they’re everywhere, Charles Mudede

Charles Mudede, who wrote that interesting article about strange fire crimes in Seattle, NOTICED MY REFERENCE TO HIS ARTICLE. And already he has a couple of clods making stupid remarks about this in his comments boxes.

I’m quite serious when I say that, just as Platonic philosophy was responding in large part to the challenge of sophistry, present-day philosophy needs to be responding to the challenge posed by pointless hyper-critique, the attitude that finds something wrong in every utterance simply because it is possible to find something wrong, or to pretend to do so (the more usual case).

When it appears in the form of blog comments it isn’t that important, because you’re never going to hear from most of these people in any other context; they’re rolling spitwads in their basements and firing them through cyberspace, and that’s the sort of hobby that isn’t very compatible with serious intellectual work, for it is parasitical off those who are working.

The larger problem is when it is done by more serious people. Our philosophical imaginations have failed us, and we now think for some reason that there is a choice only between critique and bootlicking adulation. But just think for a second about what a dumb alternative that is. For example, what are your conversations with friends like? Are you sneering at everything they say? Surely not, or they wouldn’t stay friends for long. Are you flattering everything they say? Surely not, because that’s not what conversations with friends go like. Those conversations generally amount to taking seriously what your friend is saying, being generally supportive, but also letting them know where you think they’re going wrong. I see no reason that intellectual conversation should be any different from that.

But back to Charles Mudede. I had no idea who he was. That link was sent to me by a Cairo colleague who saw it on the blog of an ex-AUC faculty spouse who just moved back to Seattle and was amused to see me mentioned in such an unlikely context. But as “small world” stories go, it turns out Charles Mudede knows Steven Shaviro quite well.

In any case, Charles, your commenters are adolescent jerks.