Friday, January 20, 2006

One

Schelling once wrote that beginning must not know itself - it is always hidden, misplaced, obscured and forgotten. That is why I won't allow myself more than a word in my first entry: but nevertheless a word on beginning.
To begin writing a blog on philosophy, and even more to begin writing it in a form of scattered fragments and comments, seems a rather pretentious task. After all, does a series of fragments have a beginning? Can we ever say that a comment begins, when it is by its very essence a continuation, a text, written post festum, a mere echoing remark?
Maybe this only outlined problem will be a sufficient excuse for a beginning. I say "excuse" because as a student of philosophy I came to learn that a beginning, a start or an origin are the philosophical themes. From Plato's Timaeus (and its famous beginning: "one, two, three") and Plotin's One (this time without two and three) to Rousseau's origine (of language, of society, of inequality) and Fichte's relentless attempts to stage a beginning of subjectivity, beginning is indeed a subject that philosopher cannot avoid and a theme that we can almost measure a strenght of thought with. This is why my "excuse" for a beginning is maybe a sign of certain humility - humility, that suits well with what I'll be writing here: fragments and coments on my study of philosophy.

Cheers

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Waiting for two and three :)

BTW, it's "to suit sth." not "to suit with sth.": a tipically Slovene mistake.