arndt@lymph.DEC (01/03/85)
My man. It really is a shame that we cannot meet except on the net. I think
if we ever did we would both say in unison, "You're a flaming a**hole!" (only
I'd be right!) and then sit down for some interesting conversation.
So you lost mail for two weeks, eh? Just goes to show that you can't rely on
anyone anymore. I paid for three weeks! Oh well, others have lost a lot more
than two weeks of my mail because of non-support.
I really don't know what to do about your request for me to remail my reply to
your posting of the "scholarly quote". I mean that would be me quoting MYSELF!
Or are you trying to set me up? Actually I liked the article, except
that it was . . . a . . . little . . . hard . . . to . . . read. Nice try at a
quote though, keep reading and you'll get the hang of it. Of course only
Buffoons with nothng to say quote others, right? Why did you? Did someone
send it to you or did you really read something on your own? Or, with all the
dots, did you just make it up believing that somewhere someone must have said
something like that?
The truth is that I don't have on file an electric copy of my reply any more.
I know, think of the loss to history! Perhaps one of your fans could forward
it to you. Or one of mine (who keeps everything I post in the Arndt file for
future generations).
So just for you, this time, I reach to my library shelf and draw out OBJECTIONS
TO HUMANISM, H. J. Blackham, et al, Penguin Books, Great Britain,'67, p.56-58.
"Perhaps we can put the question in this form: Is there an inevitable clash
between thinking and feeling?
Some of those who earlier in this century, in the controversy about meaning
and value, adopted a rigidly scientific standard for 'meaning', have come more
and more to regard poetry as the language of unified apperception, the language
indeed of our common and real awareness: . . . .
This practical concern with poetry and the arts might with some intellectuals
express the sense of a personal therapeutic need - like the sick cat which goes
instinctively for the grass. But it may well be nothing more than an intell-
igent and healthy recognition that every human mind must learn to balance
itself. Where there is a great variety of desires, interests, and propensities
a deliberate effort may be needed if these are to be in harmony instead of
conflict.
. . . we are highly unlikely to meet an absolutely equal development of logic
and analysis, on the one hand, and imagination and intuition, on the other, in
one mind and personality.
Moreover, if we look at what we know of the personal history of those who have
prefered to think in general and abstract terms we shall unquestionably find
a great deal of the obsessional anxiety which we nowadays describe as neurotic.
Descartes, Kant, Niezsche and Schopenhauer, to mention only a few, would
certainly not have qualified as A1 at Freud's. Wittgenstein was severely
depressive, . . . . The analytical and generalizing intellect, particularly
in its mathematical and logical specialization, seems too narrow for a maturing
humanity, and I would even suggest that it may be allied with an actual dislike
of the concrete particulars of ordinary spontaneous living."
----------------------------------------
How about it Rich, do you dislike concrete?
By the way, OBJECTIONS TO HUMANISM is a dandy little book. It is written by
four hunanists who are attempting to answer objections TO humanism! So the
woman (yes!) is on your side I would think.
Gotta go amigo,
Keep chargin'
Ken Arndt