disrespect for Phrygia and Cappadocia

Gibbon on the army of Licinus:

“The army consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand foot, and fifteen thousand horse; and, as the cavalry was drawn for the most part from Phrygia and Cappadocia, we may conceive a more favourable opinion of the beauty of the horses than of the courage and dexterity of their riders.”

another elegant sentence

Despite the horrific content. Gibbon on what Constantine did after the defeat of Maxentius (who fell from a bridge into the River Tiber while fleeing the battle, sank deep in his armor, and drowned in the muddy river bottom):

“He inflicted the same treatment to which a defeat would have exposed his own person and family, put to death the two sons of the tyrant, and carefully extirpated his whole race.”

p.s. demystification

p.s. As one of my readers aptly put it a few months ago, my goal in all of these posts is to demystify productivity. Why? Because I hate to see talented younger people suffer under the assumption that there is something wrong with them. There isn’t anything wrong. That doesn’t mean you won’t blow it, but if you blow it, it won’t be because there’s some narrowly distributed mystical power that you lack.

There are two sorts of people who might want the writing to remain mystified.

1. The slick magicians who get a lot done but want it to seem like the result of some sort of superhuman talent. However, this is probably a fairly small percentage of productive people.

2. More commonly, it is the masochists who self-destructively mystify it for themselves. As repeatedly stated, I went through this phase myself for much of my 20’s, and thus have a pretty detailed understanding of the multi-faceted psychology that is involved. I was lucky enough to pull out of it, through a combination of hard work and good fortune, and wish that everyone would do the same.

Actually, there was another key ingredient aside from hard work and good fortune, and that was motivation. I’ve intensely wanted to write philosophy books since I was 16 years old, and never lost that drive even during the years when I had a hard time even getting 8-page seminar papers done by the deadline. What are you really motivated to do? If you are inclined to wish on stars or at wishing wells, what is it that you truly wish for most of all? For me, it was always to write interesting philosophy books. That’s probably the reason I was able to engineer such a miraculous turnaround in my writing habits.

And to be clear about it, there is nothing “condescending” about this advice… Whoever you are, there are surely plenty of areas of life where I would benefit from your advice in return. We all have to do what we do best, and if possible should share the knowledge of how we did it. High writing productivity is one thing I’ve learned to do well, and there are many readers of this blog who have thanked me profusely for sharing. I will continue to share these points.

blog idea for later this summer

Since I’ll be writing an entire (short) book later this summer, it occurs to me that it might be a good idea to post daily on the writing of that book– how to organize one, how to break it into the right number of parts, how to attack it section by section so that the the end gradually comes into view.

I can keep those posts in a special folder on the right-hand side of the page, just like the advice posts. This will probably be of great interest to anyone who likes the writing advice posts.

I’d start now with a brief explanation of the nature of the book and the history behind the project, but since the contract for that one is still in the mail, I refrain from commenting for reasons approximating superstition. Once the contract is signed, I will state some preliminaries and set up the folder.

This will be my 5th book, so they’re no longer intimidating. And though they are still exciting to write, the excitement is less that of a massive year-long adrenaline rush, and more that of solving a problem– à la designing a building, to use my favorite metaphor. This project in particular does have specific constraints, and those constraints are specifically budget-related, which I really love. I could only get a grant to pay for a certain number of pages of translation, and hence cannot go over that page-limit. (Actually, it’s a limit on the number of characters in the manuscript, including spaces.)

External constraints are a good thing. The great obstacle to producing any piece of writing, remember, is the abyss of infinity from which ex nihilo creation of a manuscript is supposed to occur. But if there are even minimal rules at the outset, that is a great help for anchoring the author in the real world, and removing the false air of infinity that surrounds the beginning of any project.

Books are not mental entities that come onto paper only accidentally. They are a hybrid entity that needs a healthy relationship with publisher, market, past writings, and in this case translator. (For instance, do I want to alter my usual style given that the book will first be published in French? There are certain peculiarities of French style that obviously differ from English style. If I decide to consciously write differently knowing that the language will be French –and I may well decide to ignore that fact– what is the best way to go about it? Should I be reading good French authors on the side while writing this book? And should I be reading them in French original, or in English translation? Naturally, they shouldn’t be philosophical authors, because it’s too easy to become contaminated by thoughts and turns of phrase that aren’t really your own. But what would be best– a French essaysist, or a fiction writer? And should it be something like Montaigne, or a contemporary? I haven’t decided the answers to any of these questions yet.)

I’m also now in the absurd-sounding position of having 4 or 5 books to write in the next 12 months. Is it manageable? Yes. You just have to look at it as a series of different intellectual tasks.

on breaking your own writing rules

Last night I mentioned that I had 25 pages of my Croatia lecture done, by blazing through a rough draft and paying no attention to the prose until later. Only the conclusion still remained to be written.

I added that it’s best not to write the conclusion by the same rapid drafting method. Instead, I said that I planned to revise the first 25 pages thoroughly in order to build up momentum for a clear and focused conclusion.

However, I broke my rule in this case. You have to listen to what your energy is telling you (as long as it’s not anxiously telling you to procrastinate, though there may be cases when procrastination is saying something valuable as well about a wrong approach to a topic).

My plan today was to work on polishing the first 25 pages. For whatever reason, I felt no interest today in doing so. Instead, the Conclusion Muse came over me, and I quickly had an outline of the conclusion, and almost as quickly wrote it.

Total length of the draft is 33 pages, which is about right. When revising prose, there is a general tendency for it to grow slightly longer rather than to shrink (it is often necessary to add clarifications to a number of points, and that takes space). Most likely, the final version will end up at around 36-37 pages when the prose is polished, and that is a pretty good length for this particular lecture. For me with my fast talking, that’ll clock in at just under an hour.

So, listen to what your energy is telling you about where it wants to go. Don’t crunch up a day into the fetters of a writing method if your energy wants to wander and do things in an unusual order.

To repeat an earlier question… At six days before departing for the conference, do you think I’m better off with 33 rough pages, or would I be better off with, say, 7 highly polished pages at this stage?

I think it’s pretty clear that the 33 rough pages are better. They exist. They can be fixed. Everything is in the right logical order; the thematic transitions all make sense.

Also, in purely psychological terms, with the 33 rough pages I can honestly tell myself “I’m finished!” That puts a totally different spin on the upcoming week.

Not only can prose-fixing be done in public spaces more easily than original writing, thereby giving me location flexibility during the coming week. Just as importantly, prose-fixing (at least for me) can fit into the nooks and crannies of a daily schedule more easily than original writing can. If you’re like me… well, it’s hard for me to get motivated to do original writing if I know I have an obligation two-and-a-half hours from now. I need to feel that there’s an unbounded block of time ahead, and no obligations to other people coming up soon.

It’s quite different with fixing already extant prose. In this case, you can make very good use of a spare 15 minutes. You can fix the paragraphs one by one. You can take a break after any paragraph you please, then return and do the next paragraph whenever you feel like it.

Personally, I also tend to re-outline the draft while fixing it, writing down on a list what the main idea of each paragraph is. This helps ferret out pointless repetitions and occasional holes in the argument.

a nameless stylistic trick

I’ve seen this in other authors, but can’t think of a good name for it. Set up a strange dichotomy (if an accurate one) that would sound bizarre in isolation, but then make it believable by treating it as a quick fait accompli and shifting the reader’s attention to the results of that dichotomy. Perhaps the example will be clearer than my explanation of it. The scene is Constantine’s approach to Rome, and the foolish decision of Maxentius, his rival, to come out and give open battle rather than enduring a siege inside the walls of Rome:

“The cavalry of Maxentius was principally composed either of unwieldy cuirassiers or of light Moors and Numidians. They yielded to the vigour of the Gallic horse, which possessed more activity than the one, more firmness than the other.”

It’s like I always say… Chances of winning a battle are slim if you have nothing but unwieldy cuirassiers, and equally slim if you’re stuck with light Moors and Numidians. But put the two together, and then you’re truly doomed. Especially if you are opposed by “the Gallic horse.”

*lol*

Gibbon’s economy as a writer

Look at how quickly he handles Constantine’s conquest of Susa. I don’t think it loses anything in vividness.

“The same day that they appeared before Susa, they applied fire to the gates and ladders to the walls; and, mounting to the assault amidst a shower of stones and arrows, they entered the place sword in hand, and cut in pieces the greatest part of the garrison.”

“uncharted waters”

COMPLETE LIES has a reaction to my “next big thing” post, with some autobiographical remarks used to develop his own views on the matter.

What I was trying to convey in my post is that it’s necessary to balance on two legs. There is a reason why the well-known, lasting, classic thinkers are classics, and I think it would be disastrous to read only the philosophy of the past 50 years. My worry is that your philosophical roots wouldn’t go very deep in that case, and fleeting contemporary squabbles might look more important to you than they really are, even though some of them may just be repetitions of an earlier debate of a dusty forgotten century.

However, the other excess is equally harmful: the smug “nothing is new under the sun” perspective. Kant annihilates this attitude marvelously in his preface to the Prolegomena. It’s an especially despicable attitude when someone’s definition of “classic” simply means “accepted prior to about 1985.” For instance, the most dismissive person I know about the supposed trendiness of contemporary thinkers is not some ancient Thomist, but a Gadamerian!!! I’m sorry, but Gadamer has perhaps not stood a much longer test of time than Deleuze has. And in fact, my favorite aspect of analytic philosophy is its basic self-confidence vis-à-vis the tradition. It is a continental job hazard that we always run the risk of cowering like insecure schoolchildren at the mighty feet of Heidegger or Hegel. This is not a problem the analytics suffer from, and in this respect (though not in all respects!) they should be emulated.

I’ve lived on both sides of this question, and find that it works best if you combine the two attitudes. My undergraduate institution had a completely required curriculum, and (other than a few papers in genetics) no authors were read who were later than Freud and Husserl. I loved it. What you gain from that sort of early sequestration in the distant past is a healthy contempt for trendiness and pretentiousness. Unfortunately, a few people never emerge from that contempt to a sufficient degree to see that there really are lots of new birds, mammals, and monsters assembled under the sun at any given moment.

It’s not a realistic attitude to say “we don’t yet know if Derrida will stand the test of time.” Of course we don’t know. We have to decide; we’re not going to be alive long enough to see how Derrida’s doing 200 years from now. And if you don’t want to deal with anything unless it’s at least a century old, then you’re going to be nothing but an antique dealer. If that’s what you want to be, it’s a respectable profession, but it’s not my profession of choice.

on “the next big thing”

As readers of this and neighboring blogs know, a brief debate about the position of Badiou was touched off earlier this week by a cri de coeur from SPLINTERING BONE ASHES. I found the discussion fascinating, and possibly (though by no means obviously) a turning point of sorts.

Reactions to this discussion were interesting. However, a couple of blogs at the edge of the conversation dismissed the issue with contempt, with an attitude of “haha! these fashion-chasers always looking for the next big thing!” This has always struck me as a wrong and superficial attitude to the question of fashion in philosophy. I’ll now say a few brief words as to why.

The real foundation of philosophy is not “arguments,” but a handful of recognized classic thinkers who are widely acknowledged as models and guides. This is more explicitly the case in the continental tradition, but even analytically trained thinkers would be embarrassed to admit it if they hadn’t read a healthy amount of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant at the very least. There are clear differences in the two traditions as to the classic list, of course. In analytic philosophy you can probably get away with not knowing much about Hegel, and in continental philosophy you can get away with not knowing much about Locke, but the reverse would likely not be true.

In any case, whatever the differences in the recognized foundational works and thinkers of the discipline, there is a deeply rooted corpus of recognized “important work” in our past.

But at any given moment, philosophy is not just concerned with great works of the past. There are always new things going on, right now, and except for those who resolve to do purely historical scholarship, most people in philosophy are concerned to a greater or lesser degree with those developments.

In continental philosophy, unfortunately, it is more likely that people remain fixated on what was “new” at the time they turned about 30 years old. That’s why the best way to stay au courant in continental philosophy is to pay attention to what graduate students are reading these days. That seems less true in analytic philosophy, whose less historically-oriented focus ensures that the cutting edge is always wherever the top people are working right now. In continental philosophy, the cutting edge is usually wherever 25-30 year-olds are working right now. The senior figures in continental philosophy are more likely to still be working on whatever was hot when they were 25-30. (My older Department colleagues, bless them, still think Merleau-Ponty and Derrrida are the latest news. Nothing against Merleau-Ponty and Derrida, but they are obviously not the latest news. I assume this would be far less likely to happen in analytic philosophy circles.)

There are plenty of fashions in analytic philosophy too. They simply tend to be about “-isms” rather than about proper names. For this reason it is easy to mock the movement of continental pilgrimage Heidegger to Derrida to Deleuze to Badiou to whatever comes next. But remember that the fixation on proper names is only in the worst cases the result of juvenile personality cults. The reason continental philosophy fixates on the next big proper name rather than the next big -ism is that continental philosophy generally does not agree that philosophy is built out of micro-progress through isolated good arguments. Continental philosophy is more system-oriented (or whatever word is less loaded than “system”). Continental philosophy is more interested in overall sweeping visions of the world, and it is the nature of things that such visions tend to be found in the work of individuals more often than in collectives. For the past half-century or so, the most appealing individual projects in this tradition have come from France, but that is a contingency that could change with little notice. Who knows whether Ljubljana, Stuttgart, or Venice might not suddenly provide a surprising blood transfusion of new ideas for continental thought.

It is, of course, important not to be carried away by fashions. This is what a classical education will give you– the sense of what the great achievements in philosophy have been, how many transient stars of the past have faded from view forever, and how rooted new breakthroughs generally are in things that were seen long ago, but only fleetingly.

But it is also important not to just sit in the library and scoff at everything that has appeared in the last 10 or 15 years. Anyone with a real taste for philosophy will be slow to be impressed by the latest fads, but that same person also needs to have their eyes and ears open, and not smugly assume that there’s nothing new under the sun. After all, philosophy isn’t that old. The ancient Greeks are our next-door neighbors if you look at the sum total of human history. Domestic dogs are much older than philosophy, and so are agriculture, beer, and the use of the wheel. There’s no telling whether some key presuppositions of Greek philosophy might not be completely reversed at some point by the impetus to a totally new tradition.

And that’s why you can’t sit smugly in the library. You need to make an effort to absorb the latest writings in the field, and to attempt, on the fly, to make assessments of more and less important, more and less durable, more and less interesting. We can be wrong in such judgments, of course. But we can also be wrong in our “arguments,” just as we can be wrong in judging people, or in choosing employers or marriages. The possibility that we might be wrong is no excuse for withdrawing from the necessity of getting involved and assessing the situation.

In my opinion, it is not just good, but vitally important to have a “next big thing” in the field every decade or even half-decade. A new dominant figure helps organize what might otherwise be a disorienting period of chaos and eclecticism. I feel lucky to be old enough now that I’ve seen the rise and fall of a couple of different philosophical schools, and presumably by age 60 or so I will have even more wisdom about such processes.

And most importantly, it’s not all in vain. Whether or not Badiou was right to predict that Being and Event is “a great work of philosophy that will be studied across the centuries,” or however he put it, such an achievement is not necessary for the book to be of great value. We’re all better off for what Badiou has brought to the table; he’s thrown a few new spices into the soup. All we can do is honestly judge for ourselves how important those ingredients have been, and then decide whether to stay by his side or move on. I don’t see the point of sitting on the sidelines and chuckling at some very intense and bright graduate students who put 4 or 5 years of energy into mastering a difficult philosophy, and then some of them deciding that they are disappointed. Personally, I applaud them for their engagement.