one more thing: response to some reader mail

I was also engaging in last-minute correspondence with a reader at the end of the day, and that reader raised a point of more general interest:

“Last night, while rereading some sections of Prince of Networks, a couple arguments and, more importantly, the manner and style with which they’re delivered, convinced me [that]… authorial intention fallacy aside, most of your work exhibits the utmost intellectual integrity and manages to balance expertly an almost invisible border between dogmatism and bullshit, while leaning quite skillfully toward the former. (Note: I’m not calling you a dogmatist…only that you lean toward dogmatism. That is, one can be an honest dogmatist, I believe. And, perhaps, the honest dogmatist is one who defends expertly a particular line of argument while engaging honestly and directly with any and all comers to establish the reasonableness and truth of the defended claims.) What I realized last night was the following: Harman actually believes these claims…he’s actually convinced by the arguments he skillfully presents and responds honestly to the critical assaults often launched disingenuously by ironists [at blog name excised]… What is it about OOP that you find so convincing? I know this last question is perhaps silly for the simple reason that one could find any number of responses in the thousands of pages of your published and unpublished work. But, I’m impressed by the courage you display each and every day defending the cluster of interrelated claims that compose your position. I envy you. I can’t stay focused for longer than one day to develop a position.”

Other than the term “dogmatist” (which I would use differently) this is largely a true assessment. I absolutely can’t stand saying anything that I don’t really believe. It’s a trait that seeps into my personal life as well. For instance, I despise the teasing that sometimes goes on between friends, especially run-of-the-mill male “locker room” teasing (which I viscerally detest), being unable to see it as anything other than a passive-aggressive eruption of genuine minor hostilities and competitions boiling just beneath the surface, and it horrifies me to see traces of such bubbling sulphur in people I view warmly as true friends. So as a result, I pretty much never tease anyone (there are minor exceptions that prove the rule), nor do I care to receive any in return.

But away from the personal and towards the intellectual… Yes, I only like to say things that I really believe. And one of the reasons I often steer clear of political discussion in continental philosophy circles is that it so often seems insincere: there may be some sincerity there at the core, but it always quickly turns into a game of people trying to outflank each other ever further to the Left, with positions struck against other positions rather than against the world itself, and I find that quick loss of contact with reality to be distressing in any discussion. In no area more than politics does bullshit so quickly infest philosophy. And I’d rather stay away from such conversations as much as possible.

As far as philosophical argument goes, there is the obvious fact that in all of my writings I usually return quickly (and sometimes not so quickly) to touch base with Heidegger’s tool-analysis. That’s not just to let the reader follow my arguments from step one, but also to remind myself that I’m telling the truth about what I really believe. Most of the things that I really believe about philosophy sprout from that single analysis (though I think that neither Heidegger himself nor any of his interpreters quite grasped the point of it). When in doubt, I go back to the tool-analysis, and then I can remember everything that followed from it, and in what order.

By keeping things simple and honest and returning to the same basic piece of ground repeatedly, it’s also easier not to get swept away by the pile of books on your desk. I have all those books too and am also in danger quite often of becoming scattered.

But I use the same principle described above to avoid becoming scattered by the various books on the desk. When reading any book, I focus entirely on what I am genuinely surprised by or interested in in the book in question. If you finish reading a book and simply list the 10 things that genuinely surprised or interested you, then you already have the outline of a good article; it won’t be boring, because you are very different from anyone else alive, and your simple likes and dislikes are going to be fresh compared with anyone else’s. Write that article, and people will be able to tell that it’s fresh and from the heart. That doesn’t mean it can’t also be funny, but if it is then there will be a certain freshness and honesty to the humor.

Unless you do it this way, there’s the permanent danger of being full of sh*t in what you write, because you’ll be trying to imagine what you could say that will impress or outflank others, rather than what you really care about or are fascinated by in whatever it is you’re reading.

And to answer another of the questions in the message, what I like so much about OOP is that I think it’s both true and beautiful.

I’ll stop here arbitrarily due to fatigue, but there are hundreds of pages that could be written on this topic.