Eating Crow

"Ακόμα και τα κοράκια στις στέγες cawing για το οποίο είναι αληθείς."

Courtesy of a translation engine the above Greek attributed to Callimachus by Sextus Empiricus (c. 160 – 210 AD) means:

"Even the crows on the roof-tops are cawing about which conditionals are true." Benson Mates.

Which is to say that I translated the English back into the Greek in which it was written. Now, this apparently has to do with logic (or Logic) and the ways in which statements "follow" premises--that is, how we assess the truth of conditionals.  I think.  In case it's not obvious by now, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Why, though, I came here to say this.  I found this different translation on a blog which I find far more interesting and stimulating.

“The very crows on the rooftops croak about what implications are sound.” 

In fact, from the snippets I've read while seeking translations to compare the Mates with the above by (?) J. N. Nielsen, the "conditionals" surrounding this statement by Callimachus have to do with the making of sounds and the making of meaning and the assertions that meaning making is human, mortal,  divine, animal, etc. and etc. and so on...

So, the poetry of this translation is more "sense-making" to me than the somewhat more "logical" terminology of the Mates translation.  (Though I suppose we can argue that crows are not frogs and so don't quite croak but, as Mates has it, caw.)

Crows croak and implicate sound in implicating the soundness of the croaks of crows.

Then there is the Kafka that I've used here a few times:

The crows maintain that a single crow could destroy the heavens. There is no doubt of that, but it proves nothing against the heavens, for heaven simply means: the impossibility of crows. [Kaiser/Wilkins]

I would have to say that this aphorism from Kafka's "Blue Octavo Notebooks" seems to me to be a re-working of the Callimachus via Sextus Empiricus and that this simply says the language cannot contain the meaning.

Crows, 1
Logic, 0

Lost Along the Way

"I was once asked if the messianic idea still had meaning for me, and if it were necessary to retain the idea of an ultimate stage of history where humanity would no longer be violent, where humanity would have broken definitely through the crust of being, and where everything would be clear. I answered that to be worthy of the messianic era one must admit that ethics has a meaning, even without the promises of the Messiah."

(Levinas, Emanual. Ethics & Infinity)

***

The Messiah will come only when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last day.

(Kafka, Parables & Paradoxes)

***

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe—"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

(Thoreau, Henry David. "Resistance to Civil Government")

***

I grant that I cannot really reconcile myself to the following expressions made use of even by clever men: “A certain people (engaged in a struggle for civil freedom) is not yet ripe for freedom”; “The bondmen of a landed proprietor are not yet ready for freedom”; and hence, likewise; “Mankind in general is not yet ripe for freedom of belief.” For according to such a presupposition, freedom will never arrive, since we cannot ripen to this freedom if we are not first of all placed therein (we must be free in order to be able to make purposive use of our powers in freedom). The first attempts will indeed be crude and usually will be attended by a more painful and more dangerous state than that in which we are still under the orders and also the care of others; yet we never ripen with respect to reason except through our own efforts (which we can make only when we are free). I raise no protest when those who hold power in their hands, being constrained by the circumstances of the times, postpone far, very far, into the future the sundering of these bonds. But to proceed on the principle that those who are once subjected to these bonds are essentially unfit for freedom and that one is justified in continually removing them farther from it is to usurp the prerogatives of Divinity itself, which created men for freedom. It is certainly more convenient to rule in state, household, and church if one is able to carry out such a principle. But is it also more just?  

(Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, 1793)

***

So the real question we have to ask becomes: what is it about the experience of living under a state, that is, in a society where rules are enforced by the threat of prisons and police, and all the forms of inequality and alienation that makes possible, that makes it seem obvious to us that people, under such conditions, would behave in a way that it turns out they don't actually behave?

The anarchist answer is simple. If you treat people like children, they will tend to act like children. The only successful method anyone has ever devised to encourage others to act like adults is to treat them as if they already are.

(Graeber, David. The Democracy Project)

Fedora Paranoia

Dennis Hartley reviews movies at Hullabaloo on Saturday Nights. This time he's opined on The Adjustment Bureau--the latest adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story (did that guy know how much movies would use him? Likely.)--starring Jason Bourne.

He opens by classifying this as "a post-film noir, contemporary film subgenre that I like to call Guys with Fedoras. A Guys with Fedoras film is usually sub-headed under (although not necessarily restricted to) the sci-fi genre. Think along the lines of Dark City , The Matrix , or A Beautiful Mind. When the Guys with Fedoras show up in those films, you just know that the protagonist’s world is about to be shaken up."

This struck me...fedoras are creepy to me. They are the symbol of the state. Rather, they are the symbol of the gangster state. Have you ever seen one of those movie-newsreels where a busy New York street is shown in something like 40s or 50s and all you see is hats? (Now, showing the same scene, all you'd see is yellow.)

Anonymity, secrecy, implicit danger and harm...the Cold War state; the nuclear bomb state; the surveillance state. I always assumed the authorities who picked up Joseph K wore fedoras.

I'm sure there are any number of books that parse the history and meaning of the HAT--from the practical uses to its role as religious ornament and on to fashion accessory (and how all these "mix" in some odd way to reveal some inherently "human" meaning).

Is there anything comparable for the female? The Fedora is engendered Authority and as such a symbol of a bullying patriarchy.

My favorite fedora movie is Miller's Crossing where the hat is a character in its own right...it just doesn't fit on some guys. It is seen as blessing and curse. It is indicator of salvation and damnation.