Texts and Archives

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Thursday, August 31, 2023

From The Barbarism Of The Savage To The Barbarism Of Decay

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Giambattista Vico, The New Science , tr. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch (New York: Cornell University Press, 1948), Conclusion o...
Saturday, August 26, 2023

To Philosophise

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Immanuel Kant, Introduction to Logic , tr. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (London, 1885), p. 16: Two things, chiefly, are required in a philosopher...
Thursday, August 24, 2023

A Lot Of Numskulls

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Paul Hazard,  European Thought in the eighteenth Century: from Montesquieu to Lessing , tr. J. Lewis May (Yale University Press, 1954), p. 8...
Monday, July 31, 2023

Love

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1 Corinthians 13:4-7:                     4 Love suffereth long: it is bountiful: love envieth not: love doth not boast itself: it is not p...
Saturday, July 29, 2023

A Theory For Everything

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Lucian Blaga, Lucian Blaga: Selected Philosophical Extracts (Vernon Press, 2018), Aphorisms, p. 147: Those who in order to live need a theor...
Monday, July 24, 2023

Making Knowledge One's Own

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Michel de Montaigne, Essays , bk. I., ch. 24, Of Pedantry (tr. Charles Cotton): We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust; w...
Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Love's Greatest Gift

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László F. Földényi,  Melancholy (Melankólia) , tr. Tim Wilkinson (Yale University Press, 2016), ch. 7, Love and Melancholia, pp. 245-246: Lo...
Monday, July 10, 2023

A World That Makes You Recoil

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Giacomo Leopardi, The Letters of Giacomo Leopardi 1817-1837 , tr. Prue Shaw (Routledge, 2017), from the 3rd letter, To Pietro Giordani, Mila...
Thursday, July 6, 2023

Misanthropic & Romantic Pessimism

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Georges Léon Palante,  Pessimisme et Individualisme  (Paris, Alcan, 1914), tr. Mitch Abidor: The foolishness that this [misanthropic] pessim...

Goethe And The Joy Of Living

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Pierre Hadot, Don't Forget to Live: Goethe and the Tradition of Spiritual Exercises , tr. Michael Chase (The University of Chicago Press...
Monday, July 3, 2023

Between Senancour And Amiel, The Malady Of The Century, & The Romanticists

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Étienne Pivert de Senancour,  Obermann, Selections From Letters to a Friend , tr. Jessie Peabody Frothingham (Cambridge, 1901), vol. I., Int...
Sunday, July 2, 2023

The Beloved's Parting

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Johann von Goethe, Alexis and Dora , tr. Edgard Alferd Bowring:                [...] Thou, too, art after me gazing in vain. Our hearts are ...
Saturday, July 1, 2023

Philine To Amiel

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Philine to Henri-Frédéric Amiel, tr. Van Wyck Brooks: My paradise on earth would be to live with you; a hundred years would not be enough. I...
Thursday, June 29, 2023

Love & Grief

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Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel's Journal , tr. Mrs. Humphrey Ward, March 28, 1855: Not a blade of grass but has a story to tell, not a hear...

When Liberty Is A Great Boon

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Jean de La Bruyère,  The «Characters» of Jean de la Bruyère , tr. Henri Van Laun (London, 1885), ch. XII., Of Opinions, §104, p. 364: “How d...
Tuesday, June 27, 2023

On Vanity & Vain Men

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Jean de La Bruyère, The «Characters» of Jean de la Bruyère , tr. Henri Van Laun (London, 1885), ch. XI., Of Mankind, the numbers of the frag...

La Bruyère Astonished

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Jean de La Bruyère, The «Characters» of Jean de la Bruyère , tr. Henri Van Laun (London, 1885), ch. XI., Of Mankind, §16, pp. 284-5: Some pe...
Sunday, June 25, 2023

Too Great An Undertaking!

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Jean de La Bruyère, The «Characters» of Jean de la Bruyère , tr. Henri Van Laun (London, 1885), ch. I., Of Works of the Mind, §2, p. 8: We s...
Thursday, June 22, 2023

Judging Rousseau; The Sentimentalist; Sentimentalism & Sentiment; Ancients & Moderns; Biography & Character; etc.

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James Russell Lowell, Among my Books , (Boston, 1870), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists, pp. 361-371: In judging Rousseau, it would be unfai...
Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Beware The Epistles Of S. Paul!

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John Addington Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: The Revival of Learning (New York, 1881), ch. VII., p. 398: It need hardly be added that, when...