Month: June 2026
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The word understand means position. In Old English, understandan is composed of under and standan. Yet under did not simply mean beneath. It could also mean among, between, in the presence of, or in proximity to something. To understand was therefore not to grasp an idea, but to stand within it. The image is spatial before it is conceptual. One stands among things, takes…
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If you haven’t painted grey, Cézanne said, you are not a painter. Perhaps the same could be said of thinking itself. Why should a single colour be a criterion? This statement is not a proposition but a provocation. Yet thought repeatedly returns to grey. Think of the colour of the shadows in Plato’s cave. Hegel writes:…
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In Greek, aphōrismenos means separated, set apart, marked off, a boundary. It is formed from apo, away from, and horizō, to divide, determine, draw a line. The same root as horizon, the line that separates earth from sky. An aphorism belongs to this too. Before it became a short saying, aphorismos meant a definition, a…
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“My reading has left impressions upon me as much as I have left impressions upon the books. A tattered copy of E. Starkie’s B. and a heavily marginalia-laden copy of B.’s Reflections have accompanied me for years, shaping me much as prolonged sitting shapes an armchair. The cushion bears the imprint of the body only briefly, but the chair…
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