a history of philosophy read through the vagaries of available translations would make for a fun read, though i don't imagine anyone's too desperate to set out working on it. e.g. i've heard people suggest that the standard readings of kierkegaard are bizarrely warped because they come filtered through philosophers who were reading french translations of bad german translations of the danish, misunderstandings accumulating everywhere along the way.
― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Thursday, 23 May 2013 01:15 (eleven years ago) link
looking it up a bit more i see that there were some translations of husserl in the '30s, but most of it went untouched, logical investigations not appearing in english till 1970.
― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Thursday, 23 May 2013 01:17 (eleven years ago) link
yeah id be very interested in a study like that. spending as i do a lot of time in peirce studies it's really interesting to see the reception of his thought go through stages as more things became available and inevitably filtered through the historical moment it arrives in.
― ryan, Thursday, 23 May 2013 01:17 (eleven years ago) link
amongst philosophers in the English-speaking world in the first half of the 20th century, though, German proficiency was standard, so I don't think the lack of translation is quite the problem you're suggesting
especially given how tricky Husserl is to translating.
& in the German and Polish-speaking worlds, also critical in the "break", this was def no problem. Carnap & Gödel knew their Husserl.
that's all to say, I don't think the "break" was chiefly a linguistic problem.
cf. http://www.amazon.com/Parting-Ways-Cassirer-Heidegger-ebook/dp/B004XOZ892
― Euler, Thursday, 23 May 2013 08:11 (eleven years ago) link
yeah i slightly overstate the case for joekz, but these historical contingencies are interesting nevertheless. and there's also something of just having the literature readily available, as in the case of bergson and husserl, who didn't really seem to bother to become aware of each other beyond second hand information until quite late in their lives.
― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Thursday, 23 May 2013 12:10 (eleven years ago) link
it's still the case in France today that scholars here are frequently ignorant of what scholars are doing in other countries. again, it's not the language: they've that under control. but there's a "village" aspect to French intellectual life, wherein you study the works of contemporaries in your village, communicated largely through conferences but also through writings; & you don't venture outside this. it's what the French call "localisme". in Paris this means that you might not even know about the work being done by someone across town, or even down the street (if you're working in the 5th or 6th). & you don't really *want* to! you certainly don't *need* to in order to get by; for these villages are self-sustaining in terms of publishing, giving conferences...& yes, getting & giving jobs (though the nationalization of job hiring committees has somewhat mitigated that).
my understanding is that this "provinciality" is not new to France; that it was in place in the era you're talking about.
― Euler, Thursday, 23 May 2013 12:25 (eleven years ago) link
in the face of being wrong (not that I'm wrong wrong but you're quite right that France was a special case for that kind of academic factionalism even before it became the unfortunate standard in philosophy) I'm going to go with default internet protocol and respond with some cats:
http://binarythis.wordpress.com/2013/05/23/judith-butler-explained-with-cats/
― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Friday, 24 May 2013 00:27 (eleven years ago) link
so I thought I'd update everyone on my book. It was rejected last summer by the first press I sent it too. I just spend about 5 months doing heavy revisions and streamlining it and basically just improving the flow of it. very surprisingly got my proposal accepted by an even better university press and they even seem pretty enthusiastic about it. I'll send the full manuscript in a few weeks. so cross your fingers for me.
so chances at getting a book published have *slightly* improved but still gotta run the gauntlet of grouchy reviewers.
but I swear the learning curve of this process should be worth another degree at least!
― ryan, Friday, 24 May 2013 18:26 (eleven years ago) link
wrote that on my phone so that's my excuse this time for poor grammar and spelling. this time.
― ryan, Friday, 24 May 2013 18:27 (eleven years ago) link
cool man, congrats
― goole, Friday, 24 May 2013 18:28 (eleven years ago) link
rah
― there is no special cat hexis with mini fried donuts (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Friday, 24 May 2013 18:29 (eleven years ago) link
well done sir
― the league against cool sports (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2013 18:31 (eleven years ago) link
thanks guys. obviously I may still not get this thing off the ground but I thought it would be fun to share the process.
One of the previous two reviewers was totally brutal though. To the point I could only read his response one time and then had to delete it. The other was very encouraging and really helped me.
― ryan, Friday, 24 May 2013 18:31 (eleven years ago) link
very nice! good luck!
― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Friday, 24 May 2013 18:41 (eleven years ago) link
wtf r u on about husserl fuk u.
― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Sunday, 26 May 2013 20:27 (eleven years ago) link
sounds like u got some bracketing to do son
― j., Sunday, 26 May 2013 20:30 (eleven years ago) link
ya gonna go for a classic and completely illegitimate "details of this are beyond the scope of this discussion" and move on.
― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Sunday, 26 May 2013 20:32 (eleven years ago) link
work for another project!
― j., Sunday, 26 May 2013 20:32 (eleven years ago) link
philosophy needs to develop a textual mark like a black box or something that stands for "here is where my understanding of this idea would go if I had any understanding of it, which I don't."
― ryan, Sunday, 26 May 2013 22:50 (eleven years ago) link
cavell has a whole repertoire of ways to do that
― j., Sunday, 26 May 2013 22:54 (eleven years ago) link
lol.
i do notice that the older and more revered a philosopher you are the more you can get away with "and this part i dont understand but I'm gonna keep going on with this train of thought."
― ryan, Sunday, 26 May 2013 22:58 (eleven years ago) link
yeah that's methodologically tricky. I don't see it as merely a matter of prestige, but instead chiefly as something you're allowed to do if the phenomenon you're talking about is acknowledged to be really hard & really interesting. if you do good work you end up implicitly defining what you're talking about, through the context you provide.
― Euler, Sunday, 26 May 2013 23:06 (eleven years ago) link
I decided to be more intellectually honest and I'VE TAKEN THREE HOURS TO WRITE 500 WORDS.
Good thing with my next section I can be more like "here's some shite off the top of my head, you haven't read the stuff I'm talking about so I can say what I want."
― ohmigud (Merdeyeux), Sunday, 26 May 2013 23:12 (eleven years ago) link
intellectual honesty is going to get you nowhere
― j., Monday, 27 May 2013 02:09 (eleven years ago) link
http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/movies/hannah-arendt-with-barbara-sukowa-and-janet-mcteer.html?hpw
Arendt is a more challenging cinematic portrait. Her outwardly bookish existence challenges the ancient distinction between active and contemplative ways of living, but the work of thinking is notoriously difficult to show. In this case, it looks a lot like smoking, with intervals of typing, pacing or staring at the ceiling from a daybed in the study.Still, I would not hesitate to describe “Hannah Arendt” as an action movie, though of a more than usually dialectical type. Its climax, in which Arendt defends herself against critics, matches some of the great courtroom scenes in cinema and provides a stirring reminder that the labor of figuring out the world is necessary, difficult and sometimes genuinely heroic.
Still, I would not hesitate to describe “Hannah Arendt” as an action movie, though of a more than usually dialectical type. Its climax, in which Arendt defends herself against critics, matches some of the great courtroom scenes in cinema and provides a stirring reminder that the labor of figuring out the world is necessary, difficult and sometimes genuinely heroic.
lol, verite
― j., Wednesday, 29 May 2013 17:26 (eleven years ago) link
want: http://www.amazon.com/Intellectual-History-Cannibalism-Catalin-Avramescu/dp/0691152195
― Mordy , Wednesday, 29 May 2013 19:42 (eleven years ago) link
i think that's a book a friend recommended to me, it sounds great
― the league against cool sports (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 29 May 2013 19:44 (eleven years ago) link
new latour out this month. new patricia churchland too.
― markers, Friday, 12 July 2013 14:16 (ten years ago) link
someone should buy both of them for me
http://www.amazon.com/Inquiry-into-Modes-Existence-Anthropology/dp/0674724992/http://www.amazon.com/Touching-Nerve-Self-as-Brain/dp/0393058328/
― markers, Friday, 12 July 2013 14:17 (ten years ago) link
the new adrian johnston too
http://www.amazon.com/Prolegomena-Any-Future-Materialism-Contemporary/dp/0810129124/
― markers, Friday, 12 July 2013 14:18 (ten years ago) link
i've read the first chapter of the latour book, seems interesting and definitely ~important~ when it comes to the development of his thought.
i just got back from the massive deleuze studies conference, all due respect to everyone including myself but if i hear the word 'deterritorialization' once more this summer then i am going to hurt ppl.
― Fanois och Alexander (Merdeyeux), Friday, 12 July 2013 14:21 (ten years ago) link
i really got to get on the ball with summer reading. i need to order the Laruelle but i was gonna try to read "Being and Event" finally as well. life keeps intruding. I missed my chance at being a medieval contemplative, i guess.
― ryan, Friday, 12 July 2013 15:04 (ten years ago) link
what's churchland's deal. amazon descriptions make me think i wouldn't like her stuff very much.
― ryan, Friday, 12 July 2013 15:11 (ten years ago) link
Pat and Paul Churchland are the originators of eliminative materialism, Paul's original paper is "Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes".
― El tres de 乒乓 de 1808 (silby), Saturday, 13 July 2013 19:38 (ten years ago) link
The argument I think is that basically if you admit a physicalist theory of the mind-brain, then you have to abandon any idea that folk psychology has any explanatory power, or that it reduces to neuroscience in a consistent way.
― El tres de 乒乓 de 1808 (silby), Saturday, 13 July 2013 19:41 (ten years ago) link
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Biology-of-Ethics/127789/
― El tres de 乒乓 de 1808 (silby), Saturday, 13 July 2013 19:42 (ten years ago) link
incidentally pair-bonding studies of voles are great, prairie voles will start exhibiting pair-bond behavior after about 1/2 an hour of cuddling
― El tres de 乒乓 de 1808 (silby), Saturday, 13 July 2013 19:44 (ten years ago) link
thanks! looking forward to reading that
― ryan, Saturday, 13 July 2013 19:49 (ten years ago) link
you have to abandon any idea that folk psychology has any explanatory power
Folk psychology has many heuristic and predictive qualities, so this conclusion is overstated. What folk psychology cannot explain are the exact physical workings of a mind-brain, but then no physicalist theory of the mind-brain has ever been rigorous enough to do so, either.
― Aimless, Saturday, 13 July 2013 19:49 (ten years ago) link
the Churchlands and ppl like James Ladyman are pretty popular in the hardcore scientific / scientistic wing of speculative realism, scientific knowledge not being reducible to the subject-object correlate and such.
― Fanois och Alexander (Merdeyeux), Saturday, 13 July 2013 19:55 (ten years ago) link
this is glib, but I often wonder if "materialism" acts for that crowd much as the "unconscious" did for early psychoanalysis. Its fascinating and ever elusive (ever recursive!) object of inquiry.
― ryan, Saturday, 13 July 2013 20:43 (ten years ago) link
yeah, part of the point of the conference I organised recently was supposed to be getting to the root of what we mean by materialism, end result was "dunno m8, let's go to the pub".
― Fanois och Alexander (Merdeyeux), Saturday, 13 July 2013 21:09 (ten years ago) link
Given that I think eliminative materialism is b.s. of a kind barely surpassed, I've always assumed I'd detest her (presumed by me) dogmatic stridency.
Yet she came over surprisingly well in this excellent 1.45 hour podcast interview. I thought it one of the site's best (for me they have ratio of 8:1)
http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/07/18/episode-41-pat-churchland-on-the-neurobiology-of-morality-plus-hume%E2%80%99s-ethics/
― Campari G&T, Saturday, 13 July 2013 21:36 (ten years ago) link
end result was "dunno m8, let's go to the pub"
beautiful. I sometimes think this is the most important part of the philosophic tradition going back to Socrates.
― ryan, Saturday, 13 July 2013 22:06 (ten years ago) link
also why tend to describe philosophy/theory as fun and humbling and disarming to those not initiated who prob tend to see it as merely pointy headed egomaniacs verbally jousting (which it is as well!)
― ryan, Saturday, 13 July 2013 22:09 (ten years ago) link
ime philosophers likely to harbor mars-dwellers who come along to the pub because why that's where the talking will be but who sit there and say 'well i guess i'll just have water if all they have is alcohol and soda'
― j., Saturday, 13 July 2013 22:18 (ten years ago) link
http://www.tubechop.com/watch/1321418
― markers, Sunday, 14 July 2013 15:20 (ten years ago) link
^^^ amazing
― ryan, Monday, 15 July 2013 04:35 (ten years ago) link
that embarrassed shrug he gives will haunt me forever.
― ryan, Monday, 15 July 2013 04:37 (ten years ago) link