randian | 燃点

The renowned American philosopher Hilary Putnam passed away last year. Even though he was a pioneering figure in new American Pragmatism, second to none in both the multi-disciplinary scope and abundance of his work, he was still, at the time of his death, best remembered for coming up with the question known as “brains in a vat”…

“River of Fundament”, an operatic, five-hour-long film created by Matthew Barney in 2014, was presented in Asia for the first time last September; it is known in translation as Chongsheng zhi He— literally “River of Rebirth­ ­—which is believed to be the film’s subject.

The Mainland and Hong Kong aren’t the same story. And yet, at this historical juncture, the two are connected.

A first for modern times, our historical narratives are moving out of tragedy and into comedy, and like it or not, this will be a major turning point.

Recently, I came across a conver­sation between Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht (in the former’s book Understanding Brecht, first published in 1966)…

The ocean space borrows its designation as a non-space from the fact that it is by law a no-man’s-land: the sea belongs to everyone and to no one.

For a world that we cannot perceive, what does it matter whether it exists or not? Perhaps you can further demonstrate that, though an autonomous world is imperceptible, it can still think for us. Yet in this sense, such a world becomes one stipulated by human thought, and ultimately cannot escape the fundamental relationship between thinking and being.

These are truths, affirmations, stated or not, that are felt but not proved.