in which items of utmost import are discussed

[finluithiel]

Item the First: This site is driving me nutso, in that I'm starting to have irreverent mental commentaries in the form of lists whenever I observe things happening around me. Help?

Item the Second: Last Wednesday, on the 26th of August in the Year of Our Lord 2009, I, along with Kari, eviscerated a very dead, and very pregnant, cat. Also, we broke its jaw, sternum, and ribs. And I might as well mention that we accidentally performed dental surgery on a (very dead, and very pregnant) feline. The things we do for our grades science!

I have a sneaking suspicion that all the cats I've encountered since the start of the semester know what I did to their brethren. Or am I just projecting?

Item the Third: I just had a geekgasm of the very worst kind. While reading the first chapter of Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, I suddenly realized that while Kant was discussing what it means to do one's duty, he was talking about Mr. Darcy. An excerpt from the chapter:

...[I]f nature implanted little sympathy in this or that man's heart; if (being in other respects an honest fellow) he were cold in temperament and indifferent to the sufferings of others--perhaps because, being endowed with the special gift of patience and robust endurance in his own sufferings, he assumed the like in others or even demanded it; if such a man (who would in truth not be the worst product of nature) were not exactly fashioned by [nature] to be a philanthropist, would he not still find in himself a source from which he might draw a worth far higher than any that a good-natured temperament can have? Assuredly he would. It is precisely in this that the worth of character begins to show--a moral worth and beyond all comparison the highest--namely, that he does good, not from inclination, but from duty. (Trans. by H.J. Paton) (emphases mine)

It really couldn't be any more Darcy-esque than this.

Now, I have two theories as to why Mr. Darcy is intimately tied to Immanuel Kant's concept of the Categorical Imperative.

• Theory the First: Jane Austen had read what Kant had to say about duty and morality, and decided to base one of her male heroes on his idea of the 'moral man'


• Theory the Second: A rabid Austenite, from a period when time travel is possible, and who found the same parallels as I did, travelled back to the 18th century and provided Mr. Kant with a copy of P&P, assuming that he'd like what he'd read, not knowing that Kant had in fact not yet started writing about the Categorical Imperative. Kant, upon finishing the novel, then developed a fanboy crush on Mr. Darcy and decided that Mr. Darcy is indeed the very best kind of man. Thus the Categorical Imperative is born, thereby establishing a paradox.

Personally, the second theory seems more plausible to me. ;p

Item the Fourth: Methinks I shall get sick this weekend, judging from the cough I seem to have developed overnight. My immune system sucks. Leucocytes, verily ye art made of fail.