on “being right”

This gives material for a more general thought… In some circles, too much emphasis is placed on being “right”. If there is a real world, then there should also be a correct verbal expression of that world.

But how does Nancy Cartwright put it… something like: she’s an ontological realist but a theory anti-realist. (I may have mangled the wording.) I’m on board with that. Maybe I’d say I’m an anti-pragmatist in ontology but a full-bore pragmatist when it comes to knowledge… We humans are not granted to know the truth. I believe that there is one, but that it cannot survive translation into any particular form of knowledge without distortion.

So, the best we can hope for is to move the ball forward. (This is why I have such visceral contempt for sniping know-it-alls who do nothing but critique. You have to move the ball. You have to have your own position. Ultimately, if not immediately, that means you have to publish. Sorry: publish your idea, or perish.)

Now, I happen to think Braver’s book is wrong about a good number of things. But I don’t care. Why not? Because he has given us a desperately needed consolidation of things that other continental authors have been afraid to say openly: above all, that continental philosophy has been and remains a largely anti-realist movement. The chic way of dealing with this issue has always been to pose as if one were beyond the superficial realism/antirealism dispute. But in fact, continental philosophy has always taken the anti-realist fork in the road, and Braver bluntly admits it. The quality of the debate has greatly improved thanks to his book, and in the end we’re all wrong anyway; only the world itself is right. (Whitehead said this, by the way… If we have to answer whether a given proposition is true or false, then it must be said that every verbal proposition is false. Why? Because every verbal proposition is an abstraction.)

I am “Philosophy Today”

Funny about that Amazon page… This is the first time I’ve ever seen my own words cited under the name of a corporate entity. This is me, on Braver’s book:

“It is the sort of book that everyone working in the continental tradition, and many in the analytic tradition, will want to read… Braver’s real strength is his sweeping synoptic vision of continentalism from Kant to Derrida, backed by triple the needed homework to make this vision tangible. The book deserves great success, and Braver ought to become a household name in continental circles… It would be hard to ask for a more thoroughly researched work on the topic, or for one more honest or more technically precise… A landmark.”–Philosophy Today

I’m not sure if Braver is a household name in continental circles yet, but he really ought to be, because that book needed to be written, and it has “classic” written all over it. (And I say this as someone who, of course, detests continental anti-realism as a mortal enemy.) It will be hard to improve on that book for a good many years.

words from a very effective author

[ADDENDUM: My caution was unnecessary, since the person in question says he does not mind being cited by name. He is Lee J. Braver, author of the wonderful book A THING OF THIS WORLD, an impressively systematic discussion of continental anti-realism. I wrote an article-length review of this book that appeared in Philosophy Today in 2008.]

Someone whose work I like a great deal just wrote in with this. I’m deleting all the personal parts and also breaking it into paragraphs for ease of reading. Otherwise, these are his exact words:

“What I always say about [my doctoral institution] is that I got a great education but a lousy apprenticeship. For one thing, I learned nothing about what it’s like to be a professor, etc. But also, I think of how Heidegger compares thought to a craft (near the beginning of [What is Called Thinking?]) which we must learn & practice (I take his form of writing which frequently hits dead-ends (Holzwege) & has to go back & start over again as giving the reader an apprenticeship in how thinking actually works rather than just presenting us decapitated conclusions on a platter).

If I were ever to teach grad students, I think I’d have each prof in the dept give a half-hour workshop (maybe 1 a week) on tips, tricks, and techniques they’ve developed. I simply would not be able to do what I do without a huge bag of tricks I cultivated over years of grinding it out. I mean the nitty-gritty stuff, like working out a consistent system of abbreviations to write in margins and different forms of underlining that signal different things (recap, thesis of the paragraph, interesting but not all that important to the argument, etc.). I have found it essential to have a set way of marking up my books (I cringe when I see students’ virginal texts).

In fact, I credit a lot of my big-picture perspective in [my book] to the fact that, after repeated slow & careful readings, I was able to skim sometimes a couple dozen texts in a few days by relying on my notations/underlining, etc. This is the sort of stuff no one talks about–the dust & detritus of a scholarly life, but I couldn’t function without it. So I think this is really useful stuff for grad students/young researchers & good on you for taking up the task of e-training.”

I would agree that the right markings in a text can be very useful. The state of my Heidegger volumes means that if necessary I could now write an article in a couple of days on almost any work by Heidegger, simply because I already have them condensed down to “highlights”. Once in awhile you feel like going back and doing a word-for-word reread with the best of them… Being and Time is always worth a cover-to-cover read now and then, obviously. But I agree with the author above that you also want to “process” the great works you read for quicker future use, and the right system of marginal notes is a good way to do that.

carrot-and-stick remix

“Surround yourself with people who have projects, and ruthlessly exclude those who sabotage those projects in even the slightest manner.”

assistance to the suffering

More e-mail continues to suggest that this blog functions as an oasis for the tortured, suffering graduate student population. So I guess I should encourage them even more often. Much of the advice found here will probably be contained and developed in book form in a co-authored work in the near future, but I’ll save the details for later.

But I heard a good maxim this week: “surround yourself with people who have projects.”

You must continue to avoid another class of person, as a matter of life and death: the endless sniping procrastinator, always attempting to sabotage those who are moving forward, while appealing to the alibi of some great Masterwork they are putting together that will reduce the work of others to dust. A good number of masterworks happen to have been written under contract or career pressure (Being and Time, The Phenomenology of Spirit) and if you’ve been working for 18 or 19 years on a supposed masterwork, then it probably isn’t one.

Just figure out what you have to say, and say it. And avoid those who avoid this procedure.

Philosophy is not made up of “arguments”, it’s made up of specific philosophical works, usually written ones. Arguments are one ingredient in those works. The people who sit around refuting everything you do aren’t worth listening to; listening to them is complicity in their blood-sucking anti-libido.

There’s a small part in each of us that is susceptible to corruption by such forces, and it’s your task to conquer that part of yourself.

Remember, you’ll be dead soon. Sorry to be so grim, but it’s the best motivation to not waste your precious years sitting around making up excuses for why you couldn’t develop your ideas. If you don’t develop those ideas, we are all a bit poorer for it.

the marvels of style

Readers of this blog who don’t care for Gibbon are in for a boring summer, because I’m unlikely to stop being fascinated. It is incredible that someone could churn out thousands of pages of such brilliantly elliptical and allusive prose while still telling a coherent story. I’d have a hard time writing one paragraph in that style (though that may be a fun parody project for some future posts… Gibbon writing about the Obama Administration). My only disappointment on the current reread is the boring Chapter VIII on Persia. He should have done much better with such a potentially interesting topic.

My citations of the Decline and Fall will become less noticeable, however, as soon as my own rate of original posts picks up again. This summer is unusually full, between trips to Croatia and England, two other articles due, and an as-yet unstarted book due as well, along with another book due in late December, various editing and administrative projects, and the like.

It’s hard to know where the limits of one’s energy are. Sometimes “inflationary universe” scenarios are possible where you can increase your energy tenfold in a certain sphere just by finding a few time-saving tricks, conserving your powers, or combining multiple tasks into one. Other times you find yourself saying “I was crazy to say yes to this.” There’s no a priori way to know which is which.

If you’re 23 years old and have lots of energy, enjoy it, because it won’t be there forever. But in compensation you’ll learn how to focus your energy better as the years go by.