So a few days ago I took a book out of the library: Simon Critchley's Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction.

I know virtually everything in the book already, but you know how I am, I like to remind myself - continually - of the "big picture". I go over the same ground obsessively sometimes for years at a time.

Anyway, two days after I took it out of the library, someone recalled it!

My first thought was, "Motherfucker! I can't have a book for more than two days before some dickweed recalls it?"

Then my second thought was, "Wait a minute - why does someone at this university want to read about continental philosophy?"

The third thought (here's where the social subtype kicks in) was, "Someone at this university wants to read about continental philosophy. This is an excellent sign! I will return the book right away so that the consciousness of others might be raised post haste."

In other news, I have recently developed a fascination with the Renaissance. I'm really interested (again) in the Borgias, the Medicis, the Sforzas, etc.

I'm especially fond of Cesare Borgia, but just in general there's something awesome about this period. You see medieval barbarity balanced with a kind of modern industriousness. It's before traditional modes of authority collapse completely; they're tottering gateways through which the cunning and wicked can race on the way to fulfilling their insatiable thirst for gold and spices. The framework is left over from the Middle Ages, but the individuals occupying the helms are more like us than their predecessors.

You see the simultaneous development of humanism, lust for glory, patriotism, wit, social etiquette, and personality, yet these tools are used for acquistion of indigo, city-states, fiefs, jewels, and cinnamon rather than profit. Human standards and natural standards are still interchangeable in most spheres of society. Society is still based -- at least in part but not for long -- in nature. But you have these few individuals -- the Borgias are probably the most notable example -- who recognize that it's all bullshit and who take full advantage of that fact. They recognize the shape of things to come, and they realize few others see what they see.

The harbinger of this great change -- the change into the period we call "modernity" or the scientific age -- is the autonomy of politics. Politics is the first sphere of human existence that develops its own rules, its own principles entirely independent of the rules of tradition, nature, philosophy, and ethics. Eventually everything goes the way of politics, but before this happens, you basically just have these crime families -- like the Bushes, but with style -- hoodwinking everyone.

What fun it must have been! Had I lived during that time, I most likely would have been some dirt-poor peasant eating rocks and believing in the divinity of Jesus, but I'd like to believe that I might have dressed from head to toe in black velvet and shot people for fun. Or maybe I could helped toss Francesco di Pazzi off the balcony of the Palazzo Vecchio for trying to assassinate Lorenzo di Medici. Nowadays if you want to do that sort of thing, you have to join the United States military, and everyone knows that's no fun! They don't even wear black velvet!