Thursday wrap-up

Brassier’s 6 hours on Sellars were a success, notwithstanding the density of the reading materials (Sellars’s 1978 Carus Lectures). Everyone I spoke with came out finding Sellars more rather than less interesting, which is obviously a good sign for a lecture.

Tomorrow is only a half-day: the afternoon. The morning is free, which is good, because this is perhaps the most intense academic event I’ve ever attended. I was walking home with Martin Hägglund afterwards, and we’ve had the same reaction to the intensity of it. Six hours of rather technical discussion (with 2 hours’ lunch in between), then you have to come straight home and start doing the readings for the next day. Presumably some participants did all the reading in advance, but personally I had no window of free time in which to do that. So it’s like being a high school student in a very difficult school: six hours in class, then doing homework all night long.

For two weeks, I can handle it. And the discussions are very helpful.