An animal born too soon must make masks We feel that we cannot relate to ourselves until we have performed the necessary alienation of objectifying ourselves, thus producing an object we take to be ourselves. Matthew Stanley • Psychoanalysis
Moebius <3 I can’t change your mind (and you can’t either) I don’t know your story. I can only share mine. I don’t know what you need, so it seems disingenuous to insist too strongly in any one direction. Matthew Stanley • Philosophy
Snow covered fields with a Harrow by Vincent van Gogh Putting the human visual apparatus in context As a species, we suffer terribly from a violent obsession with the world of images, transfixed by what we can see, and ablaze with the desire to see what we cannot. We should not stop short of marveling at this quandary. Matthew Stanley • Philosophy
Saussure's semiotic work shows us "how the sausage is made," so to speak... A key selection from Course in General Linguistics by Saussure I often find that people have heard of Saussure, and maybe even have a vague impression about him – "the semiotics guy, right?" – but haven't read him. This is a shame, because unlike many of the thinkers who fall into that category of heard-of-em-but-never-read-em, his writing is Matthew Stanley • Philosophy
The father is a screen - responding to Girard's critique of the Oedipal complex This piece continues our ongoing series on the philosophical problem posed by the emergence of self-destructive behaviors in human beings, and it builds on a prior essay about how Lacan draws out the under-theorized role of fantasy in Girard's theory of desire. This piece expands our understanding of Matthew Stanley • Psychoanalysis
Zen Master Jianzhen sails to Japan Desire: Push Theories and Pull Theories (Part 2) This essay serves as the second part of the work began last week in which I trace two contrasting categories of theories of desire. These two pieces play a pivotal role in our ongoing series on the question of self-destructive behavior in humans. I moved quite a bit of this Matthew Stanley • Psychoanalysis
