liu si

This is all I know about June 4, 1989 in Tiananmen Square:
(1) A lot of students died when the tanks were sent into the square. (Actually I don't know this - strictly, all I know is that there were deaths.)
(2) There's a book by a American (or British?) sociologist, who happened to be in China at the time working on something else, and went down to Tiananmen to interview students. We don't want your democracy, they told him; we want Rousseau's democracy. I think about that from time to time. What did they mean?
(3) I wasn't in Oxford the weekend Wang Dan came to speak.

But it seems important anyway not to forget the day - to acknowledge that it happened. Tiananmen wasn't my first impression of China, but it was my first political impression? of China - and one of my first political memories, I think - in the sense of a memory of politics happening somewhere in the world. Five months later, the Berlin Wall came down. I was TFing for a class on democracy last semester, and it occurred to me that all of the students in the class - who were all sophomores - had been born after 1989. They have no sense - however vague and inchoate - of a world in which Communism was still a force to be reckoned with.

This isn't a political post, really; just - marking time.

on going the bloody hard way

I was looking for something Rush Rhees on Wittgenstein and doing it the bloody hard way, and found James Conant's essay

Rush Rhees tells us: 'Wittgenstein used to say to me, "Go the bloody hard way".' And, Rhees adds: 'I remember this more often, perhaps, than any other single remark of his.'
...
Rhees connects what Wittgenstein means by going the bloody hard way with the manner in which Wittgenstein himself sought to practise philosophy:

Unless one understands this, then I do not think one can understand Wittgenstein's conviction that philosophy is important....Philosophy, as he practised it, was 'the bloody hard way'....And it was not only a way of thinking and working, but a way of living as well. And the 'hardness' was really a criterion of the sort of life that was worthwhile. Perhaps I should add 'for him.'

besties

The only differences, 'concerning temporal Matters', that [John Home] had with Hume, were his indifference to port and his insistence on spelling his name with an 'o'. 

- Editor's footnote in Hume's History of Natural Religion. John Home was a cousin and close friend of Hume.

what it is

"But this is neither dogmatism nor scepticism, but stupidity; a state of mind very different from your sifting, inquisitive disposition, my ingenious friend." 

- Cleanthes to Philo, in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion 

living on words

C. K. Ogden sums up the ending of the ill-fated romance of Bentham and Polly Dunkley:

Meanwhile...the young lady, alarmed, no doubt, by the prospect of an income derived solely from an annual volume on legal theory, had beaten a retreat. 

- From his introduction to the Theory of Legislation (1931)

An irresistible invitation

Bentham invites John Lind and his wife to visit him:

There is a two-legged creature I have heard you speak of as belonging to you. Were it to come here, could you answer for it's being quiet? If you could, I should like of all things to see it. You must consider and it must consider it could not see a creature of its own sex here all the while above the degree of my Landlord's wife who was Sir George's laundry maid; so that what it has to consider is whether it would prefer its Master's arid company and mine and nobody else's for four days to such as it might have were it to stay at home. Toilette furniture and all its other rattle traps it must bring of course: moreover it must engage to go up stairs and sit in its own room or let us sit in mine if ever we should find it in the way, when you and I in our profound wisdoms are sitting in council over the affairs of state. 

Why indeed

Opening of a letter from Jeremy Bentham to Samuel Bentham, 17 July 1776:

Why has thou not sent me some Tea?

Joan Didion on experience

From a Paris Review interview:

I was one of those children who tended to perceive the world in terms of things read about it. I began with a literary idea of experience, and I still don't know where all the lies are. For example, it may not be true that people who try to fly always burst into flames and fall. That may not be true at all. In fact people do fly, and land safely. But I don't really believe that. I still see Icarus. I don't seem to have a set of physical facts at my disposal, don't seem to understand how things really work. I just have an idea of how they work, which is always trouble. As Henry James told us.

And to you too

Bentham to his younger brother Sam, on the occasion of his (Bentham's) 28th birthday:

"God's-daddikins! it is my birthday -- say something pretty to me on the occasion."

Mustard be special?

On the radio:

"...but what do you give to someone special, but not that special? Trader Joe's whole grain dijon mustard. It's the perfect way to say to someone, I really like you, but let's not rush into anything."

Grumblings Pt 2

The young Bentham to a friend (not Mulford):

This Mulford is always sluggish about performing his duty,  untrustworthy, very forgetful of his debts, an enemy to gods and men. Wherefore I pray that his cucumbers may suddenly wither that no plant may prosper for him that Rover may become even more untrustworthy than his master and may end miserably, that his wretched hovel may fall to pieces about his ears, all this and if there be anything yet more terrible than this, I lay upon him as a solemn curse.

Early grumblings

In a letter from a young Jeremy Bentham to his father, while at Oxford:

P.S. Grievances. No shirts to my back. No good shoes to my Feet. My new Tablecloths full of holes. 

His next letter to his father, a week or so later, has this for a postscript:

I forgot to mention that among my 10 Shirts, 1 is my brother's, another quite a rag, and 1 or 2 not much better.

There are also a number of letters asking for sugar and tea, which, he says, costs twice as much in Oxford.