Historical Consciousness

The newer half of the work, and the one still being written. If you have come from Learning, this is the second of the two doors.

The Thing Itself

You have done this already, probably today.

You learn that Newton — the one from the textbook, force and distance, the neat diagram — spent years on alchemy and died a loveless shut-in. Or you find out the ancient Greeks had a geared computer for tracking the calendar, and something in you objects, because computers are supposed to be modern. Or you see a painting from 1937 and a post from last week doing the same gesture, and you can’t unsee it.

That jolt is the subject. Not the facts on either side of it — the jolt. Something you’d received about a period comes apart against something you’ve just met, and for a second you can feel the seam. That is historical consciousness, and the essays here are an attempt to take it seriously rather than enjoy it and move on.

Why It Isn’t Just Irony

The obvious reading is that this is a joke structure — setup, subversion, the pleasure of being caught out. The essays argue it’s more than that, and the argument runs through three things happening at once whenever you read anything at all.

Time-consciousness, or how a sequence feels while you are inside it. Your eyes move left to right across a painting and that movement is itself a shape, before any interpreting starts.

Hermeneutic consciousness, or the way that sequence gets laid alongside every other sequence you have met. You don’t see the figure by the water; you see Narcissus, because Narcissus is already in you.

Historical consciousness proper, which is the comparison of one moment’s sequences to another’s. Jesus read as a type of Elijah. An influencer read as a type of Narcissus. And then — this is where it gets interesting — the comparison of those two comparisons, ancient allegory set beside a contemporary intuition about things repeating.

Once you can take a tweet or a painting apart along those three lines, you have something more useful than a theory of memes, and something more precise than gesturing at collective memory.

Where to Start

The essays are meant to be read in order. They are long, they have pictures in them, and they take their time.

More are coming. This is being written in public, in order, and the earlier ones will change as the later ones find problems in them.

How It Relates to the Other Door

Premissive Philosophy asked what happens to a claim when you follow it back to whoever made it. This asks the same question of a period — what happens to an image, an argument or a joke when you follow it back to the moment that could produce it, and then notice you are standing in a moment yourself.

Same question. Longer lever.