Member: mfd101

CollectionsYour library (10,403), eBooks (1,148), CDs (696), DVDs (350), Decommissioned (67), All collections (12,660)

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Tagsreview article (1,525), eBook (1,148), article (984), CD classical (637), Plato [Plátōn] c429/3-c348/7 BCE (471), Aristotle [Aristotélēs] 384-322 BCE (462), Martin Heidegger 1889-1976 (443), Immanuel Kant 1724-1804 (414), natural language (384), Friedrich Nietzsche 1844-1900 (338) — see all tags

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About meRetired Australian civil servant

About my libraryLargest sections are: (1) history - mostly Europe from Ancient Greece to C20th, Americas C15th-18th, Pacific C18th-19th contact, & WW2; wars & warfare are big; (2) philosophy - mostly Greeks, C17th-18th Anglos, Kierkegaard & C20th (with Popper, Heidegger, Foucault & Derrida taking up rather more space than posterity is likely to think they deserve); and now of course there is this new and speculative realism stuff to delight us after the decades of tedium called deconstruction & postmodernism ("30 years lost to navel gazing"); (3) literary theory & literatures - mostly Eng-, Fr- & Ger-language, others in translation except for some It, Sp & Lat; (4) linguistics - mostly text linguistics, semantics & Paris School narrative semiotics; (5) anthropology & comparative mythology - lots of French structuralism, looking now just a tad dated; (6) religions & theologies - mostly Christian & Jewish - considered both from a secular historical point of view & as discourse (mythology, historiography, oral literature, narrative structures).

What's growing? 'History' has been out of control for years, and 'Philosophy' is expanding at a great rate. I blame Amazon. Very bad effect on my budget. And just this month (March 2013) I've discovered the Delphi Classics eBooks: generally very good quality 'complete works' (unlike most eBook series by other publishers) and at US2 or 3 how could any reasonable person resist? Another evil influence. (And now - October 2013 - I've discovered that Arvensa Editions supply high-quality eBooks of French literary classics, the first really good French eBooks I've come across.)

January 2015: have set up new collection entitled 'Decommissioned' to preserve trace of books to be left behind (junked, sold, given away to friends or 2nd-hand bookshops or Lifeline Book Festival) over the next few months as I prepare to move permanently to live in Thailand. Also new collections for eBooks, CDs & DVDs - to make the forthcoming sorting & reduction easier.

Mid-2015: I have discovered Schelling(!). Rather more interesting than Hegel ... April 2016: I have discovered Schopenhauer (who despised Hegel). More weighty tomes to trudge through (though Schopenhauer is at least readable for any reasonable human being). And I have also discovered Leskov, whose writing at its best (as in 'Lady Macbeth ... ') is a joy to read.

Intellectual curiosity: a manifestation of the sin of Greed.

Library: velleities of knowledge; v. under 'Control: freaks'. Combining in the present century the classical with the post-modern pleasures, blindness with obesity. Like Montaigne I speak as one who inquires and is ignorant. The unread books of my library are the horizon of my ignorance, an ignorance that expands, like the cosmos, ever faster. But they were, these unread books, like those I have read, chosen for my library on the basis of their content and my interests, so they have a useful function organizing my ignorance through demarcation, turning mysteries into problems. The unread are, like the unready, a tribute to optimism, and optimism is what keeps us alive.

Motto: Et in veritate vinum

GroupsAmerican Revolution & Founding Fathers History, Ancient History, Australian LibraryThingers, Biblical History, Classical Music, Combiners!, French Connection, Gay Men, German Library Thingers, HMS Surprise —show all groups, Homer, the Trojan war, and pre-classical Greece, Japanese Literature, Language, LibraryThing en français, Lingua Latina, Literatura en Espanol, Medieval Europe, Military History, Naval History and Fiction, Philosophy and Theory, Philosophy of Science, Political Philosophy, Second World War History

LocationSurin province, Thailand

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Account typepublic, lifetime

URLs /profile/mfd101 (profile)
/catalog/mfd101 (library)

Member sinceJan 15, 2008