Dilettante Scholar

Notes and comments on books I'm reading.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth: Part I, Chapter 4, "Procedural Regulations"

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In preceding chapters, Blumenberg had considered the function of myth in a hypothetical original situation (the "absolutism of reality...
Monday, January 6, 2025

Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth: Part I, Chapter 3, "Significance"

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Blumenberg sets out in this chapter to discuss, not the origins of myth (which he states is unknowable), but the history of the study of myt...
Friday, December 27, 2024

Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth: Part I, Chapter 2, "The Name Breaks into the Chaos of the Unnamed"

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The first half of this chapter is an exercise in delightful erudition about naming, with the key theme being that names make the world famil...
Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth: Part I, Chapter 1, "After the Absolutism of Reality"

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Blumenberg sets out by focusing on the significance of prehistorical humanity's lack of mastery of reality. This is, he admits, not a si...
Monday, September 28, 2015

Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: Chapter 11, "Hazards of Transition"

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Neustadt starts this further reconsideration with the question, "is the presidency possible?" -- and then looks at some different ...
Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Discourse on the Sciences and Arts" in The First and Second Dicourses, Masters, ed.

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Tensions and paradoxes everywhere. Rousseau characterizes learning and eloquence as vices which hide true feelings and meanings, but his e...
Sunday, August 4, 2013

Immanuel Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" in Kant's Political Writings, Hans Reiss, ed.

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Enlightenment defined: Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.  Immaturity is the inability to use one...

Roy Jenkins, Gladstone: Chapters 17 and 18, "'My Mission Is to Pacify Ireland'" and "A Commanding Prime Minister"

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Gladstone recovered his balance in the opposition against Disraeli's minority Conservative government by late 1867 .  His foothold was I...
Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Roy Jenkins, Gladstone: Chapters 15 and 16, "The People's William" and "Disraeli's Foil"

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In the early 1860s, all the remaining Peelite luminaries other than Gladstone perished, leaving him with no political home but Liberalism.  ...
Monday, December 24, 2012

Zadie Smith, White Teeth

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White Teeth impressed me above all for its marriage of the realistic and fantastic. From early on, we get a heavy dose of the fantastic: ...
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Sunday, December 23, 2012

Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: Chapter 10, "Reappraising Power"

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In this chapter, written in 1976 (16 years after the original publication of his book), Neustadt reconsiders his account of presidential pow...
Sunday, December 9, 2012

C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary: Chapter 4, "The Light and the Dark"

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 After presenting his cricketing resume without false modesty or bravado, the opening paragraphs lay out a predicament: the young James had ...
Saturday, May 12, 2012

C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary: Chapter 3, "Old School-tie"

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James recollects the Puritan ethic that imbued his West Indian upbringing with special reference to the virtues of restraint and loyalty. H...
Sunday, May 6, 2012

Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power: Chapter 9, "Appraising a President"

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In this first supplementary chapter added to the original text, Neustadt tries to assess Kennedy's mastery of presidential power.  He ar...
Sunday, April 29, 2012

Roy Jenkins, Gladstone: Chapters 13 and 14, "The Hostile Partnership with Palmerston" and "God's Vicar in the Treasury"

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Derby's Conservative government fell and Parliament was dissolved in the wake of Disraeli's failed attempt at a second reform bill i...
Sunday, April 22, 2012

Roy Jenkins, Gladstone: Chapters 11 and 12, "Health and Wealth" and "A Short Odyssey for a British Ulysses"

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Gladstone was out of office for most of the 1850s, so his genuinely political activity was pretty scant. This gives Jenkins the opportunity...
Saturday, February 25, 2012

Hans Blumenberg, Paradigms for a Metaphorology: Chapter 10, "Geometric Symbolism and Metaphorics"

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Blumenberg begins by explaining the contrast he wants to draw between symbolism and metaphorics with reference to Fontenelle's critique ...
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