Sitting with Lucretius in the garden There are moments when the jungle before me implodes under the weight of its own complexity. Every stone is a mountain writ small, and the invisible air conceals a maelstrom of atoms and vacuums. The appearance of stability dissolves: reality rearranges itself into a catalogue of magnitudes. The substance of “being” comprises yardsticks and...
To you whom this concerns, I don’t know where to start. Which reminds me of how I began one of my journals. And so, to quote myself:* There’s something satisfyingly indulgent about copying words that had already been finished, but are being given a new meaning in a new context. So: Allow me to pause the proceedings – really no more than a preface, an elaborate digression into...
Some essential part of stories lies in their telling. Here is a story: Kant has the idea of the sublime, whereby the aesthetic is significantly determined by its ability to transcend (and hence terrify) our senses. For instance the magnitude of a mountain or a storm – both threaten our sense of self and perception by impressing upon us fact that there is always more, forcing us to teeter...
Summary: The rediscovery of Lucretius’ text by Italian scribe (Poggio Bracciolini) and its impact on contemporary / renaissance thinking. Quote: “[With Lucretius] it became possible – never easy, but possible – in the poet Auden’s phrase to find the mortal world enough.” {Preface} “Acediosus, sometimes translated as “apathetic,” refers to an illness...
Editorial notes: In February 2013, Shai adds Evernote to his suite of repositories. This is an application designed specifically for note-taking, organising, task lists and archiving. This proves to be the ideal tool for him to better control his ever-growing research notes, stored primarily up to this point, in handwritten notebooks and documents stored in his Google drive. Between February 2013...
Editorial notes: In September 2010, Shai begins the first phase of his intellectual journey with an essay dedicated to the Greek mathematician, astronomer and pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales of Miletus. This the first of 80 essays, written between September 2010 and July 2015, dedicated to analysing the thoughts and writings of the great ancient Greek and classical Western philosophers. A close...
