Wuthering
Expectations

  A Distinguished Crankologist

Sunday, January 22, 2023

Paradoxes and epistemology - early Greek philosophy as conceptual innovation - "Zeno argues fallaciously."

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The conceptual innovation of Thales that we identify as the birth of philosophy quickly spun off other conceptual innovations.  A real conce...
Saturday, January 14, 2023

Thales, the first philosopher - what is philosophy, anyways?

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He [Thales of Miletus] held that the original substance of all things is water, and that the world is animate and full of deities.  They say...
6 comments:
Friday, January 6, 2023

Diogenes Laertius and the fun of the fragment

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We have the complete Plato, from multiple manuscript sources.  We have lost every published book (widely copied scroll) of Aristotle’s, but ...
2 comments:
Thursday, January 5, 2023

Please read Greek philosophy with me - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, dog men, people jumping in volcanoes

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Greek philosophy, readalong #2. This idea got more interesting the more I thought about it, but had more organizational problems, plus the...
Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Please read the Roman plays with me (although not all of them) - Plautus, Terence, Seneca

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Roman plays, a sampling, readalong #1. Fresh off the Greek plays, I want to revisit some of the surviving Roman plays to remind myself wha...
5 comments:
Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music - enchantment is the precondition of all dramatic art

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When I read Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) several years ago I was interested in it as a 19t...
4 comments:
Saturday, December 10, 2022

On Great Writing by Longinus - But greatness appears suddenly; like a thunderbolt it carries all before it

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I will deposit my notes on On Great Writing , which is either a 3rd century text by Longinus, one of the great scholars and rhetoricians of ...
4 comments:
Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Readalongs I wish someone else would organize - Cuban literature, August Wilson plays, and many more

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The glory days of book blogs were full of “challenges.”   I hosted several: Scottish literature, Italian, Austrian, Scandinavian, Portuguese...
17 comments:
Tuesday, December 6, 2022

Planning next year's readalong opportunities - Greek philosophy and Roman plays

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If only I had another idea as good as reading all the Greek plays in order.  But I do have ideas. 1. Roman plays.   Up to five Roman playw...
12 comments:
Thursday, December 1, 2022

Thanks and praise to celebrate the happiness of this great event – the end of the Greek play readalong

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I am quoting the end of Alcestis by Euripides, his early whatever it is, not a tragedy, not a satyr play, not a comedy.  Admetos has won ba...
11 comments:
Friday, November 25, 2022

The Girl from Samos by Menander - I don’t think any one individual is better at birth than any other

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It’s our last plays, the last surviving Greek play, The Girl from Samos (315 BCE) by Menander.  How tastes, or circumstances, had changed i...
3 comments:
Friday, November 18, 2022

Menander's Dyskolos - each man would hold a moderate share and be content

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This week it’s Menander’s Dyskolos , or The Grouch , or The Misanthrope (316 BCE), which may or may not have inspired the title of Molière’...
2 comments:
Friday, November 11, 2022

Wealth by Aristophanes - gout here, pot bellies there, ... obesity beyond all bounds

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We saw Sophocles and Euripides end their long careers with masterpieces, but we do not have that luck with Aristophanes.  Wealth (388 BCE) ...
Monday, November 7, 2022

Notes on Aristotle's Poetics - What are the conditions on which the tragic effect depends?

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Aristotle did not invent literary criticism with Poetics (late 4th c. BCE, maybe) – we just read The Frogs – but for centuries it was the ...
5 comments:
Friday, November 4, 2022

The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes - Octopus tunnyfish dogfish and skate

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The Assemblywomen by Aristophanes – or The Parliament of Women , or several other titles – was performed in 392 BCE, thirteen years after T...
3 comments:
Friday, October 28, 2022

Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles - indeed his end / Was wonderful if ever mortal’s was

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Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles is one of the plays that got me excited about the entire project of reading or re-reading the complete play...
12 comments:
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