Being & Tim

Merry Christmas and a Happy Old Meme!

2012-01-02T11:29:00.002Z

Here's Hipster Heidegger to wish you a happy New Year. By showing you how cool he is.

2011-12-15T15:53:00.001Z

I am very lazy and have disappointed you all with the lack of Being & Tim comics *hangs head in shame*

I can only offer you the comfort of Happy Heidegger

Hopefully there will be new comics in the near future, including NIGHT OF THE LIVING UTILITARIANS! & I'M A PHILOSOPHER GET ME OUT OF HERE!

see you soon,
becca x

Being and Tim diaries!

2011-09-16T13:29:00.000+01:00

Yes folks that's right, it's time for the 'Being & Tim Diaries' again!

Some of you might have been lucky enough to purchase a Being & Tim diary last year. For those of you who didn't and might be wondering what they look like, here's a picture of my Mum reading one, looking bemused but educated I like to think ;-). Of course she got a copy cos she's my supportive Mum, but don't let that make you think they're not good diaries

Each diary is hand-bound, and A5 size, with about 121 pages. This works out at 2 weeks to view and 18 Being & Tim cartoons from the site! (There'll be a new lot in this year, for those of you who bought a diary last year). There's also the regular diary stuff: month to view, year to view, holidays (UK on the whole), and a small notebook section. There are even quotations on some pages, although I used up most of the funny quotations last year. Philosophers really can be quite dull.

You can see a couple of photos of last year's diary below. This year they'll be bound with faux-suede, which is a lot nicer. They'll cost £20 each to preorder (as opposed to £23 when they come on sale in December) and while I know that's quite alot, they do take me ages, and I am pretty proud of how they look at the end.

If you'd like to pre-order one for £20 then please email me at rasdyer@gmail.com, or contact me through my Etsy shop at http://www.etsy.com/shop/beingandtimetc?ref=si_shop

Hope to hear from you! becca xo

If Immanuel Kant was Batman....

2011-09-14T10:52:00.000+01:00

...then Derrida would be the Riddler. As it is Kant is clearly Superman, so Derrida might be some sort of Lex Luther type, he's certainly more sultry than the Riddler in Batman Forever. Similar hair though......hmm...

How to introduce Derrida? It seems a little bit silly to try and quote wikipedia at this juncture, as his project, the infamous DECONSTRUCTION was precisely an attack on systems as totality.

Before I try, let's just go back to Monsieur Descartes, with his famous 'catchphrase' : 'I think therefore I am.' In trying to doubt everything Descartes found that the only thing he could be absolutely sure of was his own thoughts: you can't doubt your own existence without...well...thinking, which undermines the whole exercise really. But for Descartes, you can doubt your own body, physical reality might all be an illusion, like the Matrix or some video game brain in jar situation. (I nearly put brian-in-a-jar, but that would be something completely different).

So from Descartes comes one of the key discussions of Western Philosophy: how can we ever be sure that physical reality is not an illusion? Descartes does some fancy intellectual footwork appealing to God, which isn't very convincing. Berkeley says that things only really exist when we perceive them. Samuel Johnson kicks a stone and Hume just plays a game of bridge, just saying we should get on with the fact we can't be certain. Kant tries to join both together by appealing to two separate realms, saying that there is a structure to thought which presupposes certain things, that while they can't be verified they must be believed for our thoughts to make sense. Now that's the quickest summary of Kant's thought ever!

We can return to Derrida here. His point is that the way language works (developing Ferdinard Saussure's theory) precisely makes an appeal to a 'structure of thought' impossible. Language works differentially: that is to say, we recognise sounds and symbols in contrast to other sounds and symbols, not by reference to things outside of language. There isn't a point where we can say 'ah look there's that thing beyond language that justifies language' because we're using language! As such ' language depends on nothing, no fundamental ground of logic, science or society' (Holcombe: 2007), it just can't be determined absolutely. Any interpretation of a text is going to depend solely on the choice of some words over others, a suppression of some meanings in favour of others. Kant's interpretation of a structure of rationality would for Derrida be equally supressive.

Derrida thought this had huge ramifications for philosophical discourse, and to a certain extent this is true. On the grounds of this argument any concept claiming original authority, whether that be Heidegger's notion of authenticity, or concepts like absolute truth, meaning, identity and essence are simply stepping beyond their remit. Being cannot be said to be continually and statically 'present', a reference point for language that exists outside of it, because the structure of language disrupts this. Instead language is a constant flux of different interpretations, in which Being is neither present, nor absent. Of course this is impossible to draw, so instead I put him playing his Nintendo DS.

Lecture over, see you soon!

becca xo

p.s I cited John Holcombe's article from http://www.textetc.com/theory/derrida.html
Check it out if you want to learn more about Derrida!
p.p.s Being & Tim 2012 diaries will be ready to order soon! Photos to follow this week!
p.p.p.s I'm very welcome to hear comments from those who might have more knowledge than me on Derrida's work. As Holcombe suggests, ''Derrida himself was a good deal more astute and learned than his followers.'' (ibid.)

Philosophical Investigations....

2011-09-12T13:36:00.000+01:00

Hello!

You may have been wondering what we at Being &Tim Towers have been up to the last few months, as things have been more than a little quiet on the blog of late. I've been working on number of different projects, scattered all over empirical reality and the world-wide-interweb, and the next year should be pretty busy, which is very exciting.

Most relevantly, I've been doing some little pics for Peter Baron's brilliant site Philosophical Investigations: which is choc-ful of all sorts of resources and discussions for A-level students and their teachers. You can see an old Being & Tim on the site here and the commissions like the one below will be uploaded onto the site very shortly. Welcome to anyone coming from there, and for the rest of you I recommend a little peek...!

''Kant believed human experience could be divided between two realms, the realm of ideas [noumenal realm] and the realm of experience [phenomenal realm], and that morality came from the realm of ideas''' Peter Baron, for more have a look around www.philosophicalinvestigations.co.uk

I've also been busy working on a children's book with author Sal Macip, and going to become a self-employed illustrator from next month, both of which are very scary, but you can see what I've been up to at my illustration blog: www.rasdyer.blogspot.com. (Still very much under construction!) Hopefully at some point in then next few weeks I'll be launching a new website that will combine all my comics, illustrations and pictures of pigs in pants into one lovely home! But I'll keep you posted...

The last piece of exciting news is that I've finally relocated my MA dissertation! All 20,000 words of it. And to celebrate me being able to navigate my google account I'm going to release this 'lost treasure' to you, a piece at a time.....mwaahahahahah. I'll post the first section at some point this week, as well as a new Being & Tim cartoon.....how exciting!

see you soon,

becca xo

Why do you have to ruin EVERYTHING?!

2011-08-03T15:55:00.000+01:00

When I was a child I had a Spirograph toy that I used to really enjoy, but now I'm older I realise it was all just a way of trying to get me to LIKE MATHS! GAH!

Being & Nothingness in 'A Dialectical Love Story'

2011-07-30T12:35:00.000+01:00

The Sickness Unto Death

2011-07-15T13:56:00.001+01:00

theoLOLgians

2011-07-05T16:42:00.000+01:00

Simone Weil

While doing some ''research'' I stumbled upon the blog http://theololgians.wordpress.com/, which describes itself as ''The LOLCATZ meme, but for nerdy theology types''. Pretty self-explanatory, and also pretty darn funny. Check out augustine and tillich for starters, and bonhoffer is pretty funny too.

Theodor Adorno (sort of a theologian)

Paul Tillich

I submit these 3 for your comments....
becca x

with apologies to Edward Said

2011-06-13T13:02:00.002+01:00

it is my duty to mitigate the silliness of this cartoon by demanding you follow this link before reading the cartoon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Said

done?

no cheating now....

okay then....

The adventures of Thomas Aquinas!

2011-05-16T08:56:00.001+01:00

This cartoon is abit more silly than normal, and was really just a nod to one of my favourite past-times: foraging. I'm a particular fan of anything you can make out of humble weed: and can often be found knee-high in nettles collecting ingredients to make soup, pesto, and most importantly BEER!

Anyway, while looking for recipes for Dandelion and Burdock, a traditional British soft-drink that tastes a bit like American root beer, I found this alleged story of its origins....

''One notable example has it that St. Thomas Aquinas, after praying for inspiration for a full night, walked from his place of prayer straight into the countryside and, "trusting in God to provide", concocted the drink from the first plants he encountered. It was this drink that aided his concentration when seeking to formulate his theological arguments that ultimately culminated in the Summa Theologica.^[2]

^{And then I slightly extrapolated on this, using my own special brand of infantile humour. haha!}

^{The absence of both Being and Tim in this cartoon makes me feel the need to compensate with a arbitrary link. Here's one my friend sent to me about Nietzsche's horrendous musical compositions. Poor guy, I mean, can it be that bad???!}

^{Listen here to decide, and leave me your comments, especially if you make it to the end!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcvINsq1KSw}

becca xo

SUPER KANT!

2011-05-06T10:25:00.004+01:00

Super Kant has been gracing Being and tim since back in the day. He's one of my favourite characters, and has battles with Uberman and of course, his enemy SLUMBERING DOGMAN! I was never really happy with the original cartoon but have managed to redo it to get some of the Critique of Pure Reason in at the end, which makes it MORE EDUCATIONAL (so don't enjoy it too much)! He's also a bit more dishy than he was to begin with....;-)

Any other ideas about who Super Kant could battle? Arnold Schopenaheur-negger?! Leave me your comments!

becca x

I would defend to the death your right to say the most ridiculous things, really I would.

2011-04-29T13:43:00.001+01:00

Voltaire is probably right, but at the same time...mneh.

becca x

Being & Tim Easter Egg Hunt! Today! Brighton!

2011-04-24T13:18:00.002+01:00

For anyone living in Brighton, UK, today I will be hiding 10 Being & Tim Mini-Fortune-Cookie-Non-Religious-Philosophical-Eggs, in the Pavilion Gardens for ANYONE TO FIND! Each egg comes complete with philosophical advice, a plasticine model of Being, a Being & Tim sticker and a mini-creme egg (while stocks last). Better get down there quick before the plasticine and chocolate make a terrible gooey non-edible but philosophical mess!

Those of you not in brighton might enjoy the non-chocolatey plasticine of this old chestnut ---->..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-034Un28R4

I am also working on new stuff so will post it very soon... Happy Non-Religious Chocolate Day!
becca x

Being & Tim's Holiday: Day 5

2011-01-23T11:12:00.000Z


Being & Tim at 'PhilosophyLand' with Marcel Mouse!

Rather than being a real mouse, Marcel Mauss was an anthropologist whose most famous text was

The Gift, in which he analysed the sociological construction of gift-giving, especially in relation to non-capitalist societies. Just a cursory glance through the wikipedia entry shows how interesting a text it is:

Mauss argued that gifts are never "free". Rather, human history is full of examples that gifts give rise to reciprocal exchange. The famous question that drove his inquiry into the anthropology of the gift was: "What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?" (1990:3). The answer is simple: the gift is a "total prestation", imbued with "spiritual mechanisms", engaging the honour of both giver and receiver... Such transactions transcend the divisions between the spiritual and the material in a way that according to Mauss is almost "magical". The giver does not merely give an object but also part of himself, for the object is indissolubly tied to the giver: "the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them" (1990:31). Because of this bond between giver and gift, the act of giving creates a social bond with an obligation to reciprocate on part of the recipient.

As I have never read the text I don't want to comment on the ins-and-outs of Mauss's theory: but even the short quotations in the above wikipedia entry show its parallels to Marx's early writings, particularly this quotation from Comments on James Mill. Marx has just outlined the way that commodity exchange under capitalism alienates us from each other: when I buy something what is important to me is the object I am purchasing, not the human act of labour that stands behind the object in question. Under this form of exchange human beings are valuable only as instruments that create objects; as an alternative to this Marx puts forward this idea:

Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. Each of us would have in two ways affirmed himself and the other person. 1) In my production I would have objectified my individuality, its specific character, and therefore enjoyed not only an individual manifestation of my life during the activity, but also when looking at the object I would have the individual pleasure of knowing my personality to be objective, visible to the senses and hence a power beyond all doubt. 2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work, that is, of having objectified man's essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature. 3) I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and therefore would become recognised and felt by you yourself as a completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love. 4) In the individual expression of my life I would have directly created your expression of your life, and therefore in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realised my true nature, my human nature, my communal nature.

Our products would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.

(this quotation is right near the end of http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/index.htm)

In this wonderful quotation, Marx seems to be envisaging a type of exchange where the act of individual labour (what he views as our 'species-being') is what gives the object value, where the work on the object itself is a form of dialogue (or dialectic) in which our relationship is continually redefined and our humanity made visible in ever different creations. Compare this to what Mauss says in The Gift "the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them" (1990:31).

Marx seems to move away from this view by the time he gets to Capital, but I think it's a compelling place to start thinking about what economy means, and how we might be able to intervene within capitalism. Derrida and Adorno both return to this idea of the gift, Derrida in Given Time (see context here ) and Adorno in Minima Moralia, Section 21. But they're both weirdoes....haha xx

Being & Tim's Holiday: Day 4

2011-01-20T20:14:00.001Z


Chillin' at the Grand Hotel Abyss with Adorno

I've not read the Theory of the Novel, and my current favourite thing about Georg Lukacs is the inescapable link to another, more contemporary philosopher. So I can't comment much on the specific context of the following quotation:

'A considerable part of the leading German intelligentsia, including Adorno, have taken up residence in the ‘Grand Hotel Abyss’ which I described in connection with my critique of Schopenhauer as ‘a beautiful hotel, equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity. And the daily contemplation of the abyss between excellent meals or artistic entertainments, can only heighten the enjoyment of the subtle comforts offered.’ (Die Zerstörung der Vernunft, Neuwied 1962, p. 219)'

----Georg Lukács 1962 : Preface to The Theory of the Novel at http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/theory-novel/preface.htm

Nevertheless, I think there might be something quite keen in his criticism of Adorno, whose philosophy, as compelling and formidable as it is, offers (by Adorno's own standards I think it should be added) very little in the way of 'bridge' over the abyss which is the inherent self-contradictions of capitalism. Rather the activity of Negative Dialectics seems to involve precisely dwelling on these contradictions: that in writing and attending to them we bear witness to a future in which these contradictions are no longer apparent: where the objects we speak of, and particularly the subjects, can exist as ends in themselves rather than as means towards profit.

If anything compels me to return to University for a phD it's the tension between thinkers like Adorno (and Simone Weil) on one side who seem to value contemplation, and perhaps more ACTION-BASED philosophers, like Nietzsche perhaps. Or Gillian Rose. Something like this anyway.

Last holiday snap tomorrow, hope to see you then.

becca xo

ps. new cartoon here too!

Being & Tim's Holiday: Day 3

2011-01-19T01:23:00.000Z

They finally made it to the Realm of the Forms: looks a bit familiar don't you think?

Being & Tim's Holiday: Day 2

2011-01-18T12:52:00.002Z

Being & Tim got a bit lost on their way to the realm of the forms!

While I'm here, to the left are a few pictures of recent Being & Tim items: some stickers and some diaries. Still available to order from rasdyer@gmail.com or from Dave's comics....

My ongoing one-a-day project is still going on here , otherwise, see you tomorrow for more about Being & Tim's holiday!
becca xo

Being & Tim's Holiday Snaps: Day 1

2011-01-17T15:23:00.000Z

I've finally got round to drawing some B&T for my one-a-day-project: this is a picture from Being & Tim's holiday in Greece...

Here is what Wikipedia says about Plato's Cave and what it means:

''Socrates describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the prisoners''

That is to say: it's not a real cave.

For those of you who are interested, I am still doing my one-a-day drawing project, but have moved it to another blog, cos Being & Tim were getting jealous. You can find it at www.rasdyer.blogspot.com, and I'll update it every couple of days (my new year's resolution said nothing about scanning everyday! But I will do my best)

Another pic from Being & Tim's holiday tomorrow,

becca xx

january 5th - 7th (more philosophy to follow!)

2011-01-12T10:52:00.002Z

jan 5: a character from a book i'm illustrating, commenting on my use of materials.

jan 7: when i had a job, this happened alot.

jan 6: sorry this isn't great quality, don't have scanner at the mo.

january the eighth to the twelfth of my drawings....

2011-01-12T10:36:00.000Z

january 11th: this is sometimes how i feel about doing one drawing a day.

january 10th: this is 100% truth. I saw it in the hospital.

january 9th: this is 100% truth too.

january 8th: this is about 90% truth except it wasn't so fun

january 4th

2011-01-04T22:51:00.001Z

This is data entry pig who is a character from my other blog Friends on Benefits. He got his name because he dreams of doing data-entry for a living. Hopefully i will finally get round to drawing his adventures, as part of my one-a-day project. But you won't get to see them for the next few days because I'm going to Scotland, to hide out in the mountains away from human life (like the Shining but with more cups of tea). I'm not cheating though: I'll draw the pictures, I just won't be able to post them....Sorry. Back on the 10th though and will put any pictures of D.E.Pig here and on Friends on Benefit. But who knows what I might draw tomorrow?! MUOHOAHAHA.....

becca xo

jan 3

2011-01-03T15:50:00.000Z

Today I started to draw an orchid...

but I got bored...

january 2nd!

2011-01-02T22:40:00.000Z


Sketch for day 2: SUPER DEPRESSIVE! I'd like to spend more time tomorrow, do something classy! We shall see!

one-a-day project

2011-01-01T20:33:00.001Z

In 2010 my friends Caz and Kathryn Gibson both did totally unconnected 'one-a-day' projects for different amounts of time. This year I am gonna try and follow their example and spend a bit of time every day drawing, playing moosic or making something and then putting it on this blog. Here's the first drawing: something I've been intending to draw for my 'Gallows Humour' blog but have only just got around to. I'll put it up there as well, but i thought i'd share it here too.

becca xo

2011201120112011

2011-01-01T13:19:00.000Z

Happy New Year! I hope you had a better evening than me. I had flu, and was in bed, when this demon appeared and told me that i'd have to live ye life again and inumerable times again right down to the moon and the spider in the window, and even himself...

no wait, that was something else...

Instead, not wanting to be left out of one of the most festive of activities, I compiled a TOP TEN list of Being & Tim 2010 posts for those of you who might be new to the site, or just for anyone wanting to revisit their favourite moments. Do you remember that time when Dasein started crying? what LOLz..

There'll be new adventures, philosophical and otherwise, coming soon. Woop!
beccaxo

New version of Marxist Musical Chairs!

2010-12-07T16:05:00.000Z

Here's another new version of an old cartoon, that's also going to be in the 2011 diary. It's a very obvious pun on the last line of the Communist Manifesto: 'Workers of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your chains!'

Mark Steel has a very funny lecture about Marx. Check out the first part here, if you have time. It's great!

becca xo

something for the meantime

2010-12-06T16:10:00.000Z

While I work hard on the new diary, here's a new version of an old cartoon i did, that will feature in its pages. The Excluded Middle (the little green chap on the right) is an idea of Derrida's I believe, and is essentially the idea that we can create a suspension between what seems like a simple opposition. For example in the case of gender, rather than preferencing male or female, we can question the necessity and morality of making a choice at all. The act of suspension takes place through the act of writing, as we continuously question and deconstruct all notions of stability.

I think it's rubbish.

becca xo

Being & Tim 3: The Heidegger Years!

2010-12-01T13:31:00.001Z

The next lot of Being & Tim cartoons have been photo-copied and enveloped for your enjoyment. This collection includes 6 Being & Tim cartoons inspired by the work of Martin Heidegger (left) (including Being-in-the-world, Tool-Being, Ready-to-hand, Naked Dasein, Being with a Big B, and Not-at-home). They're a great summary of the main themes of Being & Time! ;-)

Yeah, I know you could just print them off yourselves, but then again, how would you get your hands on the EXCLUSIVE Being & Tim Stickers that are in this pack?! That would take a LOT more planning, and at £1 a pack plus P & P it's a lot simpler just to order them straight from my email address: rasdyer@gmail.com. I could also send you Being & Tim 1 and 2 for £1 each too, as they all make great stocking fillers!

For those of you still waiting on diaries, I have nearly completed the final formatting, and will let you know as soon as they are ready for me to send,

becca xo

Coming to a cinema near you!

2010-11-22T15:40:00.002Z

The return of the repressed is the process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness or in behavior, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious." Parapraxes, bungled or symptomatic actions, are examples of such derivatives. (http://www.answers.com/topic/return-of-the-repressed#ixzz161hl3G95) Y'know Freudian Slips (not to be confused with Freudian Slippers). When you say one thing but mean you mother, and all that. Whereas Kant was all about rationality, and motorbikes, as you can see. You can see Kant in action here here and here, if you're a particular fan :-)

(This will most likely be featured in the exclusive 2011 Being & Tim handmade diary, available for order at £18 each!)

Oh, I've got a new post on my other blog too. Hope you like it

becca xo

Being-for-itself

2010-11-08T08:06:00.001Z

Here's another one! Inspired by Sartre's use of the term 'l'etre-pour-soi' (see the Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy for a proper account, although there is as yet no sign of Nothingness in this cartoon...maybe Being's detachment from the world will cause him to emerge tomorrow?!!!)

Extra points will be given for knowing which philosopher inspired the Existential porn mag 'The Body in its Sexual Being'. Without using Google, you big cheats. xo

Naked Dasein

2010-11-04T16:21:00.000Z

'Even in the most indifferent and inoffensive everydayness the Being of Dasein can burst forth as a naked 'it is and it has to be'

Oooh matron.

xo

I hope Adam Smith don't mind it.

2010-11-03T09:10:00.000Z

This is so good it merits a whole post for itself.

AMAZING!

xo

Schrodinger's LOLcats

2010-10-27T17:02:00.002+01:00

Awhile ago I talked about my plan to do a cartoon called Schrodinger's Cat in the Hat, based on the famous thought experiment by Schrodinger that everyone knows about but no one really understands. As such, I have had to do a bit of extra research before turning my pen to a quantum-physical rhyme, and in one of the many deep philosophical discussions I had with friends on the subject, was inspired to do my own take on the internet phenomenon that is lolcats (thanks to kesh for the idea.) It turns out that pretty much everyone has made this joke, but it's just still funny! Here's another picture I found on the web, just to be fair to the cats, and a few more below i edited myself.

Incidentally it's pretty hard to find an animal that hasn't already been attached to Schrodinger on the interwebs. I found Schrodinger's poodle, but let me know if you find anymore!

becca xo

another blog

2010-10-26T16:15:00.001+01:00

I've got a new blog. I've not finished making it look nice, but i put a post up,
check it out, if you feel like it at...

http://friendsonbenefits.blogspot.com/

becca xo

Being does not belong to man

2010-10-11T16:44:00.001+01:00

Simone Weil says that 'being does not belong to man' on page 33 of Gravity & Grace, the most famous of her works. Wikipedia says:

'It is difficult to speak conclusively of Weil's theology, since it exists only in the form of scattered aphorisms in her notebooks, and in a handful of letters. Neither of these formats provides a very direct path to understanding or evaluating her beliefs^'

^{and I'm inclined to believe it, not because it's right but because I'm exhausted by a weekend of gigging and making nettle ale!}
^{Thanks to Nicole Holgate for the reference, her blog is here, and she does a cool zine entitled 'What Would Nietzsche Do?'}
^{She would say that it's more about zombies than Nietzsche, but I think the important themes are all there: existential angst,}
^{sceptical self-reflexivity, moustaches....}

^{I've also been working on another blog, for my illustration work. It's not going to be half as fun as Being & Tim.}

^{'Til Thursday,}

^{becca xo}

A book of Freudian jokes.

2010-10-07T15:30:00.001+01:00

I think this one explains itself! More on Monday. xo

Being & Tim Update!

2010-10-03T09:36:00.000+01:00

Just thought I'd let you know that I've not disappeared, I've just been working on some varying projects, and planning some Being & Tim Christmas gifts including a BEING & TIM 2011 Diary!

The diaries will be A5 size (ish, maybe more on the square side), hard-back and hand-bound with 18 (or more, haven't decided yet!) A5 colour Being & Tim illustrations, and a number of smaller ones, quotations etc, to make 2011 your most philosophical year yet! Pre-order at rasdyer@gmail.com and get it at a reduced price of £18! (It'll be ready some time in October sort of thing but you can pay when i send it or summat)

Also Being & Tim 3 should be out for Christmas time, including more Being & Tim cartoons, some STICKERS and a BADGE! I'll keep you updated on that....the other two collections are still available for £1.50 each or £3.00 for both, plus p&p, email me if you would like me to post you them :-)

Anyway, I've also been doing a few different illustrations for different projects. This one (featuring Descartes, Hume and Kant) is for a cartoon/comic/satire/newspaper set in 1791 and based on a sinister story of a scientist and his dream machine.....dah da DANNN! The paper is coming out as part of the White Night event in Brighton. For more on the newspaper see their website, but if you haven't heard about the White Nights thang, then check them out too! Should all be lots of fun.

Anyway, more Being & Tim to follow, let me know if you're interested in those diaries....

Cheerio!

becca xo

Video clip

2010-09-09T16:51:00.000+01:00

My pink pen ('Being'-colour) ran out yesterday, interupting the new cartoon I've been working on. I bought another one today so hopefully it'll be finished by tomorrow, but while you're waiting, here's a funny clip from comedian Ricky Gervais about the Nazi's misappropriation of Hitler. Chortle. becca xo

Being & Technology

2010-09-01T14:22:00.000+01:00

Heidegger talks about Dasein and its relationship to technology quite alot. I don't think he quite meant this....

And while we're on the subject of technology, check out this website that my brother and dad are setting up: www.carebook-dev.org.The idea is that it's a support network for patients and carers, as well as providing information and medical advice. Like Facebook, for cancer!

becca xo
(P.S Geeky favourite thing about this cartoon: Kierkegaard is on facebook chat as idle, because of what he says about idleness!! ;-) )

something completely different

2010-08-31T14:43:00.000+01:00

Here's a little cartoon featuring Data-Entry pig.
'Give a man a banana and he can eat for a day....'

More B&T to follow
bxo

Tool-Being

2010-08-27T12:33:00.001+01:00


I thought this book deserved a cartoon

The Return of the Fat Pink Duke (BEING not me...!)

2010-08-26T15:33:00.003+01:00

Hej hej and hello folks!

I got back from Sweden & Dragonfly festival yesterday morning at about 6am, but thought I'd wait until after a long sleep to update the blog! (Didn't want to drool on the keyboard for one thing!)

The festival was great, set in a forest near Falköping, what I didn't realise was that the forest is home to a reconstruction of a pre-historic village! So Being & Tim were exhibited, and I was sleeping in, an actual hut. (Although I like to think of it more as a hobbit hole.)

Outside the hobbit hole!

Inside the hut (Being & Tim on your right!)

Oh, before I go rabbiting on, here's the actual cartoon for today. Being-not-at-home. It's a Heideggerean term (again) about feeling das unheimlich: out of place in the world (literally 'not-at-home'). Part of Dasein's authenticity is its ability to recognise its displacement from the objective world, its own particularity and individuality...I'm sure a Heideggerean could explain better than that. Actually, does Heidegger actually use that word or am I getting him confused with Freud? Gosh I really should read Being & Time...

Anyway, Being's using the term to try and avoid Heidegger. What larks!

Part of the point of not posting while I was away was to catch up with some new cartoons. Unfortunately Ryanair's baggage policy (one lunchbox each) made it impossible to take my big sketchbook so I spent a lot of time just doodling really, plus being inspired by one of my fellow artists at the festivals, the lovely Emma. You can see her work at www.emmaekstam.com, it really is amazing. It's inspired me to start drawing things again, (I put a picture of my hands here for comedy value!), plus we talked about doing some illustrations together of Thus Spoke Zarasthustra. It's a pretty Romantic book (well I'd say it was satirical more than Romantic, but let's not split hairs right now) but the point is that all the references to dancing stars and tightrope walkers and hurdy gurdy songs would lend itself well to illustration. Y'know, spreading the word through imagery, like stained-glass windows! haha. Anyway, I'm going to try and put some more sketches up on here, to develop my style abit. But tell me if you just want more Being & Tim! (I don't really know the etiquette of blogs, can I change subjects a bit? Is that a betrayal?!)

Anyway, here are some more photos, in case you're interested. You can also see an animation I made at the festival on my youtube account. It's about my bandmates Jimmy & El, who in many ways are similar to Being & Tim!

A proper fairy tale mushroom (there's a pixie under there if you look hard enough)

Anyway, I'll update tomorrow, just to make up for the lack of posts over the holiday. (I'll also forgive you for not voting on my poll. haha)

becca xo

another hut


susanna gets her prehistoric skills on, cooking on an open fire!

a viking boat at the Gothenburg City Museum

Gothenburg

Susanna & Sara dancing in the Main Tent at Dragonfly

Apologies.

2010-08-13T10:17:00.000+01:00

Hi there everyone,

I'm terribly sorry i've not had a chance to update anything recently. I've been busily preparing for the Dragonfly festival in Sweden which i've been going on about. Yesterday I ordered some prints, and also got some rather posh looking business cards! heehee. But i've been sketching too, some new ideas: Being-not-at-home, Tool-Being...and i ordered a book on quantum theory so i can double check my schrodinger's cat in the hat!!

I don't think I mentioned that I put a lot of paper 'business cards' in all the copies of Being & Time at Sussex University library...!! If that's what's led you to this site then welcome!!! Please feel free to leave a comment! But it turned out to be quite a good way to find new ideas (apparently Heidegger talks about 'naked Dasein' somewhere! Maybe I should do an 'adult' Being & Tim??!)

So, I'm off on Tues/Weds, and back the next week on 24th, so i probably won't have any time to put anything up before then... but i'll make sure that I take lots of photos and most importantly do lots of sketches! I've put up a new poll as a kind of compensation for while i'm away....

See you in a week or two!

becca xo

Saturday

2010-08-02T09:56:00.000+01:00

The compARTment space, featuring Nic Blair's elastic installation

Books from Matthew James Kay

Zines


Paul from POG and a sunny sky!

Comics by Paul

Clare plays uke

Live Graffiti from Wet Paint Productions

A beautiful collection of Peach Melba zines

Thanks to everyone who came along for the Compartment opening at the open market on Saturday, especially everyone who played music or brought along zines. It was a nice day, starting off a bit rainy and gloomy, but ending up with the sun shining merrily as we ate cake and listened to music...
Here are some pictures for you...

The Death of Me plays the first set of the day


Ben from Boy in the Cupboard sings about the	end of the world

Me.

mmmmm zines again

The compartment space, with Ben from Brighton DJs

Clothes and Art at one of the Maker's stalls

Dresses by Dig for Victory at another stall

Zine Stall tomorrow: featuring NEW BEING & TIM!

2010-07-30T22:19:00.000+01:00

Well tomorrow is the opening day of compARTment, you may have seen the posters that I made in an earlier post. Just to get you excited (if you live in the Brighton area) I thought I'd post a photo of some of the zines that'll be at the Open Market, off London Road, at some unspecified time after 9am. Poetry and apocalyptic postcards from the Young Hanoverians, some stuff from Andy P (creator of Celph, there in the background) and some other stuff about zombies and social unrest....and apparently my friend Nicole is bringing her comic down, which apparently has something to do with Nietzsche! Score!

But eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed a new-looking-brown envelope! Yes folks, that's right, there's a new edition of Being & Tim, featuring 8 more ontological adventures...Still only £1! Available at all good comic shops once I get round to putting them in there. But available at the open market tomorrow from about 9ish....!!

Last thing now, too good not to mention, I finally got round to collecting my friend's spinning wheel, i am officially A SPINSTER!!! WOOOHOOOOO!!!!! And if you don't believe me that spinning wheels are related to the word spinster then check out the dictionary!

Cheerio, hope to see you tomorrow!

becca xo

almost what i said it would be...!

2010-07-29T11:03:00.000+01:00

so, I got distracted from scanning in the first ever sketch of Being & Nothingness, by my friend. But on the up side I was distracted by drawing more cartoons! These are a couple of sketches for my new blog (which is still under construction) about humourous ways of dealing with cancer! My brother was diagnosed with a brain tumour in January, and it helps a little bit to be able to appreciate how bizarre the whole situation is. The cartoon on the left details how absurdly sensitive one becomes, while the one on the right focuses more on the homocidal tendencies brought up by tragedy. In fact, maybe I intentionally killed my pot plant out of suppressed rage? hum.

In other news, I'm going to be exhibiting Being & Tim in Sweden for the Dragonfly festival in August! I'm very excited about this, but also a bit scared, as it'll be my first proper exhibition, and there's still a lot to do....!

Anyway, I'll put that Being & Nothingness cartoon up soon, it's pretty cute

becca xo

Simone Weil STRIKES again!

2010-07-27T12:43:00.002+01:00

Here's ANOTHER joke gleaned from the writings of Simone Weil featuring Nothingness, Being's binary opposite, who you may remember from here and here. It's funny cos they're binary opposites!

Anyway, as always i'm in a permanent rush. I'll post some news tomorrow, with a little cartoon that my friend Kevin drew of Being and Nothingness (he kinda came up with him, so he deserves some credit!)

'Til tomorrow!

becca xo

a not very philosophical post with FREE Being & Tim Business card!

2010-07-22T22:14:00.002+01:00

Exhibit A

well, the two things i've been working on this week are: exhibit A: Being and Tim business card! Print some off and pass them around your friends! You'll soon be the coolest kids in town! And if you live in Brighton, UK, you might be interested in printing out the other poster I made: another (better) design for my friend's open space regeneration group compARTment. I'm hoping to run a zine stand there in a week or two, so will probably have less time to draw cartoons cos I'll be e-mailing and doing all the boring stuff that you always seem to forget is involved in the glitzy glamourous world of zine fests. But come along if you're in the area, July 31st at Brighton's Open Market. There'll be music and zines and lots of elastic! (intriging no?!)

Exhibit B

So sorry for the boring post, but I'll try and work on the long-awaited Schrodinger's Cat in the Hat for next time! Cheerio!

becca xo

Well, you asked for it...

2010-07-20T21:21:00.001+01:00

So, the votes from the poll are in, and Karl Marx and Simone Weil are the winners! (Although it was a pretty close thing as you can see.) To celebrate here's a Simone Weil 'joke', of which i have no idea about the reference. My friend Stuart is doing his phD on Forgiveness and he sent this joke to me once in a text message. Perhaps if you put a nice comment on the blog he will recall the reference for us. No pressure Stu!

Anyway, Simone Weil, despite being one of my favourite philosophers, doesn't exactly 'brim' with comic potential: in fact she's up there with Adorno as one of the most austere philosophers I've ever read. If you're unfamiliar with her work then check out these quotes for starters. Could be a good 'straight man' though? Custard pie in the face routine perhaps? All ideas on a Stamped Addressed Email to rasdyer@gmail.com please....

However Mark Steel has recently opened my eyes to all the comic potential available from Marx: he sure was a colourful character! So expect lots of cartoons based on this video very soon! (I'm sort of in love with Mark Steel now)

Also, despite my attempt at garnishing your opinion about the direction of Being & Tim, I'm still a Nietzschean and therefore don't really believe in democracy! Should I have mentioned that before hand?!

See you soon suckers!! ;-)

becca xo

SUPER KANT VS. UBERMAN!

2010-07-12T23:57:00.004+01:00

What ho! I'm feeling better, and during my convalescence from 'strange-zombie-tiredness disease' i not only watched numerous sci-fi films but manage to finish Super Kant 3! Just in case the reference to 'uberman' isn't clear, the cartoon's actually a sort of lame attempt to summarize Nietzsche's critique of Kant's aesthetics in On The Genealogy of Morality (Third essay, Section 6).

The bare bones of Nietzsche's argument here seem to be that something just can't give pleasure without interest: we're precisely interested in being right. Nietzsche thinks the idea of 'pleasure without interest' is a 'non-concept and absurdity', which relies on the presupposition that we are all possessors of a transcendental, purely rational will. I guess if we could hold such an objective standpoint then we could really understand the idea of being non-interested, but Nietzsche points out that every standpoint is couched in the conditions which allow it to thrive: it's self-preservative, and for Nietzsche, shouldn't be imposed upon others who live under different conditions. I'm not sure if it's really this that leads him to call Kant a catastrophic spider, but he does, in The Antichrist. (The Portable Nietzsche. Penguin. 1954. pp578). And Kant's comments at the end are to do with his view on animals, how we should treat them as examples of how we should treat humanity, I forget where he says this but I know I read it in that Philosophy Anthology that I had in the First Year of Uni! It's like when tamagotchi's came out and everyone was worried because if young kids starved their computer-generated dog creatures that surely meant they'd do the same to their little brother. (Incidentally, I pretty much used exactly the same joke in another cartoon....don't tell anyone!!!)

Also, I thought it would be funny to see how much I could get Uberman to look like John Matrix, seeing as Arnie's about as close to the stereotype of the ubermensch as you can get. However it's worth pointing out that Nietzsche's use of the German term ubermensch is gender neutral, therefore 'superhuman' is more accurate than the term 'superman'.......there are lots of other ways in which the typical view of Nietzsche-as-fascist is wrong but that's another cartoon for another time...!

Oh, and if you have time, fill out my poll! Just was interested who the coolest philosopher is!

see you soon! becca xo

first draft for Super Kant 3!

2010-07-06T22:26:00.000+01:00

Oh dear. I wasn't on time again. And now it's time for dinner!
Here's a rough draft of my new comic, Super Kant 3 featuring UBERMAN!

Explanation, and final copy to follow! Enjoy becca xo

uh-oh spaghetti ohs!

2010-07-01T16:33:00.001+01:00

Well, I'm gonna come clean. I've not done a Being & Tim for today. I've been super-busy working on a poster/flyer thing for my friend's organisation compARTment (see left). They work to use derelict sites for workshops and community events and brilliant stuff like that. Anywayses, they've got some stalls at our local market, and said I could do a zinefest there if I made a poster. I kinda like it, and I definitely enjoy geeking out on photoshop! (the words are gonna go in the blue bit, I don't know what they are yet!)

But, just so you're not entirely bereft of some bad philosophy puns and toilet humour, I've also included a couple of very old sketches of Being & Tim, back when I was still working out how to draw them. They'll probably never make it into final pieces. But you never know, I've got to run out of ideas at some point!The second one's for all the Cavellians in the house....good old Stan :-)

(although for the record, his reading of Nietzsche in Cities of Words is appalling. E-mail if you wanna discuss...!)

Anyway I'll do my best to do a proper one for Monday, have a good weekend in the meantime!

beccaxo

The Relatives, The Absolute, and some stuff about Apophaticism

2010-06-28T20:50:00.000+01:00

oh dear. Not only did I miss our appointment last thursday, but once again I've left this late so I have had neither time to properly clean it up, nor to think of anything interesting to say, and as such, Being in particular looks a mess. Although in my defence, I was 'experimenting with a new style'....y'know, messy!

Anyway, the joke here is about confusing the relative with the absolute, but this is a silly philosophy pun, so instead I will talk about Apophatic Theology, in order to use long words and feel clever. Ready? Apophatic theology is a posh name for Negative Theology, that wot I mentioned in my last post, the idea that God is so awesome and infinite that language can't describe him, we just have to say what he's not like, in a gesture towards him. Sort of like saying, 'oh our language is so rubbish, but there is this thing beyond it that is not rubbish.' That's a direct from Julian of Norwich that is.

Also behold how I have put the three sections in three different parts! This is to build DRAMATIC TENSION, and not because it's too fiddly to put them altogether on photoshop...!!!! Let me know if you think it works, see you on thursday! becca xo

A Pedantic Ripost to the Guru Josh Infinity Project

2010-06-21T18:08:00.000+01:00

Hello there. Here's my post for this Monday, at a much more reasonable time than last week! I saw this video at the gym the other day. Apparently it's from 2008 but I hadn't heard it before although it is said to have 'taken the world by storm' or got 22 MILLION hits on youtube, which I guess is about the same thing. And yet, as so often happens in popular culture, the lyrics contain a ridiculous use of the word 'infinity.' (See the cartoon). Another example is in cult-classic movie Forbidden Planet, where the oh-so-super-intelligent scientist claims that the aliens managed to increase their energy supply: 'almost literally to the the power of infinity'. This latter example is made even more amusing by the use of the word 'almost' at the beginning!

Now I don't want to come across as a snob, if anything I'm just a pedant, but the philosophical and mathematical point of the term infinity is that it represents that which is beyond what we can describe or calculate, and as this can't have a conceivable upper limit then infinity cannot be said to be fixed point or a quantity! Rather it's a quality: so you can't multiply by the power of infinity anymore than you can multiply by the power of blue. Also the question of how we can know that infinity really exists when it is precisely that which exceeds and resists knowledge is a question that has been pondered by many philosophers and theologians. I don't think any of these thinkers thought that the answer might be 'Guru Josh'...

Now I suppose Guru Josh is being a bit more ''poetic'' than the writers of Forbidden Planet, but nonetheless

this sort of hippy mumbo-jumbo just serves to distract from how exciting the notion of the Infinite is, whether in astronomy or the Negative Theologians for example: Pseudo-Dionysus, Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, and then in all the philosophers influenced by the latter, including Heidegger. Gordon Finlayson, a lecturer at my old uni thinks we can even find a type of Negative Theology in Adorno. He presents a persuasive argument in 'On not Being Silent in the Darkness: Adorno's Singular Apophaticism' Adorno and Religion, ed. M. Waggoner, Indiana University Presss (forthcoming 2009). (Check me out with my 'proper' citations and everything!)

Hum. This post started off as a joke but I got a bit serious at the end there...In any case infinity is a serious issue, and cartoons like this need to be seen as the pathetic attempt for easy laughs that they are....

Join me in my quest for linguistic precision in popular culture!

becca xo

Priority to the Question of Being

2010-06-17T23:53:00.002+01:00

Right then. Well it's still technically thursday in the UK (16 minutes to go as I type!) and, as promised, here's another cartoon. I am too tired to write much, as I spent all evening photo-shopping Heidegger's face. He looks a bit camp, but then he seems to be a bit of a camp icon in this comic, as you may have guessed from the video I made back in March.

In a nutshell, Heidegger's project was precisely to give priority to the question of Being, i.e to explore what it means to actually be, the categories this involves and such. He explores this in Being & Time, the book that started this comic off in the first place! Hence Being's outrage....!

It's worth getting a closer look so you can peer deep into Heidegger's dark photo-shopped pupils, and try to see the ground of Being...
beccaxo
(finished at 23.53- a close call!)

Bricks & Sorrow

2010-06-14T22:25:00.001+01:00

beep beep! Okay so it's a bit late today, and the image is a bit mussy, because I was rushing and didn't have time for the usual post-production routine!

According to my second year notes (!) the idea of bricks and sorrow being incommensurable is an example of non-cognitivism or emotivism. Moral statements can't really be said to be rational, because they're not statements of fact about the world but expressions of preference: in reality there is nothing by which we can compare them, just like there's no way to decide whether lasagne or chocolate is 'better'. Saying 'murder is bad' is like saying 'boo hiss to murder': saying 'courage is good' only says 'hooray for courage'. (Funnily enough, this is often referred to as the boo-hurrah theory!). The upshot is that we can't have a moral system, because there just isn't a way of systematising such statements. Instead we should just learn more about bricks I guess.

becca xo

Sketches

2010-06-13T18:21:00.001+01:00

well, it's not a monday, but i have been doing a few little sketches, and got over-excited by my extra-curricular work and thought i'd show you, dearest internet users.

so over <-----there is a sketch of The Cat in the hat, which i will alter for copyright purposes in my upcoming Being & Tim 'Schrodinger's Cat in the Hat'! For those of you who follow my Twitter account, this is the quantum mechanics i've been attempting to get my head around! And it's trying to get it to rhyme which is the real kicker...still, keep you eyes on this page, I reckon it'll be ready sooooonish. Go here if you wish to prepare yourself!

And here ----> is another cartoon sketch of the two characters I hope you are familiar with now, Data Entry Pig and Becca Bumface. (They're going to get their own blog soon, called 'Friends on Benefits', one of those ''social satires'' of the world of work and the benefit system. Ho ho) Here Becca Bumface is attempting to simplify Nietzsche's notion of the Apollonian/Dionysiac. (That's the Birth Of Tragedy in front of her there...!) You can read more about this here, and make your own decision if Art Garfunkel really does represent the orgiastic and ecstatic elements of the Dionysian. So, just another sketch really, for my own amusement...and to mock my friend who said it...!

see you tomorrow kids! becca xo

2010-06-10T20:08:00.001+01:00

another one that needs very little explanation due to its exceptional silliness.... no time to chat i'm afraid, just off to play a gig with another band i is in. I play the glockenspiel!

have a good weekend! becca xo

The Questions of Being

2010-06-07T17:25:00.001+01:00

I was gonna say ' a bit of a silly one today', but then I realised that, well, that's not really something particularly notable! But yeah, here's Being asking some questions of himself, in a philosophical way. We've got references to some of the most important names of the philosophical realm. Plato, Hegel, Heraclitus, Flowers.

You may remember the cartoons on the left from this post and this post , here they are recounting my meeting with Being & Tim's first celebrity fan! NICK CAVE! Well, that's not really what happened at all, I did actually speak (or mumble) to him and then shoved my Being & Tim comic into his hand and ran away before he could say anything! He met my friend more recently, and said that Being & Tim was 'very moving'.

I think that means he doesn't understand it.

becca xo

Sometimes....

2010-06-03T17:05:00.002+01:00

I have to be quick today, but here's a little cartoon that I did with Jimmy the ukulele wielding maniac from the other day. It's based on that old quotation often attributed to Sigmund Freud, but no one really knows who first said it, it appears. If you don't get the reference, you're just going to have to ask your mum this time... ;-)

See you Monday,

becca xo

More Beckett!

2010-05-31T18:05:00.001+01:00

Well, I was thinking of going all ''low-brow'' today (!), but then my friend Jimmy (on the left with the ukulele) came up with these two ideas, continuing the Beckettian theme of the last post, and it must be added, further limiting the people who will find this funny. So these two are dedicated to all you weightlifting philosophy cartoon fans out there! For everyone else look here! Jimmy seems to think the second one was particularly funny, it being a reference to a Beckett quotation from Waiting for Godot again. I don't know how famous it is, nor how funny it is, but Jimmy insisted. And you can see from the photo that he's a dangerous man.

Let me know your thoughts anyway!

See you Thursday,

becca xo

Waiting for Blobbot

2010-05-27T11:45:00.001+01:00

Here's the new idea i've been working on, based on Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot, and in a equally significant sense, based on Sesame Street's re-telling of it 'Waiting for Elmo'. When I say based, I do mean copied from the script, although careful readers will notice that one frame deviates from the original!

As much as cookie monster might wish to say the play makes no sense at all (see link above), and having over-heard numerous dismissals during the interval when I went to see it in Brighton (parallels with X-men anyone?), I really really like Beckett, and what seems to me to be interesting about all of his plays is not that it makes no sense, but that they make too much sense: they have too many different meanings. It'd take me a long time and a lot of thought to explain how I don't mean this in a post-modern way: I think the plays actively resist some interpretations (an interesting point re: this is the wikipedia article about how fiercely opposed Beckett was to female actors in this particular play). What interests me the most is that even this play, which is easy to imagine as existing in some sort of vacuum, is in fact situated on the margins of a society: while this society is absent on stage, there are still numerous references to sleeping in ditches, a mob which beat up Estragon, the role of artists, etc. I suppose my intuition is that this is a play that critiques our society as it is now, not just 'ideas' or 'metaphors'. I think it's a materialist play about negotiating the contradictions of a post-industrialised society.

Anyway, it might just be that I've been listening to too much of the Diagram Brothers so I'll just shut up: if you're interested, watch this bit from the play: I find it incredibly moving. Alternatively, send me essays and things to prove me wrong, in either case,

Smash the System!

beccaxo

p.s Being & Tim has its first celebrity endorsement, more to follow! xx

Super Kant: Part 2

2010-05-24T15:54:00.002+01:00

I've been working hard on some new ideas, but as yet they're not quite finished, so instead I'm going to put up this (very) old but (I think) fairly amusing Super Kant episode! You may remember 'mild-mannered philosopher Clark Kant' from this episode but in this second installment we find him battling with the moral conundrum of whether or not to tell a murderer where their victim is hiding. Kant was so committed to the idea of respecting another rational agent that he did in fact suggest that the moral thing would be not to lie to the murderer. Presumably you'd then phone the police or something. As Being says, most people tend to be a little baffled by this example, and it certainly goes some of the way for giving Kant his 'hard-nosed' image. That and the front cover of the Critique of Pure Reason, he looks terrifying! (For more on this example have a look at the 'Inquiring Murderer' section on wikipedia.)

While we're talking about Kant's hard-nosed image, have a look at this video. It made me chuckle, but then again, I'm a Nietzschean.

See you on Thursday!

beccaxo

The Death of the Author

2010-05-20T10:19:00.002+01:00

Hello there! Happy Thursday! While I was looking for something to put up I found this super super old one, as you can see from the date. Over 4 years old, crikey! (For a long time I didn't know how to work photoshop, so i spent a couple of years just copying out the same 6 cartoons over and over again, trying to get them ABSOLUTELY perfect! Thank goodness for the clone stamp!). Anyway, like all Being & Tims, it's a not-very-sophisticated literalisation of a philosophical point: here the point in question is Roland Barthe's seminal essay 'The Death of the Author', where he suggests that imposing authorial intention as the source of the meaning of a text ignores the fact that texts can be interpreted in numerous different ways. A good example is whether or not Conrad's Heart of Darkness is racist: if you're the interested the Chinua Achebe argument is the most famous in this discussion. The notion of the death of the author then sort of leads to Derrida and post-structuralism and a 'flux between interpretations'. People are beginning to question whether this is a particularly honest approach to literature or life (while Derrida isn't wrong it's not clear that we don't always already operate under certain assumptions which post-structuralism doesn't touch.) Being & Tim certainly think so!

I've also started an Etsy Shop for those of you who might want to buy a set of Being & Tim comics, they're not expensive, I just thought I'd put my fear of the internet on one side and give it a go. So if you want one or two or many, then go HERE!

Ta ta for now! Becca xo

The Elephant of SURPRISE!

2010-05-18T12:40:00.003+01:00

I thought I should make this rather silly joke after the elephant of truth, but as it is, it's still not really more than a very silly pun. I tried to make it a bit more sophisticated with reference to Henry David Thoreau, so if you like the idea of him and Ralph Waldo Emerson having sexy parties at Walden pond then you can just ignore the elephant fellow. (The reference is from Walden, p31 in my edition which is Dover, 1995.) The guy basically spent a year squatting by a pond, being totally self-sufficient, and writing about the need to re-think our relationship to society. Really excellent Anarchist stuff.

beccaxo

The Elephant of Truth

2010-05-02T21:26:00.003+01:00

Hello there, me again! Here's another Being & Tim for you, it's fairly self-explanatory this time, though it has some basic principles of logic that I could just about scrabble together from my recollections of the first year of uni!

Also here's another character i've been working on: it's just a pencil sketch so sorry about the quality, but i thought it would be good to get more used to sharing my sketches so I post more. It's a character who's semi-autobiographical: she's a depressive by day, and by night she is SUPER-DEPRESSIVE! With all the energy and powers of a normal person! She's friends with Data-Entry Pig, from the other day....

beccaxo

The Courage Not to Act!

2010-04-29T13:27:00.001+01:00

I'm hoping that your excitement that I've ACTUALLY POSTED something will make you feel well-disposed towards my utter lack of referencing in regards to this new cartoon. (I definitely read it somewhere, I think it was Kierkegaard's notebooks or a minor source that seems to escape the tendrils of wiki-quote!) While searching for a reference I did find another Kierkegaard quotation that is just begging for a cartoon, so keep your eyes peeled for something to do with this. It certainly makes me feel better about not posting for awhile! But I have been drawing a few things. This little fellow below is Data Entry Pig, a new character I've been developing! He's PASSIONATE about retail! And most other things that will get him through the job interview. Also right at the bottom is the fiirst of many cartoons attempting to find some humour in my brother's brain tumour. There he is, getting zapped by Dr. Blofeld. Not many people know this but Dr. Blofeld did in fact train as a radiologist, before turning to plans of world domination. And that's me as a cartoon.

Anyway, I won't leave it so long next time. Cheerio! becca xo

More Animation!

2010-04-09T23:32:00.000+01:00

Short story: New ANIMATION HERE!

Long story: I guess it tends to be the way with me that I'll do a few cartoons in a week and then announce to the internet that: YES I AM A PROPER BLOGGER! and almost as soon as I say this I lose all motivation for posting whatsoever. Well, it's more complicated than that really, you'll find out more about it when I start one of my autobiographical cartoons in the next couple of weeks. It's going to be called 'Gallows Humour: or How I learnt to stop worrying and love my brother's brain tumour'. Yes folks, this is the mysterious illness my brother has been suffering from. It's crappy to say the least, but we're trying to keep a sense of humour: we've also tentatively begun work on 'Cancer! The Musical!'

Anyway, the news from Being & Tim is that I've made another little animation, this one based on a cartoon I posted last year. The whole idea of the category of being functioning as a predicate, or a label, is all to do with St. Anselm's proof of God. This proof hinges on the idea that God isn't a 'normal' idea, but is rather an infinite one, and it seems as though an infinitely good God that did not exist would not yet reach the limits of our thought: but rather would have to be succeeded by an infinitely good God that did exist.

Kant's famous argument against Anselm is that 'Being is obviously not a real predicate': which is to say that existence in turn is not a 'normal' concept: it's not like 'being blue' or 'being hungry': whether or not the thing exists in the real world doesn't make a difference to the concept: if this is hard to get your head round then think about this: does a 1 kg bag of sugar that you have in your hand weigh more or less than a 1 kg bag of sugar that you are imagining?!!

As you can see it all gets pretty confused, but if this isn't clear then go here and watch the animation and all will become clear!

haha.

beccaxo

Grey Mice Think Alike

2010-04-03T14:50:00.001+01:00

When my dad was about the age he is in this picture, he did a test where he was asked to fill in the sentence 'G___ M___ think alike'. As you might have guessed, he thought that the answer was grey mice, which I've always thought really cute, and have finally got round to illustrating. He probably didn't imagine that they were talking about Derrida, but I thought it was funnier that way...Oh, and I'm also working on some ideas for new non-philosophical comics, so if you like inappropriate humour about illness and/or social satire featuring pigs in ruffs, then stay tuned! Happy Secular Chocolate-Scoffing Weekend! beccaxo

The Limits of Sense.

2010-04-01T17:52:00.001+01:00

Part of the problem of doing a pseudo-philosophy cartoon is that people assume you always know the philosophy behind it, and have done lots of research, rather than simply heard your lecturer say something mildly amusing and done a silly cartoon of it. Most of my cartoons relating to the early Wittgenstein emphasise this: along with many others (i hope!) I am quite happy to admit that I have little to no idea what Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is really about. I mean I could say that it is generally about the referential structure of language, the logical system extending from this and the clear delineation between sense and nonsense (hence the limits of sense, a term Wittgenstein uses), but I couldn't really say why he thought this. People try and explain it to me and I hear the word logic and fall asleep. It's just a problem I have.

The later Wittgenstein though: he's much better.

beccaxo

p.s I do know some stuff about philosophy, it's just that most of it involves Nietzsche. I even have a Nietzsche watch so basically, I must be a philosopher.

p.p.s Sorry about the bad quality of the picture, I've gone to my parents, so have had to use a camera not a scanner to get them onto the interweb. I'll change them asap...

The Knight of Infinite Faith

2010-03-30T20:20:00.001+01:00

Here's a new cartoon, based on Kierkegaard's Knight of Infinite Faith, whom is 'unable to make himself intelligible to others' (Kierkegaard, 1985: 107). Kierkegaard wavers on the suggestion that in fact, he can't be certain he's ever identified such a person at all, but that this doesn't give him grounds to deny that every other person could be one (1985: 67-8). Indeed the Knight of faith is consumed with graciously accepting finitude at every moment: 'he belongs altogether to the world' (1985: 68) and is therefore almost totally unidentifiable in a crowd: 'indeed, he looks just like a tax-gatherer!' (1985:68). A fact Being seems not to have grasped... becca xo

Destroying the History of Ontology

2010-03-28T16:44:00.001+01:00

I'm very much enjoying being a PROPER blogger, and updating the blog everyday! Hooray! I'm still on a bit of a Heidegger trip though, it's Heidegger who sees part of his task as destroying the history of ontology. I was being lazy about this one so I'm just going to direct you to the paragraph entitled 'Destruktion' on the wikipedia page about Heideggerian terminology which says it better than I could...

Enjoy!
beccaxo

Well-Being

2010-03-27T14:31:00.000Z

In 'How to bluff your way in Philosophy' Jim Hankinson describes the main characteristics of Eastern Philosophy in a section called 'How to Be a Mystic':

'1/ Invent a few meaningless paradoxes (such as 'The only true light is the darkness' or 'Each step forward is a step backwards').
2/. Have a line in pointless proverbs (like 'He who talks with the goldfish is lucky to receive an answer', or 'the taller the tree, the thinner the fruit').
3/ Profess a belief in at least one palpable metaphysical absurdity, such as that Everything is All One, or that Ordinary Reality is merely a Base Illusion in Comparison with the True Light of the Godhead. Remember to Talk in Capital Letters.
4/ Intimate in an obscure way that the Road to Enlightenment, though Long and Hard, is Ultimately Traversable, and hint that a good method of traversing it is by entering on a Close Physical Relationship with yourself.
5/ At all times wear a Benign Smile, for practical purposes indistinguishable from the Inane Grin' (1999:56)

I have nothing to add.

beccaxo

The Shortest Summary of Being and Time Ever!

2010-03-26T17:44:00.000Z

You might remember Dasein from an earlier post, here he is again in glorious technicolor! Dasein is a Heideggerian term from Being & Time by Martin Heidegger, the book that 'spawned' Being & Tim! In Being & Time Heidegger attempts to show that any attempt to understand our Being is already regulated by certain concepts. It's helpful to point out that his work exists in the same vein as Kierkegaard's: again an investigation of Being is already dictated by our position as beings. Heidegger says, 'But even if we ask, 'What is Being'?, we keep within an understanding of the 'is',' (1962: 25). Anyway, to cut a long story short, moods are one of the categories necessary to our understanding of our Being, 'in every case Dasein always has some mood' (1962:173).Which is why Dasein is so touchy...(but I think Being might have forgotten his birthday as well.)

becca xo

Being & Tim in Hong Kong!

2010-03-24T13:59:00.000Z

Being and Tim decided to join me when I went to Hong Kong with the band I'm in, but Tim was too badly behaved for me to get many good photos of them. Clockwise from Top Left: Being and Tim waiting in the departure lounge in heathrow, Graeme and Eleanor McGee in the background: Being and Tim in the room I stayed in on the 33rd floor (Being doesn't like heights!); Being gorges himself on airplane food on the way back: Being and Tim at Joyce is not here on Peel Street with Jimmy McGee.

A good time was had by all! Thanks to Jane and Mike from Songs for Children for having The Bobby McGees! If you're ever in HK looking for somewhere to dance then check out their wonderful indie night! becca xo

Being-towards-Youtube

2010-03-04T20:35:00.000Z

Right, so I've spent what feels like the last month making this little animation for you, the Viewing Public! (actually it's the last day and a half, but youtube is a lot more stressful than i thought!). Anyway, it's supposed to be a theme tune of sorts for the ''upcoming'' Being and Tim: the Series! I made the theme tune with Jimmy McGee, he's doing the backing vocals, and I'm doing the rest: we sped up one track so i sound about 5! Jimmy and me are both in The Bobby McGee's but can also be found embarrassing ourselves musically and all sorts on his YouTube channel. My favourite thing about the theme tune is the way that Jimmy's backing vocals sound a little bit like the singing in the Original Star Trek theme tune!

By the way, The video I made actually has a much better ending than this, where Martin H smiles and a halo grows round his head, but for some reason YouTube won't upload this bit. I don't know why but will hopefully figure it out and update it asap. Until then you'll just have to use your mental imaging faculties.

phew, i'm pooped. till next time
becca xo

Being under Erasure!

2010-02-25T22:42:00.001Z

hello there. I'm sorry it's been such a dreadfully long time since I've posted anything. I think I may have mentioned somewhere that my brother has been ill, so that's been pretty horrible... Anyway, I had a few hours while watching The Empire Strikes Back to draw this little number. Being-under-Erasure is a phrase that Derrida gets from Heidegger i think, but I'm not entirely sure how the latter uses it. For Derrida it's a case of the notion of Being always being compromised by language. Either that or it's something to do with the British pop group Erasure. In fact, I'm happy to admit I am not entirely sure what Derrida means when he says it: I tend to think that his philosophy is generally to do with most things being inherently paradoxical, but apparently there's more to it than that. Anyone?

Oh, also if you like choose your own adventure stories then look at this
...just one of the many nice things I found at the Brighton Zine fest...buy it and support local artists, and maybe zombies...

beccaxo

Tweet Tweet!

2010-02-12T18:41:00.000Z

I'm finally on Twitter. But if you're reading this already, that's probably no big news, as it'll just redirect you here. Like some sort of spatial temporal loop....ARGH! becca xo

To Reason Away From Being

2010-02-05T11:32:00.001Z

Here's a new cartoon i did a few weeks ago, but didn't get round to putting online. I'm in a terrible hurry to get a train, but will find the reference as soon as possible. The gist is that Kierkegaard, often said to be the Grandfather, or Father, or Godfather of Existenstialism, claims to 'reason away from Being'. This is a way of saying that 'existence precedes essence': exactly what the Existentialists assert: that to think is to already to be, so our the attempt to think what Being might be will never really work, as we can't step outside our own thoughts. Y'know, to be is to do, do be do be doo.

In other news, my wonderful friend Kaya did a little write-up of this blog, for the prestigious digital media agency 'glue london'. I always thought I was more of an 'old media' girl myself: the pen, the paper, etc, but their stuff looks cool. Not sure what they mean by 'geeky tidbits from the world of cyberspace' though??! Anyway, Hello if you came through that link, it is delightful to e-meet you!

Also, does anyone think Kierkegaard was a bit of a hottie?!
More soon!

becca xo

2010-01-25T19:57:00.000Z

Well i've not been drawing too much, as my brother has been ill and I can't take all my pens back to my parents! But I have been looking at Hark, A Vagrant! pretty much obsessively, and I found a cartoon on one of Kate Beaton's affiliated sites that I thought rather captured my own creative process. Just substitute philosophical for historical, and the admiral guy for some dude in a toga.

I might try and get on twitpic soon, when I can make more than one cartoon a week!

becca xo

old joke, new pic

2010-01-20T13:53:00.000Z

ladies and gentlemen,

the unbearable lightness of Being...

beccaxo

Alvin, Simon and Theodor W. Adorno

2010-01-18T00:01:00.002Z

i only just realised how long it's been since i put up a post: sorry about that, it's partly cos i've been busy, partly because I've been doing this cartoon in COLOUR which always takes ages...

The idea of this cartoon began with changing Alvin, Simon and Theodor (the chipmunks) into Alvin, Simon and Fyodor Dostoyevsky: but it ends up working better with neo-Marxist thinker Theodor W.Adorno, not only because he does look a little like a chipmunk, but also because you can change the words of the Chipmunk's classic Alvin's Harmonica to incorporate a reference to Adorno's co-author Max Horkheimer, AND a quotation from Adorno's Minima Moralia!:

'Every visit to the cinema, despite the utmost watchfulness, leaves me dumber and worse than before. Sociability itself is a participant in injustice, insofar as it pretends we can still talk with each other in a frozen world, and the flippant, chummy word contributes to the perpetuation of silence, insofar as the concessions to those being addressed debase the latter once more as speakers.' S. 5

Statements like these often do just seem a bit opposed to common-sense, but i think his idea is actually pretty interesting, although my understanding of his work is not very deep. The general idea seems to be that our language originated under different economic conditions, and the objects it referred to then, no longer exist under the economic conditions of capitalism. Most importantly, when we attempt to identify the 'free subject' described by our language, we cannot point to a real example of such a subject. Capitalism, as an economic totality, already structures our choices, so we cannot make a choice that is totally free. Either we work to pay the rent or we go and live in a squat and risk continual eviction, but we stand in relation to capitalism, not outside it.

The idea that we can't escape a legal or economic system but that we always stand in relation to it is a common one: what is interesting for Adorno is that this is a problem rooted in language. As such, we can't truthfully even describe an alternative: this is why Adorno sees the 'chummy word' as participating in injustice. Our language itself separates us from each other, because it does not really refer to the world we experience, or the person we are attempting to address.

So he would probably hate the chipmunks... oops.

beccaxo

Nothing to lose but their....?

2010-01-09T22:10:00.001Z

This cartoon refers to the famous lines from The Communist Manifesto: 'the workers have nothing to lose but their chains. they have a world to win. workers of the world unite!' The idea that Marx might have been referring to a giant game of musical chairs seemed too humourous to resist, although I am beginning to realise how the humour of my comics is perhaps not quite so sophisticated as I once thought....!!!

You can read about the Communist Manifesto here, or better still read it in full here (it's not very long). That second site (www.Marxists.org) is a wonderful site with loads of texts by a range of different socialist and marxist theorists. Which reminds me, stay tuned for the next Being & Tim featuring Alvin, Simon and Theodor Adorno as the Chipmunks....!

beccaxo

Throwing away the ladder...

2010-01-07T15:39:00.001Z

In the Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus, the book where the young Wittgenstein claimed to solve all the problems of philosophy, he includes the following elliptical remark:

''My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) (6.54)''

Not hard to see how that led to this cartoon

The Tractatus is one of my least favourite philosophical texts, mainly because I don't have a particularly ''logical'' mind: however I remain intrigued by Wittgenstein, not only his later works, but the man himself. Not only is he also quoted as saying that 'A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes,' a motto I have modestly decided to adopt for Being & Tim (!) but also, 'I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves'!!! What a guy! (Those quotes and more can be found here)

I bet he did throw like a girl though.

Being Ready-to-hand

2010-01-05T16:14:00.002Z

Being Ready-at-hand is one of Martin Heidegger's words to describe the way we interact with the world and what better way to commemorate it than with a visual pun!

Also I thought I'd experiment with shades of grey: initially this way because I thought it'd be quicker, but now I just think it looks a bit more stylised...

Another thing I have been enjoying is the most excellent historical comic Hark a Vagrant! Go and have a look!

Once again Happy New Year, I'm saying it every day until tomorrow, when I guess it stops being socially appropriate.

becca xo

2010-01-02T17:28:00.000Z

Hello and Happy New Year from Being & Tim! Sorry if there have been a few problems with the site over the last few days: too much mulled wine, and general technological incompetency! The ''exciting'' news is that Being and Tim will soon have their very own domain. www.beingandtim.com, but this blogspot address will still work fine.

Truly exciting stuff.

beccaxo

Philosophy Part-a-y!

2009-12-08T15:17:00.001Z

In my experience, (and famously in that of Monty Python's) Philosophers tend to be just as good at partying as they are at thinking. And what would a party be without a good game of Twister!! And look at John Locke cheating by trying to invoke secondary qualities! What a cad! beccaxo

The Gift of Death

2009-12-07T18:51:00.001Z

here's a Christmas Being and Tim 'based' on Derrida's essay The Gift of Death. I think these would make handy Christmas cards, if you wanted any to send to that special someone, then get in touch at rasdyer@gmail.com (I haven't worked out how much to charge for them, maybe £1.50 each or something..) ! beccaxo

Being-in-the-world

2009-11-30T09:22:00.001Z

Infinite Being...

2009-11-23T11:47:00.000Z

Instrumental Being

2009-11-18T13:03:00.000Z

Species Being

2009-11-15T13:21:00.001Z

Cutting Pink into Bits...

2009-11-13T18:12:00.000Z

Notorious B.E.I.N.G

2009-11-06T21:12:00.001Z

Super Kant!

2009-11-06T21:02:00.000Z

I kept meaning to re-do this cartoon, so it looked more dc/marvel/film noir- i think if kant had been a super-hero he would have taken the same serious attitude to it as he did to everything else: but hopefully the point comes across anyway! New episodes of Super Kant are on the drawing board, including the feature length motion picture, 'The Return of the Repressed!' beccax

Howling from the Vaults

2009-11-06T20:15:00.001Z

Just when you thought Being and Tim was dead, I have returned with more philosophical adventures! Now that I've recovered from my MA thesis I should be able to put new strips up pretty regularly, as well as adding all the old cartoons which I've been saying I'd finish properly for years!

Here's an old one, a bit of character development.

beccax

The Excluded Middle

2009-07-08T12:47:00.000+01:00

Happy
late
birthday
Kevin!

(if it's not very good quality that's because i've been experimenting with new pens, that aren't very good.)

2009-05-08T13:48:00.000+01:00

Apologies for the long absence, i've been busy doing essays. It's with great pleasure I return to these pages, with two more cartoons for your philosophical pleasure

Please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
beccax

MONTAGE!

2009-04-14T21:16:00.000+01:00

it's not much of a montage admittedly. But still, there's Marty H's face, and two badly drawn eyebrows, which were the reason this charming multi media piece didn't make it into my first little book thing...