The original texts of The Ethics.
Showing posts with label The Ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Ethics. Show all posts
May 23, 2013
The Ethics, Continued
the essence of things
that cracks open under the weight of a thousand questions
like daggers in the dark[3]-
bright blue day of confidence
turns out
to be a shadow of something else . . .
that something else is behind a screen,
and we’ve created the blue, or the screen,
or both
or everything
or[4] nothing
“There is a proof for that”
sez Spinoza
“and it goes like this[5]:
Jesus died for your sins;
but there are no sins,
no death,
and no Jesus.
There’s a red wheelbarrow,
and maybe Billie the Kid
but fuck that taxonomy, anyway
more or less depends on them
I awake to a cold bright day
and understand that I am alone[8]
and what is left
is to breathe deep the air
and begin again,
always again[9]
There is another way,
there is always another way.[10]
* * * * *
Spinoza clears his throat:[11]
“What the masses learned to accept without reason
reason cannot refute.
And pretty baubles and grand gestures
while logic becomes dressed as witchcraft
and is danced
from fear
to shame,
and returns,
hollowed out,
as sham and excuse.[14]
My beautiful mathematics require commitment most find beyond
the pale:
Fascists bully words to their own purpose,
while Capitalists simply purchase meaning.
The rest lack all vision.[15]
I sit here in the corpse-colored twilight,
tallow candle a-sputter,
and commit truth to the page
against all odds.”
(Spinoza doesn’t write poetry by the light of day.)
* * * * *
PART ONE[16]
“There are truths
and they are
self-evident.”
Spinoza emerges into
a cold dawn
candle extinguished,
sheaves of parchment falling from his table,
drifting snow,
flesh snow[17]
“or, as they should
be, at least.
a calculus of the
real,
a shape of what is.
Only fools question
the otherwise,
for here is here.”
There is a wave and
a shuffle
Spinoza turns his
face to the cold sun.
“Your investments
mean nothing to me.
Your lineage[20]
means nothing to me.
Your rights, your
culture,
that house of straw
that you defend with
your dying breath?
It means nothing to
me.
The essence of
mankind
does not involve
the necessary
existence of mankind;
Spinoza scrambles
off,
rocks spraying from
his feet,
then turns for a
last salvo:
“The order of things
is the order of thought.
The mind is nothing not constituted by idea.
Idea is the thing,
idea is the flow
mind the machine
buckling down and locking in to the flow.[25]
The idea creates the mind
the mind delimits the idea
and its all connected,
virtually the same . . .
bodies in respect to bodies
machines in respect to machines
bodies assembled
and bodies inscrutable
machines and flows inextricable
from what wellspring?
to what ocean?”
He turned abruptly
to the stone path
rising above him
* * * * *
A word can’t mean
two things
it can mean one
thing, then another
Or it can mean
everything,
[1] as to
him alone does existence appertain
[2] PROP.
XXV. God is the efficient cause not only
of the existence of things, but also of their essence.
[3]
everything
[4]
intellect in function finite infinite will
[5] PROP.
XXXII. Will cannot be called a free cause, but only a necessary cause.
[6] eternity
[7]
imperfection in God
[8]
concerning created things
[9] truth
[10] I
assume a starting point
[11] they
only look for knowledge of the final causes of events
[12] anxious
[13]
reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance
[14] such
persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their
only available means for approving and preserving their authority would vanish
also.
[15] is
things corrupt to the point of putridity, loathsome
[16] V. We feel and perceive no particular things,
save bodies and modes of thought
[17] power
of God the free will
[18]
knowledge of the cause
[19] effect
[20] things
are said to exist
[21] PROP.
XI. The first element, which constitutes
the actual being of the human mind, is the idea of some particular thing
actually existing.
[22] modes
of the attributes
[23] We thus
comprehend, not only that the human mind is united to the body, but also the
nature of the union between mind and body.
[24] nature
of our body
[25] large superfices
[26] the
human body is affected in a
[27]
external body presence
[28] one
possible explanation
[29] I am
very far from the truth
March 4, 2013
from The Ethics: the Original Edition
This is the original text from my latest poetry project, The Ethics. This poem is handwritten over a text of Spinoza's Ethics. This original is meant to be approached as an object, like a picture or a drawing, and owes a major debt to Tony Woollard's work. The poem itself is something separate, though inextricably linked to the process that created the object. The final poem may differ somewhat from what is written in the object, though I don't know for sure. It is only fair to expect it to take on a life of its own separate of the original text. As it currently stands, you can see that the poem actually follows the text from the object quite closely.
from The Ethics
The Ethics[1]
I can no longer be concerned with god.
If there is a point, it has long since faded
into the nothing of an[3] infinite
violation
of boundary logic. So
I, unlike Spinoza,
This ethics is a world of vapor,
a world of smoke, of arcane legerdemain
half hidden under a veil,
a deck of pornographic trading cards,
that thing you forgot, remembered, forgot
I scratch out an ethics in fine point against type,
a frail bulwark against onrushing words
that never melts, the snow falling
on the living and the dead, burying[20] ciphers
[empty] like[21] acorns
forgotten by squirrels,
words torn loose and herded by green capital
into holding pens on vast[22] ranches
deep in Texas ,
words that accumulate to words
like capital accumulates to capital,[23]
with no regard to anything
It is the mission of
this ethics to
- have no fear of emptiness at the core
of words.[32]
It is the mission of this ethics
to kick words into forbidden trajectories
to split them like atoms
to create blinding white light.
It is the mission of this ethics
to liberate words from meaning,
but not meanings.
It is the mission of this ethics
to liberate meaning from capital,
from ranches of privilege and tradition.[33]
I am inadequate for
the task,
but I am what is
left.[34]
[1] for Tony
Woollard
[2]
CONCERNING GOD – or not
[3] infinite
[4] effect
[5]
knowledge
[6] nothing
[7] ignorant
[8] true
causes
[9]
confusion - think
[10] only
truth
[11]
external to the intellect
[12] If
anyone now ask, by what sign shall he be able to distinguish different
substances, let him
[13] show
that
[14] the
universe
[15]
infinite
[16] would
be sought in vain
[17] no
cause or reason can be given
[18] which
destroys
[19]
existence
[20] absurd
[21] nature
of
[22] God
[23] nothing
which is in itself
[24] this is
exactly
[25] the
weapon
[26] aimed
at us
[27] reality
recoiled
[28] conclusion
that extended substance must be finite, they will in good sooth be acting like
a man who asserts that circles have the properties of squares, and, thereby
finding himself landed in absurdities, proceeds to deny that circles have any
center, from which all lines drawn to circumference are equal
[29]
substance could be so divided that its parts
[30] admit
of being destroyed
[31] as to
leave no vacuum?
[32] God is
free cause
[33]
Conceive, if possible
[34] idea of
God does not naturally follow
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