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Friday, 8 September 2017



How do you get the notion of the particularity of the particular? In most of your dealings in the world it is not needed. The objects of interest are indexed by their meanings, and meanings are always generalities, or the refined cross-referencing of generalities which are still generalities. If such cross-referencing was drawn out to its ultimate point then presumably it would achieve the unique meaning of individuals. The possibility of reaching such a limit might be part of your idea of the reality of 'real' things but it cannot constitute their uniqueness. For you, objects are individualised by a choice, which may be your own active selection of the object or else passively, the selection of you by the object. Is this then like checking into a large hotel? You chose the city and selected this one hotel out of several possibilities. You arrive and present your credentials. The impenetrably polite and perfectly groomed clerk stares attentively at a screen in which you are to be identified, a tiny ripple of concordance flickers across their face to show that you are in the system, they press a few buttons, clickety-click, and smile and hand you an invisibly coded card. And then after riding an elevator, and reading off room numbers in a corridor lined with identical doors, you find yourself in a particular room in which everything is satisfactory (for the sake of argument). It is familiar and functional and fit for purpose but utterly generic. You can rest but not really relax, or maybe it's the other way around, you can relax but not really rest. If you stay in the same room for more than a week then all its contents will perhaps acquire an individual character, some of the quality of home, but this too is generic, is merely homeness. You can stare for a long time at an object, say a glass you have filled from a little bottle selected from the mini-bar, you can taste the familiar brand of whisky. Is this particular? Does it have haecceitas, quiddity? Are you enough to make the moment, is the moment enough to make you?

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