Attention Conservation Notice: This one's about philosophy
[NB. I first encountered the term "Attention Conservation Notice" through Warren Ellis, so credit to him or whoever else came up with it.]
This has been bugging me since yesterday, when A&L Daily linked to it. It's not as if every charge is groundless, but a particular point caught my eye:
The obituary author may, indeed, be ignorant of the history of philosophy, but certainly no more so than Professor Scott, whose ignorance extends to the present: there are no "appreciative quotes" from "American philosophers," because American philosophers thought he was a fraud, a betrayal to philosophy's grand history.
and
Mark Taylor... [proclaims] Derrida one of the three great philosophers of the 20th-century, along with Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Of course, even Wittgenstein and Heidegger are controversial choices, though in terms of sheer impact, they are plainly in a wholly different league from Derrida, so much so that anyone knowledgeable about 20th-century European and Anglophone philosophy and intellectual culture must laugh out loud at Professor Taylor's dishonest hyperbole.
Well, the obvious thing first: Anglophone philosophy would disregard Heidegger and Derrida, certainly (and remember, I'm not the biggest fan of either), but European philosophy as a whole? Or, to rephrase it, Continental philosophy? Leiter here perpetuates the odious myth that American/British/analytic philosophy is the only philosophy. It's not surprising that American philosophers as a whole haven't said anything good about Derrida, but it's not necessarily because Derrida was a fraud or anything like that - it's because they're all analytic.
Every day I am increasingly thankful that I by chance wound up at one of the few universities in North America that has a philosophy department with thinkers from both streams, even if our increased focus on philosophy of science means we're weighted down with analytic profs. There's nothing wrong with analytic philosophy, with logic or any of that, but when it posits itself as the only true, real, valid or existing form of philosophy it pisses me off. Up with metaphysics. Up with ontology and aesthetics and proper (ie. non-Heideggerian) phenomenology. Not because they're better than linguistic philosophy or logic, but because they're just as worthy of serious intellectual discourse.
This has been bugging me since yesterday, when A&L Daily linked to it. It's not as if every charge is groundless, but a particular point caught my eye:
The obituary author may, indeed, be ignorant of the history of philosophy, but certainly no more so than Professor Scott, whose ignorance extends to the present: there are no "appreciative quotes" from "American philosophers," because American philosophers thought he was a fraud, a betrayal to philosophy's grand history.
and
Mark Taylor... [proclaims] Derrida one of the three great philosophers of the 20th-century, along with Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Of course, even Wittgenstein and Heidegger are controversial choices, though in terms of sheer impact, they are plainly in a wholly different league from Derrida, so much so that anyone knowledgeable about 20th-century European and Anglophone philosophy and intellectual culture must laugh out loud at Professor Taylor's dishonest hyperbole.
Well, the obvious thing first: Anglophone philosophy would disregard Heidegger and Derrida, certainly (and remember, I'm not the biggest fan of either), but European philosophy as a whole? Or, to rephrase it, Continental philosophy? Leiter here perpetuates the odious myth that American/British/analytic philosophy is the only philosophy. It's not surprising that American philosophers as a whole haven't said anything good about Derrida, but it's not necessarily because Derrida was a fraud or anything like that - it's because they're all analytic.
Every day I am increasingly thankful that I by chance wound up at one of the few universities in North America that has a philosophy department with thinkers from both streams, even if our increased focus on philosophy of science means we're weighted down with analytic profs. There's nothing wrong with analytic philosophy, with logic or any of that, but when it posits itself as the only true, real, valid or existing form of philosophy it pisses me off. Up with metaphysics. Up with ontology and aesthetics and proper (ie. non-Heideggerian) phenomenology. Not because they're better than linguistic philosophy or logic, but because they're just as worthy of serious intellectual discourse.
