Reviewing Joseph Roach’s It in the TLS (September 7), Michael Caines cleverly sums Roach’s history with: “Now it is celebrities who have two bodies: the body natural and the body cinematic.” At the same time, he faults Roach for giving “relatively little attention to the techniques by which performers and their familiars perfect their act – the photographic conditions, for example, under which Greta Garbo’s face, as discussed by Roland Barthes, became the face of ‘the Divine’ – or the... Read more

Rosenstock-Huessy finds himself “hurt, swayed, shaken, elated, disillusioned, shocked, comforted,” and incapable of refraining from speech: “To write a book is no luxury. It is a means of survival.” Behind Rosenstock-Huessy stands Hamann, and behind Hamann is Elihu of the book of Job, whose words Hamann uses as the epigram for his Aesthetica in Nuce : “Behold my heart is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins, it is ready to burst. I must speak, that I may... Read more

It’s not clear whether Vico (1668-1744) had actually read Descartes (1596-1650) directly, or how much he had read. But it is clear enough that he had read and understood the Cartesianism of his time. His response is perhaps most clearly seen in his treatment of ethics. He opposed the application of the paradigm of mathematics and physics to all courses of study. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “In De nostri temporis studiorum ratione, for example, Vico takes up... Read more

Caputo argues that for Kant God fulfills a purely “regulative” function, providing the basis for an aesthetic “as if” regarding the divine regulation of the world. God also has a moral function, giving the rational demands of duty a divine, theological umph. Kant’s philosophy and the Enlightenment in general “put God in such a vulnerable position that it was only a matter of time until someone would come along and lop God off, on the grounds that natural science and... Read more