Author Archives: Lee

Notes on Gregory Corso’s “Variations on a Generation”

Posted on March 30, 2022 by Lee

The Beat Generation was never supposed to become so big, says Gregory Corso, and that’s why it has such a stupid name. If they’d known they might have spent more time thinking about it. Perhaps not. It doesn’t make sense … Continue reading →

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The Imperfection of Henry Miller

Posted on March 7, 2022 by Lee

Henry Miller has made a vow not to alter a line of what he writes because perfection is no longer his object. He wants to get to know his own mind, with all its faults and weaknesses, and share with … Continue reading →

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A Life for Wandering Through

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Lee

Paris in the 1930s was a place where you could simply be an artist. It didn’t matter if you produced any significant work or not. For example, Henry Miller tells us that an acquaintance of his, called Sylvester, will never … Continue reading →

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The Editor and the Escritoire

Posted on January 28, 2022 by Lee

A less extraordinary mind would have been incapable of worrying so much about an old desk and would never have made the discovery. Victor Eremita, fictitious editor of Søren Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, tells the story of how he came across the … Continue reading →

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Hegel, Reason, and the Unhappy Consciousness

Posted on November 9, 2021 by Lee

As the sun sets in Canto II of Dante’s Inferno, the pilgrim, Dante himself, explains that he is not worthy to undertake the journey, through Hell and Purgatory, to Heaven. I lack the strength and skill, he says. The poet … Continue reading →

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The “Specific Shape” of Stories (Notes on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit §§678-679)

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Lee

For Hegel, the limitation of religion is that it relies on “picture-thinking.” A religion is based around the interpretation of a number of stories, images, and rituals designed to show the human spirit the truth about itself and its place … Continue reading →

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Conscience and the Perfection of Religion (Notes on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit §§677-678)

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Lee

Conscience holds the moral truth within itself. Instead of waiting for the day of judgement, conscience judges its own actions in the here and now. But conscience is fooling itself. The universal law that the moral self-consciousness holds within itself, … Continue reading →

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Notes on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit §§674-677: Heaven and the Underworld

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Lee

In the ancient Greek conception of “the underworld,” the shades that dwell there are individual souls still, as they were in the world above. They are still cut off from the unknown, unknowable, and universal “fate” that determines the outcomes … Continue reading →

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Notes on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit §§673-674

Posted on October 20, 2021 by Lee

“Religion” is a concept that Hegel develops throughout his Phenomenology of Spirit. Here I’m going to look at the most abstract concept of religion that Hegel provides, the most minimal notion of what a religion must be in order to … Continue reading →

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Notes on Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin

Posted on October 12, 2021 by Lee

The sun is shining and Berlin belongs to Hitler, is the almost final thought of Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin. Christopher catches his reflection in a shop window and is horrified to see that he is smiling: sunshine is still … Continue reading →

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