The horrible nightmare is over... maybe.

I did well (I think) on my Malebranche exam, I missed the part about "delectations of Grace", which was a stupid point to miss, but I did well on natural judgment and he read my essay while nodding his head consistently. I also got his trick question, which I had been generally warned about, so hopefully I did okay.

Dread, horrible, gut-wrenching LOGIC on the other hand, I'll be lucky if I passed. I took it this morning, with the beginning sense that I had worked hard (flash-cards and everything) and that I was basically prepared. The damn test was only two pages long! I know I got the first question right, but the rest might have been uber crap. I totally missed a lot of the rules for proofs, so I don't think any of them were right, except maybe one or two individual lines. Almost everyone took the full 2 and a half hours, and I feel a little sick now thinking that I might have to retake it. People are in the process of assuring me that this is how a lot of people felt after the exam, and they did fine. I just suck really hard at memorizing things, and for the life of me the big picture does not make sense, so please God let me pass. I'd settle for a 10 or a 9, just don't make me retake it. I just keep muttering to myself and shaking my head: HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE nightmare.

So now the task is to shake off the massive blow to confidence that I've just sustained and try to relax a little before my Dad et. al. arrive on Sunday. I need a freakin' break. I am not going to read a damn book or write a goddamn sentence. The thesis can wait, I am pooping TIRED. In that line, my only plan is to do a whole lot of socializing and sleeping.

Horrible, horrible nightmare. But it's over.

On a completely different note, apparently we can modulate our brain activity by watching MRIs of it working! I probably just need a labotomy.

In Clue to Addiction, a Brain Injury Halts Smoking

Woo boy, so two down and two to go... I took my huge Kant exam yesterday, which I literally worked on for four days straight after my Lacan exam. It was probably the hardest I've worked on anything in a long time, which is hard to believe that I would stress about it more than my Kierkegaard work over the summer, but there it is. I had NO idea what the professor was talking about most of the time, so it was a long and arduous effort to make sense of the notes. Fortunately, there were a few of us in similar circumstances, and so we got together and worked on it, splitting up various sections and making presentation. It was a good experience, and when I got up there to talk to Prof. Moors, I felt pretty good about my answers. We'll see how I did though.

I love being here right now. It's totally the most stressed and pressed I have ever been, and yet the challenge is something I've been really looking for. Which is not to say that my previous academic challenges haven't been substantial or fulfilling, but something about the level of expectation and my new and improved level of committment and preparation is deeply satisfying. The level of comraderie is really nice too, everyone knows how hard this stuff is and we appreciate the diversity of talents that everyone brings to the table.

I have a long way to go though, still. I have my Kierkegaard paper to revise in the next two days (I hope to be done then anyway) and then Malebranche and dread Logic come up next week. I haven't even started thinking about them, but I've been working consistently throughout the semester, so I think I won't be coming to it blind.

The world outside has gotten very cold by Belgian standards, which is really alright because it helps to keep me inside and more or less focused. We had a crazy hale storm on Sunday night, I literally thought my window was going to break in on me, it was incredibly loud. I can never see hale without thinking of the time I went to Treblinka with my Polish camp in July and it haled on us. The most superficial guy in the group (whom we used to call "Gel" on account of all the grease he used to wear in his hair [ten points for the reference if anyone gets it]) said in perfect English: "God is crying."

So tomorrow besides work I think I'm going back to Holland for a little rest. It's lovely to be able to do that, I don't think I'll ever take that for granted.

At any rate, I hope everyone is well and projects are continuing apace.

Love,

Cake

Two words: Smoked it.

I'm not so sure I did all that well on the written part, but he kept me for a long time at the oral stage (ha ha!) and even insisted that I did know stuff I was willing to give up on. In any case, I feel pretty good about it, and even if I don't do as well as I think I did, I'm pretty happy that I didn't just humiliate myself. Woo hoo! for small victories.

Here's the summary that I wrote, it might be pretty boring for most of you, but if you're curious about what we did in this class, this is a very stripped down version that I think nonetheless captures most of the important elements and movements.

A.D.C. Cake January 18^th, 2007
Final exam general question: Advanced Philosophical Anthropology, Fall 2006

The broad historical context into which Lacan fits Freud in his Seminar on ethics (1959-1960) is the sense in which moral philosophy has lost the perspective of Aristotle. Lacan interprets Aristotle's ethical position as maintaining the possibility of a harmony between the human subject and the “sovereign good,” that ultimately the macro cosmos promotes the welfare of the human being. In this anthropology, our natural feelings of pleasure and pain lead us to a refinement of our moral actions. In Lacan's eyes, this Aristotelian anthropology is destroyed by the notion of Freud's that sexuality in particular is not a unity, but a unified complex of human drives and instincts. For Lacan, the idea that “pleasure does not begin with intentionality” destroys the Aristotelian moral perspective. Further, the moral philosophy of Kant also makes a break with the harmonic conception of moral life. It is rather the moral law that stands as the only measure of the moral worth of our actions. Kant denies that we can act according to our sensations of pleasure or pain and have anything but (at best) an accidental moral correctness. With this Kantian break, it is no longer with happiness that we associate moral life (as does Utilitarianism), but with the ideals of altruism, rationality and duty.

In this new ethical framework, Lacan is using Freud to advocate a hermeneutical contextualism that seeks to protect and describe those aspects of our moral life which are in danger of being obscured by the major moral theories. The task for an ethics of psychoanalysis is to uncover and preserve the subtleties of our spontaneous moral experience, so that we may open up a more adequate relation to them. To this end, Lacan highlights Freud's description of the two principles of mental functioning: the pleasure principle and the reality principle. For Freud, the pleasure principle is a principle of inertia which strives for a unity of perception and to this end will lead the subject by the quickest possible route toward a discharge of excitation, which Freud identifies as “unpleasure.” Yet the pleasure principle is not always adequate. It dominates the system of perception, and can often lead the subject to hallucinate an object, which may result in a relation with reality that is actually unpleasurable for the human subject. If the subject's drive for self-preservation prevails, the pleasure principle is replaced by the reality principle, which mentalizes excitation. The reality principle allows the subject to bear a certain quantity of unpleasure for a certain amount of time, and to take distance from the unattainable promise of satisfaction. This gives the subject the condition for having a more adequate relation with reality, taming the exigencies of the pleasure principle.

So at a certain level the pleasure principle and the reality principle interact fluidly, and protect each other from possible excesses. Yet there is another element of our moral life, for Lacan, and he reads this from Freud's notorious theory of the death instinct. Here there is an “instinct” that has something destructive about it and this element gives rise to a kind of repetition that resists mentalization. Here he finds evidence for a psychic force that stands beyond the economy of the two principles and has no dialectic with them. This outside influence on our moral life he reads as “Das Ding,” “The Thing.” Das Ding has an intrinsic value for the subject which is particular for every individual. As a force from beyond, it jams the smooth interaction of the two principles, disrupting and disturbing the mental economy of the subject. In relation to Das Ding an element of my life that happens to participate in its intrinsic value becomes no longer replaceable. I must have it, or I cannot be happy. Once Das Ding makes itself known, the subject's desire becomes unsatisfiable, infinite. If the subject is unlucky enough to have this intrinsic value invested in a specific aim that is at odds with the social world, then this desire isolates the subject from the social order. It is at this point, for Lacan, where we find ethics.

Lacan describes the desire for Das Ding as the desire for a satisfaction or a representation that unifies all the satisfactions and representations in some ultimate One. Thus the story of Das Ding can be told in terms of a kind of nostalgia, the subject feels that at some point wholeness has been lost. The only way to find it again is to find that One object, Das Ding. Lacan tells two stories about the origin of Das Ding. The first story involves an inevitable effect of an ontological process, wherein our mental life is brought about by the translation of impressions into representations, which are all associated in a network through which the mental life ceaselessly moves. Mental life is in a restless dispersion, produces its own beyond, as no single representation is sufficient to unify the entire network. Das Ding is brought about by the desire of the subject to rest in a unitary whole, under One ultimate representation. The other story involves the Freudian idea (taken up by Levi-Strauss) that culture begins with a primal prohibition, the incest taboo. Lacan stresses the arbitrariness of this moral law. There is no reason why we cannot stay with our mothers, but we are prohibited to do so. Our desire for wholeness is a desire to transgress the primal prohibition and stay with our mothers. In this story the mother is Das Ding, the ultimate object that will give the ultimate satisfaction.

This fundamental difficulty, the desire to transgress the law that cannot be transgressed, is the hard core of moral life for Lacan. It is in this schema that we can see that Aristotelian moral philosophy is lost to us, insofar as it emphasizes a harmony. The macro cosmos no longer promotes our welfare, we have unpredictable desires that go against our well-being. It is only if we are lucky that we are not isolated from the social world. Lacan's answer to this is to strive to enjoy the symbolic sublimation of our infinite desire, to enjoy the satisfaction it offers us in effigy, and thus to combine the powers of the pleasure principle (through smaller satisfactions) and the reality principle (through mentalization).

My big Lacan exam is tomorrow, and I feel prepared, but that somehow doesn't make the transition between now and then any easier, so I've got a tremendous amount of nervous energy that I need to put somewhere, and I'm going to do something I've been trying not to do, given the blessings I can currently count just off the top of my head. I will also do this in the form of a list, so that you'll all be spared the long-windedness of my less than zen state of preparedness.

Things I don't like (hate) about Leuven:

1. There's no such thing as free water in restaurants (although you frequently get free booze)
2. Beer is cheaper than water.
3. Coffee only comes in two sizes: small and extra small.
4. The coffee sucks.
5. It's raining almost all the time.
6. All the ATMs run out of cash on a weekly basis
7. The only food you can get after midnight is terrible for you.
8. The sidewalks are narrow and uneven.
9. The bicyclists couldn't give a shit about anyone else.
10. There isn't always a clear distinctinction between the way of pedestrians and the way of cars.
11. There is NO good breakfast here. You'd think in the land of waffles they'd have figured out by now that with a little imagination (and a little less chocolate), you can eat them for something besides dessert. What I'm really saying is I miss diner food.
12. The clothes are both better and vastly more expensive.
13. NOTHING is open until 3pm on Sundays.
14. The libraries work on the 9-5 clock, and hardly at all on weekends.
15. I can't deposit money in ATMs
16. Almost all payments are made internal to the banking systems, so the phone company can take their payment whenever the hell they want.
17. I have to go to the ring to get Bagels.
18. Nobody knows what rye bread or TVP is.
19. There's no Korean food, and no affordable sushi.
20. The music in the cafes and bars sucks... A lot. (except for Blue Cat and Libertad)

That's as many as I can think of without straining myself. Not bad, only 20. It's been worse? Yeah, it's been worse.

I think I might post my two page answer to Moyaert's question "What was the course about?" tomorrow after the exam. It will probably be a bit boring, I had to take out all the nice rhetorical flourishes for the sake of eXtreme concision.

I'm gonna break a leg, so much is obvious.

Happy New Year everyone!

2006 was a doozy, that's for certain, but I think 2007 is shaping up nicely. I'm tired as all get out, even though I had a very sedate New Year's Eve, relatively speaking. My Mom brought Trivial Pursuit for me when she came with my Brother for Christmas (more on that later) so Marianne, Shannon, Mark and I went for Ethiopian food (tremendously awesome) and just played Trivial Pursuit until well after the clock struck the beginning of the new year. Marianne won (of course) but I think the rest of us put up a pretty good fight. It was nice, I'm always afraid of this celebration day, especially when I'm away from Ithaca, because you really can't beat NYE in I-town, or at least I've never been able to find anything better. But we managed to beat all the blues and pressure and had a wonderful time!

As previously mentioned, the Momiji and Brohan came over on the 22nd and stayed for a glorious week. We went to Brugge and Antwerp, but otherwise we just rambled around Leuven and ate like royalty. Only the best for my Moms, and I love it when I get to ride that wagon. We played a lot of trivial pursuit too, and they took lots of pictures, which I am waiting to get through email (hint hint) and then I'll post them on Flickr. Here I'll include a couple portraits and the train station in Antwerp, which I promised to share a long time ago. We didn't get to go to Namur, which is a shame, I really wanted my Mom to experience the dessert house, but time is always short with the visits.

It was super nice not to be completely without family for the holidays, I think I would've been a bit upset if I was all alone (but for my wonderful friends). But now that it's all over it's just going to be work work work from now until my Dad and fam come in February. My exams start on the 18th of this month, which gives me a bit of time to catch up on all the stuff I've been sidelining, which is not a terrific amount, but enough to put the pressure on.This is the view of the spectacular entrance to the train station in Antwerp from the platforms, it's just breathtakingly beautiful, and massive. Below is my beautiful Mother (Pia) in my apartment, who thinks she takes terrible pictures, but as you can see, that's just modesty.And here of course is the Moose (Adam), with his new set of keys. He stayed with me while my Mom stayed at the Holiday Inn down the street. Of course he popped my airmattress, but was generally cheerful otherwise. It was SO nice to get to spend some time with my family, it has been a while after all.

At any rate, I hope everyone had a lovely break/celebration and I wish everyone absolutely the best the new year has to offer!

Much love,

Cake