Quotes by Edward A. Martin

“Thus with the question of the Being of truth and the necessity of presupposing it, just as with the question of the essence of knowledge, an 'ideal subject' has generally been posited. The motive for this, whether explicit or tacit, lies in the requirement that philosophy should have the '*a priori*' as its theme, rather than 'empirical facts' as such. There is some justification for this requirement, though it still needs to be grounded ontologically. Yet is this requirement satisfied by positing an 'ideal subject'? Is not such a subject *a fanciful idealization*? With such a conception have we not missed precisely the *a priori* character of that merely 'factual' subject, Dasein? Is it not an attribute of the *a priori* character of the factical subject (that is, an attribute of Dasein's facticity) that it is in the truth and in untruth equiprimordially?The ideas of a 'pure "I"' and of a 'consciousness in general' are so far from including the *a priori* character of 'actual' subjectivity that the ontological characters of Dasein's facticity and its state of being are either passed over or not seen at all. Rejection of a 'consciousness in general' does not signify that the *a priori* is negated, any more than the positing of an idealized subject guarantees that Dasein has an *a priori* character grounded upon fact.Both the contention that there are 'eternal truths' and the jumbling together of Dasein's phenomenally grounded 'ideality' with an idealized absolute subject, belong to those residues of Christian theology within philosophical problematics which have not as yet been radically extruded.The Being of truth is connected primordially with Dasein. And only because Dasein is as constituted by disclosedness (that is, by understanding), can anything like Being be understood; only so is it possible to understand Being."”

“Jane Eyre was not only ‘a human document written in blood, [but] also one of the best blood-and-thunder detective stories in the world’.””

“As ubiquitous in Biarritz as he was everywhere else was the wire-haired fox terrier Caesar. Bred by the Duchess of Newcastle and presented to the King in 1903, he was adored by his master. Noisy and ill-disciplined, he ruthlessly exploited Edward’s affection, safe in the knowledge he would never be punished for his many misdemeanours. At most, the King would ineffectually shake his stick and admonish him with the words, ‘You naughty dog, you naughty, naughty dog.’24 Dismissed by Lady Fingall as a ‘horrid little snob’,25 he was one of the most pampered animals in Europe. In 1907, Fritz Ponsonby had had to dissuade Edward from rushing a vet from London to Marienbad at the cost of £200 a day to attend to Caesar, who had been taken ill there. Restored to health, he was modelled by Fabergé in white chalcedony with cabochon rubies for eyes and a gold collar embossed, as in life, with the legend ‘I Belong to the King’. On their picnic excursions, Caesar liked to settle himself in Violet Keppel’s lap; for her, a dubious honour, as she claimed he smelt. His attentions were more warmly received by Sonia. The terrier had, she remembered, ‘a fine disregard for the villa’s curtains and chair-legs, but a close personal regard for me’.””

“With the clock close to 11 p.m., Carrington had gone home and McDonnell was just putting on his cloak when the gates of New Palace Yard were flung open and a caravan of motor-cars puttered through. Out of the first scrambled the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, and his wife, Clementine. The others disgorged Churchill’s mother and stepfather; his brother and sister-in-law; and Captain Hugh Warrender and the 9th Duke of Marlborough. Together, they advanced to the door. Churchill had made himself quite obnoxious in the days after Edward’s death. In one of his first meetings with the new King, he had tactlessly picked up where he had left off with his father, insisting that ‘a great change was necessary in the Constitution’. George had icily responded that he was ‘averse to violent changes’. Now, on the very eve of Edward’s funeral, the Home Secretary insisted on his right to a private viewing of the coffin. McDonnell refused point-blank. Churchill attempted to pull rank. Unwavering, McDonnell retorted that if he were not satisfied, he could go and rouse Carrington, who was asleep in a nearby house, and solicit a second opinion. For several minutes, the two men bickered on the threshold until the Home Secretary, thoroughly bested, flounced off with his relations. It was, the incandescent McDonnell wrote, ‘an amazing instance of vulgarity and indecency of which I should not have thought that even Churchill was capable’.””

“That same day, Howards End was published by the firm of Edward Arnold. Its critical and popular success elevated E. M. Forster to the uppermost literary circles. Hailed by R. A. Scott-James of the Daily News as the finest novel of the year, it was set in a thoroughly up-to-date London of motor-cars, discussion groups and class distinctions. The eponymous house was, Scott-James felt, ‘a sort of symbol of everything in England, old and new, changeless, yet amid flux’.5 Forster’s epigraph, ‘Only Connect’, was a plea to readers who found themselves entangled in the conflicts – between men and women, rich and poor, conservative and progressive – that had defined Edward’s reign, and escalated dramatically in the wake of his death.””