Weaving Wonderment
Roger Scruton. Xanthippic Dialogues. In one of these dialogues, Xanthippe is weaving a tapestry depicting the late Socrates and is engaged in conversation with Plato. She is also an adept weaver of words. Take for instance this summation of several threads:
Plato: You rebuke me, Xanthippe, and rightly.The faculty of imagination infuses the world with a type of pantheism which becomes the basis for the truth of our ethical being. I like how the course through all this is by the working of enchantment. Also how this Kantian bent can accommodate a hard core materialism.
Xanthippe: Not at all, Plato. I wish only to return you to the path on which you proposed to guide me. For now I see the end of our journey before us. This thing that I have called personality: is it not revealed in the universe itself? 'Everything is full of gods,' said Thales. Every place invites our worship, and every created thing looks upon us as a face may look, with an invitation to dialogue. Our world is enchanted, and that is why we take pride in our condition. Reason, freedom, personality — this thing that distinguishes us from the rest of creation — puts us in communion with the gods. There lies the truth of the story that I told to Socrates: in everything there is judgment, and personality abounds in the world. Certainly, therefore, our destiny is distinct from the destiny of animals, and far happier than theirs.
And so for day 1066
13.11.2009
