Reporter John Dickerson talking about his notebook.

While he doesn't mention it, he's capturing the spirit of the commonplace book and the zettelkasten.

[...] I see my job as basically helping people see and to grab ahold of what's going on.

You can decide to do that the minute you sit down to start writing or you can just do it all the time. And by the time you get to writing you have a notebook full of stuff that can be used.

And it's not just about the thing you're writing about at that moment or the question you're going to ask that has to do with that week's event on Face the Nation on Sunday.

If you've been collecting all week long and wondering why a thing happens or making an observation about something and using that as a piece of color to explain the political process to somebody, then you've been doing your work before you ever sat down to do your work.

<div style="padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/169725470?h=778a09c06f&title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe></div> <script src="https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.js"></script>

Field Notes: Reporter's Notebook from Coudal Partners on Vimeo.

https://x.com/david_perell/status/1838425252772077636 via David Perell's podcast.

Sam Altman's note taking process. Pocket notebook, spiral bound so he can tear out pages. No real mention of what he does with them after though a suggestion of typing them out somewhere.

When switching, do this only at the end of a chapter, not in media res (in the middle of action).

Also summarize the last thing that happened/got explained for an easy refresher the next time you get back.

Bib-Card? Potentially Marginaelia? Feeling more like a dedicated notebook for this. Need to work out.

Vashik does this summary of a chapter on index cards... Useful to do in a Zettelkasten, or too much effort?

Iroful Fountain Pen Friendly Paper Review - Better Than Cosmo Air Light? by [[Blake's Broadcast]]

Dr. Oliver Smithies – Research Archive

ᔥ[[New-Investigator-623]] in Oliver Smithies’ notebooks : r/Zettelkasten

BEST of BOTH Worlds? Digitizing Field Notes inside Obsidian [Showcase] by [[CyanVoxel]]

via<br /> Staci Robinson, Tupac Shakur: The Authorized Biography, 2023, p. 144.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276403515343 <br /> archived copy

In 1984, Memindex was selling monthly planning calendars (pocket notebook size with spiral binding and a case) rather than their older small index card sized formats. Their calendar format looks eerily like what Day-Timer, a division of ACCO Brands, has been selling since at least the early 1990s.

This goes down to even the "cut here" triangles in the lower right corners of pages to help bookmark the current page.

grin

https://zettelkasten.de/posts/use-real-notebook/

https://web.archive.org/web/20240125180647/https://www.cygnoir.net/2024/01/20/how-i-pocket.html

https://www.cygnoir.net/2024/01/20/how-i-pocket.html

Newton's notebook was done in a tête-bêche (French for "head-to-toe") style in which he flipped the notebook over and began using it from the back to the front as a means of starting a second notebook within to separate the contents.

4.92 x 3.07 inches

Collection in Focus: Sir Isaac Newton's Pocket Memorandum Book<br /> by The Morgan Library & Museum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Zpo5yla7w

More details and a digitized version of this memorandum book at https://www.themorgan.org/collection/isaac-newton/memorandum-book

https://web.archive.org/web/20240118121305/https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1120/a-notebook-zettelkasten/p1

A numbering/indexing system for notes in notebooks that is more granular than merely page numbers. I wonder how big his notebooks are (hundreds of pages, and multiple entries per page sounds like big folios)?

Mentions several notebooks, see [[The Notebook by Roland Allen]] with the Italian examples of using multiple for different stages.

How does he process them into his 'main' repository of notes? How might this connect to a practice of scanning pages from notebooks into Obsidian for further processing and indexing, as I've been doing?

https://web.archive.org/web/20180227134526/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/12/22/writing-format-of-fieldnote/

Hawk Sugano uses a wastebook-like process to take contemporaneous notes in a pocket notebook and later transfers the ideas to index cards for follow up and filing.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180227134635/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2007/01/27/pile-of-fieldnotes/

I certainly didn't see this coming as part of the Pile of Index Cards... pocketnotebooks! Ostensibly for quick note (idea) capture on the move with transfer later.

Katern, quaderni. Vier ineengevouwen vellen. Werd ook voor 3 en 6 ineengevouwen vellen gehanteerd. Tritern, sextern en etc. De link met het Firensisch/Italiaanse quaderni als notitieboekje wordt hier niet gelegd, wel met het Latijn uiteraard, en dan naar het Frans. Zie ook dat cahier verwant is.

Bij lezen [[The Notebook by Roland Allen]]

The Notebook by Roland Allen review: a history of scribbling by [[Thomas W Hodgkinson]]

reply to u/FusRoDaahh at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/188j2xt/getting_over_the_fear_of_perfection/

I had this problem too, but eventually switched to keeping my commonplace entirely on index cards, which also allows me to move them around and re-arrange them as necessary or when useful. (It also fixed some of my indexing problems.)

The side benefit is that if I botch a single card, no sweat, just pull out a new one and start over! If you like the higher end stationery scene afforded in notebooks, then take a look at Clairfontaine's bristol cards from Exacompta which are lush and come in a variety of sizes, colors, and rulings. (They're roughly equivalent to the cost per square meter of paper you'll find in finer notebooks like Leuchtturm, Hobonichi, Moleskine, etc., though some of the less expensive index cards still do well with many writing instruments.) Most of their card sizes are just about perfect for capturing the sorts of entries that one might wish to commonplace.

Once you've been at it a while, if you want to keep up with the luxe route that some notebook practices allow, then find yourself a classy looking box to store them all in to make your neighbors jealous. My card indexes bring me more joy than any notebook ever did.

When penmanship becomes a problem, then you can fix it by printing your cards, or (even better in my opinion), typing them on your vintage Smith-Corona Clipper.

And of course the first thing one could type out on their first card and file it at the front where you can see it every day:

"Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien" (The better is the mortal enemy of the good).<br /> — Montesquieu, in Pensées, 1726

aka "Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good."

I take issue with this statement from the translators. Do they come about it themselves or does it stem from Eco?

The general affordances of many modalities are very similar, though the ease of use and speed in arrival at a destination may be slightly different. (That is, cards can be ordered more quickly perhaps, but a similar function can be done using notebooks or slips.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotopia

Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston by Ernest Callenbach (1975)

Note that this was published in the same year as The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYmLhurh_a4

Scott Scheper shows an outline of his spaced repetition practice for vocabulary words. He also shows his random "chaos" boxes with random notes that he keeps unfiled and unorganized.

—Anne Frank (1929-1945), diary entry dated Saturday, February 27, 1943 (age 13)

Anne Frank was given an empty card file by her father who filled it with index cards that were blank on one side. They were intended to use it as a "reading file" in which she and Margot were "supposed to note down the books we've read, the author and the date."

---

In the same entry she mentioned that she'd bought a separate notebook for writing down new words she encountered. Recent words she mentions encountering were "brothel" and "coquette".

https://papress.com/products/grids-guides-black-a-notebook-for-visual-thinkers

https://fontane-nb.dariah.eu/index.html

Theodor Fontane: Notizbücher. Digitale genetisch-kritische und kommentierte Edition (Notebooks. Digital genetically critical and commented edition). Edited by Gabriele Radecke. https://fontane-nb.dariah.eu/index.html, accessed on 2023-09-30

McGillen, Petra S. The Fontane Workshop: Manufacturing Realism in the Industrial Age of Print. 1st ed. New Directions in German Studies 26. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/fontane-workshop-9781501351587/.

While mostly a digital guy, Tom Standage uses Moleskine's reporter's notebooks which he likes because they're the size of an iPhone 6 plus.

iPhone 6+ (6.22 in x3.06 in)<br /> Moleskine reporter's notebook (3.5 x 5.5 inches)

So we'll expect the notebook to be recommended over the index card?

"index card" doesn't appear in the text

https://public-supply.com/

Notebook company. Orvis has used them for some of their leather folio refills in the past. (See https://www.orvis.com/leather-folio/26LS.html)

https://acritch.com/notepad/

ᔥ[[abramdemski]] in The Zettelkasten Method (accessed:: 2023-08-25 10:12:42)

reply to u/peaberryxo at https://www.reddit.com/r/notebooks/comments/14to50w/how_do_you_use_pocket_sized_notebooks/

I generally carry one all the time and use it as a convenient "waste book". I quickly collect fleeting ideas or notes throughout the day so I don't forget the tidbits that are important. When I'm back at my desk or at the end of the day/week, I will transfer things into my calendar/planner, my primary to do list, copy out more fleshed out ideas or quotes into my commonplace book or add particular ideas and sources to my zettelkasten. It's really there for quick convenience and nothing more. If it's important it always goes somewhere else.

https://www.amazon.com/Patrick-Chronodex-Time-Management-Planner/dp/B08CMYCF6V

Patrick Ng is selling a chronodex planner on Amazon.com

https://www.jetpens.com/Laconic-Style-Notebook-A5-Gantt-Chart/pd/34494

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, writer, politician, and linguist, was imprisoned from 1926 until his death in 1937 as a vocal critic of Benito Mussolini. While in prison he wrote more than 3,000 pages in more than 30 notebooks. His Prison Notebooks comprise a fascinating contribution to political theory.

https://thoughtful.sandbox.google.com/about

https://us.dingbats-notebooks.com/

At Mark Dykeman's rate, to convert to cheap composition books, he's looking at $26/year for the equivalent paper consumption. On a per day basis, it's $0.071 per day in paper.

This can be compared with my per day cost of $0.421 per day for index cards, which is more expensive, though not $1-2 per day for more expensive notebooks.

Mark Dykeman indicates that at regular work, he fills up a 180 page notebook and at the relatively steep cost of notebooks, he's paying $1-2 a day for paper.

---

This naturally brings up the idea of what it might cost per day in index cards for some zettlers' practices. I've already got some notes on price of storage...

As a rough calculation, despite most of my note taking being done digitally, I'm going through a pack of 500 Oxford cards at $12.87 every 5 months at my current pace. This is $0.02574 per card and 5 months is roughly 150 days. My current card cost per day is: $0.02574/card * 500 cards / (150 days) = $12.78/150 days = $0.0858 per day which is far better than $2/day.

Though if I had an all-physical card habit, I would be using quite a bit more.

On July 3, 2022 I was at 10,099 annotations and today May 11, 2023 I'm at 15,259 annotations. At one annotation per card that's 5,160 cards in the span of 312 days giving me a cost of $0.02574/card * 5,160 cards / 312 days = $0.421 per day or an average of $153.75 per year averaging 6,036 cards per year.

(Note that this doesn't also include the average of three physical cards a day I'm using in addition, so the total would be slightly higher.)

Index cards are thus, quite a bit cheaper a habit than fine stationery notebooks.

from Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

Out of a total of 201 notebooks, Kurt Sethe's work on the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache comprised 27 notebooks with 3240 pages of notes on hieroglyphic copies from his travels and research.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geChDY3MQj8

Similar to TUL disk bound notebooks.

Paper is nice for fountain pens.

On the expensive side.

https://williamhannah.com/

https://plotterusa.com/

While I love a great notebook as much as (more than?) the next person, a lot of the notes I take are specifically for filing into either my zettelkasten or index card-based commonplace book for later re-use. Sadly there's not a lot out there in the 4 x 6" format, so I've been able to use some book binder's glue to fashion my own "index card notebooks" which are dissemble-able for filing into my card files for cross indexing. The best part is that I can choose the paper and what's printed on it (blank, lined, grid, etc.) for use with my favorite writing media including fountain pens. I've been doing this for a while and it's working out pretty well. More details: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/01/index-card-accessories-for-note-taking-on-the-go/

Custom made notebook comprised of 4 x 6" index cards glued at the top with book adhesive surrounded by the binder clips and Lineco glue and paint brush used to make/bind the notebook. Arrayed around the "notebook" are a Lochby pen wallet and carrying case.

I've recently begun adding a chipboard backing to have a firmer writing surface while on the go as well as for inserting into a custom made journal cover/case/wallet in the future, though I've yet to find something off-the-shelf for this. Maybe an A6 cover with some extra margin for error in the size difference?

Has anyone else done this? Suggestions for improvement?

https://github.com/LPBeaulieu/Notebook-Maker-PrintANotebook/blob/main/README.md

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Cornell+Note-Taking+System+Walter+Pauk&ref=nb_sb_noss

Provides a page of pre-formated/printed notebooks for use with the Cornell note taking system.

1478-1518, Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci (''The Codex Arundel''). A collection of papers written in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), in his characteristic left-handed mirror-writing (reading from right to left), including diagrams, drawings and brief texts, covering a broad range of topics in science and art, as well as personal notes. The core of the notebook is a collection of materials that Leonardo describes as ''a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat'' (f. 1r), a collection he began in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli in Florence, in 1508. To this notebook has subsequently been added a number of other loose papers containing writing and diagrams produced by Leonardo throughout his career. Decoration: Numerous diagrams.

Interesting advice...

Were notebooks of the time generally poorly bound and prone to falling apart? The focus on longevity of notes is interesting here...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BZWJDHN/

Example of a modern day waste book for keeping track of one's accounting.

dimensions 3.5 x 5"

Brian Eno had a notebook-based practice of some sort.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-Wp0sLpnMY

PVA Glue used in bookbinding, but isn't inexpensive.

• Tacky glue - okay
• rubber cement - not great
• elmer's glue - not great, tears esp. for 2 layers
• Mod podge - pulls nicely and strong
• mod podge hard shell - cracks, not great
• PVA Glue - the best of the group

Recommendations in order: PVA, Tacky Glue, Mod Podge (regular)

Brush on top edge and do two coats. Don't get it down between sheets.

https://observablehq.com/@comeetie/map-stodon-dev

https://www.joggles.com/blog/transform-index-cards-perfect-bound-journal/

https://www.val.town/

Val Town is a collaborative notebook for APIs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_interface

Max Raisin indicated that Gotthard Deutsch read several events with dates out of a little notebook during lectures. Was this really a notebook or possibly a small stack/deck of index cards? The could certainly be easily mistaken....

Check these references

Goutor comments, like many before him, that it is common to take notes on notebook paper in longer form, but that this is inadvisable as it is much harder to impose a useful order or classification on such work. He does mention scissors as a means of cutting up such notes, but comments that "a mass of slips of paper of varying sizes [can be] difficult to arrange and potentially useless unless care has been taken to note the source of each separate entry."

He also repeats the frequent admonitions that one should take notes only on one side and to use cards of a uniform size.

(p6)

In his youth, while selling drugs on the side, Jay-Z would write down material for lyrics into a green notebook. He never took the notebook around with him on the streets, but instead would buy anything at a corner store just for the paper bags as writing material. He would write the words onto these paper bags and stuff them into his pockets (wearable Zettelkasten anyone? or maybe Zetteltasche?) When he got home, in long standing waste book tradition, he would transfer the words to his notebook.

Jay-Z has said he hasn't written down any lyrics since his first album, but warns, "I've lost plenty of material. It's not the best way. I wouldn't advise it to anyone. I've lost a couple albums' worth of great material."

https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2010/11/20101116_fa_01.mp3

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/T3Z38uDUEeuFcPu2U_w_zA (Jonathan Edwards' zettelmantle)

Historian Edward Gibbon made all of his notes "in books of fast-bound leaves".

reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wvn38a/using_notebooks_with_your_antinet/

Ross Ashby, a systems theorist like Luhmann, had a sophisticated hybrid notebook/index card system that some here might find an interesting and usable model, particularly if they're enamored of the notebook format. It's been digitized and is online for perusal: http://www.rossashby.info/

https://quarto.org/

https://rekonect.com/

Rekonect magnetic notebooks.

Clever though expensive. Not sure this is worth it unless you had a very specific use case.

https://manage.kmail-lists.com/subscriptions/web-view?a=Vc5bVr&c=01FM1J43DPQ7Z364Z8K8CX8XD5&k=8a739d0b524d1452c6bb9dcf67fb51f9&g=WQd6TQ&m=QSAze3&r=QiCJM9j

Francis Ford Coppola published an exact reproduction of his original prompt book for The Godfather called The Godfather Notebook (Regan Arts, 2016).

Francis Ford Coppola created and used a prompt book to organize his notes and annotations on Mario Puzo's The Godfather to create the 1972 Paramount blockbuster.

Having learned the stage managers' technique of keeping a prompt book at Hofstra, his contained an annotated copy of the novel with scene-by-scene breakdowns, notes on setting, cliches to avoid, and even casting ideas.

Beethoven apparently kept organized notebooks for his work. His system was arranged based on the level of finished work, so he had spaces for rough ideas, improved ideas and others for finished ideas.

Source for this?

Since there is no Maritime law in Liechtenstein, Nicolas Reithner, Hannes Mähr, and Mario Frick, the attorneys who wrote this book, left most of the pages blank indicating in bold in the front matter:

Please use the remaining pages of this work as a notebook.

Source

This is by far the funniest law book out there pic.twitter.com/zWYOAsMIOM

— Nicole A. Rizza (JD Era) 🏳️‍⚧️ (@NicoleARizza) May 25, 2022

<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

At the end of the 18th century, John Bell (1745–1831), an English publisher published notebooks with the title Bell’s Common-Place Book, Formed generally upon the Principles Recommended and Practised by Mr Locke. The notebooks commonly included 550 pages, of which eight pages included instructions on John Locke's indexing method.

---

Link to: - Didn't Erasmus Darwin use one of these?!

Scott P. Scheper left off of notebooks and started using note cards in 2006.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2011/06/20/inside-notebooks/

There are a number of books which feature the sketchbooks and notebooks of famous writers, researchers and artists. However, most of their work is presented as art in and of itself. Rarely are the messiest and ugliest pages pictured. Most of the layouts in these books are laid out as art. Frequently missing are the structural parts and interviews with the original authors talking about their process. How do they actually use these notebooks in practice? How do ideas move from their heads into the notebooks and from there into their practical work? The notebooks only capture raw ideas as a scaffolding for extending the user's brain and thinking, but it doesn't capture the intangible ideas and portions of process which are still trapped within their brains. To be able to evaluate these portions, the author needs to talk or write about those missing portions of the process otherwise the way they create genius is wholly missing. A viewer of such notebooks would be no closer to creating genius for themselves by attempting to follow the same patterns without these additional structures. It's like the indigenous peoples who talk with rocks as part of their cultural practice—so much of what is happening is missing from the description of "talking with rocks" that most people wouldn't even know where to begin, but for the initiated, the process would be imminently crystal clear.

Which of these books actually delves into the process and does interviews as well?

This article actually lays out the notebooks as their own form of art rather than centering the idea of creative process as a means of helping others to follow these same patterns. We need the book that does for the art and design area what Sönke Ahrens' book How to Take Smart Notes does for the note taking space. It's interesting to see Niklas Luhmann's collection of 90,000 index cards, but without knowing how he used them and what purpose they served, the enterprise is lost. Similarly the depiction of Roland Barthes' index cards in Roland Barthes has a similar function. Showing them is not equivalent to actually understanding them.

link to: https://hypothes.is/a/3SOmoMcMEey8n9dSUWhPJw

https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/11/19/joan-didion-on-keeping-a-notebook/

A nice little advertisement for Joan Didion's essay "On Keeping a Notebook". Mostly it's pull quotes from the piece without any additional commentary. I've downloaded a copy of the book to read the piece in full myself.

Annotations or notes are definitely the first step towards having a collection of excerpts from one's reading. Where to put them can be a useful question though. Should they be in the margins for ease of creation or should they go into a notebook. Both of these methods may require later rewriting/revision or even moving into a more convenient permanent place. The idea "don't repeat yourself" (DRY) in programming can be useful to keep in mind, but the repetition of the ideas in writing and revision can help to quicken the memory as well as potentially surface additional ideas that hadn't occurred upon the notes' original capture.

A list of disadvantages of digital gardens versus paper-based notebooks.

Gerben and Brendan Howell created PenPub which connects with a Moleskine/Neo smartpen via bluetooth, turns the lines into an SVG file, uploads that to a static web server, and thereby creates a ‘paper website’ that is a live reflection of your notebook (with a few seconds delay)

• Example page: http://penpub.ink/page38.html
• PenPub code is available at: https://gitlab.com/bhowell/penpub

syndicated copy

Fleeting notes are similar to the sorts of things one would have traditionally kept in a waste book.

---

Francesco Sacchini recommended the use of two notebooks:

“Not unlike attentive merchants... [who] keep two books, one small, the other large: the first you would call adversaria or a daybook (ephemerides), the second an account book (calendarium) and ledger (codex).” —Francesco Sacchini "Chapter 13". De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus. Wurzburg. p. 91. (1614).

(See also Blair, Ann M. (2004). "Note taking as an art of transmission". Critical Inquiry. 31 (1): 91. doi:10.1086/427303.)

The root word ephemeral in this context is highly suggestive of the use and function of fleeting notes.

---

The Latin word "ephemerides" can also be translated as "newspaper", useful for only a short period of time.

---

Recall also that in a general sense Cicero contrasted the short-lived memoranda of the merchant with the more carefully kept account book designed as a permanent record.

Reference: Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.

Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.

(Not sure if I had this in my notes already from other reading, but adding again just in case.)

https://www.amazon.com/10-000-Hours-Journal-Beginner/dp/1926892364

The form of this is a lot like a commonplace book or zettelkasten, but focused on one particular end-goal. Also a little bit like a journal of things read, listened to, watched, etc.

https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AProductive+Luddite&s=relevancerank&text=Productive+Luddite&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1

Productive Luddite makes some other interesting custom notebooks...

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/medieval-book/using-medieval-book/a/medieval-notepads

https://www.thecramped.com/two-alternatives-to-field-notes/

https://somethingdelightful.com/mj5-4791dg

C.R. Gibson Dot Grid Bonded Leather Journal - Black

Item Number: MJ5-4791DG $12.00

• 240 dot grid pages
• Leather cover
• Elastic closure
• Interior back pocket
• Ribbon marker
• Measures 5 1/4" W x 8 1/4" H

Some thoughts about leaving space in new notebooks, especially for one's future self:

• contact information in front in case of loss
• space for a future table of contents to come
• space for page numbers and dates
• space in the back for house keeping, indices, etc.

http://www.notesaboutnotes.com/Notes/FrontMatter.html

Sounds like Ross Ashby kept a commonplace book here.

Could be worth looking into: http://www.rossashby.info/ and digging further.

https://www.gentlemanstationer.com/blog/2021/3/10/hierarchies-of-fountain-pen-friendly-paper

Overview and some recommendations about the most fountain pen friendly notebook brands.

Highfive Notebook indexing method

A clever method for creating an index or tracking system in a bound notebook by creating an index and then marking the edge of the page for related pages.

Could also be used for tracking one's mood or other similar taxonomic items.

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>u/mor-leidr </span> in Has anyone used this indexing system? Curious what you think : commonplacebook (<time class='dt-published'>07/30/2021 12:29:53</time>)</cite></small>

In Fowkes, the 'form of appearance' or the Erscheinungsform.

Exchange value is the 'form of appearance' of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from it--this 'third thing' will turn out to be 'socially necessary labor time'.

Book Two of Hegel's Science of Logic, the Doctrine of Essence, begins with a chapter on 'Der Schein,' which appears in A.V. Miller's translation as "Illusory Being" (Hegel, Science of Logic, trans. by A.V. Miller, pp. 393-408).

Here, Hegel describes "schein" as "reflected immediacy, that is immediacy which is only by means of its negation and which when contrasted with its mediation is nothing but the empty determination of the immediacy of negated determinate being," (p. 396).

Hegel goes on to remark that "Schein" is "the phenomenon [Phänomen] of skepticism, and the Appearance [Erscheinung] of idealism," (p. 396).

In describing exchange value as the 'Erscheinungsform' of 'something contained in it, yet distinguishable from it'--which will be labor--Marx is clearly flirting with the terminology surrounding "Illusory Being" in the Science of Logic, which suggests labor as the 'thing-in-itself' of the exchange value. Exchange-value is the reflected immediacy that conceals the congealed labor that it is its essence.

The passage as a whole is suggestive of how exchange value will wend its way through Marx's demonstration, unfolding from itself determinations of itself.

Before presenting a long, difficult quotation from Hegel, I think the most straightforward way to present this reference to Hegel is to say present the argument as follows:

In Kantian idealism, we find that the 'thing-in-itself' cannot become an object of knowledge; consciousness only ever has immediate access to the form of appearance, the 'sensible form' of a 'thing-in-itself' which never presents itself to consciousness. In referring to the value form as the 'form of appearance' of something else which does not appear, Marx is saying that just as idealism subordinates the objectivity of the world to its appearance for consciousness, exchange-value represents immediately an essence that it suppresses, and implicitly, denies the possibility of knowledge of this essence.

Hegel writes, "Skepticism did not permit itself to say 'It is'; modern idealism did not permit itself to regard knowledge as a knowing of the thing-in-itself; the illusory being of skepticism was supposed to lack any foundation of being, and in idealism the thing-in-itself was not supposed to enter into knowledge. But at the same time, skepticism admitted a multitude of determinations of its illusory being, or rather its illusory being had for content the entire manifold wealth of the world. In idealism, too, Appearance [Erscheinung] embraces within itself the range of these manifold determinateness. This illusory being and this Appearance are immediately thus manifoldly determined. This content, therefore, may well have no being, no thing or thing-in-itself at its base; it remains on its own account as it is; the content has only been transferred from being into an illusory being, so that the latter has within itself those manifold determinateness, which are immediate, simply affirmative, and mutually related as others. Illusory being is, therefore, itself immediately determinate. It can have this or that content; whatever content it has, illusory being does not posit this itself but has it immediately. The various forms of idealism, Leibnizian, Kantian, Fichtean, and others, have not advanced beyond being as determinateness, have not advanced beyond this immediacy, any more than skepticism did. Skepticism permits the content of its illusory being to be given to it; whatever content it is supposed to have, for skepticism it is immediate. The monad of Leibniz evolves its ideas and representations out of itself; but it is not the power that generates and binds them together, rather do they arise in the monad like bubbles; they are indifferent and immediate over against one another and the same in relation to the monad itself. Similarly, the Kantian Appearance [Erscheinung] is a given content of perception; it presupposes affections, determinations of the subject, which are immediately relatively to themselves and to the subject. It may well be that the infinite obstacle of Fichte's idealism has no underlying thing-in-itself, so that it becomes purely a determinateness in the ego; but for the ego, this determinateness which it appropriates and whose externality it sublates is at the same time immediate, a limitation of the ego, which it can transcend but which has in it an element of indifference, so that although the limitation is in the ego, it contains an immediate non-being of the ego." (p. 396-397).

In Lenin's notebooks on Hegel's Science of Logic, these sections provoke a considerable degree of excitement. Lenin's 'Conspectus of Hegel's Science of Logic' can be accessed via Marxists.org here:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch02.htm

Something like organizing Latour's notebooks into some recognizable volume.

notebooks <3

Perhaps a couple of notebooks could be of aid!