Re: book

Dominic,

thanks for the reply. i thot a quick and rash generalization might stir 
some feathers

thanks for pointing me towards Leibniz's discourxe on metaphysics. 
knowing very little of leibniz, my initial post was really just a search 
for that.

my short tirade to myself was simply a means to engage myself again, not 
necessarily provide a completed glance of mallarme, jabes and leibniz.

trying to work on "book theory" has proved to be a challenging task. 
there really is little info about, tho some these days on hypertext and 
its relation to the book.

Yes, while mallarme, jabes, and leibniz's book may not really be 
identical, what difference is there really between "The Book" and "the 
book." especially as you examine how it operates. Jabes speaks volumes 
(no pun intended) about the nature of the everyday book and its cultural 
significance even if he really is discussing "The Book."

for mallarme the book is spiritual. granted.
for jabes the book is not necessarily god. the book does seem however to 
be that space in which god and man communicate, dialogue, live. the book 
is nver complete for Jabes, and thus is not God. but the imagined 
totality of the book (tho never actualized in reading it or writing it) 
is God is it not - or bare minimum that space where God and man blur.

of leibniz, frankly, i know little. as you say, in Leibniz there are the 
myriad of substances, all unique, but i thot this was really a means of 
proving the "existence" of "god" (tho not necessarily theologically).

from _The Monadology_ 
38. Thus the final reason of things must be in a necessary substance, in 
which the variety of particular changes exists only eminently, as in its 
source; and this substance we call God.
39. Now as this substance is sufficient reason of all this variety of 
particulars, which are also connected together thoughout; there is only 
one God, and this God is sufficient.

So like i said, i'm just starting to read Leibniz, and sporadically too, 
so perhaps it is true that the book is not god for Leibniz, but i wonder 
if we could apply Leibniz's formulations in _The Monadology_ to "the 
book." ie: a book consists of a myriad of monads, unique and 
interrelated, "bound" by God. If it is indeed god that allows for the 
existence and interrelation between monads for leibniz, can't our notion 
of the  bound book also act like a leibnizian god?


perhaps i am way off here, but thanks dominic for entering the dialogue 
and questioning my post. i wasnt too sure how long i could continue to 
dialogue with myselves.

graham
.


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