cyclicality of social destruction (harrison)

An inner law of dissolution drives the system to order. This entropic drive becomes clear when we consider the correlates of Vico's axiom: "The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute" (CS 242). And in the same context: "Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next, attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance" (S 241).

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

on the failed flailing of tongues (harrison)

Human speech is in every case a confession of longing and finitude, no matter what it says or does not say or even cannot say.

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

gods and the end (harrison)

In retribution for his having violated the realm that lies behind the world of appearances, Artemis brings about Actaeon's change of appearance, while leaving his human essence intact.... In the process of external metamorphosis, he comes to realize that his own inner identity is superfluous in a realm governed by appearances. (25)

Tragic wisdom had given way to the triumphalistic claims of Socratic philosophy-- its love of an abstract nontragic wisdom that looked contemplation -- not Dionysian suffering-- for its fulfillment. [Turning against the vegetative and animal origins of life, Socrates idealized and formalized the essence of truth.] (38)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

alienation from our selves, manifest destiny (harrison)

We do not intrinsically belong to the natural order (if we did we would not need to discover the facts of life)... our destiny as excursioners on the earth.... Excursions into a world where we are at once estranged and alive, or better, alive in our estrangement.

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison, page 222

letters from the madhouse (clare, harrison)

March 8 1860

DEAR SIR

I am in a Madhouse and quite forget your Name or who you are. You must excuse me for I have nothing to communicate or tell of and why I am shut up I don't know I have nothing to say so I conclude.

Yours respectfully
JOHN CLARE

RPH's response: His response..., utterly lucid and utterly mad at once, reveals that only the name "John Clare" was left to communicate itself to the world. (His essence having left.)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison, pg 216

harrison on irony

Irony is the trope of detachment. (108)

Irony is the innermost truth of a civilization that knows how to lie to itself about itself, or how to bury under deceptive veils a truth that would otherwise destroy it. (141)

As the trope of detachment, irony implies a critical relationship to the past. From an "enlightened" perspective, the ways of the past appear erroneous, self-deceived, and steeped in superstition. What tradition held to be true Enlightenment sees as false. (The sky was once believed to be an animate substance, but "we know better".) At the most fundamental level, then, irony demystifies the dogmas of faith and exposes their roots in falsehood. (114-115)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison

various and sundry (harrison)

Religion, matrimony and burial of the dead embody the linear openness of time. Religion is born of the idea of providence. It implies an awareness of the future. Burial of the dead is grounded in reverence for the past, for the ancestral, in short for what we call tradition. Tradition comes to us from the domain of the dead. Both religion and burial, in turn, serve to consolidate the contract of matrimony, which maintains the genealogical line in the present. (8)

... Prior to its ability to think abstractly, the primitive mind was unable even to conceive of a distinction between truth and falsehood. So many centuries does it take even to become aware of such a dichotomy. (12)

Human vision is privative in nature; it does not see directly into the nature of things but see only the outward surface of phenomenal appearances. (25)

Until a substance emerges into the telos of its form we simply cannot talk about it. Logos begins with the phenomenon. (28)

[On the retroactive redemption of Zarathustra] Herein lies Zarathustra's dilemma on the bridge: redemption must somehow also redeem the past.... such retroactive redemption remains impossible, for when it confronts the past the human will is impotent.

Only an alienated nature seeks adventure. (66)

The forest reveals that desire has no virginity. It does not belong to itself, it belongs to everything that shares in the life impulse itself. Desire is a promiscuous sort of will that appropriates its object and expropriates its subject. The contract of personal consent sublimates this desire as love, but it does not alter its nature. (91)

- from Forests: The Shadow of Civilization by Robert Pogue Harrison