TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2023
Or at least, so Kierkegaard said: Purity of heart is to will one thing, Kierkegaard thoughtfully said.
Rather, that was the title of one part of his later, three-part volume, Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits. We tend to focus on his earlier essay, The Sickness Unto Death.
The leading authority on the morbid Dane offers a lengthy account of The Sickness Unto Death. At one point, this analysis is offered:
According to Kierkegaard, an individual is "in despair" if he does not align himself with God or with God's plan for the self. In this way, he loses his self. Kierkegaard defines the self as the "relation's relating itself to itself in the relation," and defines the human experience as the tension between "the finite and the infinite," and between "the possible and the necessary."
The self is a relation which relates itself to itself, and so on (and so on) from there. So one standard translation has always had it, a point we've stressed to comedy audiences all around the world.
Within our own vastly self-impressed tribe, purity of heart is to will that Donald J. Trump somehow ends up in jail.
Our tribunes talk about little else. They talked about Memphis as little as possible, then swung back to this one thing.
Today, Slate interrupts its daily tsunami of advice columns long enough to offer this embarrassing essay:
Why the Stormy Daniels Charges Might Actually Reach Trump This Time
Purity of heart is to will that Stormy's demand for cash ends up sending Trump to jail!
Three tribal tribunes joined forces to pen the embarrassing essay for Slate. According to us, an individual is in despair if this is the way he or she relates to the catalog of actual needs on display in this wide, wicked world.
"Within our own vastly self-impressed tribe, purity of heart is to will that Donald J. Trump somehow ends up in jail. "
ReplyDelete1. Our so-called tribe (presumably liberals) is not "self-impressed." Somerby has no excuse for saying this except to engage in name-calling.
2. Donald Trump has committed so many crimes, both while in office and outside the presidency, that it is impossible not to want to see him put in jail for them. Some of his crimes involve the deaths of people, some involve money, some are crimes against nature and will have lasting consequences. All of them deserve punishment.
3. Misusing Kierkegaard is itself a crime. After Somerby's deliberate obtuseness over the film Tar, he has a lot of nerve ignoring Kierkegaard's intended meaning and substituting his own clumsy attraction to the phrase "purity of heart."
4. Liberals want lots of things, most having nothing to do with Trump at all. Did Somerby really miss the part where Kierkegaard discussed unity with God? It is in the same sentence!
5. Slate isn't the only one saying that Trump may be convicted for the illegal acts he committed regarding Stormy Daniels' payoff, because Cohen is on tape, Trump signed checks himself, and what he did was actually illegal.
6. Why is Somerby rooting so hard for Trump to escape prosecution? He is a bad guy, he broke the law, why should he get off?
Somerby was happy that Rittenhouse got off too. Also Roy Moore.
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ReplyDelete"Within our own vastly self-impressed tribe, purity of heart is to will that Donald J. Trump somehow ends up in jail."
Or dear. Purity of heart is completely incompatible with your brain-dead tribe.
There are two -- opposite! -- ethical systems, dear Bob: utilitarian (the ends justify the means), and deontological (do your duty regardless of the consequences).
Your brain-dead tribe, dear Bob, is -- and always will be -- utilitarian. And Kierkegaard was a deontological, deeply religious philosopher.
"Purity of heart" has nothing to do with you and your brain-dead comrades. Nothing at all.
Somerby has not given any thought to Kierkegaard. He has borrowed these particular words because he likes the phrase "want one thing". He likes relating that to his idea that the press talks about nothing besides locking Trump up, even though he just blamed the media for talking about many things, earlier today. The press is bad because it moved on from Memphis to the balloon to the earthquake. But now Somerby says it only talks about Trump, something that is demonstrably untrue. So Somerby doesn't give a damn about Kierkegaard and his ideas about despair. He is too busy excusing Trump for his wrongdoing, again.
DeleteMao, I wonder where you came up with this absolute dichotomy, good v evil, between brain dead liberal utilitarians and those who do their duty, regardless of the consequences. Any examples of anyone or any group doing their duty regardless of the consequences? What duties are you talking about? What consequences? Are you communicating, perhaps somewhat cryptically, some major insight - or is it just wingnut word salad? I'll wait with bated breath for some clarity on this, (I anticipate an endless wait).
DeleteMao is a troll. Why do you waste your time arguing with him?
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DeleteDon't flatter yourself, dear dembot: you ain't evil. Just brain-dead, easily manipulated.
...as for the examples: the Hippocratic oath is a commonly cited example. And, of course, this folk wisdom: 'do what you ought, come what may'.
"According to us, an individual is in despair if this is the way he or she relates to the catalog of actual needs on display in this wide, wicked world."
ReplyDeleteSomerby main reason for criticizing the Slate article is that there are more important things to write about. That seems pretty hypocritical given the absolute garbage he gives over his own blog to each day. How does Somerby relate to the actual needs on display in this world? By excusing miscreants like Trump.
anon 5:02, in spite of the blogger giving over "absolute garbage . . . each day" here you are each day. You must enjoy garbage. You lack the insight to realize how weird your obsession is.
DeleteI am correcting disinformation and standing up for truth, which supports democracy. What are you doing?
DeleteWhat I'm doing is wondering why you immerse yourself in "garbage" every day. You just provided the answer - you're a nut. And apparently devoid of insight.
DeleteThe nut here is the person typing lamb repeatedly to keep people from talking.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:58pm, David French hasn’t capitulated enough for anonymices.
DeleteYou ARE, in essence, the person typing lamb repeatedly.
David French is a self-confessed conservative. Go read his column before you embarrass yourself more.
DeleteDon't understand why Cecelia uses words like "capitulated". Just more performative grievance, Cec?
DeleteThe point is, as has been documented on this blog for longer than I care to mention, the New York Times is not a friend of Dems. Yet people like DinC and Cec will go to their graves whining about how the NY Times is their enemy and how aggrieved they are about it.
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Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org
@froomkin
Just what we didn’t need: Another asshole @nytopinion columnist saying conservatives *discounting the Black experience* (!!) are no more extreme than lefty excess in trying to create inclusive environments on college campuses. Then denying he said so. https://nytimes.com/2023/02/05/opinion/memphis-police-academia-partisanship.html
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Meanwhile, Driftglass gives us the lowdown on David French:
ReplyDeletehttps://driftglass.blogspot.com/2023/02/and-nowthis-fucking-guy.html
For those who want to think the worst, a candidate's payoffs to a blackmailer is a win-win point of attack. It's never been adjudicated whether or not such payments are properly regarded as campaign expense. There are arguments both ways. Thus, however Trump decided to treat the payments to Daniels, he can be accused of doing it wrong. Paying privately allows him to be accused of illegal campaign contribution. OTOH paying out of campaign funds would allow him to be accused of using campaign donations for personal use.
ReplyDeleteThe possibility that he did it wrong may be enough for people who are (rightly or wrongly) already biased against Trump. However, I don't think a jury in a criminal trial would decide that Trump's handling was illegal beyond a reasonable doubt.. There's too much uncertainty about the proper treatment of these payments. If fact, I don't think a prosecutor will ever actually bring such a case to trial.
That's all fine and dandy except that the women involved were not blackmailers. Only someone biased in favor of Trump would call them that and pretend there is some legal basis for what Trump did.
DeleteThis is why no one pays you for legal advice, David.
Delete@6:02 if Daniels approached Trump and asked for hush money, that's blackmail. OTOH if Trump first approached Daniels and offered hush money, then it's not blackmail. Either way, my point remains. The law is ambiguous as to whether such payment is a campaign expense or a personal expense. Keeping the affair secret benefits Trump personally and it also benefits his campaign. Because of the uncertainty, I don't think either choice of how to handle the payment would be found to be illegal.
DeleteShe says that she did not approach Trump and did not ask him for money. Her side of the story is that she mentioned dating Trump on a talk show and then was approached by Trump's employees and threatened if she did not sign an NDA. The later lawsuit was to obtain release from the NDA. Her version seems most likely because Trump has been sued by several of his campaign workers because he forced them into NDAs too.
DeleteDo you really think she would have sued Trump to get out of an NDA if she were blackmailing him? That makes no sense. You are repeating Somerby's invention about what happened. Trump himself has both denied having an affair with her and also acknowledge it, at different times. He has not accused her of blackmailing him, because they would entail admitting that there was an affair. McDougal, similarly, was approached by a lawyer who offered her money for an NDA. She did not blackmail Trump either, which supports the view that Daniels didn't either.
Fortunately, the prosecutors will decide what is chargeable and what isn't, not you and not Trump.
Still waiting for that ANTIFA organized violent nation wide insurrection after the Memphis murder that you told us was going to happen, DIC. Do you have a time frame for that? Thought not. It didn't go your way, after all.
DeleteStill waiting for that ANTIFA organized violent nation wide insurrection after the Memphis murder that you told us was going to happen, DIC.
DeleteAnd this is where DinC crawls back under his rock and disappears.
There's no reason why she would want to blackmail Trump. She had successfully transitioned from a career of performing anal and oral gangbangs to producing and directing movies starring other young girls being anally and orally gangbanged.
ReplyDeleteNot all careers need be STEM.
DeleteSomerby's borrowings are always disrespectful to the authors involved, but in this case Kierkegaard is talking about a person's relationship with God. Somerby says he is not religious, and I believe him about that, but he is being majorly callous by taking serious words and applying them to the kind of trivia he raises every day, mean-spirited attacks on largely innocent journalists. That trivializes Kierkegaard's words to the point of the extreme disrespect religious people call blasphemy. Abusing a dead philosopher that way strikes me as ugly but not surprising in a right wing that thrives on doing ugly things to hurt other people.
ReplyDeleteIt seems obvious that Somerby hates everyone and everything that he was forced to study at Harvard while avoiding the draft.
DeleteGod is a Republican.
DeleteKierkegaard is famous for differentiating between an objective truth and a subjective truth that is felt rather than observed. I think this latter truth is what the movie Tar exemplified, whereas Somerby is not good at intuition or non-concrete knowledge, abstracts, so he cannot appreciate the discussions of music in that film, which were largely very subjective. It is not surprising that he quickly grew impatient when such discussions were the main way the film conveyed Tar's creativity and stature as a conductor. Aside from disliking successful women, it must drive Somerby crazy when they succeed in subjective fields such as literature, music and art. And being unable to process abstractions, no wonder he cannot appreciate philosophy, physics or logic of the type that Godel employed. He really should have been taught that being on the spectrum is a legitimate explanation and no doubt he has strengths of his own arising from his atypical brain, but he really shouldn't envy or disparage those who think differently and have made contributions to knowledge because of it. I have no doubt that Somerby meant to spit on Kierkegaard today.
ReplyDeleteThe irony is that Catholic children are taught not to hate. Staying religious might have been a better choice for Somerby, in terms of achieving some peace of mind.
Delete"“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is signaling plans to ramp up his attack on the news industry ahead of his likely 2024 run for president,” Politico reports."
ReplyDeleteWho else attacks the news industry regularly? Somerby. This is another example of the way Somerby's essays always happen to support conservative talking points. It will be interesting to see Somerby switch from supporting (and excusing) Trump to promoting the right wing agenda of candidates like DeSantis.
Somerby has never said anything supportive of Biden, even when he was the 2020 presidential nominee. That's an exceedingly odd way for a liberal to behave.
Someone went to jail for carrying Trump’s bribe to Stormy Daniels, yet the press has never even asked Trump’s about it. Bob is so sad, small and heartless he hates those who bring this up.
ReplyDeleteYou have to wonder if Bob even read the article. The walls close in on Bob and his boy Donnie. No attempt to refute the journalism, he just wants Trump justified.
ReplyDeleteHere’s a good explanation of Russell’s paradox:
ReplyDeletehttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ymGt7I4Yn3k
And here is an even better explanation of it:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9pO-rCzy4
Arsehole.
DeleteHow are kids going to be able to discuss Kirkegaard if they aren't allowed instruction in self identity?
ReplyDeleteApparently Bob’s aversion to sending people to jail doesn’t include poor saps who get sent there for Donald Trump.
ReplyDeleteWIZARDWIERZBICKI.COM
ReplyDelete