No. 9: Russian tyranny, salvation, and twitching

Aristotle/Descartes/Du Bois/Jesus/Nietzche/Thucydides/Tocqueville/Tolstoy

Here's some things people have been writing:

Tolstoy knew that reasoning about the future isn’t enough, we also need to imagine it. Its a potent lesson for the world in general and Russia in particular as many try to avoid sliding further into tyrrany time

Aristotle wrote in On Dreams that twitches were “remnants of dreams”. Descartes claimed in his Meditations that they suggest a clear separation of body and mind, an idea that has suction today. Now, a man at the University of Iowa offers a fresh perspective on dreams by scrutinizing the overlooked twitches in infants. newyorker

Jesus promised a greater salvation than what was on offer in the Hellenic world, a point missed by Nietzschean critiques. Plato, Orpheus, Homer, and Milton show up in the essay too. mereorthodoxy

Thucydides and Tocqueville’s eponymous ideas on conflict—“trap” and “paradox”, respectively—deal with how conflict from without and within gets more and more likely as power and well-being grow. nytimes

Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness (came up on 8/29), is embodied by the main character in American Fiction, a new film about a writer and professor who never made it big. vanityfair