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Susan Sontag: Reborn

academia, books, solitude, truth —

19 Feb 2009

Just finished up the first set of Sontag's journals (1947-1963, age 15-30).

journal is narcissistic + speech is social + erotic + has more incentive in the feared

Also, interaction has more opportunity to alter thought? Public vs. private decision making. Similar to C. Sunstein or JS Mill ideas on the public commons, social as a corrective, truth will out, etc. This, of course, assumes the Platonic view that there is some sort of absolute truth that can be attained, no?

One must distinguish "the truth" from "the truth about." It is true that 1) it was snowing and 2) Aaron Nolan put milk in the coffee he brought me. But the truth about, e.g., I.'s and my relationship is not an inventory of what has happened, what was said, done. It is an interpretation, an insight.

...There are degrees of "truth about."

and

The Platonic view of Kant is right. I saw this in my Descartes lecture at SLC this morning.

Truth as correspondence to the facts means that the model of truth is conceived of as information.

It is true that:

"It is raining outside."
""Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan."

+ these statements are true statements because it is, Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan. Introspection will never get you these results. [emp. mine]

So truth is physical and cannot be known through thinking...only experiencing (ie - you would not discover the thing that is Kabul through thought). Everything else is idea/abstraction. Logic, therefore, cannot discover truth. Philosophy cannot discover truth.

Also, her fluctuations on doing academia or doing human interaction were heartbreaking. I've already been struggling with this. If she could not figure out how to balance doing those two things at once, I do not possibly see how I can.

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