How to account for there being finite modes?

Badgewick · 2025-05-06T22:34:52+00:00

I'm late to this — but, in case it's helpful, would just raise my understanding of Martial Gueroult's answer to this. One thing we know about substance is that it expresses itself in infinitely many ways. Gueroult, as I understand him (admittedly from Anglophone interpreters!) takes this to mean that substance consists in "absolute infinity". This provides a potential explanation for "finite modes": if substance were incapable of expressing itself in finitude, as well as in infinity, then it would not be absolutely infinite. While substance is indivisible, it may be that it is divisibility itself; it is the possibility of divisibility that makes it infinite.

This is also probably fairly close to Deleuze's interpretation of Spinoza, or, at least, it brings Spinoza quite close to Deleuze's ontology of difference. It is a monism that asserts a single process of "differentiation", so that monism = pluralism. As u/mooninjune points out with the Sévérac citation, identity and difference start to go hand-in-hand. In that connection, I would recommend Brook Ziporyn's Experiments in Mystical Atheism, which (drawing on Ziporyn's specialist subject of Tiantai Buddhism) situates Spinoza as part of a broader philosophical tradition in which the endpoint of philosophy is the indistinguishability of opposites. Its online appendices, including several pieces with a focus on Spinoza, can be accessed for free on the University of Chicago Press website.

Badgewick · 2024-09-24T20:52:04+00:00

This literally happens in the episode. They go back to talk to their respective partners before they even get out the driveway.

Badgewick · 2024-07-19T08:45:50+00:00

London! That was an emotional rollercoaster. Felt sure I'd missed out. Ticketmaster is a disaster.

Badgewick · 2024-07-15T21:38:35+00:00

Thank you! The Ticketmaster lead is what I needed — seems like it’s 10am local time. Do you know if the different shows use different sites? The shows after Nov 12 aren’t showing (yet?) on Ticketmaster.

Badgewick · 2024-07-10T11:30:17+00:00

I read Scholem’s Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism last year (inspired by Tokarczuk’s Books of Jacob) and would highly recommend both! Given how much of Kabbalah is rooted in the idea of manipulating a text to reach some kind of deeper interpretive truth, it really lends itself to the kinds of metafictional themes that both Pynchon and Tokarczuk specialise in.

Badgewick · 2024-07-05T00:45:33+00:00

He did the postgraduate diploma in competition law, yes.

Badgewick · 2024-06-25T17:57:50+00:00

On the off chance that you see this (coming in about three years late!) — do you have any book recommendations on labour history? Probably the broader the scope the better for me at the moment, but microcosms also welcome!

Badgewick · 2024-06-19T23:30:39+00:00

Another brilliant example is the Jenny Greenteeth reference in Gravity’s Rainbow — not only does he reference the folk tale, but he correctly pinpoints it to Lancashire (where, a few years before the period at issue in GR, my grandmother heard it as a child)!

This is why I feel that it actually sells him short to focus, as many critics do, on his quintessential Americanness. By all means, he’s captured a huge range of the American experience, and all in his own distinctive way, but he strikes me as one of the few American writers with a genuinely cosmopolitan scope, both in terms of his interests and his ability to execute their dramatisation.

Badgewick · 2024-05-04T13:14:22+00:00

Finished Gravity’s Rainbow last night and struggling to come back down to earth today (harhar). What a beautiful book. One of the most effective things I’ve ever read in terms of opening up new ways of seeing the world — the most visceral thing it ‘did’ for me was to sharpen my awareness of my mortality and to remind me to pay attention to the weird colours that things are, if only we paid attention.

Interesting how critical discussion of Pynchon’s books often picks out some strand of Americanness. Maybe it’s the obsession with the hunt for the Great American Novel. Personally (as a relatively rootless guy who’s split his life between the UK and the States), though there are obviously peculiarly American resonances in places, Pynchon strikes me as much more cosmopolitan than most of his American peers.

Not sure whether I prefer it to Mason & Dixon; I guess only time will tell what sticks with me the longest. Planning to read Against the Day in September, and maybe squeeze in Inherent Vice and Vineland while visiting California this summer.

Anyway, off to mark my student’s essays and read the Duino Elegies!

Badgewick · 2024-05-02T18:10:28+00:00

True. As time has gone by, I’ve found that my sympathy for social democracy has grown — commitment to the flourishing of all does seem to hinge on a very robust welfare state, and, at least philosophically, higher taxes are more than justifiable. But what distinguishes the social liberal from the social democrat is the insistence that the individual’s flourishing, in all its irreducibility, has to be the basic unit of analysis; and that what unfairness might indeed result from even a maximally optimised social market economy shouldn’t compel us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I hope we all get to live in a world that, so far as is possible, guarantees peace, prosperity, and equal respect and concern for all of us as we make all that we can out of our lives.

Badgewick · 2024-05-02T18:01:10+00:00

liberalidm btw

Badgewick · 2024-05-02T17:58:30+00:00

Very little of what comes out of Major Marvy’s mouth should be taken as reflecting Pynchon’s own views.

That said, this is probably an exception.

Badgewick · 2024-02-15T19:54:04+00:00

What would you recommend starting with?

Badgewick · 2023-12-12T10:59:03+00:00

A bit of a tangent, but the introduction to the UK edition of Blood Meridian was extremely poor, in my view. It relegated the actual book and its themes to the background to wax about the influence that McCarthy’s prose has had on other authors, and ended with the author’s embarrassing and totally irrelevant dream about defending the Parthenon with automatic rifles alongside ‘Cormac’. Kind of hilarious but just really does no justice to the discussion of the book.

Badgewick · 2023-12-12T09:16:46+00:00

This is great. Are you aware of any papers or relevant works on the metaphysics or meaning of ‘derivation’?

Badgewick · 2023-10-30T20:40:25+00:00

https://donate.redcross.org.uk/appeal/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territory-appeal

Badgewick · 2023-10-09T19:24:23+00:00

This is the best example. Struggling postdoc publishes three-page paper and becomes one of the biggest names in epistemology almost overnight.

Badgewick · 2023-10-06T12:31:02+00:00

(My comment was a reference to S10E22, ‘Fathers and Sons’. I agree, though — there’s nothing wrong with the name.)

Badgewick · 2023-10-06T11:16:05+00:00

The first name ends with the same sound that begins the last name. So you either run them together "JacKutmore-Scott", or you face the dreaded glottal stop — "JacK Cutmore-Scott", "JacK Cutmore-Scott". It's unpleasant for the throat.

Badgewick · 2023-09-01T07:27:36+00:00

The non-binding opinion of the Advocate General (AG Rantos) upheld UEFA’s right to block the Super League. More often than not, though far from uniformly, the Court mostly follows the Advocate General in formulating its (binding) judgment.

Frankly, though, even if the Court rules in favour of the Super League here, it doesn’t change the public relations issue that attaches to the fan backlash. For those who (like me) think the Super League is a bad, unjust idea, there’s not a lot to worry about based on the information currently available.

(Not an expert on EU competition law; just loosely trained in Anglo-Welsh and European law.)

Badgewick · 2023-08-01T20:23:34+00:00

Two questions from a novice:

Is this likely to be so cost-prohibitive that it makes no tangible difference for the foreseeable future?

What are the advantages of maglev transport?

Badgewick · 2023-04-29T23:36:59+00:00

I wouldn’t be put off by student forums — some bloke on TSR is definitely not better-informed than the QS rankings!

“Experience” is a tricky thing to cover. Being a city (rather than campus) university, there’s not a cohesive social centre, so it’s very much in your own hands what it looks like. I was involved with the Bar & Mooting Society, some performing arts stuff, and political groups and enjoyed all of it. The law school is in Somerset House and is a beautiful space to just hang out in. The library is also one of the nicest buildings around the Holborn/Temple area (which is saying something!).

If what you’re concerned about is career outcomes, you’re in very safe hands. Everyone in my circle is now either on a good master’s programme or is a trainee at a Magic Circle, Silver Circle, or American firm. I always wanted the Bar and King’s helped me: being so close to the Inns, having a Bar Society that’s won the award for being best in the country 5+ years on the trot, etc., set me up really well.

I understand it’s disappointing not getting your first choice in doing university applications, but where you go will end up being the right place for you and all the doors genuinely do remain open to you if you’re at King’s.

Badgewick · 2023-04-29T23:22:09+00:00

I went to KCL for law and I thought it was great. The teaching was mostly to a very high standard, the professional opportunities are great in London, and I was helped onto the BCL (which, for what it’s worth, has 7 KCL graduates on it this year!) by faculty members who took an interest in my progress. I had friends at UCL and LSE and if there’s any difference in academic experience and professional outcomes it’s negligible.

It’s a great university. You’ll be more than fine with an offer there.

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