Some Easy Spinoza

Spinoza is a difficult thinker, not so much to understand, but to tolerate. That is, there is something so tutorial about his main work the Ethics, it sometimes takes a great deal of effort, or merely exposure, to realize that he has quite benign intentions and realizations, and that there is something even more than [...]

What is “Passing through Infinities”?

Corry Shores has another beautiful, traveling meditation and analysis of some thoughts that I raised (I certainly enjoy seeing my thoughts reflected in that mirror, as I discover things that I must have been thinking however dimly, or should be thinking). Here he takes on the trope of “passing through infinities” that I found in von Kleist’s [...]

Looking at the Limb-loosener: Between Image and Word

Roxana Ghita over at the floating bridge of dreams posts a gorgeous photographic expression of the “limb-loosener”, drawing in part on my own thoughts of Sappho’s erotic figure. She seems to specialize in the transposition of photography and poetry, and the site is haunting,  and the poem there by Amy Lowell called to mind another Sappho [...]

The Bear with the Rapier: Kleist on Leibniz and Microscopic Infinities

Dancing Bears Passing Through Infinities More on Corry Shore’s “Deleuze and Dance…” post. In the comments section of my last post an exchange lead me to recall von Kleist’s wonderful “On the Marionette Theatre”.  - There is some debate as to how much irony is in the story, if there is a kind of Kierkegaardian reverse [...]

Die and Dance in Spinozist Terms

Corry Shores has done a beautiful rumination spurred by my last short post on Deaththat really for some reason stirs me. In serpentine fashion he takes us through the infinimicules of existences, early views in microscopy (citing my favorite, under-read Spinoza document, Kerckring’s testament of animalcules), Deleuze’s conception of bodies in variation and thoughts about Michael Jackson [...]

Death, Bodies, Last

When a body dies, there is a change in the echo of external events. Perhaps that is all there is. And therefore a body does not truly die, which is not to say that there is no change, but that the very notion of change is negotiable, perceptual. A “change in the echo” is to [...]

Spinoza and Mechanical Infinities

The Mechanically Bound Infinite I want to respond to Corry Shores’ wonderful incorporation of my Spinoza Foci  research into his philosophical project (which has a declaimed Deleuzian/Bergsonian direction). It feels good to have one’s own ideas put in the service of another’s productive thoughts. You come to realize something more about what you were thinking. [...]

Spinoza and Optics and Pirates

I see now that Corry Shores has put up a reading, and mutual expression of some of my work on Spionza and Optics, “Spinoza’s Foci for Deleuze’s Attraction”. I have to say that I have not read it yet (for sometimes I savor/reserve the first reading of a text for a generous moment, for when [...]

}∅{ The Full Set

The Full-ness of a Body This is not what I intend to write on the Subject of Infinity, but it is a projective chain of thoughts. It is a tracing of a yet un-consolidated line of interpretation. Fido the Yak presents a symbol/concept which – and I’m not sure of its origin or complete meaning - [...]

Spinoza on the Infinite, the Unbound: Part I

Preliminary Key to understanding Spinoza’s approach to the Infinite is appreciating that for him, primarily and speaking generally, The Infinite is Unbroken. And following this, modifications of the Infinite (how Spinoza defines the modes) do not break that unbroken state. For Spinoza, any treatment of Substance must follow from this understanding. What makes this compelling, and [...]