Last night, I got up to urinate, a not uncommon urge working its sly way in my sixty-five year old mechanism. I have travelled through our apartment all in the dark a million times. But this time I kept overshooting and bumping into things. The bookshelf, the door. There was no major pratfall – my footfalls to the bathroom and back were just off by the merest stroke of the compass. But I was reminded, as so many of us are in the depths of our nightwatches, of Kant. Kant’s little writings are all too little known, except for the all too known What is Enlightenment. One of his most entertaining papers is entitled “What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking.” It was written to interfere in a dispute between Mendelssohn and Jacobi over the limits of reason and the rights of genius. Mendelssohn, in the course of this dispute, talks about being “oriented” by common sense, or healthy reason, and opts for a religious purified of enthusiasm, worshipping a rational God. Kant, with
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads