Stephen, hope the talk goes well.
Thanks for the Lucretius suggestion, I did consider getting a book
version but am limited to only one this month and that is Walter
Benjamin's Work of art and other writings. Also pleasing given that my
absolute deviation poetics rests on the swerve of the atom. Deviation is
absolute with the abstraction away of void and atoms and where
abstraction is imagination. It is a pure idea which exists as borders
(and where there is border there are many borders.)
The below cut and paste from Marx's doctoral thesis I have just been
re-reading and still rather like.
Thus, while the atom frees itself from its relative existence, the
straight line, by abstracting from it, by swerving away from it; so the
entire Epicurean philosophy swerves away from the restrictive mode of
being wherever the concept of abstract individuality, self-sufficiency
and negation of all relation to other things must be represented in its
existence.
The purpose of action is to be found therefore in abstracting, swerving
away from pain and confusion, in ataraxy. Hence the good is the flight
from evil pleasure the swerving away from suffering. Finally, where
abstract individuality appears in its highest freedom and independence,
in its totality, there it follows that the being which is swerved away
from, is all being, for this reason, the gods swerve away from the
world, do not bother with it and live outside it.
These gods of Epicurus have often been ridiculed, these gods who, like
human beings, dwell in the intermundia [The spaces between the worlds,
literally: inter-worlds] of the real world, have no body but a
quasi-body, no blood but quasi-blood, and, content to abide in blissful
peace, lend no car to any supplication, are unconcerned with us and the
world, are honoured because of their beauty, their majesty and their
superior nature, and not for any gain.
And yet these gods are no fiction of Epicurus. They did exist. They are
the Elastic gods of Greek art
From: Karl Marx
The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of
Nature
Part II: Chapter One: The Declination of the Atom from the Straight Line
On Fri, 2009-02-13 at 23:34 -0800, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> I suggest reading Lucretius
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