When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
—Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
Our…
Topics
Bloggers
Essayists
Interviews
InterviewsReviews
Gallery
GalleryArchives
Author Archive
The Cave of False Consciousness II
Posted by Ken Smith on February 16th, 2010 at 9:01 AM. . . We are necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not comprehend ourselves, we have to misunderstand ourselves, for us the law “Each is furthest from himself” applies to all eternity.
—Nietzsche, On…
Kenneth Smith on The Cave of False Consciousness
Posted by Ken Smith on February 13th, 2010 at 9:40 AMOpinion is the castle, or rather the temple of human nature; and, if it be polluted, there is no longer any thing sacred or venerable in sublunary existence.
—William Godwin, An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice, vol. 2,…
A Couple of Films About the Mystical Cult of Chance: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Intacto and Gela Babluani’s 13 Tzameti
Posted by Ken Smith on December 10th, 2009 at 9:45 AMHow poor a bargain is the life of man, and in how mean a market are we sold.
—Oscar Wilde
The Spanish film Intacto (2002) explores the cult and charisma of “good luck” or nearly divine favoritism…
“Science” and “Rationality” as the Mystical Cult of Chance
Posted by Ken Smith on December 10th, 2009 at 9:00 AM
He nourished a conviction that there must be some logic
lurking somewhere in the results of chance.
—Joseph Conrad, “The End of the Tether”
I…
A COUPLE OF FILMS DEFYING MODERN ISOLATIONISM: Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Veronique and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Eclisse
Posted by Ken Smith on December 9th, 2009 at 3:01 PMTwo unnervingly and sublimely beautiful films can be mustered to illustrate the provincial metaphysical limitations of all that “bourgeois individualism” has ever taken for granted as normal, natural and ultimate: in The Double Life of Veronique (1991) a young woman’s…
Anarchic Isolationism Essay
Posted by Ken Smith on December 5th, 2009 at 4:01 AMNo man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main . . . .
—John Donne
Moderns believe profoundly in very…
Privatism, Idiotism, “Atomism”: Modern Isolationism
Posted by Ken Smith on December 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 AMDecades ago, I heard my first penetrating, apt and enduring general characterization of the reigning delusions of the modern world:Â moderns are witlessly afflicted with a self-flattering but morally and spiritually chilling preconception that their basic mode of existence is…
TCJ Blogs
Top TCJ Stories
- 1. Valerie Barclay: Spurned
- 2. Copyright’s Dubious History
- 3. The Moto Hagio Interview conducted by Matt Thorn (Part Three of Four)
- 4. The Moto Hagio Interview conducted by Matt Thorn (Part Two of Four)
- 5. The Moto Hagio Interview conducted by Matt Thorn (Part One of Four)
- 6. Norman Pettingill: His Life
- 7. Journalista reputation-destroying extra: Four years’ work
- 8. I mean, seriously. Bleach?
- 9. Christopher Handley’s Attorney Comments On His Case
- 10. Ariel Schrag Replies At Length to the Likewise Roundtable
