Friday

There was a party on friday night. At Hades and B. It was fun, though I did go around - in a rather higgledy-piggledy fashion - telling everyone why a dose of Nietzsche makes radicalism so much more fun.
Hades and I considered the ways in which the appearance (or name, etc) of a thinker affects the extent to which we open ourselves to their thought. Hades began by saying that he took an instant dislike to David Hume, because he hasn't a nice name. We agreed on the need to complicate this, since A.N. Whitehead has possibly the ugliest name in philosophy, and yet his late works make him seem marginally interesting, enigmatic, and cutting-edge.
I put forward that old favourite of mine: that it is possible to gather a lot about someone not by their looks but by their countenance, their bearing, their facial expressions, the way in which they hold themselves, and the 'look' on their hands. This view was bolstered, I thought, by an interview - which I saw last week - with Francis Bacon. Up 'til that point, I had only ever seen still photographs of him (ok, and self-portraits, but that is another matter). Frankly, his face repulsed me, in an astonishingly powerful way. Yet when I got to see it animated, talking, quaffing red tea, I fell in love with that face.