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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0776  Saturday, 24 November 2007

[1] 	From:	R. A. Cantrell <racant@gmail.com>
	Date:	Tuesday, 13 Nov 2007 14:32:23 -0600
	Subj:	Re: SHK 18.0767 Presentism

[2] 	From:	Terence Hawkes <terence.hawkes@btinternet.com>
	Date:	Wednesday, 14 Nov 2007 11:56:43 -0000
	Subj:	Presentism


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:		R. A. Cantrell <racant@gmail.com>
Date:		Tuesday, 13 Nov 2007 14:32:23 -0600
Subject: 18.0767 Presentism
Comment:	Re: SHK 18.0767 Presentism

 >John, what is the necessary object of scholarship? Is it not to seek, by
 >reasoning together, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
 >truth, despite our limitations?

Perhaps you missed class the day that all the "isms" declared "Truth" folly.

I was not, and I bridled, violently.

 >And does not presentism (as presently
 >appropriated) undermine this quest by focusing almost exclusively on
 >such limitations and by emphasizing time and again the utter futility of
 >this quest? Such defeatism can only lead budding scholars away from
 >seeking, sifting and weighing evidence, and toward rhetorical
 >deployments and ungrounded theoretical lucubrations strangling in their
 >circularity and indefinition.

That is the point in the "isms," to stifle and stymie all thought in the 
home of the enemies of the "isms," the Red, White, and Blue, US of A. 
This is not an inadvertent product of some benign ideology that has as 
its object the improvement of humanity, but a stratagem designed to do 
purposeful harm to us, to destroy us by making idiots of our children.

 >Now that Marxian teleology has been
 >deconstructed,

What a hoot. Marxian teleology; perfect, circular, public Onanism.

All the best,
R.A. Cantrell

[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:		Terence Hawkes <terence.hawkes@btinternet.com>
Date:		Wednesday, 14 Nov 2007 11:56:43 -0000
Subject:	Presentism

Think, Joe, think. To seek, 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth, despite our limitations' is absurdly self-destructive. Our 
'limitations' are exactly those which deprive us of the truth. 
Presentism's focus allows it to feel the harsher edge of history.

T. Hawkes

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