That was Simon Critchley's question in his essay on the new NYT philosophy series called The Stone. He's the moderator of the series, and his essay was supposed to kick things off.
Kind of a weird piece. The internets rumbled with the groaning of analytic philosophers, and I can understand why.
[Quick primer on the two main denominations in the contemporary academic philosophy world: There are analytic philosophers and there are Continental philosophers. One way to understand the distinction is to consider why each is hard to read, for different reasons. Analytic philosophers are hard to read like computer programs are hard to read. They're full of precisely defined words, and sometimes just letters and symbols, and you have to have your philosophical dictionary out and plug and chug the definitions in there to understand what the hell they're saying. It may be a bitch to read, but like a computer program, you can be sure that it either makes sense or it won't work. Someone can point out your mistake and you have to admit you're wrong. Well, not everyone admits they're wrong, but by and large, that's the way it usually works.
Continental philosophy is hard to read because it doesn't use precisely defined words. I mean, they're using English...or German or French or whatever (Continental does refer to that Euro euphemism "the Continent"). The words have definitions. But the style is much squishier and lends itself to stretching words and concepts to fit a philosophical argument. And it's hard to read because the argument itself can be hard to follow, and sometimes gets lost in literary type flourishes, that usually aren't very good from a literary point of view anyway. So, the criticism is, it's much harder to pin someone down and say, aha!, look here see, what you wrote was wrong. Because there's plenty of wiggle room and opportunity for showmanship, which lends itself to confidence games rather than clearly understood questions and (attempted) answers.
The ideal analytic philosopher is just nails when it comes to logical argumentation. The ideal Continental philosopher is damn clever and cryptic.
These are just caricatures of the two styles of philosophy. It's not a necessarily useful way to categorize all philosophy out there, but it's one way to explain the context of the academic discipline today. Another helpful bit of information is that analytic philosophy currently tends to be very much an applied discipline. I mean, it does have abstract topics like metaphysics, but it also deals with the philosophy of science. More specifically, philosophy of psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy of physics, biology, et cetera. Continental philosophy tends to be about more abstract, metaphysical and existential stuff.]
Back to Critchley's essay. He doesn't mention any of the great philosophy being done on practical topics, like bioethics and philosophy of mind and philosophy of physics (I'm probably giving away my preference for analytic philosophy here). And there are some really great popular books out there that translate this stuff into non-specialist language for the rest of us. But the message he delivered in his essay was that the philosopher is basically out of touch, but gosh aren't you intrigued by how wonderfully out of touch he is (it's a "he", definitely--the only philosophers Critchley talks about are ancient Greek dudes). The philosopher is "the one who is silly", "the person who has time or who takes time", and, let's give a fair warning, "PHILOSOPHY KILLS".
?
Is it that hard to write an apology for philosophy? Philosophy helps us get our thinking straight. It's better to think straight than to think crooked. Try it out. Moving on.
I just came across this website today, which is a great example of philosophy being put to good use: www.AskPhilosophers.org. Got a tough question that hurts your thinker? Post it on the website, and a professional philosopher will do his or her diggity darndest to answer it. Seems incredibly practical to me.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Excuses
I don't even know why I feel the need to justify why I haven't been posting here. But I did say I would post more often, so I feel like I need an excuse. Ok, excuses, excuses. Let's see. I moved. That's the big one, really. I moved a whole 4 blocks, and it unsettled my world for a while.
Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to try and write at least a few sentences about every book I read. Every time I update my Goodreads account, I feel like I should put something in the review section, and I think, "Aaaaah, I'll do that later." Never happens.
So, starting with the next book I finish, I'll do that. But I did want to make a confession, though. I was talking to a friend recently, who also has a Goodreads account. He was saying that he noticed (someone else might have pointed it out to him) that the books he reads are almost entirely written by men. And a quick survey of the last 100 books I've read, covering about 2 years, revealed the same pattern in my reading. Six books were written by women (intense mathematical analysis tells me that this amounts to 6%), and 3 of those titles were by the same woman (Marilynne Robinson). So, really I've only read 3 female authors in two years. I'm not sure what that says about me. Is this something I need to consciously correct?
Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to try and write at least a few sentences about every book I read. Every time I update my Goodreads account, I feel like I should put something in the review section, and I think, "Aaaaah, I'll do that later." Never happens.
So, starting with the next book I finish, I'll do that. But I did want to make a confession, though. I was talking to a friend recently, who also has a Goodreads account. He was saying that he noticed (someone else might have pointed it out to him) that the books he reads are almost entirely written by men. And a quick survey of the last 100 books I've read, covering about 2 years, revealed the same pattern in my reading. Six books were written by women (intense mathematical analysis tells me that this amounts to 6%), and 3 of those titles were by the same woman (Marilynne Robinson). So, really I've only read 3 female authors in two years. I'm not sure what that says about me. Is this something I need to consciously correct?
Monday, February 15, 2010
Diaz on Reading
OK, I kind of remember what Diaz said the other night about novels and reading. He was asked by someone in the crowd if he ever got any push back from his editor or publisher about the use of Spanish in his book.
The short answer was, no, he didn't get much push back. Because he would have just pulled the book and his publishers knew that. But guys, he said (he said that a lot, guys), the only reason that would be an issue is that we've forgotten how to read. When we used to read as kids, we were always coming across a word that we didn't know and we had to look it up. We had to ask questions, we had to do some work, and now that we're adults we think all of that is behind us. Sure, reading can be fun and entertaining and even mindless, but a novel, he said, a novel can be something that does more than that. It can be something you experience like you experience life, which is to say, something you don't completely understand. Just about every day you hear someone or read something that you don't quite understand, someone is speaking in a different language, like Spanish or IT-nerd-ish or politico-conspiracy-ish, and you have to either ask a question or let it go. You either do some work and find out the meaning of that that foreign phrase or that jargon, or you go on with your life and realize that you can't understand everything, you can't control everything, that life is ultimately huge and unwieldy and beyond taming.
And guys, he said, that's why a novel can be such a great form of community building, because ultimately the best way to somehow manage life is to realize that our understanding is really an interpretation. Any meaning we can derive is in the form of interpretation, which we know is in itself a fickle thing, and the best interpretation you're ever going to get is one that includes many voices, many viewpoints. Other people, other readers, who bring their own experiences to the novel and understand it in their peculiar, sometimes even fucked-up, ways can add to the conversation about what this novel "means".
And that meaning, I'd say (no longer paraphrasing Diaz, and hardly being original here), can be so many things, but the best thing you could say about a novel is just that it's true. Fiction is true when you get that sort of it's-funny-because-it's-true feeling, which is a cliche about cliched stand-up comedy. But it's that feeling. The realization that, yeah, this is what life is like, this is my experience somehow snatched and twisted a bit and injected into language in a way I've never seen before. And you somehow understand your life better and feel as if you can live better because of it. Because you've got just a little firmer pinkie grip than you had before, and that's why you keep reading.
The short answer was, no, he didn't get much push back. Because he would have just pulled the book and his publishers knew that. But guys, he said (he said that a lot, guys), the only reason that would be an issue is that we've forgotten how to read. When we used to read as kids, we were always coming across a word that we didn't know and we had to look it up. We had to ask questions, we had to do some work, and now that we're adults we think all of that is behind us. Sure, reading can be fun and entertaining and even mindless, but a novel, he said, a novel can be something that does more than that. It can be something you experience like you experience life, which is to say, something you don't completely understand. Just about every day you hear someone or read something that you don't quite understand, someone is speaking in a different language, like Spanish or IT-nerd-ish or politico-conspiracy-ish, and you have to either ask a question or let it go. You either do some work and find out the meaning of that that foreign phrase or that jargon, or you go on with your life and realize that you can't understand everything, you can't control everything, that life is ultimately huge and unwieldy and beyond taming.
And guys, he said, that's why a novel can be such a great form of community building, because ultimately the best way to somehow manage life is to realize that our understanding is really an interpretation. Any meaning we can derive is in the form of interpretation, which we know is in itself a fickle thing, and the best interpretation you're ever going to get is one that includes many voices, many viewpoints. Other people, other readers, who bring their own experiences to the novel and understand it in their peculiar, sometimes even fucked-up, ways can add to the conversation about what this novel "means".
And that meaning, I'd say (no longer paraphrasing Diaz, and hardly being original here), can be so many things, but the best thing you could say about a novel is just that it's true. Fiction is true when you get that sort of it's-funny-because-it's-true feeling, which is a cliche about cliched stand-up comedy. But it's that feeling. The realization that, yeah, this is what life is like, this is my experience somehow snatched and twisted a bit and injected into language in a way I've never seen before. And you somehow understand your life better and feel as if you can live better because of it. Because you've got just a little firmer pinkie grip than you had before, and that's why you keep reading.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Junot Diaz
I saw Junot Diaz last night at Butler University. He kept it very short, just read two pieces. And the first he read off his iPhone because he forgot to print it out.
He seemed to have three personae: Jersey ghetto (which he was in most of the time), Dominican (he spoke in Spanish to some Dominicans in the crowd), and professor (when he expounded during the Q&A). Pretty entertaining. Made me want to go back and read *The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao* again. Haven't read *Drown* yet. Probably will soon.
He said some interesting things about reading and novels and how important they are. Well, I forget exactly what he said, but this is what I remember: reading is way more important to him than writing. I’m always encouraged when I hear that. I can get kind of stupidly depressed when I think about the fact that I want to write something, but I haven't. Everyone wants to write. Not everyone can. But you can read. And, I’m remembering now, I love hearing Borges (in his Norton lectures--they're on CD!) say that first and foremost he's a reader. And an interview by Bolano, where he says that what's really important is that we keep reading--writing, not so much. Is there a Spanish language connection here? Anyway, you can do worse than be a pathological reader, I guess.
He seemed to have three personae: Jersey ghetto (which he was in most of the time), Dominican (he spoke in Spanish to some Dominicans in the crowd), and professor (when he expounded during the Q&A). Pretty entertaining. Made me want to go back and read *The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao* again. Haven't read *Drown* yet. Probably will soon.
He said some interesting things about reading and novels and how important they are. Well, I forget exactly what he said, but this is what I remember: reading is way more important to him than writing. I’m always encouraged when I hear that. I can get kind of stupidly depressed when I think about the fact that I want to write something, but I haven't. Everyone wants to write. Not everyone can. But you can read. And, I’m remembering now, I love hearing Borges (in his Norton lectures--they're on CD!) say that first and foremost he's a reader. And an interview by Bolano, where he says that what's really important is that we keep reading--writing, not so much. Is there a Spanish language connection here? Anyway, you can do worse than be a pathological reader, I guess.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Correlation is Causation
Apparently this is old news, but I'm just now learning about this: http://www.obereed.net/hh/correlation.html. Wish I'd known sooner.
Friday, January 22, 2010
David Foster Wallace
Have you read that guy? Oh my gosh. He's good. Was good. If you didn't know, he committed suicide in September of 2008, which makes it a little awkward when he's writing about depression and suicide. But he did it so well. And with levity, and it works, it makes you smile, you can't help it.
(And if you think that's not the sort of thing that should make you smile, then you should not read this guy. Because he's one of those people, like Mel Brooks or Trey Parker, who has shown us that anything can be funny. *Anything*. I mean, without these people we would never have laughed at the Holocaust or AIDS or self-annihilation by microwave oven. And that would have been a shame.)
Early last year I read *Infinite Jest* and it changed my life. I said, Yes, this is it, this is brilliant, this is the kind of book I've been looking for my entire life. And then I went on with my life and basically forgot about that hefty novel (it's 1100 pages). Then I recently picked up *Brief Interviews with Hideous Men* and I remembered, Oh yeah, this guy exists, or existed not so long ago, David Foster Wallace, and he was a genius.
In case you're wondering, Brief Interviews is a collection of short stories, and the title comes from these fictional interviews that are kind of evenly spaced throughout the book. You don't know what the questions are, but the interviewees are all misogynists. I know, hilarious, right?
Here's an excerpt, where two graduate students are being interviewed. Their names are K--- and E---, and they are responding to the same question:
K--- 'What does today's woman want. That's the big one.'
E--- 'I agree. It's the big one all right. It's the what-do-you-call...'
K--- 'Or put another way, what do today's women *think* they want versus what do they really deep down *want*.'
E--- 'Or what do they think they're *supposed* to want.'
And you can imagine what two over-educated, theory-soaked misogynists can tell you about what women *really*, *deep down* want.
Anyway, it's a great book, and I recommend it as an intro to DFW if you're not quite up for Infinite Jest. Also, here's a great essay I found about Wallace at The Point Magazine: http://thepointmag.com/death1.html.
[And yes, I'm one of those people who uses the words "genius" and "brilliant" a bit lightly. Which is one way to divide the world. Those who do and those who don't. The way you might categorize carbonated beverage fans as Coke-lovers or Pepsi-lovers; taxonomical biologists as lumpers or splitters; or physicists as strict-Copenhagen-ers or non-strict-Copenhagen-ers.]
(And if you think that's not the sort of thing that should make you smile, then you should not read this guy. Because he's one of those people, like Mel Brooks or Trey Parker, who has shown us that anything can be funny. *Anything*. I mean, without these people we would never have laughed at the Holocaust or AIDS or self-annihilation by microwave oven. And that would have been a shame.)
Early last year I read *Infinite Jest* and it changed my life. I said, Yes, this is it, this is brilliant, this is the kind of book I've been looking for my entire life. And then I went on with my life and basically forgot about that hefty novel (it's 1100 pages). Then I recently picked up *Brief Interviews with Hideous Men* and I remembered, Oh yeah, this guy exists, or existed not so long ago, David Foster Wallace, and he was a genius.
In case you're wondering, Brief Interviews is a collection of short stories, and the title comes from these fictional interviews that are kind of evenly spaced throughout the book. You don't know what the questions are, but the interviewees are all misogynists. I know, hilarious, right?
Here's an excerpt, where two graduate students are being interviewed. Their names are K--- and E---, and they are responding to the same question:
K--- 'What does today's woman want. That's the big one.'
E--- 'I agree. It's the big one all right. It's the what-do-you-call...'
K--- 'Or put another way, what do today's women *think* they want versus what do they really deep down *want*.'
E--- 'Or what do they think they're *supposed* to want.'
And you can imagine what two over-educated, theory-soaked misogynists can tell you about what women *really*, *deep down* want.
Anyway, it's a great book, and I recommend it as an intro to DFW if you're not quite up for Infinite Jest. Also, here's a great essay I found about Wallace at The Point Magazine: http://thepointmag.com/death1.html.
[And yes, I'm one of those people who uses the words "genius" and "brilliant" a bit lightly. Which is one way to divide the world. Those who do and those who don't. The way you might categorize carbonated beverage fans as Coke-lovers or Pepsi-lovers; taxonomical biologists as lumpers or splitters; or physicists as strict-Copenhagen-ers or non-strict-Copenhagen-ers.]
The Post Where Sub-sub Lightens Up
I've been thinking that maybe I should start using this blog more like a blog. In fact, I somehow feel like I owe it to people to make it a bit bloggy-er, if they've gone to all the trouble of clicking into this particular corner of the virtual cosmos, with the expectation that they will find something informal and personal and confessional and all. So I'm thinking that this is what I owe, and really I've been keeping myself to myself very selfishly. The thing I realized (I had an epiphany) is that I'm very special. Like one in six and a half billion, a unique snowflake, and whatever else is unique like that, like a crooked branch on a gnarly tree, or a constellation of freckles on a pale lower back, etc.. And what I need to do is spend loads of time expressing myself in the most idiosyncratic fashion I can muster, with confidence that I'll find this all extremely rewarding.
So I will post more. I will give my opinion and do my best to keep facts, figures, and numbers (scientific, statistical, monetary, astrological) out of it. And I will try not to be holier than thou. Because, I'm being painfully honest with everyone including myself, I have posted some very serious and preachy stuff on this blog. Back to the epiphany: I've been taking myself too seriously. To be fair, no one else was, so I felt that if anyone was going to take me seriously it had to be me. But life is short (the epiphany), and it's better when I'm not so serious. If I'm going to be serious again, I'll warn you beforehand. But I'll try not to do it.
What will this blog be about, now? Well, mostly about what I've been reading. Probably. Or movies and music, that sort of stuff. So, here we draw a line in the Sub-sub space, below this line we do not venture, unless we are curious about how serious and preachy I used to be. But don't bring it up again. Please.
_______________________
So I will post more. I will give my opinion and do my best to keep facts, figures, and numbers (scientific, statistical, monetary, astrological) out of it. And I will try not to be holier than thou. Because, I'm being painfully honest with everyone including myself, I have posted some very serious and preachy stuff on this blog. Back to the epiphany: I've been taking myself too seriously. To be fair, no one else was, so I felt that if anyone was going to take me seriously it had to be me. But life is short (the epiphany), and it's better when I'm not so serious. If I'm going to be serious again, I'll warn you beforehand. But I'll try not to do it.
What will this blog be about, now? Well, mostly about what I've been reading. Probably. Or movies and music, that sort of stuff. So, here we draw a line in the Sub-sub space, below this line we do not venture, unless we are curious about how serious and preachy I used to be. But don't bring it up again. Please.
_______________________
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