Archives | Philosophy
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Of Polemic
"Were we to search among men’s recorded thoughts for the choicest manifestations of human imbecility and prejudice, our specimens would be mostly taken from their opinions of the opinions of one another.” - J.S. Mill
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Monday, July 25, 2005
Near Theory (My creation, is it real?)
Little game. Get out your pencil. Provide the following (or just click and find out what I'm on about under the fold.)
1. Singular noun. Two syllables.
2. Verb. One syllable.
3. Plural noun. One syllable.
4. Singular noun. One syllable.
5. Singular noun. One syllable.
6. Plural noun. Two syllables. Must rhyme with the selection for 1.
7. Singular noun, two syllables.
8. Singular noun, one syllable.
9. Verb, one syllable.
10. Verb, one syllable.
11. Adjective, three syllables.
12. Plural noun, one syllable.
13. Plural noun, one syllable.
14. Plural noun, one syllable. Must rhyme with the selection for 10.
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Near Theory II (Bits and Pieces)
This is the conclusion to "Near Theory (My creation, is it real?)", see above. It has been separated off for the convenience of those who like their punchlines without a lot of joke by way of lead-in. Well, really I suppose it contains the second punch-line. To get the joke you need to read just a little bit of the above post, but then you can quit in boredom and read this instead.Continue reading "Near Theory II (Bits and Pieces)"
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
A Respose to “The Deconstructive Angel”
This is a guest post by Adam Kotsko, graduate student at the Chicago Theological Seminary and proprietor of The Weblog. He is on vacation from blogging this week so he can blog at the Valve.
I wish to take issue primarily with one sentence in M. H. Abrams’ contribution to Theory’s Empire, “The Deconstructive Angel”; it is exemplary of the register in which Abrams’ misreading operates:
Continue reading "A Respose to “The Deconstructive Angel”"What is distinctive about Derrida is first that, like other French structuralists, he shifts his inquiry from language to écriture, the written or printed text; and second that he conceives a text in an extraordinarily limited fashion (202).
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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Poetics and Problematics - or - The Engineer Knows the Worst Truth About the Valve
I’ve completed what I hope is the final version of my chess/Nabokov essay, now entitled (at nnyhav’s good suggestion) “Poetics and Problematics”. Maybe you saw the draft, which was about 5,000 words but lacked a conclusion. Predictably, making up this deficit caused the production to bloat to 10,000 words. I reduced it to a lean, mean, 6,500 by playing “Gonna Fly Now” on iTunes and pouring a glass of raw eggs in the disk drive. (Mileage may vary on your system.) If you would like to read the final version, just email - jholbo at mac dot com - and I’ll send you a download link. It’s location is not exactly secret, but I generally don’t post what I hope are final drafts before offering them to journal editors. (Is that a wise policy?) I’m sending this to “Philosophy and Literature” in a couple days and final comments would be appreciated. My main concern is that I’ve weakened comprehensibility through excessive cuts.
Now, something to amuse ...
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Saturday, June 11, 2005
By your/their indiff’rence in the dank
The draft of my Nabokov & etc. chess essay contains an alleged quote from Denis Donoghue: "I hate chess". But no citation. I was confident of my capacity to remedy this defect; the thing was to be found on a left-hand page, either of Ferocious Alphabets or The Pure Good of Theory. Alas, two cover-to-cover readings have disabused me of this inexplicable delusion. If anyone can document Donoghue's authorship of this sentence, I will, um, thank you profusely. In fact, I have to email Donoghue about the Theory's Empire event. He's a contributor to the volume. Perhaps I can try to induce him to write me the sentence in an email. I feel rather like Earbrass, in The Unstrung Harp:
Continue reading "By your/their indiff’rence in the dank"Mr. Earbrass was virtually asleep when several lines of verse passed through his mind and left it hopelessly awake. Here was the perfect epigraph for TUH:
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Friday, June 10, 2005
Identification (10 Points); Discussion (25 Points)
No cheating.
I do not know if I am typical in this, but I know that most of my works of fiction “wrote themselves”, in the sense that when writing them, I did not start out with any preconceived plot line, action, key locations, or even the ending. Thus, I wrote as if I were taking dictation, but as if what I wrote was being dictated to me by some functional regions of my brain to which I myself have no introspective access. As a rule, such was the creative mechanism, one which I intend neither to praise nor condemn, because it seems to me it may be common to everyone in varying degrees. It is as if some kind of functional performance of the brain is subject to isolation, especially during dreams and in hyponoic, hypobulic, and hypnotic states. The effects of this are, if at all, very difficult to control by force of will. What does this mean? I believe that deciphering these kinds of psychological phenomena will gradually reveal their trivial nature and origins. To put it as simply as possible, the brain of modern man was not formed by the genetic competition of the last million years in order for us to be able to play music, paint, make rhymes, write prose, or engage in physics or philosophy. We now know how densely branched and expansive the family tree of pre-human troglodytes was.
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Sunday, June 05, 2005
My Review of The Literary Wittgenstein
NDPR has posted book event is scheduled for August 2-4. When it happens I’m going to use the review as a sort of general springboard for discussion. I hope it will also perform the standard function of helping you decide whether the book - and, by extension, our event - sounds interesting. I’ll produce a sequel for the occasion. Basically, the review concludes by noting - without resolving or explaining - apparently baffling tensions. I want to pick up almost exactly where I leave off, i.e. by resolving and explaining, which isn’t the job of a reviewer, who is too busy pointing out where others have failed to do so.
What am I talking about? At the tail end of the review I quote one the contributors, Joseph Margolis, complaining (quite justly, I think): “We do certainly see how brilliantly he worked; but, for all that, I confess I have never seen a convincing statement of Wittgenstein’s general ‘method’.” I set this beside a quote from Wittgenstein: “The nimbus of philosophy has been lost. For we now have a method of doing philosophy, and can speak of skilful philosophers. Compare the difference between alchemy and chemistry: chemistry has a method and we can speak of skilful chemists. But once a method has been found the opportunities for the expression of personality are correspondingly restricted.” You see the problem, I take it. Further quotes make it worse. About how philosophy should be written only as a poetic working on one’s own personality, for example. I’m going to set the lot beside a passage from Donald Barthelme’s “The Genius"
His assistants cluster about him. He is severe with them, demanding, punctilious, but this is for their own ultimate benefit. He devises hideously difficult problems, or complicates their work with sudden oblique comments that open whole new areas of investigation - yawning chasms under their feet. It is as if he wishes to place them in situations where only failure is possible. But failure, too, is part of mental life. “I will make you failure-proof,” he says jokingly. His assistants pale.
We’ll get to that come August. Another thing I want to do then is say a bit more about some of the pieces in the anthology that only get a sentence or two in my review. Space constraints. I’ll try to make amends.
The Literary Wittgenstein is presently available from Barnes & Noble. Amazon
Feel free to discuss my review in comments. Just because we are going to do it again in August is no reason not to warm up a bit now.
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Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Poems and Problems
I've got a draft of a paper for you to knock back with comments, if you would be so kind. [UPDATE: final draft available by request. Just email me and ask.] Actually, it's another of my patented mock-Platonic dialogues. It's titled "Poems and Problems" (PDF) and is a modestly expanded version of what you get in this old post. 5,000 words about Nabokov and chess and Macbeth and interpretive theory and poetry. [UPDATE: the draft contains an apparently erroneous imputation of chess hatred to Denis Donoghue. See this post.] Some good jokes. It needs part II, but that isn't done. Part I should be moderately freestanding, despite the teaser ending. Please tell me what you think. I'm not sure what to do with it. Maybe send it to Philosophy and Literature.
By the by, I'm thinking about trying to have a draft-a-week feature here at the Valve. Something a bit like Brian Weatherson's papersblog, but less dedicated. I'm not taking submissions yet. I gotta think. (I want to earn my editor's stripes, but I don't want to work too hard.) Suggestions about how it might work? A simple question. Is there any problem inviting people to submit drafts of papers to be posted, while having that little Creative Commons badge up? Obviously, if it's hosted at the Valve (my paper is not), it means people are releasing their drafts under Creative Commons. Does anyone think that is a bad idea, i.e. might it make trouble for anyone who wanted to publish a final version of their draft somewhere else? I wouldn't want that.
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Monday, May 23, 2005
Does Darwin Hate Iguanas? Does Melville Hate Librarians?
Acephalous has a whole bunch of great posts up. Funny + clever + long + I agree. First, he links to this site, containing illustrations for every. single. page. of Gravity's Rainbow. [Crikey.] And don't miss this moving and pathetic dialogue:
Continue reading "Does Darwin Hate Iguanas? Does Melville Hate Librarians?"Iguana #2: Good Heavens! What are you... (thrown into ocean by Darwin)
Iguana #2: Why I nev... (thrown into ocean by Darwin)
Iguana #2: My Good Man! Why do you insist on throwing me in the ocean? How have I offen... (thrown into ocean by Darwin)
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Saturday, May 21, 2005
Wittgenstein Reads Empson
Just put the finishing touches on a review of The Literary Wittgenstein for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, nice little online outfit. No, you can't see it yet. Check back in 6 weeks. Re: our Wittgenstein book event, I think we are delaying it until the book comes back in existence. July or August. So my review will come out, if the Notre Dame people like it. Then our event. We'll work it out.
One point I make in the review is that 'the literary Wittgenstein' is a worthy subject, but some people have gotten a little too comfortable with the very idea of it. You come to regard Wittgenstein as a sort of 'strayed poet' (per the title of a poem I.A. Richards wrote about him), misunderstood by all the analytic philosophers hemming him in. (In my dissertation I kept tripping over this and finally set it aside as "the myth of Wittgensteinian captivity".) You tend to lose track of the fact that if he'd gone to live with a bunch of literary types he would have felt just as misunderstood by them, probably more so. Being an analytic philosopher and all. Anyway, one way I illustrate the point is by quoting from F.R. Leavis' "Memories of Wittgenstein". Leavis was acquainted with Wittgenstein - not a close friend, but they met and talked. Leavis admired his character, acknowledged his brilliance, his deep ethical seriousness and high culture. But: "cultivated as he was, his interest in literature had remained rudimentary ... It may of course be that in German the range and quality of his literary culture were more impressive, but I can't give any great weight to that possibility." There is a footnote from the editor, Rush Rhees, consisting of a single exclamation point of sheer incredulity. [Did Donna Haraway ever get that efficient, Ray?] Leavis is obviously totally mistaken, and lots of people have tut-tutted at his piece for this reason. But it seems to me useful to remind ourselves that Leavis wasn't exactly a blind idiot. Yes, we have Culture and Value today, and he didn't; so we can read things like: "philosophy is mostly a working on yourself ... on your own interpretations"; and: "I think I summed up my position when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry." But he also gave lectures that started with remarks like: "The nimbus of philosophy has been lost. For we now have a method of doing philosophy, and can speak of skilful philosophers. Compare the difference between alchemy and chemistry: chemistry has a method and we can speak of skilful chemists. But once a method has been found the opportunities for the expression of personality are correspondingly restricted." Sounds like a narrow-minded positivist, doesn't he? No wonder Leavis figured he was on the other side of the fence, regarding the Two Cultures. At least with respect to his philosophy.
Anyway, that's not what I wanted to write about tonight. I want to write about how Wittgenstein and Leavis read Empson together. Just so a day doesn't go by without an Empson post. Leavis writes:
"He said to me once (it must have been soon after his return to Cambridge): 'Do you know a man called Empson?' 'I replied: 'No, but I've just come on him in Cambridge Poetry 1929, which I've reviewed for the Cambridge Review.' 'Is he any good.' 'It's surprising,' I said, 'but there are six poems of his in the book, and they are all poems and very distinctive.' 'What are they like?' asked Wittgenstein. I replied that there was little point in my describing them, since he didn't know enough about English poetry. 'If you like them,' he said, 'you can describe them.' So I started: 'You know Donne?' No, he didn't know Donne. [This sort of kills the explanation. Cut to Wittgenstein visiting Leavis to see the book.] 'Where's that anthology? Read me his best poem.' The book was handy; opening it, I said, with 'Legal Fictions' before my eyes. 'I don't know whether this is his best poem, but it will do.' When I had read it, Wittgenstein said, 'Explain it!' So I began to do so, taking the first line first. 'Oh! I understand that,' he interrupted, and, looking over my arm at the text, 'but what does this mean?' He pointed two or three lines on. At the third or fourth interruption of the same kind I shut the book, and said, 'I'm not playing.' 'It's perfectly plain that you don't understand the poem in the least,' he said. 'Give me the book.' I complied, and sure enough, without any difficulty, he went through the poem, explaining the analogical structure that I should have explained myself, if he had allowed me."
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Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Sorting out Aristotle with Milosz
I struggled to understand Aristotle’s concept of Mimesis when I was taught it in college. I then proceeded to forget all about it in graduate school, where the classes I chose to take (most of them on contemporary theory) never went near the subject. But based on my recent interests (in Iris Murdoch, for instance), and on some of the conversations that have been occurring at The Valve, it seems like it might be helpful to sort out some basic things about Aristotle.
My understanding is pretty basic, along the lines of what the Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism says:
The principal source of our knowledge of Aristotle’s aesthetic and literary theory is the Poetics, but important supplementary information is found in other treatises, chiefly the Rhetoric, the Politics, and the Nicomachean Ethics. As expressed in these works, Aristotelian aesthetics directly contradicts Plato’s negative view of art by establishing a potent intellectual role for artistic mimesis. For Aristotle, mimesis describes a process involving the use by different art forms of different means of representation, different manners of communicating that representation to an audience, and different levels of moral and ethical behavior as objects of the artistic representation. Thus Aristotle distinguishes between tragedy and comedy essentially on the basis of the fact that the former represents “noble” or “morally good” agents, while the latter portrays “ignoble” or “morally defective” characters. All forms of mimesis, however, including tragedy and comedy, come into existence because of a fundamental intellectual impulse felt by all human beings. In the Metaphysics Aristotle describes this impulse as humanity’s “desire to know,” and in chapter 4 of the Poetics he identifies it with the essential pleasure we human beings find in all mimesis, the pleasure of “learning and inference."
I’m now going to pose some naive questions that come out of this, which will in all likelihood expose my shocking ignorance of classical philosophy:
--Is the emphasis on learning and inference in this definition accurate? It suggests that we should be talking more about didacticism and less about style or language.
--Is the emphasis on pleasure above accurate? If so, it almost gives the game away to the Platonists and, more recently, the cultural Philistines. The mimetic element in literature may be fundamental, but it is “for pleasure,” not an expression of a need, or an essential element of social order. (I tend to think that art is essential in a healthy society, not voluntary.)
--If the good is derived from human models rather than ideal (or absolute) ones, and if human beings are prone not to be good, why do we benefit from this way of thinking? Why not start with absolute ideals, and allow ourselves fall short?
--Does Aristotle have anything to say on the (admittedly more contemporary) question of whether serious art should be inherently oriented to moral questions?
--What is the role of the individual’s subjective experience in the shaping of the distinctive authorial voice? (Again, a modern question, but an inescapable one if we are going to have a theory of literary mimesis)
Let’s make this a little more concrete. One contemporary writer who struggles with the above questions in an Aristotelian (or at least, anti-Platonic) idiom is Czeslaw Milosz. There are many Milosz poems that get into it, but there is one in particular that I wish to quote, called “To Raja Rao,” which was written in Berkeley, in 1969. Below the fold, two excerpts from the poem, and some further thoughts.
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Thursday, May 12, 2005
The Literary Wittgenstein and Theory’s Empire
As mentioned a few days ago, I am planning a few Massive Multi-Thinker Online Reviews on the lines of the China Miéville event at CT. This post gives some advance detail, in case you want to do your homework early.Continue reading "The Literary Wittgenstein and Theory’s Empire"
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Monday, May 09, 2005
Contemptsmanship
The Plotnitsky piece Jonathan links has come in for criticism as arrogant. More broadly, it seems to be contemptsmanship sweeps week here at the Valve. Is culture war, considered in its emotional aspect, more than recreational contempt?
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Monday, April 25, 2005
Reputation Economy Again
Does your literary weblog lack readers? Are your best posts alms for oblivion? Well, then, that is what the comment box is for. To make yourself known. Go ahead. Announce your existence. Tell us of your blog, or your best post.
Speaking of the blogroll, I just remembered to add: God of the Machine. He used to do more of the cultural blogging. Even Yvor Winters blogging. Now I gather he's starting a cult and mathematics is involved. I really couldn't say. Also, you should visit the nice behold the considerable, eccentric intelligence of John Emerson at Idiocentrism. Also, here's something odd Halfway Down the Danube. (For those who care to step in the same river twice, part II. I do want to encourage holbonicism. Does 'hooked on holbonics' have a ring to it?)
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