tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post4279302462290287312..comments2024-03-07T12:57:35.296-05:00Comments on Varieties of Unreligious Experience: Poetics and the Curse of IronyConrad H. Rothhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-19052234776541928582006-12-29T02:08:00.000-05:002006-12-29T02:08:00.000-05:00Thanks, Pedro (and Chris--sorry, it slipped my min...Thanks, Pedro (and Chris--sorry, it slipped my mind to come back and respond)--and yes, one of the advantages of the unreligious experience is its unlegislatedness.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-72188870016904167612006-12-28T17:55:00.000-05:002006-12-28T17:55:00.000-05:00I would say this doesn't belong in a blog, but I r...I would say this doesn't belong in a blog, but I rather pretend it does, if it means you'll continue writing on the subject. I had never thought of Frye as one of ''them''. I might have to reread him whole.<br /><br />To someone above: Shelley thought poets were the true legislators of this world, but I hope he was being ironic. :)Pedro Eduardo Ferrarihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06272073927620219544noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-25516344232254757212006-12-21T22:53:00.000-05:002006-12-21T22:53:00.000-05:00i've got it now -- an important realization -- but...i've got it now -- an important realization -- but will confide it to emailAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-17569351633823148552006-12-21T11:58:00.000-05:002006-12-21T11:58:00.000-05:00Picking up just one thread from this bundle of ide...Picking up just one thread from this bundle of ideas:<br /><br />Burke's view of religion does not seem to see beyond the secular world in which he lives -<br />outside of which, the enemies of religious movements, rather than those who are indifferent, are often competing religious movements -- where the winners enjoy social establishment, and the losers are lucky to escape with their lives. <br /><br /><br />O.K., religions are poetic -- but they're the kind of poetry that's legislative - and isn't that why<br />you prefer the varieties of unreligious experience ?chris millerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09575033275184403015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-50553976749783121702006-12-20T11:01:00.000-05:002006-12-20T11:01:00.000-05:00But all that aside, it's preposterous to suppose t...But all that aside, it's preposterous to suppose that "I love you madly" can no longer be spoken, even by a man to very sophisticated woman, providing of course that it is the truth, the truth about him. (If I were Eco's very sophisticated woman, when he brought up Cartland I'd laugh in his face. What does he know of Cartland?)<br /><br />Truth is not a sharp, keen, ironist's etching all the time (not even in science, the model for all of this -- no accident that Sokrates had been a scientist before taking up moral philosophy). Frequently it is a sloppy and sentimental woodcut, and what is more a woodcut by Dürer. Every generation is born into the world young, not old, even though it always thinks it invented sex.<br /><br />There's a lot of truth in old saws, and that's how they become old saws. This is an ironic fact: it cuts both ways, toward you and against you, with the grain (a ripsaw) and across it (a crosscut saw).<br /><br /><i>Who can fail to admire this sort of brio?</i><br /><br />The poor sod who gets unexpectedly baked or friz or drenched, as may be. Mother Nature, as Feynman didn't quite say, has no irony.John Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-84408741243211991372006-12-20T07:51:00.000-05:002006-12-20T07:51:00.000-05:00Ram, I just disagree. I think what you're describi...Ram, I just disagree. I think what you're describing is ignorance, not stupidity. After all, postmodern idiots are terribly ironical. Those who speak in cliches as if new are either a) those who <em>don't know</em> that they are cliches, or b) those who <em>don't know</em> that it is wrong to speak in cliches (an ironist's "fact"). Either way they are ignorant, not stupid.<br /><br />As for Flaubert's <em>Dictionnaire</em>, I take it as one of the earliest symptoms of the fully-fledged ironic condition. (Or to put it another way, to forestall the adduction of Rabelais, Sterne et al--one of the earliest symptoms of someone <em>defeated</em> by the ironic condition.) Stupid, perhaps, but hardly against irony.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-66435610161905075292006-12-20T07:14:00.000-05:002006-12-20T07:14:00.000-05:00Irony cannot be turned against Irony, as the only ...<i>Irony cannot be turned against Irony, as the only thing that can defeat Irony is ignorance, which is impossible to achieve except by senility, lobotomy, or a nasty fall</i><br /><br />Within myself to seek my only hire<br />Desiring nought but how to kill desire.<br /><br />But it’s not ignorance that can defeat irony, it is stupidity. Stupidity, unlike ignorance, knows a lot of things, can speak in clichés as if they were new, can find meaning in the most banal of commonplaces. Maybe it <i>is</i> possible to use irony against irony: one could take the Flaubert route, and try to write a stupid book ‘arrangé de telle manière que le lecteur ne sache pas si on se fout de lui ou non’.Raminagrobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12008850757226541475noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-75848458225741437692006-12-19T15:33:00.000-05:002006-12-19T15:33:00.000-05:00Yes, exactly.Yes, <em>exactly</em>.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-28774957834071051232006-12-19T11:58:00.000-05:002006-12-19T11:58:00.000-05:00Slose heads a committee that purposes to suppress ...Slose heads a committee that purposes to suppress the obscene plays performed in public kemmerhouses here; they must be like the Karhidish huhuth. Slose opposes them because they are trivial, vulgar, and blasphemous.<br /><br /> To oppose something is to maintain it.<br /><br /> They say here “all roads lead to Mishnory.” To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.<br /><br /> Yegey in the Hall of the Thirty-Three today: “I unalterably oppose this blockade of grain-exports to Karhide, and the spirit of competition which motivates it.” Right enough, but he will not get off the Mishnory road going that way. He must offer an alternative. [...]<br /><br /> To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. Thus proof is a word not often used among the Handdarata, who have chosen not to treat God as a fact, subject either to proof or to belief: and they have broken the circle, and go free.<br /><br /> To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.<br /><br />[...]<br /><br />To become a high officer in the Sarf one must have, it seems, a certain complex form of stupidity. Gaum exemplifies it. He sees me as a Karhidish agent attempting to lead Orgoreyn into a tremendous prestige-loss by persuading them to believe in the hoax of the Envoy from the Ekumen; he thinks that I spent my time as Prime Minister preparing this hoax. By God, I have better things to do than play shifgrethor with scum. But that is a simplicity he is unequipped to see. [...]<br /><br /> Did he really think I’d sell myself for his small change? He must think me very uneasy; which, indeed, makes me uneasy.<br /><br /> Damn them, these unclean men. There is not one clean man among them.<br /><br />--Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, in exile in the Great Commensality of OrgoreynJohn Cowanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11452247999156925669noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-35956419960165262652006-12-19T11:47:00.000-05:002006-12-19T11:47:00.000-05:00Thanks, Chiffre. I haven't read Sloterdijk. In fac...Thanks, Chiffre. I haven't read Sloterdijk. In fact, I haven't even heard of Sloterdijk, although I know the phrase, 'enlightened false consciousness'. I'd say that cynicism is one manifestation of irony--it's difficult to use the terms with too much historical precision as neither means much what it did ca. 300 BC. Perhaps you would well identify cynicism with ironic consciousness. In many instances the words are probably interchangeable. Still, I feel 'irony' to be the more encompassing problem, though no doubt one could dispute it.Conrad H. Rothhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01916542057749474124noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20433842.post-34311520630148804132006-12-19T10:56:00.000-05:002006-12-19T10:56:00.000-05:00This was a really fine piece, Conrad, and tied tog...This was a really fine piece, Conrad, and tied together a lot of things I'd never connected before. I wonder, though, if what you are calling "irony" isn't in fact what Sloterdijk identified, some 20 years ago, as contemporary "cynicism", which he defines as enlightened false consciousness.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com