Raging Consciousness

I’m slowly working on an entry about reading. Love in the days of rage a novel by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, illustrates what reading is for me, or at least why I read. I picked the book out of a bargain bin years ago, in a fit of Beat reading, but never made it past the first sentence, which has to be one of the more poorly constructed first sentences in the history of the novel. So the slim book sat on my travelling shelf for years, until recently the subject of Paris 1968 surfaced in my reading. Feenberg devotes a chapter to that historic moment in Questioning Technology and in a blurb on the back cover of Peter Sloterdijk’s Critique of Cynical Reason Jürgen Habermas writes, “Inasmuch as he explains the aftermath of the shattered ideals of 1968 with means he borrows from philosophical history, he gleans from the pile of rubble a piece of truth.” So before devoting the next six months of my reading life to Sloterdijk, I read, over a few nights, Love in the days of Rage.

Why Siddharta?

It might be interesting to begin writing about the book before it’s even been read. The process of choosing a book is probably the most pivotal part of the experience, at least for the book in question. It seems simple enough, without its being chosen a book will not be read.

I think the theme of the book as written on its back cover (“The true profession of man is to find his way to himself.”) is something I’ve thought a little about recently and I’d like to explore the ideas of “way” and “self” a little further.