I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

Socrates ... did not write. It seems academically obvious that he perished because he did not publish!

I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.

Then why do you want to know?" "Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.

The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.

Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.

If culture did not filter, it would be inane - as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.