As Marx said, history does not walk on its head; but neither does it think with its “feet,” but rather its body. All economical and psychological explanations of a doctrine are true, since the thinker only ever thinks beginning from what he is. Reflection upon a doctrine will itself only be complete when it succeeds in connecting with the history of the doctrine and with external explanations, and in putting the causes and the sense of a doctrine back into an existential structure.

In relation to its fundamental dimensions, all periods of history appear as manifestations of a single existence or as episodes of a single drama – but we do not know if this drama will have an ending. Because we are in the world, we are condemned to sense, and there is nothing we can do or say that does not acquire a name in history.

Phenomenology of Perception, Preface – Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The Cogito has, up until our present day, devalued the perception of others; it has taught me that the I is only accessible to itself, since it has defined me through the thought that I have of myself, which I am clearly alone in having, at least in this ultimate sense. In order for the word “other” not to be meaningless, my existence must never reduce itself to the consciousness that I have of existing; it must in fact encompass the consciousness that one might have of it, and so also encompass my embodiment in a nature and at least the possibility of an historical situation.

Phenomenology of Perception, Preface – Maurice Merleau-Ponty

초가을 검은 피부를 비추며

빛바랜 사진처럼
얼룩진 베게처럼
때 묻은 헌책처럼
따스한 색으로

허나 또

화장실 형광등처럼
태평양 한 가운데처럼
스마트폰 액정처럼
차가운 색으로

지구 반대편
산골짜기에서
밝힐 수 없는 공동체는

새 날을 맞이하는 내 눈에게
빛으로 신호를 보내고 있었다

Educated non-European non-native English speakers want to speak more sophisticated English, but sometimes it becomes bombastic when in front of native or European English speakers, as they try to sound more adult and prevent being talked down to like a child.

Does speaking more sophisticated English make one assimilated? But at the same time, doesn’t consciously rejecting assimilation at all times make one equally trapped in it? English is like a toothbrush. Everyone uses it. You can scrub dog shit off your sole, but you can also prolong the joy of chewing on steaks. There is no correct way to use it, but if you don’t use it, you’re a fool.

“Seeking above all in literature to formulate a message that is their very own, …they scorn the artifice which for them, whose intellectual education has been almost exclusively [English], would represent recourse to a language they could only use as a second language they have learned.” 

Black Skin, White Masks, Michel Leiris via Frantz Fanon translated by Richard Philcox

Therefore no event in the life of man can possibly be excluded from painting. Consequently, a great injustice is done to the eminent painters of the Dutch school, when their technical skill alone is esteemed, and in other respects they are looked down on with disdain, because they generally depict objects from everyday life, whereas only events from world or biblical history are regarded as significant…
Moreover, the scenes and events that make up the life of so many millions of human beings, their actions, their sorrows, and their joys, are on that account important enough to be the object of art, and by their rich variety must afford material enough to unfold the many-sided Idea of mankind.Even the fleeting nature of the moment, which art has fixed in such a picture, excites a slight, peculiar feeling of emotion. For to fix the fleeting world, which is for ever transforming itself, in the enduring picture of particular events that nevertheless represent the whole, is an achievement of the art of painting by which it appears to bring time itself to a standstill, since it raises the individual to the Idea of its species…
Therefore, those eternally praiseworthy masters of art expressed the highest wisdom perceptibly in their works. Here is the summit of all art that has followed the will in its adequate objectivity, namely in the Ideas, through all the grades, from the lowest where it is affected, and its nature is unfolded, by causes, then where it is similarly affected by stimuli, and finally by motives. And now art ends by presenting the free self-abolition of the will through the one great quieter that dawns on it from the most perfect knowledge of its own nature.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World As Will and Representation, Section 48.