Berkeley

Clasping Bellflower

"To be is to be Perceived." George Berkeley. An Irish Bishop, who died in 1753, influenced Immanuel Kant, had a California University named after him, has been called an Episcopalian Saint, invested money in Caribbean sugar plantation that owned slaves. So there we go, a great mind, who, following the horrors of the second World War, rose again, so to speak. He became a source of inspiration for many. His point, and here he was far to Christian to put it like this, we were basically a digestive tract attached to a brain, everything we knew or thought we knew was in our mind. Outside our mind there was no such thing as a table, or a chair.  The isms given to his many thoughts are numerous, they include Immaterialism, Subjective Idealism. The number of E's in his name has always confused me, the realism of the making things up as we go along aspect of his thinking has always appealed to me. 

 

Personification

 

Moth Mulleins

Viper's-Bugloss and Moth Mullein are two unappreciated Flowering plants. Moth Mullein is a biennial. Viper's-Bugloss is a chalk loving biennial. It's the charming bloom that needs to be seen close up that does it to the development of a postmodernist theorists. Its's the moment experience decides "F the Grand Theory this is where I want to be." Round here of course we do get the warm weather visit from the Summer Tanager, whose call, when he's unattached, is that of a pure post structuralist, clearly no fan of Immanuel Kant. But I'm still prepared to argue with some force that Blue Birds, having been sanctified and made to feel foolish by the ditsy Blue Bird Box, are much happier when they're playing chess with the Sparrows.

Vegaphobia.

 

Hay for Beef

Round here, late April to end of June is hay for the beef cows season, not Meadowlarks or lettuce.  In the essence/experience discussion fear of vegetarians, or Vegaphobia, as well as Carniphobia, an intense, irrational form of Meat Avoidance, conjoined with rurality sums it all up really 

Heidegger and Sartre on Essence

 

Moth Mullein

Essence, for Heidegger emerged from Experience. His deliberate way of putting it was thus : "The Essence of Dasein lies in its existence." So put that in your pipe. Heidegger's book Being and Time was read by Sartre when Sartre was in prison waiting for the authorities to decide whether he was going to be a danger to France's relationship with the Third Reich and if so should he be sent to a labor camp. Inevitably the idea of being thrown into the swamp where a being over time creates its own meaning was tempting.