Friday, December 15th, 2000

Just Right
"This is just to let you know that I have taken over the world. So far, things are going well. In fact, the damn thing seems to almost run itself. Sure, I have to step in now and then to drink a beer when and where a beer needs to be drunk, and I sometimes have to take care of administration type stuff, but otherwise this is really easy. I hope you thrive under my rule."
Ken Metzler, Email

Big
"Intellectual history is the history of meaning and meaning is a dimension of all social action. We can therefore set aside the untenable distinction between ideas and events—and the artificial and sterile problems about the relationship and priority between them—that has so often introduced confusion and absurdity into discussion of intellectual history. The action of a rioter in picking up a stone can no more be understood apart from the symbolic field that gives it meaning than the action of a priest in picking up a sacramental vessel. The philosopher picking up a pen is not performing a less social action than the ploughman picking up a plough, nor does the latter act lack intellectual dimensions. Action implies meaning; meaning implies cultural intersubjectivity; intersubjectivity implies society. All social activity has an intellective dimension that gives it meaning, just as all intellectual activity has a social dimension that gives it point."

Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century

Bonus Quote...
"In this revery he saw himself sacrificed in marriage with Christine Dryfoos in a kind of admiring self-pity, and he was melted by the spectacle of the dignity with which he suffered all the life-long trials ensuing from his unselfishness."

William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes

Thursday, December 14th

Wednesday, December 13th