the NY Times review

INTERESTING TO READ THE N.Y. TIMES ON FAYE’S BOOK. This is pretty shoddy stuff, but somehow Faye is off to an even faster start than Farías was.

Incidentally, though the article itself isn’t all that horrible, the following paragraph is pretty weak:

“[Heidegger’s] prose is so dense that some scholars have said it could be interpreted to mean anything, while others have dismissed it altogether as gibberish. He is nonetheless widely considered to be one of the century’s greatest and most influential thinkers.”

For any philosophy novice reading the article, the first and second sentence here make a confusing disharmony. And that’s bad writing. You shouldn’t just give an empty “on the one hand… on the other hand…” sort of pseudo-balanced construction, but should try to clue your reader into how both views are possible. There’s little to no guidance in the article on why Heidegger is considered by many as “one of the century’s greatest and most influential thinkers.”

It sort of reminds me of the structure of that Matthew Stewart Spinoza/Leibniz book The Courtier and the Heretic. That book is essentially a self-parody of fashionable pro-Spinoza/anti-Leibniz sentiment. It proceeds largely by character assassination of Leibniz, going so far as to implicate him in the possible murder of Spinoza (I kid you not), and “leaves open” the question of whether Leibniz had a homosexual lover– despite not a shred of evidence or even rumor that I’m aware of, and despite the fact that Spinoza’s list of known female company is no longer than Leibniz’s: close to zero in both cases.

I just thought of that book because occasionally, in the midst of his slanders of Leibniz’s character and philosophy, Stewart will throw in little bits of pleasant birdseed like “Leibniz was also, of course, one of the greatest universal geniuses of all time,” but then he gives no reasons as to why, and immediately changes the subject back to how ugly, envious, and resentful Leibniz was. It was a remarkable smear for a book on philosophers, and many have noted that Stewart was simply trying to write the philosophy version of “Amadeus.” But the portrayal of Salieri in that film was already a distortion (according to those who know such things) and when doing it to someone of the stature of Leibniz the effect is nearly comical.