quick response to a mild critic

Just ran across this post from a gentleman in Greenwich. He’s posted on OOO before, and always seems interested but critical. Here’s an excerpt from the recent one:

“One of the things I find most unsatisfying about the object-orientated philosophy is a kind of amorphous objecticity. I’m never entirely certain quite what is not an object, for example, or what differences there are amongst objects, if indeed there are any at all. ‘Latour’s litanies‘, as Harman calls them (following Ian Bogost), are a particular example of a curiously unsatisfying encounter with objects, reminding me a little of poetry but less of anything I can think with or through.”

One of the reasons I don’t always like getting into long blog debates is that people sometimes seem to make critical remarks based on very limited reading of my works. From his “amorphous objecticity” remark there is no easy way to tell whether he has read only my blog posts (the laziest stage of criticism), blog posts plus “On Vicarious Causation” (the second laziest stage) or actually read some, most, or all of my books. I think I’ve made it pretty clear in those books what does and does not count as an object, and if I’m going to be on the defensive in a discussion with someone, it’s only going to be with someone who has obviously done their homework. It’s not yet clear to me whether that is the case here. If you want to make criticisms of someone’s position, it’s better to find a few passages that you’ve actually read and show why they are in contradiction or not quite sufficient. You can’t just say: “I’m not satisfied. Satisfy me.” The King of the Hill position has to be earned, not merely asserted.

As for Latour Litanies (not “Latour’s Litanies” as incorrectly stated above) I’m not sure what the problem is. Several times I’ve heard people dismiss them as “poetry,” but this would only be interesting if they were meant as anything more than that. The blogger here seems not to have read Prince of Networks, where I explain the philosophical/ rhetorical point of Latour Litanies. If he wants to criticize them, he would again have a stronger case if he were to say something like: “In Prince of Networks, Harman makes the following case for Latour Litanies on Page X… Nonetheless, I find this case unconvincing for the following reason.” Here as in the previous case, you can’t just waltz into the middle of a discussion and say: “I’m not satisfied. Satisfy me.” The burden is at least upon you to explain the reason for dissatisfaction.

Latour Litanies are a trademark stylistic device of OOO-leaning authors, but ultimately a fairly minor one. I could easily write a book without them. But they do serve a powerful rhetorical purpose on the still anti-object-oriented landscape of our time.

Moreover, most people like them. If one thing can be said of the OOO crowd, it is that we all write well. That’s why people like reading us. So why nitpick a minor stylistic device that people enjoy anyway?

the joke’s on Quine

This was sent in by a reader, and if it isn’t true, then boy it ought to be:

“I recall a story told by [prominent scholar, name deleted]: during one of the colloquia at Yale, someone drew a silly face on the room’s chalkboard so that, when the speaker commenced with his presentation, and pulled the projector sheet up, the room would be surprised with a silly face drawn on the chalkboard. In this case, the speaker was none other than Quine. When Quine retracted the projector sheet, and the silly face therefore exposed, the room burst into laughter; however, Quine was outraged: his face as still and as dry as his beloved desert landscapes. The problem, though, for Quine is that his non-participation was the sine qua non of comedy.”

Bogost interview posted

Gratton posts his INTERVIEW WITH IAN BOGOST.

In the introductory remarks, he describes Ian as “a sought-after speaker and writer.” You can say that again. I hope he posts a blog account of his most extreme speaking itinerary. I don’t have the details memorized, but it involves Sydney, Seoul, Los Angeles, and maybe a couple of other places in the space of two weeks or less, if I’m remembering correctly.

Ian is perhaps my only Amazon.com friend… From time to time I will enter my own name into Amazon so that all of my books appear and I can take a look at the sales figures. But when you do that, what also appears are any books in which you were mentioned. Once when I did that, Ian’s book Unit Operations appeared, and from the pages that came up I could see that it was a fascinating book overall. It wasn’t hard to find his email address on the web, and we were corresponding even before the book arrived.

As for the book itself, the prose is lucid and the work very hard to put down. You wouldn’t expect that the same volume could convincingly discuss the video game Grand Theft Auto and Badiou and Spinoza, but Unit Operations somehow pulls it off.

The title is even more interesting than it appears. “Unit” is Ian’s Latin version of Leibniz’s Greek term “monad,” and not too different from how I use “object.”

Deep South

There was a birthday in the group tonight, so we went to ALLIGATOR SOUL restaurant in Savannah, and spent a memorable few hours there.

At first it looked like a tough menu for vegetarians, but the chefs came up with some great stuff for me. The initial item was fried green tomatoes, a southern classic I’d never had before, but which I greatly enjoyed. Later came fried macaroni, which was weird but excellent, some sort of potato dish with leeks, and some sort of Mediterranean soup. Very satisfying experience overall. (The kids in the group were very funny tonight, too.)

But perhaps best of all was the perfect evening into which we emerged: warm breeze with a perfect scent, moist air without rain, relative silence in the streets. I would never have thought of coming to Savannah, but already I adore it.

NBA playoffs

It’s pretty rare that I have the chance to watch American sports anymore. Yes, you can easily get a satellite dish with a billion channels in Cairo; many people have them. But if the purpose of having one is to watch American sports, then you can count on all the key events starting at around 3 A.M., Cairo time. And it’s not worth it to me anymore.

But I’m snacking on some NBA playoffs this weekend now and then. And my first observation– these guys are incredibly good. I’ve forgotten how good they are. They are all incredible human physical specimens, both large and fast. Most are capable of incredible moves and breathtaking shots at various moments of the action. And they make the court look very small.

Ft. Pulaski and Tybee Island

Our morning tour was to Fort Pulaski, 9 or 10 miles outside of Savannah, and at the mouth of the river very close to open sea.

The fort was unexpectedly captured by Union forces in April 1862, though Savannah itself was only taken 2 years later, by land, by the forces of General Sherman.

Robert E. Lee himself was one of the original engineers of Fort Pulaski, and one of the most remarkable things about the tour is that the soft and uneven ground inside the fortress still reflects the military brilliance of Lee: it was his idea to keep the soil soft and uneven inside, all the better to absorb the shock of incoming mortar fire.

When the Union occupied Tybee Island a little over a mile away, Lee wrote to the fort commander that there was no reason to worry. The fortress, built of 25 million bricks arranged in clever fashion, would be able to withstand any gunfire.

But in a shock to military thinkers around the world, the Union guns were able to lay waste to part of the fort within 2 days, and the flag of surrender was raised. The era of stone and masonry fortifications came to a close with that battle.

The use of rifled artillery was a key factor. But our tour guide (an emphatic and sentimental ex-Marine who displayed a definite Confederate bias in his choice of phrases) explained that rifled artillery was actually nothing new at the time. What changed was that a Union artillery officer calculated that extra powder and a lower angle of approach by the shells would be sufficient to destroy even masonry.

We then drove over to Tybee Island (where the Union guns had been placed) and walked on the beach for awhile. The sea there has the strangest foam I have ever seen: almost solid, and often iridescent. It looked like the product of soap dumped offshore, but a small taste revealed it to be the result of nothing but salt.

Levi’s take on Atlanta

First of all, you need to take a look at his PREZI PRESENTATION from the conference. (Use arrow keys to navigate it.) It’s much better than PowerPoint. Never seen it used before, but will start to use it myself.

His take on the conference itself CAN BE FOUND HERE.

It’s a real movement now, and of a slightly different character from SR. Whereas SR was always more of a big tent (and deliberately so) OOO has more of a precision focus given that those who spoke at the conference work in very close intellectual proximity. In the case of me and Levi in particular, I also agree with him that there is now very little daylight between us on the key issues of philosophy.

The Firefly Cafe

If you’re ever in Savannah, try breakfast at the Firefly Cafe. The food was all good, but the highlight for me was the ultra-fresh hash browns.

And guess what? That is the exact table at which we sat!

I’m not normally hanging out with young kids in my daily life, but do always enjoy their sincerity and wit. There are a 10-year-old boy and 8-year-old girl along on this trip, and they have had many funny things to say already.

There was a gentle rain falling, but we decided to walk anyway. When you’re in Savannah, the whole point is to walk: rarely will you find such a series of lush squares and boulevards. It’s a little bit like New Orleans without the dangerous edge, and of course without the French influence.

Savannah

Savannah, Georgia, 7:20 AM. (Yes, I know that MacBook Photo Booth photos are never that good, but it does give a certain sense of the place.)

Savannah is a city of 20 or more green squares surrounded by gorgeous older homes. As for the riverfront (the ocean is extremely close) Ian’s wife jokingly named it “The Pirate District” yesterday, and that is probably one of those jokes that strike on the literal truth. It’s easy to imagine pirates hanging out down there.

Savannah also has some of the most beautiful trees you could hope to see.

on the non-diplomacy of Brentano

As I’ve said before, Brentano is one of the most underread continental philosophers. He’s remembered primarily as a stepping stone toward Husserl, and maybe a few people have a look at his major work Psychology from the Empirical Standpoint. Once in awhile, those who are struggling with Aristotle’s On the Soul will stumble across Brentano’s commentary in the library. And maybe a few Heideggerians will be curious enough actually to go read Brentano’s thesis on the different senses of “being” in Aristotle, which inspired the teenaged Heidegger to philosophy for the first time.

But really Brentano ought to be read for what he is: one of the major figures of the continental tradition, but more than that, as someone who is simply so precise, clear, and thorough in his argumentation that analytic philosophers can appreciate him as well.

What I really like best about him is his lucid and sovereign tone. Reading Brentano is like being a student with a really tough teacher who always sticks to the topic and never minces words. A formidable personality, but in no way a grim one. He’s simply as serious about philosophy as anyone who ever lived, and if I had to choose one person to go head to head in an argument with Socrates, it would probably be Brentano.

Nonetheless, there is a certain remarkable lack of flexibility and adaptability in the way he addresses other people. This can be seen in his “four phases” essay mentioned in the last post. It was originally an 1894 lecture given to the Literary Society of Vienna. The Society published a book, and invited Brentano to comment on it. He accepted the invitation, but began his lecture by ruthlessly tearing the book apart. (By analogy, imagine that the University of Chicago Press invited you to a banquet to lecture on one of their books, and you said the following words about it. What sort of reaction would you expect?)

“Highly esteemed assembly! Hieronymus Lorm has written a book, entitled Groundless Optimism, which deals with the most important philosophical questions. The Literary Society in Vienna has published this book, and wishes now that I speak about it to you… In the book before us, however, the views put forward are opaque and turgid. From the start it leaves us in the dark as to how we shall arrive at the most important questions, and, if I were simply to dwell on the subjects of the book I would fall into the worst mistake: I would become boring. On this occasion, moreover, it was not even left to me to select… my topic, since I was called upon to consider Lorm’s book, and thus the field from which I had to choose was in a way limited.”

His attempt to soften the blow is not especially effective:

“In spite of all this, I have accepted your invitation. The Literary Society has published a serious work on philosophy. By this, it convincingly bears witness against those who declare the general interest in philosophy extinct. That is an act indeed that deserves recognition and gratitude.”

This is both fun to read and an abject rhetorical failure. A Literary Society tells Brentano: “Please come speak to us about a book we just published.” And Brentano agrees, but essentially begins his lecture by saying: “The book you just published is opaque and turgid, and it will be boring to speak about it. Nonetheless, thanks anyway for your kind gesture. I will now lecture on my own ideas instead.” It’s unbelievably high-handed. But it’s also quite entertaining, even if sometimes bloodcurdling in its audacity.

And worse/funnier yet, Brentano adds in a footnote that the following lines were contained in the original lecture (referring to his imminent departure for Italy after two decades in Vienna, where his career was repeatedly thwarted):

“I shall perhaps never have the opportunity to speak again to my dear Viennese friends who kindly accepted me into their company twenty years ago and have shown since then so many signs of warmest benevolence. The time of my activity at the University was intolerantly shortened by Minister Taafe, and the situation became even worse when the Ministry of Education was taken over by Hohenwart… My lecture here can be seen as a sort of Last Supper, which I celebrate, for the last time, together with my friends in Vienna.”

How were these words received? Brentano tells us:

“[These] words, which were followed by a long and cold silence on the part of the audience, stirred a strong reaction in the public.”

But Brentano is a great original, and such a strange and forceful personality that he electrified everyone he encountered, including Freud and parts of Kafka’s circle along with the usual suspects: Husserl, Meinong, etc.

If there were suddenly a Brentano vogue in continental philosophy, I think it would be just about the best thing that could happen. He is one of the forgotten classics, and his work is truly fundamental to what we have been doing for the past 140 or so years.

The passages above are taken from The Four Phases of Philosophy, Balázs M. Mezei/Barry Smith. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.) Pages 81-83. In the rest of the book, Mezei and Smith use Brentano’s model of the history of philosophy to treat Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida as moments of decline from Brentano. (Which I cannot remotely accept, but which makes for fun reading as well.)