Dispensing with the tech bros
1 day ago
Suppose I say of a friend: "He isn't an automaton." - What information is
conveyed by this, and to whom would it be information? To a human
being who meets him in ordinary circumstances? What information could it give him? (At the very most that this man always behaves like
a human being, and not occasionally like a machine.)
But, after all, the game is supposed to be defined by the rules! So, if a
game prescribes that the kings are to be used for drawing lots before a game of
chess, then that is an essential part of the game. What objection might
one make to this? That one does not see the point of this
prescription. Perhaps as one wouldn't see the point either of a rule by
which each piece had to be turned round three times before one moved
it. If we found this rule in a board-game we should be surprised and
should speculate about the purpose of the rule. ("Was this prescription
meant to prevent one from moving without de consideration?")
How am I filled with pity for this man? How does it come out what
the object of my pity is? (Pity, one might say, is a form of conviction that
someone else is in pain.)
The novel was criticised around the time of its first publication by some literary critics for its straightforward "old fashioned" realism, a type of Stendhalian or Tolstoyan realism that particularly irritated neo-realists such as Elio Vittorini and Alberto Moravia. However, the novel was very popular among so-called common readers, as well as with prestigious foreign intellectuals such as Louis Aragon and E. M. Forster. In 1963 Il Gattopardo was made into a film, directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.