Cavell on the Transcendental

From an interview with Stanley Cavell:

[T]here's two kinds of people...those to whom you don't have to explain the transcendental and those to whom you can't explain the transcendental.

You have to sign up to read the interview, but it's free, and it's an interesting read. HT: OLP & Literary Studies Online, which is now firmly on my radar.

Well, I'll be a comfortable savage...

Ah, Thoreau, Walden:

And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free.

Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?

Which is to say: I've bought a house, and have been thinking about Thoreau the whole damn time...now I have to go read Whitman again, quickly. "Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)"

Suffering and Happiness (Quote of the Moment)

"Suffering is unnecessary. It doesn't make you a better artist; it only makes you a hungry one. However, to me the acquisition of the craft of writing was worth any amount of suffering. To have meaningful work is a tremendous happiness." - Rita Mae Brown

(I got hold of a used copy of the book where the Hook quote below originally appeared: The Courage of Conviction. I've only started dabbling in it, but it looks like an interesting collection. The line above is from Rita Mae Brown's contribution.)

Sidney Hook on "First and Last Things"

I came across this essay called "Convictions" by Sidney Hook (originally published here, reprinted here). The end of it is highly quotable, so here you go:

When I reflect on first and last things, I find myself believing that we value life and fear death too much. Unless we recognize that there are some things more valuable than life itself, life is not worth living.