Because pigs. That’s Will, the runt of the litter born as we arrived. He died the next day, alas. In the middle is cubed bacon for the beans. On the right, still life with pork roasts and banana.
A nod to Kierkegaard and Walker Percy: existentialist tomfoolery, political satire, literary homage, word mongering, a year-round summer reading club, Dylanesque music bits, apocalyptic marianism, poetry, fiction, meta-porn, a prisoner work-release program.
Søren Kierkegaard
Walker Percy
Bob Dylan
Literature & History
Letters from an American
Beau of the Fifth Column
This American Life
The Writer’s Almanac
San Diego Reader
The Stranger
The Inlander
Adoremus
Charlotte was Both
The Onion
From Empty Hands
Ellen Finnigan
America
Commonweal
First Things
National Review
The New Republic
All Manner of Thing
Gerasene Writers Conference
Scrutinies
DarwinCatholic
Catholic and Enjoying It
Bad Catholic
Universalis
Is My Phylactery Showing?
Quotidian Quintilian
En pocas palabras
William Wilson, Guitarist Extraordinaire
Signposts in a Strange Land
Ben Hatke
Daniel Mitsui
Dappled Things
The Fine Delight
Gene Luen Yang
Wiseblood Books
© Copyright 2020 Korrektiv Press. · All Rights Reserved · Admin
If I could only become a vegetarian, I’d be a saint.
Today, however, I ate no meat.
Oh, bacon.
I’ll have to sleepwalk and use the air freshener.
But I’ve never thought what the word means (I think I did look it up once) and had mispronounced it in my head. I’ll get a folder for the poems. Thanks.
Will was delicious. Are all your pigs named after philosophical ideas?
Freedom made a break for it.
And whoever slaughters the pigs gets a little twitchy around “Justice.”
Matter always follows Form around. But Prime Matter is so out-of-shape I can’t even describe it.
What’s prime matter?
Pretty sure it is the first cause, but these piglets were clearly descendents.
Nobody’s going to take this one for me? I’m really going to have to be *that Dominican*?
Very well. But I happily invite korrektion from anyone who knows better.
IC is apparently thinking of the Prime Mover, which (or rather, Who) is nearly the opposite of prime matter. The Prime Mover is pure actuality, with no ‘un-actualized’ potential; prime matter is pure potential, with no actuality.
Greek philosophers recognized a problem of change and identity: Things change, yet remain in some sense the same, even as they change. A solid chunk of white ice melts into a clear, reflective pool of water, and that pool of water then evaporates into an invisible cloud of gas — yet, despite all the changes in properties and place, there’s a certain underlying something that gives continuity to the ice chunk, the water pool, and the vapor cloud. That underlying something has many potentials: It is potentially solid, liquid, and gas; potentially chunk-shaped, pool-shaped, and cloud-shaped; potentially white, clear/shiny, and invisible; etc. Under various conditions — that is, when acted upon by outside forces — certain of these potentials are actualized, while others remain ‘un-actualized’ potential: The pool, for example, is actually liquid, and potentially solid and gas.
In the example of the chunk, the pool, and the cloud, we can see that a quantity of water remains continuous, ‘through’ or ‘beneath’ the changes of its properties. But the water itself consists of molecules which have the potential to become things other than water molecules — i.e., the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in a water molecule can be separated from each other. And the hydrogen and oxygen atoms have the potential to change, since they consist of subatomic particles that can be combined and configured in different ways. And so on.
But however many or few ‘levels’ of sub-atomic material reality there are, we know that any material thing does have an underlying ‘substrate’ — it has a something that may take many potential forms, but only actually takes one form at any given time.
Or, as Aristotle taught: Every material thing is a composite of matter (the potential-laden something) and form (which actualizes some, but not all, of the matter’s potentialities at any given time).
Matter never exists without form, and never could: For something to exist means for it to be actual, actualized, ‘in act’. Yet truly formless matter would have to be pure potential: Without form, it would have nothing to give it any actuality; without any actuality, it would not exist.
But even though matter may never exist apart from some form, we can still talk about matter apart from form — about the potential apart from any given actuality. And this theoretical something is what philosophers call ‘prime matter’.
Anyway, I think that’s basically right, though perhaps it’s not.
Sorry, very tired.
it was worth the wait….
BTW, my excuse is I take every August off from deep thought. I highly recommend it as a relaxing exercise. Now I’m going back to revising my book on ToB.
You know, if you wanted to make things hoppin and hot around here, y’all would recruit a Jesuit for the comboxes to fence with Angelico….
The Korrektiv House Jesuit is thoroughly engaged with explaining how my alcoholic intake is not, contrary to all appearances, a gross offense against moderation, and how, contrary to manifest truth, what I call “cheerful blasphemy” is not in any way offensive to true piety. He is a master distinguisher, but even his prodigious powers are taxed by the effort, and I fear he has no time for these academic quibblings.
p.s. Wood is a popular analogue – through the agency of the carpenter, it becomes many things.
Wood is a good analogue, but, combined with Aristotelianism, it can only make me think of this.
Now we’re cookin’. Pass the popcorn.
I done trod on scorpions, I handled poison snakes,
Made Deep Blue reboot itself, gave Ali the shakes,
Last week, I turned a trope theorist, negated a positivist, and set a lost lamb on the Way.
I reason so mean, I make Jesuits pray.
(And thanks, IC!)
That was excellent, thanks. I’ve even broken out my Introduction to Aristotle.
You’ll be happy to know that we went to a Dominican church in Seattle last week and loved it.
Thanks again Angelico.
Thank you for passing that along, sir.