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Below are the 5 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Michael Zeleny" journal:

November 10th, 2009

03:21 pm

Ἡράκλειτος τὸ ἀντίξουν συμφέρον καὶ ἐκ τῶν διαφερόντων καλλίστην ἁρμονίαν καὶ πάντα κατ᾽ ἔριν γίνεσθαι: ἐξ ἐναντίας δὲ τούτοις ἄλλοι
Heracleitus says, ‘Opposition unites,’ and ‘The fairest harmony springs from difference,’ and ‘'Tis strife that makes the world go on.’

—Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1155b1-6, translated by J. Bywater

Thirty-three years ago the author of these screeds walked free after serving a fifteen day sentence for petty hooliganism with twenty-two codefendants, counting among the first Soviet political protesters to get away with a slap on the wrist. The Berlin Wall came down thirteen years later, to the day. Coincidence? You decide.

Meanwhile, the philosophy of freedom is making giant strides in Russia. On 18 April 2009, Vadim Karastelev, head of the local Human Rights Committee, protested the curfew forbidding anyone under 18 years of age from appearing in the streets of Krasnodar region by displaying a sign with the slogan “Freedom is not given, it is taken”, a paraphrase of an analogous quotation about rights taken from a play by Maxim Gorky:

Прав—не дают, права—берут… Человек должен сам себе завоевать права, если не хочет быть раздавленным грудой обязанностей…
Rights aren’t given, rights are taken… Man must fight to win his rights if he doesn’t want to be crushed by a mountain of duties…

Herewith the expert philosophical analysis rendered in connection with his public display: ( Read more... ) Vadim Karastelev’s slogan echoes the combative demon of Charles Baudelaire:

Celui-là seul est l’égal d’un autre, qui le prouve, et celui-là seul est digne de la liberté, qui sait la conquérir.
Only he is the equal of another, who proves it, and only he is worthy of liberty, who can conquer it.

In his turn, Baudelaire drew upon Goethe’s Faust calling for free humanity jointly creating universal welfare in a free society:

Ja! diesem Sinne bin ich ganz ergeben, 
das ist der Weisheit letzter Schluß: 
Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben,
der täglich sie erobern muß.

This is the final product of my strife,
The greatest wisdom mankind ever knew:
He only earns his freedom and his life, 
Who boldly conquers them each day anew.

The Faustian maxim is infinitely malleable, lending itself as the populist motto for the National Socialism of Alfred Rosenberg, the Marxism of Ernst Thälmann, and the dissident humanism of Andrei Sakharov. May it serve as the battle cry for the advent of freedom in Russia.

Tags: anarchism, baudelaire, french, german, greek, heraclitus, lawyers, philosophy, politics, russia, russian, translation

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June 2nd, 2009

04:55 pm

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doggy stylings
Some time ago I wondered, what Aristotle might have meant by claiming in the Rhetoric 2.24, at 1401a22, that to be without a dog is most dishonorable. My solution arrived ( Read more... ) Crossposted to

larvatus,

linguaphiles,

ancient_philo,

classicalgreek, and

classics.

Tags: greek, latin, philosophy, sex, traducement, translation

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January 20th, 2009

10:15 pm

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odi ut amatura et amo ut osura
In his account of youthful character, Aristotle attributes all its errors to excess and vehemence in love, hate, and everything else. At their peril, the young neglect of the maxim of Chilon: Μηδὲν ἄγαν, Ne quid nimis, “Never go to extremes”. (Rhetoric 1389b4-5; Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum I.41.) And as he turns to the flaccid dispositions of old men, Aristotle observes that neither their love nor their hatred is strong; but, according to the precept of Bias, καὶ φιλοῦσιν ὡς μισήσοντες καὶ μισοῦσιν ὡς φιλήσοντες—“they love as if they would one day hate, and hate as if they would one day love”. (Rhetoric 1389b21-25; DL I.87.) Prudential anticipation of reversals in love and hatred emerged as an early modern adage. Thus Erasmus commends it in commenting upon “Ne quid nimis” in Adagia I.vi.96. Likewise, Juan Luis Vives writes on behalf of the “Anima Senis”: odi ut amatura et amo ut osura—“I hate as if one day I should love, and love as if one day I should hate”. More recently, Tancredo Neves, the hero of Brazilian Democratic Movement, is said to always have remembered the motto of Getúlio Vargas, his former patron, role model, and predecessor in election to the Brazilian Presidency: “I have never made an enemy whom I could not approach or a friend from whom I could not separate.”—“Não tenho inimigo de quem não possa me aproximar nem amigo de quem não possa me distanciar.” (Ronaldo Costa Couto, História indiscreta da ditadura e da abertura: Brasil: 1964-1985, Editora Record, 1999, p. 322.) Striving to dislodge a military dictatorship, Neves boasted during his Presidential campaign, that if he got 500 votes from his party, not even God would remove him from Presidency. He got the votes and was due to be sworn into office on the Ides of March in 1985. But a day before taking his Presidential oath, Neves fell gravely ill with a gastric tumor. Seven surgical bouts only served to aggravate his suffering. Neves died on 21 April 1985, the 193rd anniversary of execution and dismemberment of Tiradentes, the hero of Brazilian independence. Thus Tancredo Neves came to God after having slighted His will.

God’s will has swayed the fortunes of Jerusalem since 1095. A nominally secular state, Israel was founded upon the promise made by God to the descendants of Abraham. This promise is countermanded by the founding charter and ongoing policy of Hamas, which calls for the elimination of the Jewish state and worldwide extermination of Jews. And just as the Zionist project emerged in response to the political leverage of antisemitism, so Palestinian nationalism feeds off Jewish hegemony in the Holy Land. In more generic terms, Carl Schmitt cast the essence of the political as resting on the distinction between friend and enemy:

Der politische Feind nicht der Konkurrent oder der Gegner im allgemeinen. Feind ist auch nicht der private Gegner, den man unter Antipathiegefühlen haßt. Feind ist nur eine wenigstens eventuell, d.h. der realen Möglichkeit nach kämpfende Gesamtheit von Menschen, die einer ebensolchen Gesamtheit gegenübersteht. Feind ist nur der öffentliche Feind, weil alles, was auf eine solche Gesamtheit von Menschen, insbesondere auf ein ganzes Volk Bezug hat, dadurch öffentlich wird. Feind ist hostis, nicht inimicus im weiteren Sinne; πολέμιος, nicht ἐχθρός.
—Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen: Text von 1932 mit einem Vorwort und drei Corollarien, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1963, p. 29

The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship. The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the broader sense; πολέμιος, not ἐχθρός.
—Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, translated by George Schwab, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996, p. 28

While Jewish nationalism emerged from the 1896 publication of Der Judenstaat by Theodor Herzl, its Palestinian counterpart originates in the 1948 dispossession of the Arab natives of the newborn Jewish state. In Aristotelian terms, their political predicament is rooted in the ardor of youth. Tancredo Neves was able to define his political mission in the terms of contingent animosities ungrounded in essential hostilities. No such definition is available to Israeli and Palestinian politicians, who continue to group their nations according to the friend and enemy antithesis. Thus the prospects of peace in the Middle East are foredoomed, as long as its neighboring and intermingled adversaries continue to regard each other as public enemies. There is as yet no basis for them to hate as if one day they should love. And for want of this basis, well-meaning Christian powers will meddle in vain.

Crossposted to

larvatus and

history.

Tags: brazil, german, greek, islam, jews, latin, politics

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January 13th, 2009

02:34 am

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old klingon proverb
Gottes Mühlen mahlen langsam, mahlen aber trefflich klein;
Ob auß Langmuth er sich seumet, bringt mit Schärff er alles ein.
—Friedrich von Logau, „Göttliche Rache“, Sinngedichte III, ii, 24, circa 1654

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Retribution”, Poems, Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1869, Vol. I, p. 292

ὀψέ θεῶν ἀλέουσι μύλοι, ἀλέουσι δὲ λεπτά
—Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos I, 287 ≈ Oracula Sibyllina VIII, 14 ≈ Plutarch, Moralia, “De sera numinis vindicta” 549d

Quid mihi si fueras miseros laesurus amores,
Foedera per divos, clam violanda, dabas?
A miser, et siquis primo periuria celat,
Sera tamen tacitis Poena venit pedibus.
—Tibullus, Elegiae I, ix, 1-4 and commentary

dixerat, et tandem cunctante modestior ira
ille refert: ‘equidem non uos ad moenia Thebes
rebar et hostiles huc aduenisse cateruas.
pergite in excidium socii, si tanta uoluptas,
sanguinis, imbuite arma domi, atque haec inrita dudum
templa Iouis (quid enim haud licitum?) ferat impius ignis,
si uilem, tanti premerent cum pectora luctus,
in famulam ius esse ratus dominoque ducique.
sed uidet haec, uidet ille deum regnator, et ausis,
sera quidem, manet ira tamen.’ sic fatus, et arces
respicit.
—Statius, Thebaid V 680-690

ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est
—Juvenal, Satura XIII 100

Itaque dii pedes lanatos habent, quia nos religiosi non sumus.
—Petronius, Satyricon XLIV,18

Et dum pro se quisque deos tandem esse et non neglegere humana fremunt et superbiae crudelitatique etsi seras, non leues tamen uenire poenas—prouocare qui prouocationem sustulisset, et implorare praesidium populi qui omnia iura populi obtrisset, rapique in uincla egentem iure libertatis qui liberum corpus in seruitutem addixisset,—ipsius Appi inter contionis murmur fidem populi Romani implorantis uox audiebatur.
—And while the people muttered, each man to himself, that there were gods after all, who did not neglect the affairs of men; and that pride and cruelty were receiving their punishment, which though late was nevertheless not light—that he was appealing who had nullified appeal; that he was imploring the protection of the people who had trodden all the rights of the people under foot; that he was being carried off to prison, deprived of his right to liberty, who had condemned the person of a free citizen to slavery—the voice of Appius himself was heard amidst the murmurs of the assembly, beseeching the Roman People to protect him.
—Livy, Ab Urbe Condita 3, 56, 7, translated by Benjamin Oliver Foster

La parole des dieux n’est point vaine et trompeuse ;
Leurs desseins sont couverts d’une nuit ténébreuse ;
La peine suit le crime : elle arrive à pas lents.
—Voltaire, Oreste, I, ii

Courage, if carried to daring, leads to death; courage, if not carried to daring, leads to life. Either of these two things is sometimes beneficial, sometimes harmful.

“Why ’t is by heaven rejected,
Who has the reason detected?”

    Therefore the holy man also regards it as difficult.
    The Heavenly Reason strives not, but it is sure to conquer. It speaks not, but it is sure to respond. It summons not, but it comes of itself. It works patiently but is sure in its designs.
    Heaven’s net is vast, so vast. It is wide-meshed, but it loses nothing.
—Lao-Tze’s Tao-Teh-King, translated by Paul Carus, 73, “Daring To Act”

Tags: chinese, classics, french, german, greek, justice, latin, revenge

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December 13th, 2007

12:22 am

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one philosopher, four languages, seven translations
Aristotle, Poetics, in Greek, Russian, English, and French.

Tags: aristotle, french, greek, philosophy, russian, translation

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