About Reality Podcast

After reading "So Much Longing in So Little Space' by Karl Ove Knausgaard, in this episode we ask the same question he did in the book: what makes a work of art good, really? My position in this episode is that the 'good' or even great art object cannot be one which you experience but then go back to life as you've known it, as it's settled around you. Arguing from a more radical position, I suppose, I claim the great work of art upsets everything, shakes all that the viewer thinks they know to their very core—and, likely, hopefully, makes it impossible for the one who experiences such a great work of art to then return to life as normal. The contention I dwell on in this episode is whether the art community today really wants such art objects which shake the foundations of the known world; instead, perhaps they prefer works of art which merely accent their days spent living a late-capitalist ideal of the good, secure, stable, comfortable life.

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In the capitalist social model the house always wins, and not every individual who plays the game in the hopes of hitting big, of experiencing the windfall of all that capitalism at its height promises, is in fact going to win. The reality is that most don't, and that reality is looming every larger in the sights and mind of the collective—they are protesting this circumstance which capitalism has wrought upon the world, that the house, the system, always wins, and most individuals will end up with nothing, despite having given their life to playing the game. Is there another way of being, different from the fantasy which capitalism puts before all our eyes, which is in fact closer to, and more sustainable with, reality? This is one of the questions of our modern moment, no doubt. It's unclear who has the answer, if anyone does.

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In this episode we ask if there is any philosophical question that is unique to our time. We ask this because, on the other hand, if, despite superficial differences, the modern individual's experience of the highs and lows of this life, of their existential condition as conscious human being, is not all that different from that of any human alive at any point in the past, then the philosophical, spiritual, and scientific texts that have been passed down to us are all we need to come up with an answer as to the ways of being for our own lives in the present day.

Check out the About Reality Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

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Charles Darwin, in his description of nature, revealed a mechanism far beyond what had previously been imagined. In his almost microscopic attention to the world as it is, which so many eyes prior to his work had slid over and taken for granted, his descriptions of life on this planet often sounded otherwordly, revealing a world as if of fantasy, which we'd never noticed before. In this episode, we wonder what is yet to be revealed by the one who would look as closely at what is on this Earth.

Check out the About Reality Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

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If we regard the premodern search for truth and explanation for being in the materials of this earth as guided largely by superstition, as medieval alchemists sought to resolve the spiritual substance, contained in the materials of this earth as if they were vessels for it, in one potent object or formula – the lapis philosophorum – we would nonetheless be mistaken, Carl Jung posits, if we believed too that our own motive for modern, scientific investigation has changed all that much from theirs. It may be less superstitious, but it is no less impelled by desperation, wild desire, and fantasy.

Check out the About Reality Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

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An introduction to the hypothesis guiding a new writing project which will be a companion piece to the philosophy being developed in this podcast series. There is a mode of investigation I've developed as philosopher, which informs this series and this new writing project, and I outline it in this episode as an introduction to how this podcast and my writing is going to develop moving forward into the indefinite future (hopefully for months to come!).

Check out the About Reality Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

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How should a human creature react to a true statement? Where do we allow the written word to take us today, if anywhere? Where would a true word, written or spoken, say we are, and where does it say we're going? What has been the power of the written word throughout our history, which in our secular age we seem on guard against, providing as it does with a regaining of orientation and direction which the modern world cannot abide, for the fact that it has no patience for any statements which would reveal the shortcomings of its own project: that of 'modernity'? A true statement has always been felt as a knife piercing the illusion of ourselves we have built up, and the world as a whole has a similar self it seeks to protect from such piercing statements.

Check out the About Reality Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

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What does a people fight and give their lives for? What order and sense of history does a community seek to maintain—and is it accidental or arbitrary, or is it the only thing a people has to combat the chaos inherent to the universe, which in one form or another is always threatening to consume a people's identity and way of life?

Check out the About Reality Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

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This episode is mostly an elaboration upon one of the arguments in Alenka Zupancic's book 'Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan'.

Check out the About Reality Substack: https://aboutreality.substack.com/

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The perennial problem, revisited in today's age, of what the philosopher is really aiming to achieve: whether it is to align with what is, in contemplative fashion, or, as seems more favored these days, to take their so-called insight and bring into reality a future and world we want for ourselves. In this episode we are in doubt as to whether that latter option is possible, and conclude it might even be naive.

Substack entry I read in this episode: https://aboutreality.substack.com/p/feb-9-2022

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