Yet another "another"

[Paul Mackin]

Eric Yost wrote:

> Paul: Brown was primarily a literary personage--like Pynchon--not a 
> philosopher or scientist.   Once Brown realized this, he dropped the 
> footnotes (to connect with another post).
>
> Eric: Yet some philosophers too--Nietzsche is a good example--go from 
> writing in a conventional style to a more condensed and aphoristic 
> style. My hunch is that the change of emphasis from careful exposition 
> to aphorism shows a growing respect for paradox. The architecture of 
> "horizontal" rhetoric becomes less important than the "vertical" range 
> of a particular insight.


A growing respect for paradox AND a growing realization than his 
thinking as it continued to develop did not fit awfully well within the 
boundaries of freudianism  or other established areas of secular 
thought.  It got closer to religion and mysticism--Resurrection of the 
Body and such (a term incidentally that Pynchon likes). Marx didn't 
figure very heavily at all in LAD despite the fact that its subtitle 
included the word "history" (equal billing with the word 
"psychoanalytical").  Brown just wasn't  historically inclined. If a 
thinker is as radical and sui generis as the one Brown started out as, 
and turned further into with successive books, he has little choice but 
to argue vertically. He has few if any peers.

I think that's what I would say, though I may not remember much of the 
detail of the books. I did read the first two once a long time ago.


 

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