anarchist miracle

[David Morris]

Your question of chicken/egg presupposes reaction. But which side is the
rebel or the defender?  I think times make neither more than sand. Context
is ultimately Time.

On Friday, February 8, 2013, wrote:

>
> The lives of Spinoza and Leibniz, like Plato and Aristotle, overlapped by
> about 30-40 years. I guess the similarities between the two pairs are
> probably numerous and enlightening, all things being equal, but what
> interests me is whether there could have been an "Aristotle" before a
> "Plato," or for that matter, a "Leibniz" before a "Spinoza," in a
> philosophical sense. Maybe the answer depends on whether one is Platonic or
> Aristotelian.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'igrlivingston at gmail.com');>>
> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'pynchon-l at waste.org');>>
> Sent: Fri, Feb 8, 2013 8:38 pm
> Subject: anarchist miracle
>
> From Kenneth Burke in A Grammar of Motives:
>
>  "The famous concept of 'pre-established harmony' was invented by Leibniz
> as deus ex machina to bring it about that the principle of self-development
> activating each of the monadic substances does not interfere with the
> self-development of its fellows. That is, God so adjusted the monads to one
> another that their development would have the same effect as if they were
> all mutually constraining or influencing one another. By this
> pre-established harmony, says Leibniz, it is as though the world were
> composed of infinite voices, each singing its own particular song, unaware
> of any other, yet if you could hear them all you would hear the song of a
> choir singing in perfect time with all parts in perfect polyphonic relation
> to one another. Leibniz thus stressed the plurality side of the
> plurality-unity pair as strongly as Spinoza had stressed the unity side."
>
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