Lacan summary (over at Law & Liberty website)
Hi all, my latest effort to understand the significance of Lacan’s ideas is posted here: http://www.libertylawsite.org/2018/01/17/jacques-lacan-conservative-icon/ Hope you like.
Kolnai’s Churchill moment
The new Churchill film tracks the hesitancy inside the British establishment on whether to wage all out war with Hitler or to cede to a pact with him. The film is certainly correct that many wished to make a deal with Hitler. Churchill was one of the few who saw the threat clearly. V&R…
Pope Francis drives a classic car. Nice
V&R likes classic cars and I learnt today that Francis drives a modest Renault 4, nearly forty years old. The article looks at the cars of heads of states. It begins with the utterly beautiful Citroens favoured by the Presidents of France but ends with Francis’s modest number (https://petrolicious.com/articles/govern-tastefully-these-are-the-most-stylish-rides-for-heads-of-states).
Huizinga on trend. Of course!
I was born a few miles from Morecambe in Lancashire and learnt to do hill starts in a 1965 Morris Minor on the town’s various inclines. This post is not about the seaside town of Morecambe but my favourite book, Homo Ludens. V&R Chapter 6 explains Huizinga’s argument about the centrality of play in civilization. …
Bat drones: Scheler and Smith aren’t surprised
A recent post addressed the Barcadi bat and the challenge it offers to Smith’s ethics (http://www.ethicsoffashion.com/bacardi-bat-adam-smith-stumped/). The puzzle: How can a brand succeed when the logo is an animal that provokes fear (in most Westeners certainly, and likely many others, too)? Smith will be much happier learning that the military have an interest in…
Jacques Lacan on beauty. It ain’t pretty.
Standard fare on fashion pages: we can limit suffering (https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/video/the-gender-revolution-is-here-we-can-limit-suffering?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=4d7df3cb67-marc-jacobs-to-close-stores-beauty-s-ar-revolution&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2191372b3-4d7df3cb67-417297929). Lacan is less sure. My last few posts have examined what the famed psychoanalyst has to say about clothes and my post on high heels (http://www.ethicsoffashion.com/high-heels-done-jouissance-says-no/) shows that fashion is about intensifying pleasure and suffering at the same time. This is true about beauty,…
Kierkegaard: spot on
We live in an “aesthetically voluptuous age.” Yes. His 1843 Fear and Trembling is a tough nut but that is spot on.