three essays, two studies, and the magus of the north

'about 1 million people in the UK have left work since the start of the pandemic in march 2020, with retirement the most popular reason given by people aged between 50 and 70...'

it is certainly true of horsemouth who took the opportunity granted by the redundancy cheque and the activation of his work's pension (in particular the  proportion of his work's pension taken in advance) to jump ship. 

bye bye good ship capitalism (actually the filthiest of down-on-its-luck luggers), you will not miss me. 

- why do people work?

- because they need money to live (mostly). (there are other reasons. people like the status. the role. the sociability. they may even like the task itself). 

- if you had enough money to live on would you work?

- maybe...

horsemouth thinks of himself as retired but he worries that he does not have enough money to coast it out until pension day - when the state pension kicks in. 

the big problem (as horsemouth sees it) is the decline in the real value of pay (and indeed money in general) and the concomitant increase in profits and just pure wealth of the ruling class. now if there's a shortage of workers then the  workers should be able to challenge the bosses for better wages. horsemouth hopes that in struggle things move forward and contradictions are worked through. 

well ok let's see you says horsemouth.  

from the long hot summer to the winter of discontent.

good morning! good morning! 

horsemouth has the window open (and to be fair he's wearing a jumper). we enter another heatwave. though not quite as quality as the one before. it's early (well not as early as it was when horsemouth woke up and started writing this).

yesterday horsemouth mostly hid indoors but he also patrolled the neighbourhood a few times. he went up to teh powerscroft road book box but it was being visited the first two times he passed by (this is good news).  

on his mission (in nearby colenso road) he found a copy of three critics of the enlightenment: vico, hamman, herder by isaiah berlin (pimlico edition 2013 good condition). 

and yet three critics is a book of the type composed after the event - it may have been berlin's intention to write a book on this topic he never did and thus this is not it, it is a combination of various essays together as if they were a book, as if they all had the same object. 

the 'these essays originate...' of berlin's author's preface repurposed in this book  does not refer to all the essays included in the book, it is in fact the preface to his book  vico and herder: two studies in the history of ideas. to make the two studies into three essays requires more than the inclusion of a further essay on hamann the magus of the north (an author horsemouth has never even heard the name of before) which itself includes passages not used in the original.

and then there are also the essays not included in the book (his joseph de maistre and the origins of fascism for instance).

on wikipedia there are quibbles about the referencing too - that the secondary sources referenced by berlin in his original essays may have been swapped for the primary sources (that berlin may or may not have read).

of course any book can be objected to on these grounds (this is pretty much that is the lesson of derrida if not the lesson of althusser). 

but what of berlin's (reconstructed) intent, to quote wikipedia;

'three critics was one of berlin's many publications on the enlightenment and its enemies that did much to popularise the concept of a counter-enlightenment movement that he characterised as relativist, anti-rationalist, vitalist and organic  and which he associated most closely with german romanticism.'

now there's a lot of this counter-enlightenment thinking about (perhaps as a necessary corrective to the instrumentalist reason of the enlightenment). the various currents embrace various parts of the history authorised by the enlightenment (this is vico) but also by counter-enlightenment thinkers. these are dangerous times. anyway horsemouth has made it through the introductions and as far as p.22. 

today? more reading. a few quick patrols before it gets too hot. maybe a walk with TG at some stage. 

it is the anniversary of the recording of the first of marion brown's georgia trilogy afternoon of a georgia faun (curiously enough recorded in new york). horsemouth is letting it pootle away.