Category Archives: Grammar

NL V: “The Ambiguity of Feeling”

Index to this series

Feeling differs from thought. Thought is founded in feeling; thought is erected on feeling; thought needs feeling. Thought needs feelings that are strong enough to support it. But thought itself is not strong (or weak); it has (or can have) other properties, like precision and definiteness. Thought can be remembered and shared in a way that feeling cannot.

The New Leviathan is a work of thought. One might say that a work of thought cannot properly explain feeling. Collingwood himself says this, more or less, in Chapter V, even in its very title: “The Ambiguity of Feeling.” Continue reading

Strunk and White

The following is a lightly edited concatenation of some emails I wrote several years ago, in response to “50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice,” Geoffrey K. Pullum’s article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 17, 2009). [I returned to Strunk and White in March 2018; I supplemented the present post in July 2018.] Continue reading