Saturday 13 November 2010

Staying in...

Everyone stays in these days
I guess maybe we're getting old
Changing our minds & what we believe
Everyone stays in these days
And I miss you

But I can remember your smile
Or how it used to be
But memories fade, don't they?
With every moment you're away
From me

Can you hear a slow decay
Of photos from back when...
Or maybe that's just me
The sound I make as I breathe
Everyone stays in these days

And if you ever hear this song
A missive written in silence
And you think of me
I hope that you will smile again
The way I remember

Thursday 11 November 2010

When The Skies Are Grey

The winter nights are hurting
I have lost my way
But some time before the sunrise
You will make it ok

I don't care for tomorrow
I've forgotten yesterday
And I won't make you promise anything
Just love me today

I only talk about the weather
When the skies are grey
And when you're not beside me
I find it hard to concentrate

But I don't care for tomorrow
I've forgotten yesterday
And I won't make you promise anything
Just love me today

I had words with your father
It seems we disagree
He doesn't want to understand
About you and me

How I don't care for tomorrow
I've forgotten yesterday
And I won't make you promise anything
Just love me today

I don't care for tomorrow
I've forgotten yesterday
And I won't make you promise anything
Just love me today

Sunday 7 November 2010

Types

There's a difference between what you do and what you know is right
I've got a creeping melancholia stealing over me tonight
Now every time I strike a match it's to light another joint
Think of all those numb evenings to which we were lost
I can only get my kicks these days from watching bad TV
It's a great comfort to me


We never really tried that hard, but we're both thankful for
All the friends that we have made somewhere down the road
I'm sorry that I am this way, and I'm sorry you got hurt
I promise that I'd intervene if I had another chance
Until then I will read and re-read
The words that you sent to me


I'm inured these days to the thousand words you say that I am worth
All the empty signs that we pass by and that we disregard
I've been living in the stories you told to keep us both warm
And I'd spend the night translating my word into yours
I prayed today, But I still don't know who it was that I prayed to
Maybe words don't count for much any more
Maybe words don't count for much any more

Saturday 6 November 2010

Freedom, Beauty & Philosophy

I recently came across a statement about philosophy from one of my all time philosophical heroes, Paul Ricoeur...

"Philosophy is ethical insofar as it transforms alienation into freedom and beauty."

I will put this in context a little...

"Ethical", although a familiar enough word, is distinct from "moral". Whereas morality is consumed with right and wrong, the ethical encompasses life in its entirety with all the shades of grey left in. For Ricoeur the relation between identity and the projection of the "good life" is intimate and integral. For philosophy to be ethical would be for philosophy to play a part in who we are and how we live.

Ricoeur was a French philosopher who was a brilliant writer on, among many things, hermeneutics; the science of interpretation. I think this is relevant here because of the notion of "alienation"; part of Ricoeur's concept of interpretation is that it always involves distance; understanding necessarily implies, to some extent, criticism.

Alienation in the context of the ethical, then, implies how we become distanced from our own lives; the way that the extraordinary removes us from the ordinary, or when the ordinary becomes the uncanny. In reflecting upon anything we risk encountering strangeness within familiarity. Philosophy can help us overcome this.

Or so it seems to me. What interests me is the relationship between freedom and beauty in this process. I would argue that there are different ways in which these two qualities can exist in relation to one another, and that this relationship is shaped by the philosophical methodologies and traditions we bring to bear on the aporia we encounter.

Systematic and analytic philosophy aim for freedom through beauty. They rely upon elegance. Analytic philosophy demonstrates the beauty of the ordinary; life through the microscope. Systematic philosophy constructs elegant structures of ideas, aimed towards perfection within the limits of discourse. The freedom they grant is one of lightness; the alienation we encounter can be explained, or integrated into something else.

Therapeutic philosophy, as typified by certain interpretations of Wittgenstein, finds beauty in freedom. The alienation we encounter is a form of confusion; we see the ordinary as extraordinary because we are seeing an unusual aspect of some phenomena. As soon as we realise this, we realise that the alienation we feel is simply a result of looking at something awry. Rather than explain the aporia we dissolve it. Beauty does not emerge from the freedom this dissolution endows us with, the freedom itself is beautiful.

Hermeneutic and existentialist philosophies, however, have the potential to forge beauty from freedom. The freedom they grant us is by denying the Absolute; in the absence of God, everything is permitted. This is not to say that everything is possible; our actions are still circumscribed by our circumstances. But it means that we are free to be the authors of our own existence. Of course, this is a heavy kind of freedom. But then nobody said beauty was cheap...


As ever when I write philosophy on here, all simplistic nonsense. It's the kind of thing that you couldn't possibly agree with unless you already believed it. But, even if philosophy has nothing to do with it, freedom and beauty, both separately and in relation to one another, are surely worthy of our consideration?