“Speaking of vantage points, it seems relevant that the Oration [on the Dignity of Man, Pico della Mirandola, 1487] was penned shortly after the development of perspective by Brunelleschi and Alberti, which is to say soon after the artistic technique of opening a window on an indefinitely expanding world from the viewpoint of the individual subject. Pico's concept of man as endowed with limitless possibilities of self-realization through the appropriation of nature's diversity was destined to run through numerous reincarnations, from the philosophical guises it assumed in Herder or Marx to the crude consciousness of bourgeois consumerism.”
(Marshall Sahlins, “The Sadness of Sweetness”, in Culture in Practice, p.537, 1996).
And everything in between, one might add!
This is not the place to discuss “the question of standpoints”, and why we inevitably err on any (well intentioned) attempt at framing this discussion in secular time, always ending, in one way of another, with some form of particularism. At the end of the day, computation is simply the culmination of this bizarre long-term effort at “solving” the material problem (the economic problem) by other means, and not content with that, it is also assuring us of its unbounded capacity at “solving” the spiritual problem (the religious problem) as a side effect. And both of these, of course, for free.
On the meantime, one image and some closing remarks.
A person we identify with Moctezuma is facing a person we identify with Cortés, standing at the border of the floating garden of Tenochtitlán. In the next image, I’m standing in the City of Mexico, looking at some unrecognizable heap of rubble, buried under a parking lot. The fact that I’m producing both of these images makes absolutely “no difference”.
“Thy mind could receive truth, feel no delight and satisfaction in the certainty, beauty and harmony of it, unless Truth and the mind stood both in the same place, had one and the same unchangeable nature, unbeginning original. If there will come a time when thought itself shall cease, when all the relations and connections of Truth shall be untied; then, but not till then, shall the knot or band of thy soul's life be unloosed.”
Excellent article! Thank you for publishing it.
“Speaking of vantage points, it seems relevant that the Oration [on the Dignity of Man, Pico della Mirandola, 1487] was penned shortly after the development of perspective by Brunelleschi and Alberti, which is to say soon after the artistic technique of opening a window on an indefinitely expanding world from the viewpoint of the individual subject. Pico's concept of man as endowed with limitless possibilities of self-realization through the appropriation of nature's diversity was destined to run through numerous reincarnations, from the philosophical guises it assumed in Herder or Marx to the crude consciousness of bourgeois consumerism.”
(Marshall Sahlins, “The Sadness of Sweetness”, in Culture in Practice, p.537, 1996).
And everything in between, one might add!
This is not the place to discuss “the question of standpoints”, and why we inevitably err on any (well intentioned) attempt at framing this discussion in secular time, always ending, in one way of another, with some form of particularism. At the end of the day, computation is simply the culmination of this bizarre long-term effort at “solving” the material problem (the economic problem) by other means, and not content with that, it is also assuring us of its unbounded capacity at “solving” the spiritual problem (the religious problem) as a side effect. And both of these, of course, for free.
On the meantime, one image and some closing remarks.
A person we identify with Moctezuma is facing a person we identify with Cortés, standing at the border of the floating garden of Tenochtitlán. In the next image, I’m standing in the City of Mexico, looking at some unrecognizable heap of rubble, buried under a parking lot. The fact that I’m producing both of these images makes absolutely “no difference”.
“Thy mind could receive truth, feel no delight and satisfaction in the certainty, beauty and harmony of it, unless Truth and the mind stood both in the same place, had one and the same unchangeable nature, unbeginning original. If there will come a time when thought itself shall cease, when all the relations and connections of Truth shall be untied; then, but not till then, shall the knot or band of thy soul's life be unloosed.”
(William Law, “An Appeal”, VI.65, 1740)
Yours.