ScrIBble

 

Stoned to Say the Least

By Saint Etienne.

Kant and the Good Action

I’m reading a biography of Beethoven by Jan Swafford, and in painting the sociological background of Beethoven’s world and times Swafford writes of the huge influence of the philosopher Immanuel Kant:

For Kant, the moral part came down to what he called the “categorical imperative”: every person must act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”. Every act should be done with the conviction that if everyone did likewise, life would be good. 

So the very first action to look at to see if it matches up to the idea of one’s behavior amounting to a universal law for all is Kant’s act of writing a book of philosophy. And so we see that apparently every living person should write books of philosophy - otherwise this act of writing a book of philosophy doesn’t constitute a maxim of universal law, and is a self-contradictory piece of thought at its very root. Otherwise, armed with this code of behaviour, you don’t go one step without gong wrong. So everyone should write books of philosophy, and then life would be good. As an aside, who will read all these books, I wonder, that we should be all spending much of our time creating?

Extending this, a bit of dialogue comes to mind:

“Hi Immanuel, how are things?”

“Oh good, good.”

“You know who’s i met earlier?”

“Who?”

“Joseph. Joseph Bosch.”

“What’s he up to?”

“He seems to be doing well. He’s a shoemaker now.”

“Everyone should be a shoemaker!”

“Really?!”

“Of course! Goodness and freedom are at stake here, you fool!”

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Pray

“You know what I pray?”

“I’ve no idea. That you win the lottery?”

“No, no, no, no, no!”

“What so?”

“I pray that when I leave the world the world doesn’t follow me.”

Bourgeois Intelligentsia Lecture Hall

Student: “And who are the ‘good citizens’ in this desired society?”

Lecturer: “The good citizens are those who let themselves be re-educated without being pushed, merely prompted.”

Student: “And the not-so-good ones?”

Lecturer: “Well, there’s different gradations. There’s not-so-good ones, as you put it, who can become good ones - those who become re-educated after being pushed, for instance. The really not good ones are those who refuse to be re-educated even after being pushed.”

Student: “But the younger generations - they don’t often have to be re-educated as simply educated, is that so?”

Lecturer: “Yes, that is so.”

Tudor

 

Spruce Intelligentsia

More music news, and rock star icon Spruce Pipedream has teamed up with the aforementioned Bourgeois Intelligentsia to chisel from the caverns of consciousness a new anthemic antidote for our times: With My Tight Fitting Jeans and Your Intellectual Mastery, Together We Can Seize the Means of Production.

Rolling Stone magazine have called the song, which they are hoping to hear soon, “incisive and inspiring”.

There is also a b side, the catchily titled: The New Global Citizenry Will Comprise of Children Who Have Been Purified Ideologically (The Rest Are at Best Compost).

Gimme, Gimme

 Bourgeois Intelligentsia have just released their newest song into the war zone that is the cultural landscape: Gimme, Gimme, Gimme a Dictatorship of the Proletariat!

There is also a b side: I Just Can’t Feel Comfortable Around the Working Classes.