Today's Public Intellectuals

A thread for celebrating the life of the mind in British society.

http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/dec2009/1/4/davina-mccall-pic-getty-627914974.jpg

One cannot abstractly contrast the spectacle to actual social activity: such a division is itself divided. The spectacle which inverts the real is in fact produced. Lived reality is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle while simultaneously absorbing the spectacular order, giving it positive cohesiveness. Objective reality is present on both sides. Every notion fixed this way has no other basis than its passage into the opposite: reality rises up within the spectacle, and the spectacle is real. This reciprocal alienation is the essence and the support of the existing society.

'lived reality' huh

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The whole of teleology is constructed by speaking of man of the last four millennia as of an eternal man towards whom all things in the world have had a natural relationship from the time he began. But everything has become: there are no eternal facts, just as there are no absolute truths. Consequently what is needed from now on is historical philosophizing, and with it the virtue of modesty.

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http://www.jedwardgenius.com/jedwardquotes.htm

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The new wave of insurrection tends to rally young people who have remained outside specialized politics, whether right or left, or who have passed briefly through these spheres because of excusable errors of judgement, or ignorance. All currents merge in the tide race of nihilism. The only important thing is what lies beyond this confusion. The revolution of daily life will be the work of those who, with varying degrees of facility, are able to recognize the seeds of total self-realization preserved, contradicted and dissimulated within ideologies of every kind and who cease consequently to be either mystified or mystifiers.

you forgot to add a quote sno

EDWARD ''Who broke the light? The light is broke.”

JOHN “I didn’t break it, you broke it.”

EDWARD ''You broke it, I didn’t even move the mattress in here. You did.”

JOHN “Yeah, but technically you broke it, ‘cos I was moving in your bed.”

http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2011/04/lauriePenny_415.jpg

What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.

intellectual!

Funny but I was thinking of Michael Igantieff the other day, remember when he was TV's favourite "intellectual"? Him and Tom Paulin. Then he went back to Canada.

Ignatieff even. Who do we have now?

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History is the alienation and production of reason in unreason, of the true man in the alienated man. Without knowing it, man realizes the essence of man in the alienated products of his labour (commodities, State, religion). The loss of man that produces history and man must presuppose a definite pre-existing essence. At the end of history, this man, having become inhuman objectivity, has merely to re-grasp as subject his own essence alienated in property, religion and the State to become total man, true man.

http://www.plink.co.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Borden_1.jpeg

Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon – so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as ‘nice’ in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It’s only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude.

http://www.inspiringyoungpeople.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/sd1.jpg

I want us to stop lying. I think that we tell a lot of lies to get through everyday and I want us to stop lying. And one of the lies that we tell is that this kind of woman hating is not as pernicious, as lethal, as sadistic, as vicious as other kinds of hatred that are directed against people because of a condition of birth. We have recognized some, only some, of the historical atrocities that have occurred. We say to ourselves, this isn't the same. I'm Andrea. I'm Jane. I'm...I'm...I'm...I'm me. I'm me. But everyone has said that. Every Jew pushed on to a train said, "But... I'm me. Don't you...why are you doing this? I'm me." And the Nazis didn't have a personal motive, that could be understood in those terms. And what I am saying to you is that we are in a situation of emergency. You know that. You know that.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Lifeandhealth/Pix/pictures/2007/01/15/jh.jpg

The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.

http://queerid.com/images/user_media2/242470bc-f68d-4ab9-b7da-54ae66bdb588Radio-types-George-Lamb-010.jpg

I am merely emphasizing that the fact of "health" is a cultural fact in the broadest sense of the word, a fact that is political, economic, and social as well, a fact that is tied to a certain state of individual and collective consciousness. Every era outlines a "normal" profile of health. Perhaps we should direct ourselves toward a system that defines, in the domain of the abnormal, the pathological, the sicknesses normally covered by society.

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A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favour of any inclination, nay even of the sum total of all inclinations. Even if it should happen that, owing to special disfavour of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature, this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the good will (not, to be sure, a mere wish, but the summoning of all means in our power), then, like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light, as a thing which has its whole value in itself.

stfu kantchiles imo

http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/feb2009/7/5/Susanna_Reid_PicBBC_959392686.jpg

It was Paul Dirac, my predecessor at Cambridge, who first realized that time evolution in quantum theory, could be formulated as a unitary transformation, generated by the Hamiltonian. This worked well in non relativistic quantum theory, in which the Hamiltonian was just the total energy. It also worked in special relativity, where the Hamiltonian, could be taken to be the time component of the four momentum. But there were problems in general relativity, where neither energy, nor linear momentum, are local quantities. Energy and momentum can only be defined globally, and only for suitable asymptotic behavior.

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Emergencies serve to introduce new forms of coercion in the social division of labour, or at least to preserve the current ones. Yes, they are also functional to gangster-like settlements between different sections of capital, as happened with Mani Pulite However, this is part of the aftermath rather than the cause: the primary need is the abovementioned coercion, social control and the prevention of likely "deviations" and antagonisms. The clans fight against each other precisely to administer this prevention.

http://www.sciencephoto.com/image/225842/350wm/H4080300-David_Hume,_British_philosopher_and_historian-SPL.jpg

”shit in one hand, wish in t'other, see which fills first"

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/birdnestsoup/jedbacon.jpg

Y'all have no idea how out of love with humanity I am right now.

Maybe to reconnect you should take a look at Virgin's 1000 greatest albums of the millennium? Just a thought.

cmon nv there's always dunphy

http://www.channel4.com/assets/programmes/images/the-ascent-of-money/the-ascent-of-money_625x352.jpg

Do I obey economic laws if I extract money by offering my body for sale,... — Then the political economist replies to me: You do not transgress my laws; but see what Cousin Ethics and Cousin Religion have to say about it. My political economic ethics and religion have nothing to reproach you with, but — But whom am I now to believe, political economy or ethics? — The ethics of political economy is acquisition, work, thrift, sobriety — but political economy promises to satisfy my needs. ... It stems from the very nature of estrangement that each sphere applies to me a different and opposite yardstick — ethics one and political economy another; for each is a specific estrangement of man and focuses attention on a particular field of estranged essential activity, and each stands in an estranged relation to the other.

PRO-TIP: This thread is best with images off so you can read the quote and then click through for the punchline.

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fremme neppa venette

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The power that every individual gave the society when he entered into it can never revert to the individuals again, as long as the society lasts, but will always remain in the community; because without this there can be no community—no commonwealth, which is contrary to the original agreement; so also when the society hath placed the legislative in any assembly of men, to continue in them and their successors, with direction and authority for providing such successors, the legislative can never revert to the people whilst that government lasts: because, having provided a legislative with power to continue forever, they have given up their political power to the legislative, and cannot resume it. But if they have set limits to the duration of their legislative, and made this supreme power in any person or assembly only temporary; or else when, by the miscarriages of those in authority, it is forfeited; upon the forfeiture of their rulers, or at the determination of the time set, it reverts to the society, and the people have a right to act as supreme, and continue the legislative in themselves or place it in a new form, or new hands, as they think good.

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The beauty of flames lies in their strange play, beyond all proportion and harmony. Their diaphanous flare symbolizes at once grace and tragedy, innocence and despair, sadness and voluptuousness. The burning transcendence has something of the lightness of great purifications. I wish the fiery transcendence would carry me up and throw me into a sea of flames, where, consumed by their delicate and insidious tongues, I would die an ecstatic death. The beauty of flames creates the illusion of a pure, sublime death similar to the light of dawn. Immaterial, death in flames is like a burning of light, graceful wings. Do only butterflies die in flames? What about those devoured by the flames within them?

irl lol

One of the world's foremost philosophers
A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

We now live in a country where people are actually prepared to believe in the idea of Joey Barton as Nietzche-quoting footballing philosopher so credulity is open to stretching here.

I do not understand anything that has happened itt

that'll do, but you need to put quotation marks around it and post a pic of some old rich dude

http://www.daveandthomas.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/jeremy-clarkson.jpg

"This night you
are mistaken

i'm a farmer
in the city"

cockfarmer in the city

He looks like a character in the original Deus Ex.

...and fuck he even has the same initials as the protagonist!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4vC3y2azwSI/TguZchOQ4AI/AAAAAAAAA8Q/bD2DJ-CSv7I/s1600/hari+sweat.jpeg

So we have to find some motive for acts of justice and honesty distinct from our concern for honesty; and there is a great difficulty about this. Suppose we say this: The legitimate motive for all honest actions is a concernfor our private self-interest or reputation, it would follow that when that concern ceases, there is no longer any place for honesty. That would be a dismal outcome...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/euro2008/img/author/large/phil_mcnulty.jpg

It is not true that developments in physics go ignored by professional humanists or by the common man. The basic facts get to us all and frame the way we think and even, in this instance of the fictional Martin Fairweather, feel. The picture physics paints of the material universe is arresting enough to make the newspapers but far from flattering to our individual identities. Astronomy is what we have now instead of theology. The terrors are less, but the comforts are nil.

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Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. So we cannot say in logic, "The world has this in it, and this, but not that." For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.

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There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature, to bestow on external objects the same emotions, which it observes in itself; and to find every where those ideas, which are most present to it.

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Public opinion therefore deserves to be as much respected as despised — despised for its concrete expression and for the concrete consciousness it expresses, respected for its essential basis, a basis which only glimmers more or less dimly in that concrete expression. But in itself it has no criterion of discrimination, nor has it the ability to extract the substantive element it contains and raise it to precise knowledge. Thus to be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science. Great achievement is assured, however, of subsequent recognition and grateful acceptance by public opinion, which in due course will make it one of its own prejudices.

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He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.

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I came across a burnt-out motorcycle in the street this morning, no wheels, no seat, just a charred metal skeleton. It had obviously been stolen and dumped by a gang of teenage wild boys. It was the most beautiful thing I've seen since last night's evening sky. You don't find 'art' in galleries, it's all around you. The city is alive and on fire. Long may it burn.

I would have sex with all this British intellectuals

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http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/files/imagecache/feature/files/features/print/20090422_richard_dawkins.jpg

Telling people what to do comes naturally. When I was a youngster at Chelsea, in the first training session after Gianluca Vialli had been made manager, I kicked him from behind.

"The other lads said 'you can't do that' but he came over and shook my hand and said 'that's what I want to see' and that no matter who a player is, they are to be kicked on a match day.

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Ricky's never been interested in the business side of things, ... All Richard is interested in is boxing. Even when I could get him to come along to meetings he'd sit there and text his mates the whole time and wouldn't pay a bit of attention. After some meetings I've turned to him and said 'Do you want to know what that means?' and he's just said 'No, you deal with that, dad, I just want to fight'.

NV you are turning my dull day into a great one

A less charitable soul would suggest this was done better when Dom did it, but thankfully I'm not.

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My intention, therefore, is not to weigh that prejudicial question, that dry, necessary, and somewhat facile question of right, against the power and efficacy of the positive researches which we may witness today. The genesis and system of scripts bad never led to such profound, extended, and assured explorations. It is not really a matter of weighing the question against the importance of the discovery; since the questions are imponderable, they cannot be weighed. If the issue is not quite that, it is perhaps because its repression has real consequences in the very content of the researches that, in the present case and in a privileged way, are always arranged around problems of definition and beginning.

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As to the West: the former conflicts within society are modified and arbitrated under the double (and interrelated) impact of technical progress and international communism. Class struggles are attenuated and "imperialist contradictions" suspended before the threat from without. Mobilized against this threat, capitalist society shows an internal union and cohesion unknown at previous stages of industrial civilization. It is a cohesion on very material grounds; mobilization against the enemy works as a mighty stimulus of production and employment, thus sustaining the high standard of living.

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Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure.

http://www.brandish.tv/james%20corden%20pants%20david%20beckham%20heat%20armani.jpg

“If rulers refuse to consider poems as crimes, then someone must commit crimes that serve the function of poetry, or texts that possess the resonance of terrorism. ”

http://nickbaines.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/rowan-williams.jpg

As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in the world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.

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Sometime in the modish noughties, between the denouement of Britpop and the advent of skinny jeans, the concept of ironic clothing was born.

Take your pic(k) from this little lot

http://www.theprisma.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Rebekah-Brooks-Quits-1.jpg

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44641000/jpg/_44641491_robert_winston.jpg

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.

looool

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If you are making love it is imperative to bring all bodies to orgasm
simultaneously
Do not waste time blocking your ears.
Do not waste time seeking a soundproof shelter.
Try to get as far away from the sonic source as possible,
but do not panic.....

I wish I got more than a handful of these...

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/08_02/cdwMS1808_468x661.jpg

"If you want to know what your vagina tastes like, why not just put a clean finger up in there and then take it out and lick it? If we want someone else to taste, then why not us, too? It's like serving soup that you haven't tasted yet. You want to know, so do it. It's tasty, right?"

ok I just sb'd myself

apologies, carry on

mad lols

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"My biggest dream was to transform society. Long live the emperor!"

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/11/09/article-1226236-0721DAAC000005DC-445_468x626.jpg

No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun – for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax – This won’t hurt.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/12/23/1293125900601/Josie-Long-008.jpg

"My grandfather died at Auschwitz, very sad. He fell out of the machine gun tower."

source: http://www.jokes4us.com/peoplejokes/comedianjokes/bernardmanningjokes.html

oops

sleater-kinney tshirt is enough to make me fall in love with a shit comedian, who knew.

Get a grip there, son

http://pictures.directnews.co.uk/liveimages/michael+gove+must+consider+for+profit+free+schools+strategy_921_800464006_0_0_7045094_300.jpg

Man says to his wife: ‘Pack your bags, I’ve won the pools.’ She says: ‘What should I pack? Something light, something warm? Where are we going?’ He says: ‘We’re going nowhere. Just pack your bags and fuck off.’

"gottle of geer" is more appropriate

LOL

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/jonathanross-gal-qawards.jpg

Du kleiner Fischermann, wir wissen nicht, ob Du Verdienste hattest.
Wo kämen wir hin, wenn Jedermann Verdienste hätte!
Aber Du hattest die Mühen wie wir,
Wie wir irgendwo die Gräber Deiner Eltern,
Irgendwo am Strande eine Frau, die auf Dich wartete,
Und zu Hause die Kinder, die Dir entgegen liefen.
Trotz Deiner Mühen fandest Du es gut, da zu sein.
Genau wie wir.
Und Recht hattest Du, Aikichi Kuboyama, Du kleiner Fischermann, Aikichi Kuboyama,
Wenn auch Dein fremdländischer Name kein Verdienst anzeigt -
Wir wollen ihn auswendig lernen für unsere kurze Frist, Aikichi Kuboyama
Als Wort für unsere Schande, Aikichi Kuboyama
Als unseren Warnungsruf, Aikichi Kuboyama
Aber auch als Aikichi Kuboyama, als Namen unserer Hoffnung;
Denn ob Du vorangingst mit Deinem Sterben oder nur fortgingst an unserer Statt: Nur von uns hängt es ab, auch heute noch,
Nur von uns, Deinen Brüdern, Aikichi Kuboyama.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/07/26/article-1038820-05FA89E60000044D-780_224x423.jpg

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Music/Pix/pictures/2007/05/23/lemmy460.jpg

If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.

i'm pretty sure that's a vic reeves quote?