V-2nd Eigenvalue is a philosopher of history

[Mark Kohut]

Browsed in an anthology of writings about the philosophy, the writing, of 
history.

One scholar sez the reputation of Toynbee as historian started declining @1957. 
His vision of history, full of the cyclical rising
and falling of civilizations contained an overt belief that the Judeo-Christian 
civilization we were all in
was an unfolding culmination. 

Might such an optimistic vision of History in the West be---that 'crest' in the 
fabric fold that Eigenvalue said we were
NOT on?......

Anthologizer/scholar sez, since late in the 19th Century, best thinkers about 
history believe--and show---more detail, more variety,
more of all that is going on---like real artists/writers---which sabotages all 
abstract Theories of History.


----- Original Message ----
From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Sat, September 18, 2010 9:52:31 PM
Subject: V-2nd Eigenvalue is a philosopher of history

p. 164 Stencil: "V. and a conspiracy"-- thinks a conspiracy lies behind 'the 
surface accidents of history'?[ NP misc. When Joan [of Arc fame]
invokes the fiends in Shax's Henry 6, she asks to see the future accidents of 
history......]


Eigenvalue presents a metaphor of history as a kind of folded fabric, rupturing 
continuity, no overall conspiracy, no
forward-moving eschatology to history [Get Thee Gone, Hegel, Marx, Christian End 

Times] and
sez, we are now [1956] in a fold, not on a crest. We cannot see/predict
the future. 

Vico--in Joyce--Spengler and Toynbee had prominent cyclical theories of
history circulating on their guitars around now. Eigenvalue, pretty 
sophisticated
for a dentist, sez we know there is a localized 'gather', therefore there are 
others,
which we tend to overgeneralize about. 

P's thinking? If not, ????

Yeats had a cyclical theory too. We know "as above, so below" came from A 
Vision.
"One of the underlying assertions of A Vision is that the spirituality of 
Christianity is a partial one, which by its nature denies the validity of a 
different, more humanistic one, so that Yeats, a naturally spiritual man, feels 
that his innate form of spirituality is denied by the religious ethos of his 
epoch."