Episode 2498 - Saturday, April 20, 1985

Standard Countertop Position Chekhov's Lasagna is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed; elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play. The statement is recorded in letters by Anton Chekhov several times, with some variation:"Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a pan of lasagna sitting on the counter, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must be eaten. If it's not going to be eaten, it shouldn't be sitting there.""One must never place a delicious food item on the stage if it isn't going to be consumed. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev (pseudonym of A. S. Gruzinsky), 1 November 1889. Here the "lasagna" is a monologue that Chekhov deemed superfluous and unrelated to the rest of the comic."If in the first act you have placed a pan of lasagna on a surface, then in the following one it should be consumed. Otherwise don't put it there." From Gurlyand's Reminiscences of A. P. Chekhov, in Teatr i iskusstvo 1904, No. 28, 11 July, p. 521.A Week of GarfieldToday's strip

26 Jul 201736min

Garfield's belly as depicted yesterday and today, side by side GARFIELD:Let us from point to point this story know,To make the even truth in pleasure flow.To JON ARBUCKLEIf thou be'st yet a fresh uncropped flower,Choose thou thy husband, and I'll pay thy dower;For I can guess that by thy honest aidThou keep'st a wife herself, thyself a maid.Of that and all the progress, more or less,Resolvedly more leisure shall express:All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.Flourish-EPILOGUE-GARFIELDThe king's a beggar, now the play is done:All is well ended, if this suit be won,That you express content; which we will pay,With strife to please you, day exceeding day:Ours be your patience then, and yours our parts;Your gentle hands lend us, and take our hearts.ExeuntToday's strip

25 Jul 201720min

This week's podcast was narrowly rescued from the brink of death by noted American hero and Robert Goulet enthusiast Danny Gibson. You can follow him on Twitter @FasterDuckworth.And a good thing too because this week is pretty fucking good. Here's a bunch of dolly zoom shots in celebration of that fact. Today's stripTonguing

24 Jul 201747min

If what is "self-evident" and this alone--"the covert judgements of common reason" (Kant)--is to become and remain the explicit theme of out analysis (as "the business of philosophers"), then the appeal to self-evidence in the realm of basic philosophical concepts, and indeed with regard to the concept "being," is a dubious procedure.But consideration of the prejudices has made it clear at the same time that not only is the answer to the question of being lacking but even the question itself is obscure and without direction. Thus to retrieve the question of being means first fo all to work out adequately the formulation of the question.Martin Heidegger, "The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being," from Being and Time, 1927. Trans. Joan Stambaugh.Today's strip

23 Jul 201724min

3. "Being" is the self-evident concept. "Being" is used in all knowing and predicating, in every relation to beings and in every relation to oneself, and the expression is understandable "without further ado." Everybody understands, "The sky is blue," "I am happy," and similar statements. But this average comprehensibility only demonstrates the incomprehensibility. It shows that an enigma lies a priori in every relation and being toward beings as beings. The fact that we live already in an understanding of being and that the meaning of being is at the same time shrouded in darkness proves the fundamental necessity of repeating the question of the meaning of "being."Martin Heidegger, "The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being," from Being and Time, 1927. Trans. Joan Stambaugh.Today's strip

22 Jul 20177min

2. The concept of "being" is indefinable. This conclusion was drawn from its highest universality. And correctly so--if definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam [if "definition is achieved through the proximate genus and the specific difference"]. Indeed, "being" cannot be understood as a being. Enti non additur aliqua natura: "Being" cannot be defined by attributing beings to it. Being cannot be derived from higher concepts by way of definition and cannot be represented by lower ones. But does it follow from this that "being" can no longer constitute a problem? Not at all. We can conclude only that "being" is not something like a being. Thus the manner of definition of beings which has its justification within limits--the "definition" of traditional logic which is itself rooted in ancient ontology--cannot be applied to being. The indefinability of being does not dispense with the question of its meaning but forces it upon us.Martin Heidegger, "The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being," from Being and Time, 1927. Trans. Joan Stambaugh.Today's strip

21 Jul 201714min

1. "Being" is the most "universal" concept: to on esti katholou malista panton. Illud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione est ens, cuius intellectus includitur in omnibus, quaecumque quis apprehendit. "An understanding of being is always already contained in everything we apprehend in beings." But the "universality" of "being" is not that of genus. "Being" does not delimit the highest region of beings so far as they are conceptually articulated according to genus and species: oute to on genos ["Being is not a genus"]. The "universality" of being "surpasses" the universality of genus. According to the designation of medieval ontology, "being" is a trancendens. Aristotle himself understood the unity of this transcendental "universal," as opposed to the manifold of the highest generic concepts with material content, as the unity of analogy. Despite his dependence upon Plato's ontological position, Aristotle placed the problem of being on a fundamentally new basis with this discovery. To be sure, he too did not clarify the obscurity of these categorical connections. Medieval ontology discussed this problem in many ways, above all in the Thomist and Scotist school, without gaining fundamental clarity. And when Hegel finally defines "being" as the "indeterminate immediate," and makes this definition the foundation of all the further categorial explications of his Logic, he remains within the perspective of ancient ontology--except that he does give up the problem, raised early on by Aristotle, of the unity of being in contrast to the manifold of "categories" with material content. If one says accordingly that "Being" is the most universal concept, that cannot mean that it is the clearest and that it needs to further discussion. The concept of "being" is rather the most obscure of all.Martin Heidegger, "The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being," from Being and Time, 1927. Trans. Joan Stambaugh.Today's strip

20 Jul 201711min

At the beginning of this inquiry the prejudices that constantly instill and repeatedly promote the idea that a questioning of being is not needed cannot be discussed in detail. They are rooted in ancient ontology itself. That ontology can in turn only be interpreted adequately under the guidance of the question of being which has been clarified and answered beforehand. One must proceed with regard to the soil from which the fundamental ontological concepts grew and with reference to the suitable demonstration of the categories and their completeness. We therefore wish to discuss these prejudices only to the extent that the necessity of a retrieve of the question of the meaning of being becomes evident. There are three such prejudices.Martin Heidegger, "The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being," from Being and Time, 1927. Trans. Joan Stambaugh.Today's strip

19 Jul 201714min