Fwd: AtD: John MacTaggart Ellis MacTaggart

[Mark Kohut]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phenomenology_of_Spirit

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 3, 2019 at 10:51 AM
Subject: AtD: John MacTaggart Ellis MacTaggart
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>


was a philosopher at Trinity College, Cambridge, who enjoyed a considerable
reputation in his day.
I have never read any of his works, but I believe that he was an Hegelian;
an exponent of a philosophy now
out of favor, except in the form of Dialectical Materialism. ...
But it is said to have been Mr. MacTaggart who offers the explanation that
the word *runcible *means *tortoise-shell*
[ basing this on two books *The Owl and the Pussycat *and *The Pobble who
Has No Toes. ]*
*                                                         ----T. S. Eliot *in
"Can 'Education' Be Defined" collected in *To Criticize the Critic*

Highly probable that this is the first place TRP learned of MacTaggart and
I think I see how TRP uses him to
satirize Marxism a bit and Hegelian semi-notions---history unfolding to a
great Spirit [knowledge], say.

In fact, he might be mocking The Phenomenology of Spirit with the
Trespassers.

THIS is where our history leads.