> A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.
#HannahArendt in #LifeOfTheMind quotes this passage by #WalterBenjamin on #PaulKlee and #AngelusNovus
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> In order to engage the will, one must be willing to pause. Because, while thinking moves from past experience, and imagination fixates on what might happen in the future, the past and the future are beyond the reach of the will. Willing is what happens before one acts. To be in a state of willing is to be in the Now.
https://aeon.co/essays/what-hannah-arendt-proposed-as-an-alternative-to-authenticity
#ArendtOnAuthenticity #ArendtOnWilling #LifeOfTheMind #WillingVsAuthenticity
The sage is confused, where all the potential is.(Paul Goodman on Taoism,Peasant Thought, over Zen as a better fit for the Beats.

> Paul’s doctrine of grace: “Law came in to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”
#HannahArendt in #LifeOfTheMind has me thinking of #LaoTse, #LaoTzu #LaoTzu38 #老子38
> Courtesy was made up after losing sincerity and honesty. Courtesy is the very cause that is confusing the world. If you teach benevolence, justice and courtesy with knowledge to people, they will become fools.
https://blog.mage8.com/roushi-38
#ChyonMage #ちょんまげ英語日誌 #英訳 #translation

> .. don’t we all know how relatively easy it has always been to lose at least the habit, if not the faculty, of thinking? Nothing more is needed than to live in constant distraction and never leave the company of others.. When Socrates goes home, he is not alone, he is by himself.. What #Socrates discovered was that we can have intercourse with ourselves, as well as with others
#Arendt #HannahArendt on #thinking #LifeOfTheMind #HabitOfThinking #distraction #alone vs #ByYourself

> In Taste egoism is overcome,”.. Judgment, and especially judgments of taste, always reflect upon others and...take their possible judgments into account. This is necessary because I am human and cannot live outside the company of men
#HannahArendt #Arendt #LifeOfTheMind #Taste #Judgment