Kant’s Depression
The significance of Kant’s philosophy is, however, counter-balanced by its notorious difficulty. Reading through the table of contents alone, with its dazzling and labyrinthine array of sections, sub-sections, and sub-subsections, is a task in and of itself. Nevertheless, if Kant’s philosophy achieved one thing, it was a renewed optimism in philosophy, much in line with Enlightenment ideals concerning the advantages of secular reason and the “maturing” of humanity as a whole. Reading through Kant’s works, with their patient and rigorous divisions and sub-divisions, there is a sense of philosophy as an all-encompassing, totalizing endeavor. Philosophy, in its Kantian modes, knows everything — it even knows what it doesn’t know.
Philosophy meets horror against the backdrop of an indifferent, unhuman cosmos, in this excerpt from Eugene Thacker‘s Starry Speculative Corpse.
Recurrent Unconsidered Joy: A review of Hidden Valleys by Justin Barton
Hidden Valleys involves a large amount of country wandering, though with more precarity than the Armitages and MacFarlanes are currently enduring. During Barton’s teenage years, he and his mother travelled the country from hotel to hostel, town to village, against the sour backdrop of familial strife and a contested will. His investment in the landscape, then, was everything but professional.
Cal Revely-Calder on Hidden Valleys by Justin Barton.