The importance of a Machiavelli, a Hobbes, or a Marx is not primarily intellectual but catharctic. They don’t offer conceptual systems so much as emotional strategies.

Machiavelli stands at the gate of the modern age, divorcing technique from social purpose.

Philosophies from Descartes onward are diverse in the way in which a steam engine differs from a gas or diesel engine. And Bergson, who tried to end it all, is as mechanical as his enemy Descartes, although he preferred a kind of cosmic fuel for his system. Once grant the stripping and segmenting process for language and experience such as Shakespeare indicates in Lear, and there is no possible stay. The rollercoaster is off over the Cartesian, Lockeian, Kantian course with all the built-in panic and Angst that could be asked for.

It might be possible to solve any problem by organizing our ignorance; there’s always one guy who’s so ignorant he can’t help but see the answer. That’s called discovery.

…the alphabet and kindred gimmicks have long served man as a subliminal source of philosophical and religious assumptions. Certainly Martin Heidegger would seem to be on better ground in using the totality of language itself as philosophical datum.