“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Friday, October 28, 2011

Leibniz Love Affair

I've been enjoying Heidegger these days yet I'm also having a thing on the side with Leibniz. I find he is a little different from Deleuze's Leibniz. The affair was clinched when two days ago I discovered in some of his letters an argument almost identical to something I worked on in Realist Magic. Leibniz had gotten there via a different route. It was very pleasing.

I've always had a soft spot for Leibniz. It's those fish ponds within fish ponds.

So excited was I by the discovery that I went out and got some Rameau—I have a feeling Leibniz would have heard it. Does anyone have a sense of what music he liked? I know he writes very specifically about music theory. 

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