"Heidegger doesn’t mean that it is sometimes edifying to put human needs and interests in perspective before affirming what is otherwise their obvious seriousness. He means that human needs and interests aren’t serious."

The Passing of the World > David Wemyss

This short essay on Heidegger is very good: it locates his historicism - roughly, the idea that you don’t understand a time other than your own - in a kind of moral reasoning. When debating what to do with the environment, for example, the Heideggerian insight might be that the debate is already lost. We do not see the forest or the trees as someone before industrialization might. We already see them explicitly as objects for our use or our preservation. A whole world of “what Nature means” is closed to us.

More on Heidegger: a thought on travel, on ancient vs. modern science

dat-art:

John Constable, Wivenhoe Park, 1816

Interesting fact: The location of this painting is now the grounds of the University of Essex Colchester campus!

"Another year gone -
hat in my hand,
sandals on my feet."

Basho, “Another year gone”

darklayde:

MOST PLEASINGLY at the Harry Potter exhibition I spotted (amongst less notable portraits) one of Mary Wollstonecraft with a witch’s hat on. That fox would definitely have been magic. My cousin later dragged me over to see Byron’s visage on the walls (and we used the term visage) and, yes, nerdiest day trip.