'For the person or persons that hold dominion, can no more combine with the keeping up of majesty the running with harlots drunk or naked about the streets, or the performances of a stage player, or the open violation or contempt of laws passed by themselves than they can combine existence with non-existence'.

- Benedict de Spinoza. Political Treatise. 1677.




Tuesday, June 22, 2010

on certainty 525

525. What, then, does the case look like where someone really has a different relationship to the names of colours, for example, from us? Where, that is, there persists a slight doubt or a possibility of doubt in their use.



what does this look like?

it looks like a state of affairs –

where presumption and prejudice –

are defeated by difference

and where doubt makes obvious –

that the ground of our language use –

is uncertainty


© greg t. charlton. 2010.