Purloined letters & invisible gorillas: Paul Seabright’s Princeton in Europe talk
Indirect knowledge is a means of delivering the capacity of the knower to act. Parables and stories drawing out contradictions between an actors’ knowledge and her actions can do this. Jonathan Swift’s ‘A Modest Proposal’ is a well-known example of indirect knowledge. Kierkegaard’s use of indirect knowledge is a key element of his approach to philosophy. He wrote pseudonymously. His central texts are written in character. Direct communication of Kierkegaard’s own philosophical position is largely absent from his oeuvre. His philosophy is largely the communication of indirect knowledge.
Richard Marshall on Paul Seabright’s Princeton In Europe Lecture.
Metaphysical London Dark
So, is the dark a manifestation of London power, where London is the power and the dark its manifestation? Or is the dark the power, and London the manifestation? And when does a substance make its powers manifest? What stimulation is required to bring out the promised power…What many of these stories do, in fact, is suggest different gradings of necessity. Perhaps we should understand these stories as particles, each with basic, fundamental properties all linked to the basic law of the London haecceity, but some derived more directly than others. But there is no agreement about any of this and that may well be because no one knows what the basic laws are. No one knows which are the most fundamental ones. No one in fact knows if London is a power even, although Shakespeare thought it was, Ted Hughes agreed, and it seems all metaphysical cities are metaphysical London.
Richard Marshall reviews Oscar Zarate‘s It’s Dark In London.