unexplained surge

Somewhat bizarrely, Tuesday was the busiest day in the history of this blog. The only post made that day was the Circus Philosophicus cover, and that wasn’t the reason for the record surge.

The reason was that droves of people suddenly went and read the “most overrated philosopher” post again. Clearly someone widely read must have linked to it, but I couldn’t figure out who it was. (It wasn’t Leiter.) Mystery.

I’m still surprised by how interesting that topic seems to be. I wonder if “underrated” would be just as interesting to people, or if something about “overrated” is an inherently more fascinating category.

That makes me think all the more that it would be a fun anthology to prepare. I have no time to do it at the moment, but it would be a clarifying exercise. If such a volume were prepared, it would probably be good manners to exempt living philosophers from eligibility. Or at least I’d make that rule if it were my book, though I can understand the opposite case– if you’re a public figure, you know you’re going to get trashed a certain percentage of the time, and hence the Habermases and Zizeks are already used to it.

And true enough, something about the publicness of it would make it more bearable. Far more cruel exercises are imaginable, such as “most overrated faculty member at our university.” Or “my most overrated friend.” These would obviously be somewhat vicious in a way that denouncing a famous living philosopher would not be.

As far as I can recall, there is only one article in which I was pretty much trashed by somebody. But three other people I like (not the SR group) were also trashed in the same piece, which made it a kind of pleasant group bonding experience. One of my comrades even said “the tone is unbearable, but it’s a good review.” (None of the rest of us agreed that it was a good review.)