Karpel Tunnel wrote: ↑August 31st, 2019, 5:03 am
Felix wrote: ↑August 31st, 2019, 4:23 am
It's all or nothing with you, isn't it? (or maybe all and nothing). You said you believe in eternal forms, how can you have eternal order (eternal forms of order) within chaos?
From my reading of him his ontology seems eclectic. I don't think he decides to reconcile everything. Now this might seem ridiculous, but I think most people actually function like this. They may think mind is like or determinism is the case or have their take on what is epistemically valid, but in practice they think and act in a variety of ways and even speak in a variety of ways. Unlike him they try at least to present a whole that is consistent. He doesn't seem to bother with that.
I assume that the word "him" is me, Gary Smith. My writing isn't eclectic so much as a bricolage. If there is any reconciling of anything in my writing it is through the rhythm of my sentences. I do write what is called numerous prose. Yes, the rhythms are "chaotic" but it is there.
Here is George Saintsbury in his History of English Prose Rhythms
“It has, I have no doubt, occurred to other students of elaborate rhythmical prose that curiously large proportions of the most famous examples of it are concerned with dreams; and I should not suppose that many of them have failed to anticipate the following suggestion of the reason. Dreams themselves are nothing if not rhythmical; their singular fashion of progression (it is matter of commonest remark) floats the dreamer over the most irrational and impossible transitions and junctures (or rather breaches) of incident and subject, without jolt or jar. They thus combine—of their own nature and to the invariable experience of those who are fortunate enough to have much to do with them—the greatest possible variety with the least possible disturbance. Now this combination, as we have been faithfully putting forth, is the very soul—the quintessence, the constituting form and idea—of harmonious prose. Unfortunately it is not every one who has the faculty of producing this combination in words; fortunately there are some who have.”
There are a number of ways to achieve unity in a piece of writing, philosophical or otherwise. For philosophy, one of those ways is a clean, logical progression, another is a steady dialectical peeling back, but, as in that quote above, it can also be had in numerous prose, the rhythm of dreams, captivating metrical variation, telling repetition, the smooth jolt of the irrational.Something is awry. The thing itself is close at hand. The eye works into itself. And the soul is beside itself. The night trick. Fearsome, fearless philosophy.
Here is my favorite example of numerous prose -
"And her eyes if they were ever seen would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams and with wrecks of forgotten delirium."