Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

just found something in the Guardian's style guide that had never before occurred to me. The entry on the use of the names of people quoted refers to the situation in which it is thought necessary, in a news report, to introduce someone to ones readers with a description beyond the name. In a story about a football [soccer!] game, one might write, "Paul Heckingbottom, the Sheffield United manager, said...."  Why the commas, though? Here is the interesting bit. Why not just "Paul Heckingbottom the Sheffield United manager said..."?  TIL that commas around the name indicate that there is only one person with this function. If the team were managed by committee, and each member of the committee had the title "manager," then one might well write "Paul Heckingbottom the Sheffield United manager said...." More plausibly, and shifting to political coverage, "The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said" is proper. But there are a lot of former L...

I recently encountered the following quotation (never mind where): "Nature is the living, visible garment of God." This was attributed with some confidence (but without further specificity) to the German romantic poet/.philosopher Goethe. I googled the phrase "visible garment of God" curious about particulars. It gets 31,000 hits. But if you follow some of them you'll soon find that there are quotes of quotes of quotes . I began to understand Abe Lincoln's frustration when he said, "I never said most of the stuff you see me quoted as saying on the internet." I persisted in my inquiries. It turns out that Goethe had a character say something LIKE this, but that wording is due to another romantic poet/philosophy, Thomas Carlyle. In FAUST, Goethe had a character called Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) say: "I walk and work, above, beneath, work and weave ... 'tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, and weave for God the Garment thou sees...

"The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered. While the living thing may easily be crushed by a superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence." DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION (1916).