Concluding Unscientific Postscript Entry 1

Looks like I'm going to be reading this book this year. The book is very, very long, and I have bad eyes, so I will likely be reading it for a long time. I seem to be in a Kierkegaard frame of mind these days. You don't have to be religious or mystical to like Kierkegaard as I do, perhaps it helps if one has an unconscious remnant of religion from one's youth, I don't know. These things have a way of coming back, insisting themselves on you. But in some important ways that's beside the point. The point is one's subjectivity and individuality.

The forward of the book mentions that some have suggested that Wittgenstein's reference to the words of the Tractatus as a reference to this book ,which the author of the forward says Wittgenstein admired. Wittgenstein combined this powerful mystical bent with his analytic writing; one is tempted to think that the mysticism is responsible for his more radical later statements Russell so hated. 

In the meantime I've been reading a book which is a collection lectures by Foucault from 1983-1984 that goes under the title Courage of Truth. Foucault, very different from Kierkegaard, is nevertheless dealing with things in this book that has resonance with thoughts inspired by Kierkegaard: namely the stance of the one who speaks truth to power, with the primary example being, of course, Socrates. 

For Foucault speaking truth to power always takes place as a practice within a 'regime of truth'. Thus, the truth one is hazarding, is not the TRUTH, but the truth possible to express plainly within the context of truth-teller, be it Church corruption, the corruption of a democracy, etc... The language the truth teller tells is given to the truth teller. Yet the truth teller has within themselves the ability to mutate the language in a manner dangerous to the powers that be, else how is parrhesia(Foucault uses this term a lot) even possible? This is the sort of wrench in the machine that makes all Dystopian dramas tick.

For Kierkegaard, 150 years earlier, things are not so relative. Individuals are individuals, not created by society, as Foucault might say, but individuals as such. So, It will be interesting to play these two off each other over the course of these posts.