There was a space of blue sky and swallows today in the old crusader hospice in the Jewish quarter. I read Derrida on madness and the earth inexplicably coloured up - I found myself in the present once again (instead of that pergatory of waiting for the inevitable obstacle). He was critiquing Foucault, Descartes and Schelling and perhaps the entire philosophical chorus from Greece to Heidegger. Nietzsche was mentioned but not entirely in the negative. He may have been keeping score. The question was really about who in fact is mad, and how do we then define it in the medium of language. Ideal reading material for such a day with the threat of Icelandic Volcanoes getting off their rocky haunches and stomping all over European progressivism.
In the end it was not only about madness, but madness and dreaming - neither have a hold on reality but then reality becomes the realm of description based on the senses. Descartes claims only mathematics is sane by this definition. Derrida denies the process of defining anything.
I don't know what to claim in this entre into Jacque's brain. Though I suppose he would say the words are no longer his and quite rightly signify his absence. The words alone are infinite. Mad or sane, and what does language have to do with it? And what exactly is the 'Cogito'. The mad don't think? The mad think but can't apply the meaning? The mad can't utter the words that produce encounter? Jacque!!!
I will try the essay on Jabez and Jacque's exploration of the world within the book.
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