Adversaria (29)
‘So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy. And a further reason for caution, in this respect, might be drawn from the reflection that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists. Ambition, avarice, personal animosity, party opposition, and many other motives not more laudable than these, are apt to operate as well upon those who support as those who oppose the right side of a question’ — The Federalist, (No. 1)
‘All empty space is a space for questions, not for answers. And what we don’t know is infinite’ —Jenny Erpenbeck (Not a Novel, trans. Kurt Beals, p. 34)
‘The dry hardness which you get in the classics is absolutely repugnant to them. Poetry that isn’t damp isn’t poetry at all. They cannot see that accurate description is a legitimate object of verse. Verse to them always means a bringing in of some of the emotions that are grouped round the word infinite’ —T.E. Hulme (‘Romanticism and Classicism’, in Speculations, p. 126f.)
‘No text, of course, has a perfectly transparent meaning, and if there are multiple contending texts, the room for interpretive maneuver is that much larger. Nonetheless, the text itself is a fixed point of departure; it makes some reading implausible, if not impossible. Once there is a text as an indisputable point of reference, it provides the kind of yardstick from which deviations from the original can roughly be judged. […] The very existence of such texts has powerful consequences; it facilitates the development of an orthodox, standard account’ (—James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, p. 227)
‘I shall call my philosophy the “Valet to the Absolute.” The Absolute not a hero to his own valet’ —T.E. Hulme (‘Cinders’, in Speculations, p. 238)
‘Charisma is, above all, a specific cultural relationship between a would-be prophetic figure and his or her potential following. And because it is a relationship or an interpersonal resonance, we cannot claim that an individual has charisma in the sane way we might say that someone has a gold coin in his pocket. What constitutes a charismatic connection is always somewhat elusive, but what is charismatic in one cultural setting is unlikely to be charismatic in another, and what is charismatic at one historical moment might well be merely incomprehensible at another’ (—James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, p. 295)
‘…when a shilling circulates ten times, there is still only one shilling, even though it performs the functions of ten shillings. However, no matter in whose hand it exists for the moment, it remains always the same identical value of one shilling’ —Marx (Capital, vol. 2, p. 383)