of the act is to find itself in reflection, it must reflect upon itself, and in doing so, must require an image of the self to be reflected upon. The image to be found is the experiential self, the me to whom things happen, and concomitantly, the world in which these things happen, which is my world.

The subjective perspective is between me and me and the objective perspective is between me and my world, which must contain me. The stage is now set for the argument as to which relation is controlling; if the former, then the world is imagined and if the latter, the me is the imagined. The problem with that argument is what to do with the me that occupies both; the observed me of the inner taking on an objective hue and the observed me of the outer taking on a subjective hue.

Since the two perspectives, the inner and the outer, where the outer depends upon the inner, are of different orders, a change in the reflection upon objective me of the inner and the subjective me of the outer will entail a change of order, the two me's being seen as the product of two separate acts, positing the me that can grasp itself in two separate modes; namely, the self that may grasp itself either subjectively or objectively. This is the self completed that holds the two separate perspectives together, necessitated by the singular act of identity from which the two have risen.

In this form, the act of identity subsumes the act as the doing done by the identity posited in the act. This engenders two categories in which this identity may grasp itself, from which, each engenders two more categories, through which the two engendering categories are now reflected in reverse. As such, there are four levels of reflection, in which the first two are related by an absolute disjunction, while the last two are imaginary products of the second level in self reflection, where self-reflection then shifts from one imagined category to another. Of such a form is the Mandelbrot set created. In other words, the engineer of this that I am always has the last word as the one who sees patterns.

After all of that playing with language, some Danish wag were then to come along and say something about subjectivity being the truth, the reified self thus formed in that play of words could not but see such a statement as suggesting acosmism. The truth as the inner cannot mean other than that the outer is all an illusion:

"To give thinking supremacy over everything else is gnosticism; to make the subjective individual's ethical actuality the only actuality could seem to be acosmism. That it will so appear to a busy thinker who must explain everything, a hasty pate who traverses the whole world, demonstrates only that he has a very poor idea of what the ethical means for the subjective individual. If ethics deprived such a busy thinker of the whole world and let him keep his own self, he would very likely think, `Is this anything? Such a trifling thing is not worth keeping. Let it go along with all the rest' –then, then it is acosmism. But why does a busy thinker like that talk and think so disrespectfully of himself? Indeed, if the intention were that he should give up the whole world and be satisfied with another's person's ethical actuality, well, then he would be in the right to make light of the exchange. But to the individual his own ethical actuality ought to mean, ethically, even more than heaven and earth and everything found therein, more than world's history's six thousand years, and more than astrology, veterinary science, together with everything the times demand, which esthetically and intellectually is a prodigious narrow-mindedness. If it is not so, it is the worst for the individual himself, because then he has nothing at all, no actuality at all, because to everything else he has at the very most only a relation of possibility." (CUP, Hong, p. 341; Lowrie, p.305) 

If what this Danish wag were suggesting is that the error occurred in the first step, where the identity of a self as the doer of the act in which the self that is to be the doer is given is that error, then the truth that subjectivity is the truth cannot be seen until that error is corrected, which is to say, the ending of the act of identity; which, of course, would bring the identity contained to an end. That this might then be resisted could be expressed as follows:

"People generally consider the ethical altogether abstractly and therefore they seem to have a secret horror of it. The ethical is then looks upon as something alien to personal being, and one shrinks from abandoning oneself to it, for one cannot quite be sure what it may lead to in the course of time. Many are afraid of death in the same way, because they entertain obscure and confused ideas about the soul passing over in death into another order of things, where laws and customs prevail which are altogether different form those they have learnt to recognize in this world. The reason for such a fear of death is the individual's reluctance to be transparent to himself, for providing one is willing it is easy to see the absurdity of this fear. Similarly with the ethical; a person who fears transparency will always shun the ethical, for really the ethical wants nothing else." (E/O, Hannay, P. 545)

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "Will Brown" <wilbro99@...>
wrote:
Willy, Great to hear from you again.

Yes, I agree with Kierkegaard that the error is in the first step, or
at least in the beginning.  The problem is always how to drag the
beginning in to time.  As soon as it is done, then the beginning is
lost, and one has to drag another one in to time.  This is where
Schelling begins, and this argument was not lost on Kierkegaard.

In my own experience I wondered so to speak where everything came
from when seeing the world by being indifferent to it(again from
Schelling), and proceeded to ask "Have I always been this way?".

The subject at this point is one which understands its ignorance and
desires to know something (one answers the question with a 'no'), or
one answers a question with a 'yes' and one no longer knows what one
understands.  One screams in distress to the 'yes' with the question
"Then why did I ask".  One goes from no to yes as one who desires
one's nothingness to one who wants nothing outside himself if one is
know anything. I wanted for example to be as 'flat' as the ground
beneath my feet.

There are a couple of principles you might consider.  First, for Kant
the subjet is empty.  There is not a door, but as Kierkegaard
describes, but a 'false door' to understand any act of thought.  Any
thought does not implicate the one who thinks it.  If I have a
thought, I think it, but this does not refer to the nature of the
thinker.  If I believe I am always in the world (however that came
about)I do not understand this thought by understanding where it came
from.  I am already in the world, and looking back through a door is
not the answer I need.

In other words, one is not open to one's actual existence, or project
in the world (the existential self), because it cannot be reduced to
its positive existence-its emptyness of being in the world without
knowning this 'throwness' in to the world.  Schelling insists that
the self must be a "repetition" of itself. Of course this was not
lost on Kierkegaard, as well.  One's beginning cannot be dragged into
light, but it must be the act of the Absolute. (see p. 21, The
Indivisible Remainder, Zizek.).

I find fascinating your understanding that the self must have a self
to conceive itself. However, I don't know where this inner and outer
would be.  Is not the problem that one assumes one already knows
oneself, and therefore a world different from oneself would be
intollerable? Kierkegaard /begins/ with immediacy, and not with
reflection. I'm asking why would one assume that one needed a self at
all? How is it that one is just not part of the world in which one
assumes one acts(sees), instead of acting "outside" this world? At
least according to Kierkegaard we understand ourselves when ourselves
are repeated in Religiousness B or Repetition.

Thanks for sharing, Bill
>
> Well, this morning, being this morning, and having nothing to do
with
> the case except perhaps as a way of breaking into an intro to the
song
> and dance that follows, I present the following collection of words
as
> my turning over a new leaf in this matter of subjectivity. If any
see
> anything in this collection of words that speaks to them, fine, if
not,
> also fine. In either case, the reader is invited to react to my
words in
> any way they see fit, and that includes the reaction of not
reacting.
> ~~ willy_nilly ~~
>
> PS: Those of you who find it difficult to post because of the depth
> (ahem) of the subject there, may take heart in that what follows is
so
> off the wall as to be an easy target for the humorous response,
where
> your seriousness may enter incognito, as it were, coded in the
language
> of humor of your own choosing, without tipping your hand to the
vultures
> that haunt such a site, looking for easy pickings. In a word,
become a
> vulture yourself and pick on the nonsense that follows. Enjoy! The
> dancing bear is here only to amuse and entertain!
>
> http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/bearwent.htm
> <http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/bearwent.htm>
>
> = = == === ===== ========
>
> There is an act in which the self given in the act also acquires the
> possibility of identifying itself as the doer of that act. If that
> identity is made, the act that gives rise to the one who identifies
> itself as the doer of the act is then subsumed by the identity,
> providing two separate perspectives from which the identity who now
> occupies that act may view its self-identity; the subjective and the
> objective perspectives.
>
> In the subjective perspective, the act in question is now seen as
> thinking about oneself, or self-reflection. Since thinking requires
> something to think about, an image of the self to be thought about
must
> be present before the act of self-reflection may be completed.
There are
> two categories of image that may be found to complete that act, the
> inner and the outer; the inner being grounded in what may be called
the
> me, the experiential self, the self of experience that accrues with
> experience, and the outer being grounded in the body, where the
body as
> my body is then placed in the world as the objective, where the
> objective category is formed out of the subjective category as my
world.
>
> In other words, the subjective perspective derives from the act of
> identifying the self as the doer of the act in which the self is
given.
> If the act in which the self is given is the act that is
reflection, and
> the reified self, as the doer of the act is to find itself in
> reflection, it must reflect upon itself, and in doing so, must
require
> an image of the self to be reflected upon. The image to be found is
the
> experiential self, the me to whom things happen, and concomitantly,
the
> world in which these things happen, which is my world.
>
> The subjective perspective is between me and me and the objective
> perspective is between me and my world, which must contain me. The
stage
> is now set for the argument as to which relation is controlling; if
the
> former, then the world is imagined and if the latter, the me is the
> imagined. The problem with that argument is what to do with the me
that
> occupies both; the observed me of the inner taking on an objective
hue
> and the observed me of the outer taking on a subjective hue.
>
> Since the two perspectives, the inner and the outer, where the outer
> depends upon the inner, are of different orders, a change in the
> reflection upon objective me of the inner and the subjective me of
the
> outer will entail a change of order, the two me's being seen as the
> product of two separate acts, positing the me that can grasp itself
in
> two separate modes; namely, the self that may grasp itself either
> subjectively or objectively. This is the self completed that holds
the
> two separate perspectives together, necessitated by the singular
act of
> identity from which the two have risen.
>
> In this form, the act of identity subsumes the act as the doing
done by
> the identity posited in the act. This engenders two categories in
which
> this identity may grasp itself, from which, each engenders two more
> categories, through which the two engendering categories are now
> reflected in reverse. As such, there are four levels of reflection,
in
> which the first two are related by an absolute disjunction, while
the
> last two are imaginary products of the second level in self
reflection,
> where self-reflection then shifts from one imagined category to
another.
> Of such a form is the Mandelbrot set created. In other words, the
> engineer of this that I am always has the last word as the one who
sees
> patterns.
>
> After all of that playing with language, some Danish wag were then
to
> come along and say something about subjectivity being the truth, the
> reified self thus formed in that play of words could not but see
such a
> statement as suggesting acosmism. The truth as the inner cannot mean
> other than that the outer is all an illusion:
>
> "To give thinking supremacy over everything else is gnosticism; to
make
> the subjective individual's ethical actuality the only actuality
could
> seem to be acosmism. That it will so appear to a busy thinker who
must
> explain everything, a hasty pate who traverses the whole world,
> demonstrates only that he has a very poor idea of what the ethical
means
> for the subjective individual. If ethics deprived such a busy
thinker of
> the whole world and let him keep his own self, he would very likely
> think, `Is this anything? Such a trifling thing is not worth
> keeping. Let it go along with all the rest' –then, then it is
> acosmism. But why does a busy thinker like that talk and think so
> disrespectfully of himself? Indeed, if the intention were that he
should
> give up the whole world and be satisfied with another's person's
> ethical actuality, well, then he would be in the right to make
light of
> the exchange. But to the individual his own ethical actuality ought
to
> mean, ethically, even more than heaven and earth and everything
found
> therein, more than world's history's six thousand years, and more
than
> astrology, veterinary science, together with everything the times
> demand, which esthetically and intellectually is a prodigious
> narrow-mindedness. If it is not so, it is the worst for the
individual
> himself, because then he has nothing at all, no actuality at all,
> because to everything else he has at the very most only a relation
of
> possibility." (CUP, Hong, p. 341; Lowrie, p.305)
>
> If what this Danish wag were suggesting is that the error occurred
in
> the first step, where the identity of a self as the doer of the act
in
> which the self that is to be the doer is given is that error, then
the
> truth that subjectivity is the truth cannot be seen until that
error is
> corrected, which is to say, the ending of the act of identity;
which, of
> course, would bring the identity contained to an end. That this
might
> then be resisted could be expressed as follows:
>
> "People generally consider the ethical altogether abstractly and
> therefore they seem to have a secret horror of it. The ethical is
then
> looks upon as something alien to personal being, and one shrinks
from
> abandoning oneself to it, for one cannot quite be sure what it may
lead
> to in the course of time. Many are afraid of death in the same way,
> because they entertain obscure and confused ideas about the soul
passing
> over in death into another order of things, where laws and customs
> prevail which are altogether different form those they have learnt
to
> recognize in this world. The reason for such a fear of death is the
> individual's reluctance to be transparent to himself, for providing
one
> is willing it is easy to see the absurdity of this fear. Similarly
with
> the ethical; a person who fears transparency will always shun the
> ethical, for really the ethical wants nothing else." (E/O, Hannay,
P.
> 545)
>

Because I have been getting enquiries, here is the skinny: I have temporarily closed off the document section of my web site whilst I go through all of my quotes and compare again my accuracy of reproduction. It seems that my last checking of accuracy was not as accurate as I thought. This time I have a reader to assist me; I read what I wrote and she follows the book. It shall take some time, so, until then, I have gone fishin' for errors.  ~~~~willy

> > inaccuracies?
> >
>
> Because it was simpler simply to close the door; besides, I got a few
> bites, which was fun. OK, King James , I have done as you have
> ordained; though I do expect dispensation to hunt on royal land as I see
> fit. peasant_willy
>
> > Good job, though.
>
> Not enough! There is a stag in Glenartney I have me eye on. You know,
> down by Moonan's rill.
>

Willy, it's 'Monan's rill'!

"The stag at eve had drunk his fill
Where danced the moon on Monan's rill
And deep his midnight lair had made
In dark Glenartney's hazel shade."

Uncle Wyllis, if we're real quiet, would you please tell us a story? 

Cowboy Nick, on the streets of Laredo.

Nickle, thanks for the correction. I was doing it from memory and I had it pronounced wrong in me noggin. When I was forced  to memorize that first canto, way back in the dark ages of high school, it was 'lone Glenartney's hazel shade." Has it changed?

King James of Scotland is what sparked off the memory. It's a good thing JR is open to a bit of humorous needling, else the Tower of London for me. We were wondering through that place about a month ago.

Ok, Kierkegaard. Here is my question. If we think of the self in its totality as a chamber we occupy, where, being in that room makes us what we think we are, regardless of what we think we are, whether nothing, or everything, or any complex mixture between, and we suddenly find ourselves outside that room, not in a physical sense, as if standing outside ourselves, but because that room was imagined, as revealed by finding ourselves outside that room, would you say that a new category of self would open up for thinking about? Further, would you say that thinking about this new category of self would require comparing it to the prior category of self?

Yep, I turned our prior image inside out; no back door.  ~~~~willy

 PS: Oh yes, a story, well, I am working on one; something about two on a bridge.

>
> Nickle, thanks for the correction. I was doing it from memory and I
had
> it pronounced wrong in me noggin. When I was forced to memorize that
> first canto, way back in the dark ages of high school, it was 'lone
> Glenartney's hazel shade." Has it changed?
>
> King James of Scotland is what sparked off the memory. It's a good
thing
> JR is open to a bit of humorous needling, else the Tower of London for
> me. We were wondering through that place about a month ago.
>
> Ok, Kierkegaard. Here is my question. If we think of the self in its
> totality as a chamber we occupy, where, being in that room makes us
what
> we think we are, regardless of what we think we are, whether nothing,
or
> everything, or any complex mixture between, and we suddenly find
> ourselves outside that room, not in a physical sense, as if standing
> outside ourselves, but because that room was imagined, as revealed by
> finding ourselves outside that room, would you say that a new category
> of self would open up for thinking about? Further, would you say that
> thinking about this new category of self would require comparing it to
> the prior category of self?
>
> Yep, I turned our prior image inside out; no back door. ~~~~willy
>
>
>
> PS: Oh yes, a story, well, I am working on one; something about two on
> a bridge.
>

You're a tough one Willy,

No back door, Hah!

No Exit! Willy, that's just a dream. There's always an exit. Take my
woodchuck as an example; always has two ways in and out. The front door
only opens in and there's no handle. The back door has a handle but you
have to push out. The trick is to find the back door.

I found it!

But I'm a Fakir from zbn!

P.S. Some day I'll meet you on the bridge.

KTP

--- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "Will Brown" <wilbro99@...> wrote:
>
> Hah! Now, where did I put that back door? Durn, got a candle? I was
> thinking of the bridge as the place one must be to get to Religiousness
> A, and the place that one must return to before they can jump off it
> into Religiousness B. See? Gotta get over the river before you can leap
> off the bridge. Great fun! ~~ [:-&] ~~ Pontikos
>

Willy,

When you made your leap off the bridge, did you land into the Sea of Tranquility or into Humboldt Bay? 

Hesychios(TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER)

> --- In kierkegaardians@yahoogroups.com, "KTP" nnn88388@ wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > > Nickle, thanks for the correction. I was doing it from memory and I
> > had
> > > it pronounced wrong in me noggin. When I was forced to memorize that
> > > first canto, way back in the dark ages of high school, it was 'lone
> > > Glenartney's hazel shade." Has it changed?
> > >
> > > King James of Scotland is what sparked off the memory. It's a good
> > thing
> > > JR is open to a bit of humorous needling, else the Tower of London
> for
> > > me. We were wondering through that place about a month ago.
> > >
> > > Ok, Kierkegaard. Here is my question. If we think of the self in its
> > > totality as a chamber we occupy, where, being in that room makes us
> > what
> > > we think we are, regardless of what we think we are, whether
> nothing,
> > or
> > > everything, or any complex mixture between, and we suddenly find
> > > ourselves outside that room, not in a physical sense, as if standing
> > > outside ourselves, but because that room was imagined, as revealed
> by
> > > finding ourselves outside that room, would you say that a new
> category
> > > of self would open up for thinking about? Further, would you say
> that
> > > thinking about this new category of self would require comparing it
> to
> > > the prior category of self?
> > >
> > > Yep, I turned our prior image inside out; no back door. ~~~~willy
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > PS: Oh yes, a story, well, I am working on one; something about two
> on
> > > a bridge.
> > >
> >
> > You're a tough one Willy,
> >
> > No back door, Hah!
> >
> > No Exit! Willy, that's just a dream. There's always an exit. Take my
> > woodchuck as an example; always has two ways in and out. The front
> door
> > only opens in and there's no handle. The back door has a handle but
> you
> > have to push out. The trick is to find the back door.
> >
> > I found it!
> >
> > But I'm a Fakir from zbn!
> >
> > P.S. Some day I'll meet you on the bridge.
> >
> > KTP
> >
>

"In A, existing, my existence, is an element within my eternal consciousness (please note, the element that is, not the element that is past, because the latter is a volatilizing by speculative thought), consequently a lesser thing that hinders me in being infinitely higher than I am. Conversely, in B, existing, even though lower by being paradoxically accentuated, is nevertheless so much higher that I first become eternal in existence, and as a result existing by itself gives rise to a qualification that is infinitely higher than existing."  (CUP, Hong,  p. 573; Lowrie, p. 508) 

See your site and raise you to the real skinny! It's a very good read for all who love the mountains!!   ~~~~william_do_tell

http://kathleeninthewoods.com/sitwsynopsis.htm