a few thoughts on critique

Some thoughts on critique, in line with others I’ve posted before…

*Critique is worthless unless you really believe the criticisms you’re making. I’ve seen too many reviews that are filled with swarms of questions that the reviewer doesn’t actually give a damn about. They are just empty exercises in looking like a critical thinker. “I’m a sharp cookie. Not much gets past me.” What a pointless display of intelligence.

*The “devil’s advocate” stance is severely overused, and needs to be curtailed. Don’t play devil’s advocate just to needle people. Any philosophical work, even the greatest of them, can be insincerely needled to death by people of above average intelligence and reading background.

*It is sportsmanlike to leave room for an honest counterpunch. You can be highly critical, as long as you’re honestly exposing yourself to an equally critical rejoinder. This entails that you have to be taking a definite intellectual stand in your critique, rather than sneering haughtily from an artificial crow’s nest of transcendental-critical superiority to everything that anyone else might say. (Not to keep beating on Derrida, but even he does this a lot, and it drives me up the wall. So many of his writings seem designed precisely to avoid showing any possible vulnerabilities in his own position and to negate any counterattacks in advance. Das ist nicht fair play.)

*The word “no” is of the paltriest intellectual value. It can be useful, like a raft to cross a river. But carrying a raft around the shore all day long, though it may make you look like an admirable tough guy to anyone who passes, wastes your energy and prevents you from picking up anything else. In 30 years no one is going to care whom you smoked in a critical debate. Either you had ideas that were worth developing, or you didn’t. And remember: it is people younger than you who will ultimately make that decision. If your work is not appealing to the next generation, then you’re on the wrong track. Beating up on your peers and sneering at your elders won’t get you anywhere in the long run. Younger people can’t help your career worth a damn, but they’re the ones who will be weighing your books on the balance in your old age and after you’re long gone.

People who are jerks toward the currently powerless young are making a big mistake– not because they ought to be flattering their potential future publicists, but because addressing the young means addressing people who have no familiarity with the tedious period-piece disputes on which we and every other generation have been raised. And to address such people requires hard thinking. To write a piece of philosophical work that appeals to the current crop of 23-year-olds is an inherently more philosophical act than to score points on professional rivals A and B, because if few people care about such triumphalistic duels even now, absolutely no one will care in a few decades.