Re: [emacs-humanities] Paper Zettelkasten safety [was: Why Emacs-humanities?]

[Joe Corneli]

Joe Corneli writes:

> Amassing a large collection of notes was probably not the main desired
> outcome in Pirsig’s case; rather, it was using the notes to write a
> novel.

Presently reading “Spinoza: Practical Philosophy” by Gilles Deleuze.
The preponderance of this book is made up of an index of terms or
glossary for concepts used by Baruch (Benedictus de) Spinoza.  It occurs
to me that this index is at least something like a paper-based
Zettelkasten.  As such it seems interesting to ask what the use of
*this* index is.

Clearly, a clue is in the title.  The index is meant to be practical.

Some remarks from downstream snippets on Google Scholar:

  « "Choreographing Relations" undertakes the experiment of a conceptual
  site development of contemporary choreography by means of practical
  philosophy. »

  « Deleuze's usage of the term “immanence” conflates the immanence of
  causation (taken from Spinoza) and that of thought with respect to its
  object (deriving from Kant). For Deleuze, to be immanent is to be
  expressed by thought—which means not to condition unilaterally ... »

And one longer snippet:

  « His method is empirical by virtue of the object of inquiry regarded as
  belonging to real albeit sub-representative experience, yet
  transcendental because the very foundations for the empirical principles
  are left outside the common faculties of perception. The Deleuzian
  object of experience is considered to be given only in its tendency to
  exist—or, rather, to subsist—in a virtual, as yet non-representative
  form. These subsisting “objects” are not physically extended, as
  Descartes would have them, but are just signs or intensive
  multiplicities. »

As such it seems as though an index or glossary is a ‘better’ way to
represent the thing (representation itself being very much
not-the-point) than an essay would be.

In the book Deleuze remarks (pp. 28-29, City Lights edn.),

  « The ethics is a book written twice simultaneously: once in the
  continuous stream of definitions, propositions, demonstrations, and
  corollaries, which develop the great speculative themes with all the
  rigors of the mind; another time in the broken chain of scholia, a
  discontinuous volcanic line, a second version underneath the first,
  expressing all the angers of the heart and setting forth the practical
  theses of denunciation and liberation. »

Continued in a footnote:

  « This was a common procedure that consisted in concealing the boldest
  or least orthodox arguments in appendices or notes (Bayle’s dictionary
  is a later example).  Spinoza renewed the procedure with his systematic
  method of scholia, which refer to each other and are themselves
  connected to the prefaces and appendices, thus forming a second
  subterranean Ethics. »

So, here we have a footnote on a commentary on scholia!  This, I’d say,
is part of what’s meant by ‘practical philosophy’, in a formal sense.

It’s a matter of

- choreography
- expression
- virtuality
- liberation

These are all themes that we can continue to take up inside Emacs, e.g.,
to toot my own horn a bit, my package Arxana began as a "scholium-based
document model for commons-based peer production"
(http://metameso.org/~joe/papers/sbdm.pdf).

A recently created package called org-marginalia 
https://github.com/nobiot/org-marginalia

and an acknowledged "GNU" package Hyperbole
https://www.gnu.org/software/hyperbole/

both seem to do somewhat-similar things (although in a simplified manner
relative to the diverse aims of Arxana!).

I think we might want to ask how we can continue the efforts of Deleuze
& Spinoza, particularly with regard to ‘liberation’.

In connection with the subject line I think we need to learn how to
write dangerously!  I learned from the biographical & bibliographical
parts of the Practical Philosophy book that Spinoza didn’t publish much
during his lifetime, because the things he was thinking about about flew
in the face of state powers and reactionary-revolutionary forces:

  « As early as 1669, Koerbagh, the author of a philosophical dictionary
  denounced for its Spinozist leanings, had been arrested and had died
  in prison. »

I’m reminded of a more famous quote (can you guess it?), which, as
explained here, is often taken out of context:

  « I do think it is worth remembering what he was actually trying to
  say because the actual context is much more sensitive to the problems
  of real governance than the flip quotation's use is, often. And
  Franklin was dealing with a genuine security emergency. There were
  raids on these frontier towns. And he regarded the ability of a
  community to defend itself as the essential liberty that it would be
  contemptible to trade. So I don't really have a problem with people
  misusing the quotation, but I also think it's worth remembering what
  it was really about. »

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century

-- 
Dr Joseph A. Corneli (https://github.com/holtzermann17)

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