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Aug. 13th, 2007 04:41 pmI haven't updated this journal in such a long time, nor attended to the Chaldaean Oracles, for that matter, but now with a lull in my projects it seems like a good time to post something here. Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft vol. 2, no. 1 has finally appeared, with my article on offerings to the Gods. I've talked enough in this space about the process with respect to this one that there's no need to rehash it. MRW is affiliated with the Societas Magica, an organization dedicated to the academic study of magic. Their website has a free online newsletter with material that might interest some friends of this journal: Societas Magica newsletter
Since I last updated here, I've also put to bed an essay on the Stoic doctrine of cosmic conflagration, or ekpyrôsis, for the Fordham conference in the fall, as well as an essay on Deleuze and deep ecology for an edited collection. I also wrote an essay on Plato's Cratylus which incorporates a chunk of the MRW article on the debate between Porphyry and Iamblichus on "translating" names of Gods. This goes on top of the small but growing pile of articles on Plato I have for which it will be difficult to find homes.
Sometimes I'm tempted to skip trying to get these Plato essays in journals, and instead simply bundle them into a book and pitch it to some oddball academic publisher. It's a lot easier to sell a book about Plato than a book about Proclus, since Plato can be taught to undergraduates. Moreover, a book about Proclus would amount to nothing without the respect of people within the field—there are books out there like this already—hence it only makes sense to publish that book once its individual parts have been vetted by respectable journals. A book about Plato, on the other hand, might never get off the ground that way. Of course, what I have so far isn't long enough for a book, though it would make three respectable chapters of one. Perhaps another two essays would make for an acceptable package. They like a slim book anyhow.
I might try writing something on Kant for a conference at the New School next year. I love reading Kant, but he's very intimidating to write about. Did you know that Kant had a mustard recipe of which he was very proud?
I read Spenser's Faerie Queene recently, in the unabridged version, with the original spelling and all. It was quite a slog, I won't lie, but I love that book now. If they ever hold a Spenser conference somewhere I wouldn't mind traveling to, I would certainly go just to hear all the papers. Scholars like to see the whole thing as a Christian allegory but there's far more going on than that. Indeed, I think there was no longer a simple answer in the year 1600 CE to what it meant to be Christian. Not only was the Church fractured in multiple schisms, but at the birth of the scientific age it was not yet clear how much of what had been within the purview of religion was going to be encompassed by science. An Elizabethan magus like John Dee had every right to consider himself a man of science, because the prevailing paradigm did not exclude entities like angels from scientific analysis. What made one a scientist was not what one investigated, but the attempt to limit one's presuppositions and test one's hypotheses. The sense of a new age dawning was palpable all across Europe around the year 1600, and it's very clear from Spenser's "mutabilitie cantos" as well as from books like Bruno's Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast that intellectuals of the time experienced the pull toward an unknown but radically different future far more strongly than the drag from the past.
The difference between that moment and the modernist push in the late 19th and early 20th century, though, is that the former was infused was a desire to retain, albeit in a revalued form, the whole cultural inheritance of the West, instead of trying to start over from scratch. The new elements of which Europeans were becoming aware—Native America, China, previously suppressed aspects of Hellenistic antiquity—were to be incorporated into a synthesis that I think was not initially intended by the brightest minds of this era to be on the arrogant, domineering terms that came about later. Leibniz, for example—later, but retaining much of this post-Renaissance spirit—envisioned an engagement between European and Chinese thought where neither would be the junior partner. Hence in the famous "rites controversy," over whether Christian doctrines ought to be translated into Chinese to the degree that they effectively became wholly Chinese, or whether Chinese civilization ought to be insulted by being told that its salvation depended a distant culture much younger than it, Leibniz sided with the "translation" faction, which lost—fortuitously, really, because it set back the cause of Christian evangelism in China decisively, and certainly no missionary would have carried through the "translation" effort with the openness and self-examination of a Leibniz. If a higher level of communication had been possible between Europe and China, I could imagine that there would have been Leibnizian Neo-Confucianism in the next generation.
Say, I've finally read all the Harry Potter books, in a two week marathon. They definitely won my heart, and I think the marathon was the best way, for me at any rate, rather than having read them one at a time as they came out, too far apart. Here's a fun item from the NY Times about Harry Potter knock-off books in China (requires free registration): Memo to the Dept. of Magical Copyright Enforcement. You know, it's rather a shame that copyright laws will prevent these being translated and collected together somewhere, because they sound like fun—fan fic plus.
Also, Hellenophiles should note that the new Graeco-Roman wing at the Metropolitan Museum is excellent! It's like a temple. Not to be missed if you're ever in town…
Since I last updated here, I've also put to bed an essay on the Stoic doctrine of cosmic conflagration, or ekpyrôsis, for the Fordham conference in the fall, as well as an essay on Deleuze and deep ecology for an edited collection. I also wrote an essay on Plato's Cratylus which incorporates a chunk of the MRW article on the debate between Porphyry and Iamblichus on "translating" names of Gods. This goes on top of the small but growing pile of articles on Plato I have for which it will be difficult to find homes.
Sometimes I'm tempted to skip trying to get these Plato essays in journals, and instead simply bundle them into a book and pitch it to some oddball academic publisher. It's a lot easier to sell a book about Plato than a book about Proclus, since Plato can be taught to undergraduates. Moreover, a book about Proclus would amount to nothing without the respect of people within the field—there are books out there like this already—hence it only makes sense to publish that book once its individual parts have been vetted by respectable journals. A book about Plato, on the other hand, might never get off the ground that way. Of course, what I have so far isn't long enough for a book, though it would make three respectable chapters of one. Perhaps another two essays would make for an acceptable package. They like a slim book anyhow.
I might try writing something on Kant for a conference at the New School next year. I love reading Kant, but he's very intimidating to write about. Did you know that Kant had a mustard recipe of which he was very proud?
I read Spenser's Faerie Queene recently, in the unabridged version, with the original spelling and all. It was quite a slog, I won't lie, but I love that book now. If they ever hold a Spenser conference somewhere I wouldn't mind traveling to, I would certainly go just to hear all the papers. Scholars like to see the whole thing as a Christian allegory but there's far more going on than that. Indeed, I think there was no longer a simple answer in the year 1600 CE to what it meant to be Christian. Not only was the Church fractured in multiple schisms, but at the birth of the scientific age it was not yet clear how much of what had been within the purview of religion was going to be encompassed by science. An Elizabethan magus like John Dee had every right to consider himself a man of science, because the prevailing paradigm did not exclude entities like angels from scientific analysis. What made one a scientist was not what one investigated, but the attempt to limit one's presuppositions and test one's hypotheses. The sense of a new age dawning was palpable all across Europe around the year 1600, and it's very clear from Spenser's "mutabilitie cantos" as well as from books like Bruno's Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast that intellectuals of the time experienced the pull toward an unknown but radically different future far more strongly than the drag from the past.
The difference between that moment and the modernist push in the late 19th and early 20th century, though, is that the former was infused was a desire to retain, albeit in a revalued form, the whole cultural inheritance of the West, instead of trying to start over from scratch. The new elements of which Europeans were becoming aware—Native America, China, previously suppressed aspects of Hellenistic antiquity—were to be incorporated into a synthesis that I think was not initially intended by the brightest minds of this era to be on the arrogant, domineering terms that came about later. Leibniz, for example—later, but retaining much of this post-Renaissance spirit—envisioned an engagement between European and Chinese thought where neither would be the junior partner. Hence in the famous "rites controversy," over whether Christian doctrines ought to be translated into Chinese to the degree that they effectively became wholly Chinese, or whether Chinese civilization ought to be insulted by being told that its salvation depended a distant culture much younger than it, Leibniz sided with the "translation" faction, which lost—fortuitously, really, because it set back the cause of Christian evangelism in China decisively, and certainly no missionary would have carried through the "translation" effort with the openness and self-examination of a Leibniz. If a higher level of communication had been possible between Europe and China, I could imagine that there would have been Leibnizian Neo-Confucianism in the next generation.
Say, I've finally read all the Harry Potter books, in a two week marathon. They definitely won my heart, and I think the marathon was the best way, for me at any rate, rather than having read them one at a time as they came out, too far apart. Here's a fun item from the NY Times about Harry Potter knock-off books in China (requires free registration): Memo to the Dept. of Magical Copyright Enforcement. You know, it's rather a shame that copyright laws will prevent these being translated and collected together somewhere, because they sound like fun—fan fic plus.
Also, Hellenophiles should note that the new Graeco-Roman wing at the Metropolitan Museum is excellent! It's like a temple. Not to be missed if you're ever in town…
