A discarded fragment from a larger paper. Structuralism arose from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. He distinguished between the langue, the system of a language, and the parole, the particular utterances of a language. There is a circular relationship between them, since no parole makes sense unless there is a pre-existing langue, but no langue takes shape except as speakers speak their parole. As a system, as langue, languages are systems of differences. Meaning resides not in words... Read more

A discarded fragment from a larger paper. Structuralism arose from the linguistic theories of Ferdinand de Saussure. He distinguished between the langue, the system of a language, and the parole, the particular utterances of a language. There is a circular relationship between them, since no parole makes sense unless there is a pre-existing langue, but no langue takes shape except as speakers speak their parole. As a system, as langue, languages are systems of differences. Meaning resides not in words... Read more

Margaret Jacobs summarizes what she describes as “one of the most powerful metaphors in the Discourse : Descartes repudiates the wisdom of the ages, comparing it to those ‘old cities’ build on the foundations of ancient and medieval ruins. With a vision one imagines as shaped by the ordered and relatively new cities of the Dutch Republic, with their geometric and planned regularity, Descartes would have us build cities designed as those cities might have appeared to him, by ‘a... Read more

Margaret Jacobs summarizes what she describes as “one of the most powerful metaphors in the Discourse : Descartes repudiates the wisdom of the ages, comparing it to those ‘old cities’ build on the foundations of ancient and medieval ruins. With a vision one imagines as shaped by the ordered and relatively new cities of the Dutch Republic, with their geometric and planned regularity, Descartes would have us build cities designed as those cities might have appeared to him, by ‘a... Read more

That’s quite a weighty title for a small thought. Melville’s Ahab says that the world is nothing but a pasteboard mask, and all the colors of the world, its variety of shapes and its beauties, are nothing but a harlot’s painting on a more essential blankness, a whiteness like the blank forehead of an albino sperm whale. And so does Descartes. As summarized by EJ Diksterhuis, Descartes assumes that the material world is essentially extension in space, and in the... Read more

Some paragraphs from an illuminating paper by Michael Allen Gillespie concerning Descartes’ links with Rosicrucians: “The Rosicrucians were essentially a Hermetic society that sought to understand the hidden order of nature in order to gain power over and through it. Agrippa, for example, wrote in 1655 that for ‘a magician is defined . . . as one to whom by the grace of God the spirits have given knowledge of the secrets of nature.’ Hermetic thinkers in this sense divided... Read more

Some paragraphs from an illuminating paper by Michael Allen Gillespie concerning Descartes’ links with Rosicrucians: “The Rosicrucians were essentially a Hermetic society that sought to understand the hidden order of nature in order to gain power over and through it. Agrippa, for example, wrote in 1655 that for ‘a magician is defined . . . as one to whom by the grace of God the spirits have given knowledge of the secrets of nature.’ Hermetic thinkers in this sense divided... Read more