that article was really cool. still digesting it of course, but it struck me as a very interesting examination of what you might call mathematical communication consists of. anyway, good stuff.
― ryan, Thursday, 20 December 2012 22:43 (eleven years ago) link
yes, mathematical communication is "a thing" now, in fact spending the afternoon refereeing an article on it! good times
― Euler, Thursday, 20 December 2012 22:51 (eleven years ago) link
This might be a stupid question/one that's been answered before, but I've just started a Literature & Philosophy module for my MA (in English Lit). The course reading list/outline is as follows...
Week 1, Thursday 10th January - IntroductionIntroductory discussion Plato, The Republic, Book 10Walter Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’, in Selected Writings, Volume 1
Week 2, Thursday 17th January – Walter Benjamin: Language and MemoryWalter Benjamin, ‘The Task of the Translator’ and ‘The Image of Proust’, in Selected Writings, Volume 2
Week 3, Thursday 24rd January – Walter Benjamin continuedWalter Benjamin, ‘The Image of Proust’ in Selected Writings, Volume 2
Wek 4, Thursday 31st January – Martin Heidegger: Poetry and BeingMartin Heidegger, ‘What Are Poets For?’ in Poetry, Language, Thought
Week 5, Thursday 7th February –Heidegger continuedMartin Heidegger, ‘What Are Poets For’ and ‘The Thing’ in Poetry, Language, Thought
Week 6, Thursday 14th FebruaryTutorial Week – No seminar
Week 7, Thursday 21st February – Heidegger continuedMartin Heidegger, ‘The Nature of Language’ in On the Way to Language
Week 8, Thursday 28th February – Maurice Blanchot: Poetry Beyond BeingMaurice Blanchot, ‘Literature and the Right to Death’ in The Work of Fire
Week 9, Thursday 7th March – Blanchot continuedMaurice Blanchot, ‘Literature and the Right to Death’ continued and ‘Literature and the Original Experience’ in The Space of Literature
Week 10, Thursday 14th March – Blanchot continuedMaurice Blanchot, ‘Literature and the Original Experience’ continued
My question is thus: are there any philosophy overviews you'd recommend to accompany a course of this kind?
― Blue Collar Retail Assistant (Dwight Yorke), Friday, 11 January 2013 15:39 (eleven years ago) link
this is a great frankfurt school reader to accompany the benjamin sections:http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Theory-Society-A-Reader/dp/0415900417/ref=pd_sim_b_4
― Mordy, Friday, 11 January 2013 15:46 (eleven years ago) link
great reading list!
― max, Friday, 11 January 2013 15:47 (eleven years ago) link
Cheers Mordy!
Max: It should be an enjoyable course - the tutor repeatedly stressed how demanding/difficult it will be, which was oddly encouraging after i'd spent hours trying to wrap my head around the Benjamin piece. Plus it's my last ever term as a taught student so I might as well push myself a bit.
― Blue Collar Retail Assistant (Dwight Yorke), Friday, 11 January 2013 15:50 (eleven years ago) link
simon critchley had a decent if necessarily shallow overview of the basics of heideggers early though in the guardian a couple years ago, run over 5 or 6 columns... its about being and time which is kind of a "different" heidegger than poetry-reading heidegger but might help situate the guy and see 'where hes coming from'
― max, Friday, 11 January 2013 15:52 (eleven years ago) link
germany, iirc
― goole, Friday, 11 January 2013 20:29 (eleven years ago) link
alt.:
a clearing in being, iirc
― j., Friday, 11 January 2013 20:32 (eleven years ago) link
Gianni Vattimo definitely deploys later Heidegger to his own specific ends but he is a good gateway to the post Being and Time stuff. Admirably clear and helpful with the context in which Heidegger was working after his stuff on Nietzsche.
― ryan, Friday, 11 January 2013 21:03 (eleven years ago) link
Though part of what's fun about Heidegger is his rhetorical insistence on you meeting him entirely on his own terms.
― ryan, Friday, 11 January 2013 21:04 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/video/korsgaard110508
wow, the rhetoric of nussbaum's introduction here is just so gross
― j., Friday, 18 January 2013 06:13 (eleven years ago) link
Raymond Tallis' "A Conversation with Martin Heidegger" is supposedly a very accessible and good book. I have it but haven't gotten around to it.
This essay by Tallis about time constraints in modern life was my favorite read in 2012:
http://philosophynow.org/issues/90/A_Hasty_Report_From_A_Tearing_Hurry
― Cunga, Friday, 18 January 2013 07:03 (eleven years ago) link
Thanks for the suggestions gang!
― Blue Collar Retail Assistant (Dwight Yorke), Friday, 18 January 2013 11:13 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.amazon.com/Derrida-A-Biography-Benoit-Peeters/dp/0745656153/ref=pd_sim_b_1
― markers, Thursday, 21 February 2013 17:55 (eleven years ago) link
has anyone read that? i still think Geoffrey Bennington's book on Derrida is still after all this time the best secondary source I've ever read on him. Though i haven't read Rudolph Gasche's The Tain of the Mirror which has a good reputation.
― ryan, Thursday, 21 February 2013 21:12 (eleven years ago) link
I saw Peeters do a talk about it last year, it sounds interesting but it also seems that it's so actively not an 'intellectual biography' that working out how Derrida-the-person and Derrida-the-thinker relate could be a little tough.
I'm going to predict that within the next few years we'll see the emergence of Derrida scholarship that far surpasses that which has come so far. My impression is that we're at an, um, tipping point where the previous approaches seem irredeemably dated but a sense of Derrida's value beyond those is escalating. (I haven't read The Tain of the Mirror either, though I also saw Gasche speak a while back and he was super disappointing, nothing but a dull old reactionary. Wish I could remember some precise quotes, but he said something about Islam not really existing...)
― hot young stalin (Merdeyeux), Friday, 22 February 2013 17:21 (eleven years ago) link
haha yeah I think Gasche is probably more important for that "dated" approach you mention. Tho I agree "Derrida studies" will soon look much different than in their 70s-80s heyday.
― ryan, Friday, 22 February 2013 17:59 (eleven years ago) link
the other day i finally saw the derida book irl, and i definitely want to read it.
i was also at the mit bookstore in kendall square in boston on friday looking at stuff. the author's picture on the back inside flap of zizek's less than nothing is a painting of him riding a horse. some stuff about speculative realism in there too. seventy fucking bucks though -- much cheaper on amazon.
― markers, Sunday, 24 February 2013 19:19 (eleven years ago) link
this just came out too, but i'm gonna wait on the pdf: http://openhumanitiespress.org/realist-magic.html
markers I love the MIT Press bookstore, that place is full of attractive books by weirdos about cybernetics. Never bought anything there tho sadly.
― my god i only have 2 useless beyblade (silby), Sunday, 24 February 2013 19:20 (eleven years ago) link
by the way, have any of your tackled or tried to tackle laruelle? i tried a little bit like a year and a half ago or so but not very hard. this was the book: http://www.amazon.com/Philosophies-Difference-Critical-Introduction-Non-philosophy/dp/0826436633/
there's more out in translation now than there was then, but i haven't gone near any of it.
― markers, Sunday, 24 February 2013 19:21 (eleven years ago) link
― my god i only have 2 useless beyblade (silby)
it's great, but hard to justify buying anything when it's so much cheaper on amazon
Oh for sure but buying things is hardly the point of hanging out in bookstores imo
― my god i only have 2 useless beyblade (silby), Sunday, 24 February 2013 19:24 (eleven years ago) link
yeah that's very true -- i don't regret going!
― markers, Sunday, 24 February 2013 19:27 (eleven years ago) link
that morton book does look cool even if the argument as summarized in that blurb kinda makes me want to hit my head on my desk a few times. it's exactly the sort of over-reaching and nearly meaningless claim the OOO guys are so fond of. there's a nearly insufferable feeling i am watching a lame magic trick when i read those guys. a heideggarian theatricality that grates.
that aside, i regret that he came to my school just as i was finishing up!
― ryan, Sunday, 24 February 2013 20:06 (eleven years ago) link
ok i regret my little rant there, ha.
― ryan, Sunday, 24 February 2013 20:10 (eleven years ago) link
oh yeah just got this from MIT press and cant wait to dig in: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/026263032X/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
― ryan, Sunday, 24 February 2013 20:11 (eleven years ago) link
the more rants against OOO the better imo.
markers if you don't mind waiting a bit Laruelle's pseudo-magnum opus is out in translation in a few months - http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Non-Philosophy-Francois-Laruelle/dp/1441177566/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361737558&sr=1-1&keywords=laruelle+principles . I'm thanked in the translators' introduction! What higher recommendation could there be? The arbitrary ways of translation mean that a bunch of relatively minor texts have been translated while the more major works are still on the way so just diving in with him is difficult. Also difficult is the fact that he's a really really dense and complicated writer. Perhaps a useful place to start would be this collection of essays on him from last year: http://www.amazon.com/Laruelle-Non-Philosophy-Critical-Connections-Mullarkey/dp/0748645349/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361737934&sr=1-1&keywords=laruelle+and+non-philosophy , or maybe the recent collection of his own essays on Urbanomic http://www.urbanomic.com/pub_decisiontoheresy.php
― hot young stalin (Merdeyeux), Sunday, 24 February 2013 20:37 (eleven years ago) link
Laruelle sounds fun and I look forward to reading that magnum opus this summer. It almost sound similar to the things I find most interesting in systems theory, peirce, et al.
― ryan, Sunday, 24 February 2013 20:53 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.zero-books.net/index.php?id=99&p=2828
― markers, Friday, 1 March 2013 06:37 (eleven years ago) link
so what else is coming out this year that looks good? anything that's come out since january counts imo
― markers, Wednesday, 13 March 2013 21:36 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.amazon.com/Prolegomena-Any-Future-Materialism-Contemporary/dp/0810129124/
sounds good but when i see terms like "transcendental materialism" i always stop and wonder why you couldn't just flip it on its head and call it "materialist transcendentalism"
― ryan, Wednesday, 13 March 2013 21:43 (eleven years ago) link
is there any precident for that in the history of recent western philosophy?
― markers, Wednesday, 13 March 2013 22:37 (eleven years ago) link
not that that matters, i guess
Adrian J's very good, his book on Zizek basically serves as an outline of his own philosophy (he did his PhD with Z but he very much has his own thing going on, despite the supposed exegetical nature of that book) which I guess is now coming to fruition in this work.
What do you mean with your flipping point, Ryan? (And what do you mean by asking if there's precedent, markers? I'm maybe drunk and just have no sense of a simple point being made here.) I figure transcendental materialism (iirc a term first used in Anti-Oedipus but I suppose kinda left aside for 30+ years) has a fairly clear theoretical basis - it's a materialism which recognises a need to account for transcendental conditions - while materialist transcendentalism would be... I dunno really. A much less necessary channeling of a much more specific principle.
― hot young stalin (Merdeyeux), Thursday, 14 March 2013 02:20 (eleven years ago) link
oh i didn't really have a point! more just talking about the rhetoric of these kind of formulations.
I just wonder if putting "transcendental" in front of "materialism" is sorta the stop-gap gesture to plug the hole of a godelian incompleteness in the theory of "materialism" itself.
― ryan, Thursday, 14 March 2013 02:47 (eleven years ago) link
...it's almost as if one side of the formulation guarantees the conditions of possibility of the other, i guess is what im trying to say.
― ryan, Thursday, 14 March 2013 02:57 (eleven years ago) link
And what do you mean by asking if there's precedent, markers? I'm maybe drunk and just have no sense of a simple point being made here.
in part i think i was thinking of dialectical materialism. it seems like it's always something idealism or something materialism and not the other way around.
― markers, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:18 (eleven years ago) link
what does meillassoux call his shit?
if i ever write something on philosophy again, i'm definitely going to include "what does meillassoux call his shit?" somewhere in it
― markers, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:20 (eleven years ago) link
i believe he's "speculative realism"
now im sorta curious when these seemingly oxymoronic designations first came about.
― ryan, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:31 (eleven years ago) link
In an interview with Kronos magazine published in March 2011, Ray Brassier denied that there is any such thing as a 'speculative realist movement' and firmly distanced himself from those who continue to attach themselves to the brandname:"The ‘speculative realist movement’ exists only in the imaginations of a group of bloggers promoting an agenda for which I have no sympathy whatsoever: actor-network theory spiced with pan-psychist metaphysics and morsels of process philosophy. I don’t believe the internet is an appropriate medium for serious philosophical debate; nor do I believe it is acceptable to try to concoct a philosophical movement online by using blogs to exploit the misguided enthusiasm of impressionable graduate students. I agree with Deleuze’s remark that ultimately the most basic task of philosophy is to impede stupidity, so I see little philosophical merit in a ‘movement’ whose most signal achievement thus far is to have generated an online orgy of stupidity."
"The ‘speculative realist movement’ exists only in the imaginations of a group of bloggers promoting an agenda for which I have no sympathy whatsoever: actor-network theory spiced with pan-psychist metaphysics and morsels of process philosophy. I don’t believe the internet is an appropriate medium for serious philosophical debate; nor do I believe it is acceptable to try to concoct a philosophical movement online by using blogs to exploit the misguided enthusiasm of impressionable graduate students. I agree with Deleuze’s remark that ultimately the most basic task of philosophy is to impede stupidity, so I see little philosophical merit in a ‘movement’ whose most signal achievement thus far is to have generated an online orgy of stupidity."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_Realism
― markers, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:33 (eleven years ago) link
but yeah if you were to ask around people would say brassier, harman, hamilton grant, and meillassoux are the four biggies of sr
― markers, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:35 (eleven years ago) link
http://afterxnature.blogspot.com/2012/08/ray-brassier-interviews-with-after_26.html
― markers, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:36 (eleven years ago) link
haha i am outing myself as a curmudgeon here but i sorta agree with Brassier about the internet and philosophy.
― ryan, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:40 (eleven years ago) link
from that interview: The challenge of rationalism is to insist on the distinction between appearance and reality, or the sensible and the intelligible, while accounting for the reality of appearances, or the intelligibility of the sensible. This is a problem that goes back to Plato. It’s a question of understanding how every appearance has a kind of reality, but only insofar as it is split from within by what it does not reveal.
really wish these dudes would read Peirce.
― ryan, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:48 (eleven years ago) link
isn't he a pragmatist? i don't know anything about him except possibly that
― markers, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:54 (eleven years ago) link
yeah pragmatist but he is perhaps more famous now for inventing semiotics (even slightly prior to saussure, tho his version is very different)--but brassier sorta does a decent job of summing up what his semiotics is designed to do in that bit i quoted.
― ryan, Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:56 (eleven years ago) link