Sethomas
Apr 17th, 2006, 02:37 PM
I'm losing my edge. I started, tabula rasa, on a paper on Anselm at 1 am. At eleven and a half hours later, I turned it in with only thirteen pages. Back in first year, I'd write a 4-6'er evaluating only one or two primary texts starting on it two hours before its due date. AND I'D GET BETTER GRADES THAN I'M GETTING NOW, IN A COLLEGE THAT'S WAY MORE ELITE THAN THIS ONE. The prompts were so esoteric that if Smith, Marx, Durkheim, Hume Hayek, Schmidt, or whoever the fuck else read my respective papers on the works of Smith, Marx, Durkheim, Hume, Hayek, Schmidt, or whoever the fuck else, they would have NO FUCKING CLUE what was going on. The prompts were so obtuse that my opening paragraph had to be a collage of engimatic koans, on account of the fact that anything resembling a high school thesis statement would negate the history of my having written it, and by having not been written it could not be negated, and I think you get the picture that a universal paradox would ensue in which case WE'RE ALL FUCKED. So, you have a painfully German name yet you have a PhD in Slavic Studies? Sure, I want you to teach me everything you know about Social Philosphy from Hobbes to Mill! Yeah, I figured you don't know shit about Social Philosophy from Hobbes to Mill, but that's okay because I'll discuss the texts with legacy students who reckon themselves damn fine philosophers on account of the fact that they read the entire Timecube website and figured out that it's not logically sound!
Oh, but I digress. The subject at hand is one Anselm of Canterbury, and why the fuck it took me so long to write only 13 damn pages on him. Medieval philosophy is just funny in that once you get started thinking in its terms, it's quite hard to quit. I read on an old high school friend's blog that she thinks the animal that best represents her is a peacock. So, I ask myself:
What is the quiddity of a peacock? Is it cockness or peaness?
Then stupid people inevitably entered my mind. Augustine tells us early in the Confessions that evil is the privation of good. Stupidity is the privation of intelligence. Intelligence, in the form of logos, constitutes the quiddity of the divine. We may take from the Platonic Dialogue Euthyphro that, although it is indeterminate what is or isn't the will of the divine, that the will of the divine exists indicates that evil exists antithetical to divine will. Stupidity, then, as a privation of intelligence is antithetical to the divine. Thus, stupidity is an evil.
Yeah, I think I'll go to sleep now.
Oh, but I digress. The subject at hand is one Anselm of Canterbury, and why the fuck it took me so long to write only 13 damn pages on him. Medieval philosophy is just funny in that once you get started thinking in its terms, it's quite hard to quit. I read on an old high school friend's blog that she thinks the animal that best represents her is a peacock. So, I ask myself:
What is the quiddity of a peacock? Is it cockness or peaness?
Then stupid people inevitably entered my mind. Augustine tells us early in the Confessions that evil is the privation of good. Stupidity is the privation of intelligence. Intelligence, in the form of logos, constitutes the quiddity of the divine. We may take from the Platonic Dialogue Euthyphro that, although it is indeterminate what is or isn't the will of the divine, that the will of the divine exists indicates that evil exists antithetical to divine will. Stupidity, then, as a privation of intelligence is antithetical to the divine. Thus, stupidity is an evil.
Yeah, I think I'll go to sleep now.