Friday 31 May 2013

Contingency cf Necessity

The next step in finishing off my latest HO scale ceramic building is to cover the flat roof with a montage of French newspaper titles and to construct maybe a dozen chimney stacks similarly covered.

The roof to be covered

After much Googling and cutting and pasting I printed out several A4 sheets like this:


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Currently listening to:

Virgil Enzinger


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Last night's dinner:

Scallops, cous cous and mushrooms
Cost per head: £7.25

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La Nausee:

All of this reading across several loosely related philosophical topics is becoming undisciplined and unstructured and I'm not really learning anything or refining my knowledge in any way.

It would be best if I concentrated for a while on one concept or issue.

Yesterday, I read this passage in La Nausee:

"The essential thing is contingency. I mean that one cannot define existence as necessity. To exist is simply to be there; those who exist let themselves be encountered, but you can never deduce anything from them. I believe that there are people who have understood this. Only they tried to overcome this contingency by inventing a necessary causal being. But no necessary being can explain existence: contingency is not a delusion, a probability which can be dissipated; it is the absolute, consequently, the perfect free gift. All is free, this park, this city and myself."

Over the next days, I'm going to read what folk have to say about this opposition between the contingent and the necessary; especially as it applies to the person.


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