Not quite on Charles Taylor's Hegelianism......

[Page]

A quick correction. My mistake in verb tense makes it seem that McTaggart succeeded with his arguments about the nature of time. Of course, he did not--viz Moore, Wisdom.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mark Kohut 
  To: Page 
  Cc: pynchon -l 
  Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2007 4:51 PM
  Subject: Not quite on Charles Taylor's Hegelianism......


  Interesting.....I did not know this about Charles Taylor.....I tried to read an earlier book of his
  and waned like I did my first go at GR.....It was mental entropy in action.......

  Here is the review which lead me to ask what I did and which made me think of Pynchon, in some possibly connective (or delusional) way.......(Pynchon also seems to have gotten a similar (?)perspective on that period in history from Henry Adams, esp., "Mont-Saint Michel and Chartres").....

   
  History
   
   A Secular Age by Charles Taylor (Belknap Press). In medieval times virtually everyone in the Western world believed in God; disbelief was hard since magic appeared to be everywhere. Charles Taylor describes this earlier time as having "the social grounded in the sacred" and "human drama unfolded within a cosmos." Today belief in God is often seen as "optional," most of all in Western Europe. The modern world, Taylor argues, creates an open space where people can wander spiritually. Reason has been exalted as the best road to knowledge, and thus many people choose uncertain detachment rather than commit to one particular religious worldview. Taylor's masterful integration of history, sociology, philosophy, and theology demands much of the reader. In return you will be convinced that Charles Taylor is one of the smartest and deepest social thinkers of our time.-Tyler Cowen





  Page <page at quesnelbc.com> wrote:
    It may be worth noting that Charles Taylor is known for his works on Hegel, the arch idealist. Nothing exists but ideas; the "real" world is not physical, as we mistakenly believe. McTaggart does to time what Hegel did to the physical world, and both are reacting to Kant.
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: Mark Kohut 
      To: pynchon -l ; me 
      Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2007 4:44 AM
      Subject: Re: ATDTDA (20): As if her breath, her yearning, 568-569


      Yes, Paul this shows, in your recreation, a key theme thread, I think: Venice is, metaphorically, Shambala-like, and Dally is, of course, a tourist....not of it, always
      alienated trying to fit in.....

      Just about anyplace 'older than memory" is part ofTRPs redemptive vision, I suggest
      and if Dally is or was an innocent, this is worked out.

      "magic' works again near this place (and used to work in it, although magic may have been driven out).

      In a notice on a new book by the philosopher Charles Taylor about the West's cultural/philosophical history, he says that when the West had a unified worldview---later
      Middle ages when science and faith were one, so to speak---magic was "all around" tghe people thought.

      Paul Nightingale <isread at btinternet.com> wrote:
        Dally arrives in Venice, and Ch40 begins with another reference to the
        Chicago Fair, now "a long time ago". One thinks of her return to Chicago,
        "stunned by the immensity, the conglomeration of architectural styles (336).
        And then, her first impression of New York ("at last", 337). In Venice, as
        in New York and Chicago, the experience is powerful; and now, she is
        "certain for the first time in a life on the roll that whatever 'home' had
        meant, this [is] older than memory, than the story she thought she knew"
        (568). The voice of the tourist is intrusive, quite apart from the
        sentiments expressed: she must both relate to spoken English and be
        alienated from a version ("vilely mucous") that signifies difference.

        Here, "the evening ... would see to this pest and his replicas in their
        thousands ..." etc. Cf. the tourists who populate Ch38, as the cause of
        Randolph's "melancholy" on 549, or the "[y]oung tourists ... winding up
        their season of exemption from care" on 552.

        From Dally the narrative moves on to the Zombinis collectively, and their
        successful tour; from here, Dally isn't mentioned for several pages,
        somewhat similar to the Kit has been treated in the text. Dally, of course,
        isn't a Zombini, so Vincenzo Miserere's comment ("I think once there were
        Zombinis around Venice", 569) necessarily alienates her as the British
        Accent did. It seems that "Bria ha[s] known about the Venetian Zombinis
        since childhood", emphasising Dally's exclusion from the family: This
        comment, beginning a new paragraph allows Bria to assert herself, for once
        independently of her half-sister.





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