Re: Reponse to Robbie

Jim writes:
<< The [end of your last message] is simply facetious. You demand that only
one
reading of the sentence is possible, reject the possibility that context
may limit the statement, and even seem to disregard further knowledge of
Blake's writing and philosophy as possibly relevant to your current
understanding. >>

It was facetious, sure enough. But I'm not really demanding that only one
reading is possible, nor rejecting the worth of further knowledge about
Blake's context.

I was only maintaining that one can, reasonably enough, consider Blake's
assertion against generalizing to be itself a generalization. This does not
reflect poorly upon Blake or his quotation. And perhaps he had a very
specific understanding of generalizations that changes the sense of the
assertion. But I still don't see how it is plainly absurd, when seeing the
quote in the context of a bananafish post containing nothing else about
Blake, to see it that way. I wouldn't call anyone a dummy for it, anyway.
Of COURSE it depends on what one means by "To generalize" but, I think,
without any stretch or special philosophical definition, in a very ordinary
sense, a layperson might well say that the assertion is itself generalizing.

Other readings? Fine. An original context that proves irrefutably that
Blake did not intend to be ironic, that he did not consider the assertion to
be a generalization? Fine. I was precluding neither of these.

-robbie
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Received on Thu Jul 17 19:31:38 2003