L09-421-15-10-28-15• Today:• Examination of the means: how does Kundera provide exemplary

material by which our reading can lift to the imagination simple and ordinary things? The first step is to recognize that ‘simple and ordinary’ is neither.

• The paradoxical delusion of ‘close reading’.• That is emphatically not what I am asking you to do.• Here’s the problem: to what is your reading close? • What happens almost inevitably, is that for any individual reader,

‘close reading’ only creates for that reader a situation of punitive judgment: When I look closely, this writer does not believe what I believe, and may contradict it: I therefore see that I should reject this.

• OR, paradoxically, the opposite• I find that the writer affirms what I already believe. Therefore I

should embrace this.

Attention and composition• When you attend precisely, the first thing that is at stake is noticing what you had not

noticed before.• But composition (think here of music) is making the connections, establishing the

relations by which something significant is unified: it becomes intelligible.• If we could just spontaneously do what these poems and novels do, why don’t we?• NEWSPAPERS &c. What is happening in the world we all share?• Today’s headlines: Donald Trump has been passed in the polls by Ben Carson!!!

The Republican 3rd debate will happen tonight on CNBC. Obama (now without his education secretary, Arne Duncan) has moved for a 2% decrease in standardized tests in elementary and secondary schools. (wow! 2%) More deaths from guns; woman in doctor’s office drops her purse and her handgun (properly licensed) shoots a patient in the next room in the back.

• All month (all year? Decade?): Ben Carson proclaims that if the Jews had been armed with handguns, the Holocaust would have been much milder. Benjamin Netanyahu declares that the grand mufti of Jerusalem was the source of Hitler’s decision to ‘burn’ the Jews. permafrost is thawing. Greenland glacier has created a new river. 3000+ species a year are going extinct. The ocean temperature has passed a critical point for the health of coral reefs. Syrian (and Afghan, Indian, Iranian, Eritrean, Libyan, &c) refugees are swamping European infrastructure. The Koch brothers (to mention only the most prominent) remain steadfast in denying climate change. Virtually no legislation can get through the US congress.

• God / Allah / Ahuramazda / Zoroaster / Aliens from outer space will take care of everything

Not close reading

It is exact reasoning: the fundamental point is judgment. First: it is predication, but can be (following Immanuel Kant

for convenience) divided into determinative and reflective: the former involves determining if an object presented falls under a concept you already have.

The latter, reflective judgment, involves examination of an example or series for which you do not have a concept. The reflective judgment involves reasoning to the point of understanding something according to an intrinsic purpose.

Imagination, in this respect, is virtually identical with reflective judgment. It is the opposite of the imaginary which does not exist, and which will never allow us to actually connect it to our own lives.

Imaginative ReasoningFoundational for all reasoning. Before you can form a concept,

reflective judgment is required: it is, therefore, the ground of judgment.

Three principles: (from Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment)1. Think for yourself. (if your thoughts came from your parents, your

church, your Uncle Willy, TV advertisements, your friends—they aren’t yours)

2. Think from the point of view of the other. (your thoughts have no special sanction just because they are yours. If you think so, you will either never discover where you are mistaken, or will remain confused, baffled, angry, that the rest of the world does not agree with you)

3. Think consistently. (It counts against the validity of what you think if you contradict yourself—which is not in any way identical with changing your mind.)

Conclusions by compulsion or assent

When we suppose we are being logical, we may not recognize that in some cases (having to do with concepts, not Ideas), conclusions are necessary because denying them undermines your very ability to think).

The ground of this is a Logic of Assent. This takes a non-trivial example (like a poem or a novel), in which you understand a set of relations and then decide autonomously (3 rules above) whether it is something to which you can and actively do assent: Is this all right with me? Or have I compromised my own humanity.

ULB

Dreams.

What do we have to know to grasp someone’s dreams so as to understand?

Behavior that is problematic to others.

How far do we need to go to understand not whether we think someone’s behavior is good or appropriate, but just to understand their reasons?

Body and Soul

• Tereza and her mother pp 41-42

Being special

• 45: no shame

Women at the pool

• P 57

Petrin Hill

• 146