Donovan Miyasaki
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dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Donovan Miyasaki
@dmiyasaki.bsky.social
5K followers 2.4K following 780 posts
Philosophy professor. ‘Nietzsche's Immoralism’ & ‘Politics After Morality: Toward a Nietzschean Left.' Continental, political, ethics, Marxism, existentialism. www.donovanmiyasaki.com
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dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Lenin's philosophical writing is so embarrassing. After claiming there's no differences between Berkeley, Fichte, and Mach (who tries to move materialism out of the 18th century), he goes out of his way to argue Hegel isn't *really* an idealist. The word "absolute" didn't give you a clue, buddy?
November 3, 2025 at 3:43 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
More Nietzschean moments in Schlick's moral theory.
we must add a supplement in order to distinguish genuine kindness from the super- ficial variety which is nothing but lack of strength, and which is injurious to the capacity for happiness. What we have here is a special case of a general kind of disposition which exists whenever a man easily gives in to impulses of the moment, without, so to speak, first consulting the other impulses. In such a case the single dispositions are but loosely joined to- gether, as it were; they can be excited separately, with- out the others thereby coming into play. The unity which constitutes a strong character is lacking. In a strong character it is as if the inclinations were all directed from one fixed center. What appears here in a single example holds univer- sally. The content of the moral precepts that hold in a community, and that are taken over completely into the moral consciousness of its members, depends en- tirely upon its living conditions, upon its size and strength, its relation to the surrounding world, its civilization, customs, and religious ideas. I forego the introduction of further evidence, and refer to Wester- marck's Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, and to Spencer's Data of Ethics, which contain rich mate- rial. We see in the dependence of moral valuations upon the states of human society a sure indication that the content of morality is actually determined by so- ciety. These functions constitute something elevated and great in men in the double sense that their power in the psychic life is enormous, and that they are the source of very intense joys. Moments in which one becomes aware of their activity are moments of exalted feeling. Apart from certain exceptions, every vehement psychic process, every deployment of power, and lively activity is pleasant. we should understand better why a human life can attain its highest value only by pass- ing through the extremes. A life such as the modest poet Morike prayed for: Wollest mit Freuden Und wollest mit Leiden Mich nicht uberschuttenl dock in der Mitten Liegt holdes Bescheiden. . . .* could not be truly great, not because it lacked the deep- est suffering, but because of the absence of the greatest joys, the path t
October 31, 2025 at 3:38 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
I’d completely forgotten that Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna) made an album cover in the style of the old Vintage edition of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science.
October 28, 2025 at 11:17 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Looks like Schlick may even get Nietzsche right in a number of ways!
Schlick thinks of Wissenschaft as, ideally, a kind of game, in so far as it is an activity primarily undertaken for its own sake, and which can be pleasurable without being guided by practical interests (see also Mormann 2010, 269–272). This is how Schlick interprets Nietzsche’s notion of “joyful wisdom”, the joy involved in the game of pursuing truth. Secondly, perhaps the most important aspect of Schlick’s lectures is the way in which it presents Nietzsche’s relation to positivism. Schlick divides Nietzsche’s work into three phases: (i) an early metaphysical phase under the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner, (ii) an anti-metaphysical positivist phase, and (iii) a phase in which he is concerned with the development of an approach to values within positivist strictures. Schlick is careful to argue that the third phase in Nietzsche’s development is still compatible with positivism, and that the late Nietzsche is not a metaphysician. Schlick summarily rejects the claim that Nietzsche’s thought had heavily influenced the development of German culture and politics before 1914. It suffices for Schlick (2013a, 79) to note that few political or military leaders in Germany had even heard of Nietzsche before the British press informed them of his influence on them. Even if some German policy-makers did hear of Nietzsche, they were by no means enthusiastic about his work.27 Furthermore, Schlick connects this first claim to the second one, insofar as he doubts that Nietzsche’s work has been widely understood in Germany.
October 13, 2025 at 7:47 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Amusing to learn how much Moritz Schlick's "Problem of Ethics" cribs from Nietzsche's moral psychology. (A quick search reveals that Schlick was even a confessed admirer!)
3. The Concept of Will ...a primitive psychology under the influence of the idea of substance treats the matter as if the choice or decision in the conflict of motives were made by a special power, the "will," which, watching the struggle from without, intervenes and bestows the prize... Experience fails to disclose any such substratum which stands behind the appearances... No, there is present no "act of will" that, added to the oscillation of the ends-in-view, and the final triumph of one of them, decides which shall triumph; but the whole process that we have described is itself the act of will.
October 13, 2025 at 6:53 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Wow, had no idea this David Stone Martin cover art was based on a real photo!
August 28, 2025 at 12:53 AM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
45% locked? Only 33% of the population voted for him and his approval has plummetted, especially in the last week. Here's a June 10 poll:
Trump poll: 22% very favorable, 44% very unfavorable.
June 11, 2025 at 12:34 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Not only real, but it’s just down the road from this:
May 11, 2025 at 1:53 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
The incoherence of moral perfectionism. Perfection measures progress toward an external aim. It can't be the aim or justify the aim it measures. ("Perfect this capacity!" If intrinsically valuable, why must I increase it? "Perfection is intrinsically good!" Why perfect this, not that, capacity?)
Peanuts comic: friend asks "What do you want to be when you grow up, Charlie Brown?" He answer, "Perfect."
April 24, 2025 at 3:18 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Here's another visualization of Gilens and Page. (Just vote harder next time!)
April 18, 2025 at 7:36 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
And that election chart should be paired with Gilens and Page's 2014 policy analysis showing the US is an oligarchy (www.cambridge.org/core/journal...)
April 18, 2025 at 7:36 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Okay Klimt, I’ll see your Philosophy and raise you De Chirico’s The Philosopher’s Conquest:
De Chirico 1914 painter with a canon, cannonballs, and two artichokes in the foreground, late afternoon shadows and a clock in the middle ground, and giant industrial towers and a passing train in the distance.
April 9, 2025 at 11:37 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
That’s how you get this 1911 map of US Socialist party membership by percentage of state population:
Map showing 1911 per capita membership in the Socialist Party is highest in the west and northwest US
April 6, 2025 at 3:06 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
The University of Toronto’s library is not the only masterpiece of turkey-inspired architectural modernism. Presenting Wisconsin’s The Gobbler: www.lileks.com/institute/mo...
Photo of Wisconsin motel and supper club, The Gobbler, a midcentury modern building shaped vaguely like a turkey.
March 28, 2025 at 8:07 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Ohio Senate Bill 1 would both prohibit and require (conservative) DEI: "Demonstrate intellectual diversity for course approval, approval of general education courses, course evaluations, common reading programs, annual reviews, strategic goals for each department, and student learning outcomes."
Page image from the Ohio Legislative Service Commissions summary of Senate Bill 1, which bans faculty strikes, prohibits DEI, and enforces "intellectual diversity." Available at https://www.legislature.ohio.gov/download?key=24444
February 12, 2025 at 7:39 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Simone de Beauvoir's Force of Circumstance is uncharacteristically, deliciously pessimistic, almost approaching Adornoian levels of (admittedly misguided!) despair. (Notably this brush with defeatism is rooted in her realization that not just France is guilty toward Algeria but "myself as well.")
Excerpt from Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance: "Almost all beautiful works have been created for the privileged and by privileged people who, even if they have suffered, have always had the possibility of expressing their sufferings; they are disguising the horror of misery in its nakedness. Another evening, after another massacre— there have been so many—I longed for all such lying beauty to be utterly destroyed. Today, that feeling of horror has died down. I can listen to Beethoven. But neither he nor anyone else will ever again be able to give me that feeling I used to have of having reached some absolute. For now I know the truth of the human condition: two-thirds of mankind are hungry. My species is two-thirds composed of worms, too weak ever to rebel, who drag their way from birth to death through a perpetual dusk of despair."
February 10, 2025 at 4:42 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
I’m reminded of Danto’s use the legs in Breugel’s Icarus and apparent extra limbs in Michelangelo and Degas to argue preliminary interpretation gives a work its grounding structure, from which all other interpretative questions arise.
Excerpt from Arthur Danto, Transfiguration of the Commonplace: “Similarly, someone may not see the third ap- pendage as an extra leg in the Degas, there being again no room for three-legged women in one's conceptual scheme; and one has almost to see it as an arm unless brought up short by the suggestion that perhaps Degas is reinventing the female body in a way which our familiarity with Picasso enables us to understand, and rearranging parts to suit some inner feeling about the bodies of women, toward whom it is known that Degas had complicated misogynist feelings. In any case, we seem to be on the subject of detached or reattached limbs, and here we are, noticing those limbs in the Breugel. The third leg in Degas, the extra arm in the Rondanini: these are un- usual and call for explanation once they are pointed out. It would be weird to point out the two legs in Botticelli's Venus, since there is nothing to pay attention to there beyond whatever interest the legs as such may have; but there being two legs is of no interest whatever. A detached arm in the painting of a battle would again call for no special explanation: it serves as an indicator that it is a battlescene; you expect limbs in battlescenes as you expect trees in landscapes or bottles in a still life. The legs in Breugel's landscape need call for no special expla- nation, not if, as the title of the picture indicates, it is a landscape.”
February 10, 2025 at 2:18 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Montreal painter and self-proclaimed “Kierkegaardian” Philip Guston is perhaps the most unique—and in his direct confrontation with genocide, racism and imperialism—most timely Canadian painters. (Content that led to controversy and a temporarily postponed show at the Tate.)
Philip Guston’s 1974 painting Monument, which depicts a giant rectangular block of formed from a tangle of legs, knees, and the nail studded bottoms of human shoes and horseshoes.
February 3, 2025 at 3:44 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Feininger is also the brilliant artist behind 1906 comic strip "The Kin-der-Kids."
4 panel comic strip. A little kid imagines an anthropomorphic house waking up (shutters open), yawning (door opens), and sticking out its tongue (revealing a red carpet).
February 1, 2025 at 5:02 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Since congressional Democrats are taking the weekend off, may I suggest they take a field trip to the Berlin Denkmal zur Erinnerung an 96 von den Nationalsozialisten ermordete Reichstagsabgeordnete?
Image of the memorial to German Parliament members murdered by the Nazis, 96 iron plates commemorating each member.
February 1, 2025 at 4:34 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Another apt but grim NYRB read for the times:
Book cover of Erich Kastner, Going to the Dogs, NYRB Classics press.
February 1, 2025 at 4:18 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
Sad to hear of the death of Jules Feiffer, a cartoonist great at skewering the right, but even better at skewering milquetoast liberals and cultural capitalists.
January 21, 2025 at 3:45 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
As others mention, his landscapes are wonderful and his Nietzsche portrait under-appreciated. Of the many versions, I’m partial to the rough, sketch-like quality of this one:
1906 painting by Edvard Munch of Friedrich Nietzsche standing on a bridge.
December 4, 2024 at 3:41 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
If Google's going with portraits of dubious authenticity, it should at least deliver the 1666 Barend Graat painting. Maybe it's not really him, but it sure looks like it, and it's just such a cool painting!
November 30, 2024 at 7:29 PM
dmiyasaki.bsky.social
A new review of my two-volume study of Nietzsche's contested relation to left politics in the Review of Politics: www.cambridge.org/core/journal....
Image of the cover of an issue of Review of Politics
November 10, 2024 at 3:45 PM