Solving a Puzzle-- Understanding Some People's Reactions

[william.scherk]

And here's an excerpt from the best critical review at amazon:

If I didn't know better, I would think Janet was a bit of a slophound in the research area ...

[Selene]

Now I have to dust off my books on tropes and Greek rhetorical devices...

parrhesia is a figure of speech described as: to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking.^[1] The term is borrowed from the Greek παρρησία (πᾶν "all" + ῥῆσις / ῥῆμα "utterance, speech") meaning literally "to speak everything" and by extension "to speak freely," "to speak boldly," or "boldness." It implies not only freedom of speech, but the obligation to speak the truth for the common good, even at personal risk.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

It's nice to see your original ideas go viral.

Come on. A few thousand hits is not "going viral."

Not bad without promotion, but far far from viral.

You do know Malthus's work, yes?

I'm just an optimistic hillbilly looking at the stars. I wouldn't know of such things...

Michael

[9thdoctor]

No wonder he raves against Foucault.

For 3.52 it can be yours. Plus postage of course.

You can get a used hardcover of Cosmopolis for $2.00. Exactly what does that prove? There are 262 Amazon reviews of ATCAG, average 4 stars, and only 87 of Cosmopolis, average 3 stars, what does that prove? If you added up the number of Amazon reviews of all the works of Michel Foucault combined, would it be more than 262? Doesn’t look like it, not even close. And there’s plenty of cheap used copies of Foucault for sale too.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AMichel+Foucault&keywords=Michel+Foucault&ie=UTF8&qid=1328192064&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B000AP6Y1O

MSK: whatever happened to the 5 posts a day club? Are they still accepting members? I think there are regulars who would like to enjoy breathing the Phil-free air, while it lasts.

[Reidy]

I know about as much about Malthus as you do about Rand. And I can name-drop:

PlatoAristotleThalesCiceroArchimedesHomerSophoclesAeschylusBoethiusMarxAugustineNiebuhrUpdikeAquinasEuclidEinsteinBohrNewtonLeibnizDescartesKeynesSmithHayekVonMisesPlathMiltonShakespeareCowardMillerDarwinLinnaeusMendelHegelKantSchopenauerAdlaiStevensonGalbraithMillsLucretiusHesiodJaspersSartreNietzscheLennoxGotthelfTolstoyDostoyevskyChekovHugoCocteau.

[9thdoctor]

I know about as much about Malthus as you do about Rand. And I can name-drop:

PlatoAristotleThalesCiceroArchimedesHomerSophoclesAeschylusBoethiusMarxAugustineNiebuhrUpdikeAquinasEuclidEinsteinBohrNewtonLeibnizDescartesKeynesSmithHayekVonMisesPlathMiltonShakespeareCowardMillerDarwinLinnaeusMendelHegelKantSchopenauerAdlaiStevensonGalbraithMillsLucretiusHesiodJaspersSartreNietzscheLennoxGotthelfTolstoyDostoyevskyChekovHugoCocteau.

You left out Pancho Villa and Buster Keaton.

[william.scherk]

Reidy, that is lovely, terse and effective.

Could you please, one day, serve us up a text of Plath, Cocteau and Schopenauer? A kind of mixed grill, lightly seasoned? No need to read them through anything, not least the boring tirades of a maniac, but simply tell us why they still sing straight through to your heart.

And would it be much more savoury than the stale chop suey of gristle, stodge and muck that Janet has been slopping on our collective plate for her last six hundred posts?

Edited February 2, 2012 by william.scherk

[PDS]

Reidy, that is lovely, terse and effective.

Could you please, one day, serve us up a text of Plath, Cocteau and Schopenauer? A kind of mixed grill, lightly seasoned? No need to read them through anything, not least the boring tirades of a maniac, but simply tell us why they still sing straight through to your heart.

And would it be much more savoury than the stale chop suey of gristle, stodge and muck that Janet has been slopping on our collective plate for her last six hundred posts?

If Reidy is busy, I would be willing to dazzle the assembled masses with an exposition of the closet dramas of Percy Byshhe Shelley, with particular emphasis on his little understood The Cenci. I may or may not tie his verbal dramas into the French Revolution, which, I hasten to add, is not actually over yet. See, e.g., The Drudge Report for February 2, 2012.

Most of what I say will be long-form bluffing, with a dose of Wikipedia semi-plagiarism thrown in for a sort of demi-glaze (maybe even patina?) of intellectual respectability. So everybody would need to "price that in" when they buy this particular stock, so to speak.

Also, I once talked to John Ridpath and explained to him that one (ideally) needs to read The Fountainhead before reading Atlas Shrugged. He agreed. Not long thereafter, I breathed the second-hand smoke of one of David Kelley's cigarettes, unfortunately.

The smoke reminded me of one of the head priest's lit fags in Graham Greene's The Burnt Out Case. Querry, the protagonist in said book, was an architect. So was Howard Roark.

But I digress.

[Xray]

No. Not a political issue - that's not even skimming the surface - it is a philosophical/moral issue.

I deliberately chose the term 'political' here because force/coercion play a central role in the given context.

It goes without saying that political issues always also reflect a specific moral and philosophical code. In the case of genital mutilation, this code is horrendous.

No. Not a political issue - that's not even skimming the surface - it is a philosophical/moral issue.

I deliberately chose the term 'political' here because force/coercion play a central role in the given context.

It goes without saying that political issues always also reflect a specific moral and philosophical code. In the case of genital mutilation, this code is horrendous.

Tell me your objectively MORAL and RATIONAL opposition - because that's what we need to fight it among its practitioners.

I've had quite a few discussions on this issue on other threads where I laid out my arguments on the issue. I don't want to get off topic here too much.

Without reverting to another religion (Christianity) to contrast with the vile practices of this religion, I don't believe you can raise a moral argument.

My position on the issue is exactly the opposite: no religion can serve as a foundation of an ethics based on rationality.

For a rational principle cannot be justified by grounding it on an irrational basis.

That exposes the moral bankruptcy of the secular West: that it has only compassion and 'human' rights - emotion and force -

to combat a primitive, tribalist custom.

I think it will be impulses from the secular West that are finally going to free ethics from the shackles of religion. This (long overdue) process is already under way. It is not without reason that books by Dawkins, Hitchens & Co. have become bestsellers. But this is only the beginning. Rationality, empathy, human rights - all are elements of a secular ethics.

[Xray]

An object does not exist until and unless it is observed. - William Burroughs

Janet,

What do you think Ayn Rand would have replied to that?

Joan Baez handled that kind of comment perfectly in her early memoir Daybreak. Go read it and get your answer.

I asked you what you think Ayn Rand would have replied.

[Xray]

she [Joan Baez] was being interrogated on her pacifism. If she were driving down the road and a car was coming at her and there was someone in the way that she would hit if she swerved. So she responded that she would try to avoid the oncoming car and avoid hitting the person when she swerved. So then the question ante was upped. Well suppose you were on a two way road and there was a cliff on the side where you would go off if you swerved to avoid the car and the woman.

(quote corrected by Janet in # 239)

She said she would probably crash into the oncoming car, kill the driver, then swerve to miss the person but kill them too, then go over the cliff, land on the roof of the farmhouse and kill the entire family inside.

I am paraphrasing but she upped the ante on the response to shut the questioner up. And this was exactly what was going to happen in the above example and I was going to have to spend all the rest of the day answering reasonably and logically, while the ante was upped. And then I would start my caustic one-liners and daunce would have another nail to pound in my coffin and the rest of them would jump in and and and.......

Nope. Joanie had it covered.

Is all that supposed to mean that you too (like Joan Baez) want to "shut up" the questioner if the questions asked don't suit you?

If that is the case and you refuse to answer questions about philosophical quotes you have presented here, this of course translates as evasion.

[seymourblogger]

It's nice to see your original ideas go viral.

Come on. A few thousand hits is not "going viral." Not bad without promotion, but far far from viral.

You do know Malthus's work, yes?

I'm just an optimistic hillbilly looking at the stars. I wouldn't know of such things... Michael

No I'm the hillbilly looking at the stars.

No the 12,000 was just bean counting, not viral. And they read other stuff when they are there, which is more gratifying. Wht I meant was I don't think you have one serious posting on your site that comes close to that number. Just one, not the whole site.

By viral I mean when a juxtaposition does like Colbert + Foucault + parrhesia then gets into university classrooms via a professor using my blog to illustrate a lecture on post modernist thinking. When someone in that class talks about how neat it was on a comment site. Then you know your ideas are going viral. going, not there, just out there, the beginning of a trend, a way of thinking differently.

I don't do any original ideas of my own. My aim is to disappear. I just connect dots and weave them and interweave them, but they are what other people have done, said, written, wrote.

This is not about me, Michael. I am not interested in arguing an idea back and forth ad infinitum within the dialectic. Foucault has convinced me of the worthlessness of that and I bow to his far superior intellect and his utterly convincing and detailed discussion of it, both in his writings, his interviews, and the transcribed lectures from the College de France.

A young woman graduate student was introduced to him at one of those get togethers you go to when a famous person comes to your campus and lectures, etc. She had recently done her PhD dissertation on Foucault and she was introduced as having done that. She was thrilled to meet him of course.

And he said to paraphrase, Why me, I'm not important. Do genealogies.

When he died he had cartons and cartons of genealogies he worked on during his life and never published. Nietzsche's genealogy of god and atheism was what completely convinced Rand.

Now I've given you a serious answer. I will wait to see if I get a one-liner back. Do you mean what you say or do you not?

[Selene]

Ms. Abbey, out of curiosity, you "vanish" your individual identity to become a conduit to read an ultimate individualist "post modern philosopheress?"

Certainly a distinct approach that would bring a great deal of incredulity to those of us on this forum.

Adam

[Xray]

Here's the ROOT of the problem between you and me....There is NO ROOT to this problem.

Hmmm.... Those Foucauldians are a tricky tribe.

Ghs

... and quite versed in 'concept stealing' ('The root of the problem is that there is not root of the problem').

[seymourblogger]

An object does not exist until and unless it is observed. - William Burroughs

Janet, What do you think Ayn Rand would have replied to that?

Joan Baez handled that kind of comment perfectly in her early memoir Daybreak. Go read it and get your answer.

I asked you what you think Ayn Rand would have replied.

Sorry the Joan Baez quote was to a question by Smith on a hypothetical case of a crime. Not to you but ...........

Here's the Rand quote that I think answers your question from my reading of it: http://intellectualterrorism2.blogspot.com/2011/10/reading-ayn-rand-through-nietzsche.html

There's a lot more there that you can skip but Burroughs is large and highlighted and Rand's right under it.

[seymourblogger]

Here's the ROOT of the problem between you and me....There is NO ROOT to this problem.

Hmmm.... Those Foucauldians are a tricky tribe.

Ghs

... and quite versed in 'concept stealing' ('The root of the problem is that there is not root of the problem').

For the background of my reply you would have to spend a lot of time with Foucaut's The Order of Things.

[seymourblogger]

No wonder he raves against Foucault.

For 3.52 it can be yours. Plus postage of course.

You can get a used hardcover of Cosmopolis for $2.00. Exactly what does that prove? There are 262 Amazon reviews of ATCAG, average 4 stars, and only 87 of Cosmopolis, average 3 stars, what does that prove? If you added up the number of Amazon reviews of all the works of Michel Foucault combined, would it be more than 262? Doesn’t look like it, not even close. And there’s plenty of cheap used copies of Foucault for sale too.

http://www.amazon.co...r_id=B000AP6Y1O

MSK: whatever happened to the 5 posts a day club? Are they still accepting members? I think there are regulars who would like to enjoy breathing the Phil-free air, while it lasts.

The point is that it doesn't prove anything at all. It's a joke!

If you want to take it literally you can, but it's not funny if you do. When you try to explain a joke it's not funny anymore. And you left out the rest of the context and that's a no-no. And there's plenty of criticism of Foucault, DeLillo and Rand, so what does that prove. Nada.

[Xray]

Here's the ROOT of the problem between you and me.

(part of the quote bolded by seymourblogger)

I'm not interested in giving you any 'smart' answers. I'm interested in gettting - in the course of a mutual exchange - to the root of an issue

I am not in your Discourse. There is no origin of a problem and no idealistic horizon we are aspiring to get to. That is your Hegelian Dialectical Dominating Discourse. I am not in it. There is NO ROOT to this problem. There is only a genealogy of it. I am not going to spend the next couple of years doing that for you. Just accept the fact that I am not in your Discourse.

The statement "I am not in your discourse" merely signals interlocutor A's unwillingness to enter into a communicative exchange with another individual B. A does not like the way B approaches an issue because B does not apply the code of A's preferred philosophy.

But this is of no objective relevance in terms of the actual topic being discussed.

There is NO ROOT to this problem. There is only a genealogy of it.

Every problem has a cause (or causes). If you trace it back, you can call it 'genealogy'.

In case you think that the causality (or genealogy) chain is virtually endless: it is correct that one cannot try tracing it back endlessly in order to get "at the root" of a current problem.

Proceeding exclusively by an endless causality chain would make any progress impossible because the effect of such thinking is 'psychologically immobilizing".

"Getting at the root" is therefore to be interpreted as "tracing it back as far as it makes sense in terms of finding a solution. "

[George H. Smith]

An object does not exist until and unless it is observed. - William Burroughs

Janet, What do you think Ayn Rand would have replied to that?

Joan Baez handled that kind of comment perfectly in her early memoir Daybreak. Go read it and get your answer.

I asked you what you think Ayn Rand would have replied.

Sorry the Joan Baez quote was to a question by Smith on a hypothetical case of a crime. Not to you but ...........

Here's the Rand quote that I think answers your question from my reading of it: http://intellectualt...-nietzsche.html

There's a lot more there that you can skip but Burroughs is large and highlighted and Rand's right under it.

You cited Baez in response to a question by Xray, not me -- as it clear from the nested posts. And I never said anything about a "hypothetical crime."

You have cited the Rand line before. It has absolutely no relation to the line by Burroughs.

If you are going to fake your way through questions, at least do a better job of it.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Not bad, Janet. We might extend you a scholarship yet.

Brant, What impresses me is all those blogs without any traffic. You have to have a lot of grit to be a perfect nobody on your own and belittle with snark the public of rather famous authors. Wooh... Light bulb time... This is just like Phil. Michael

What gives you the idea there is no traffic? One posting from 9-5 (5 months now) has 12, 451 hits and is still going strong. I'll leave you to search around to see if you can find that one. I have no idea why. I can't come up with any reasonable reason. Someone checked and told me that post is on page 4 of google on a search showing 40,000,000 results. don't ask me why. I know I go viral. I post something and not too long after when I do a back search on it I see where there was dnothing when I first posted now there are 4 or 5 on that subject. Colbert + Foucault + parrhesia Foucault has a genealogy of parrhesia in his little book Fearless Speech done just before he died. This was what he was working on as Death was stalking him. It's nice to see your original ideas go viral. You do know Malthus's work, yes?

I hate to burst your egomanical bubble, but 12,451 hits does not qualify as going viral. There are threads on OL with more than double that number of hits.

I am quite familiar with Malthus; in fact, I have a discussion of him in my forthcoming book from Cambridge University Press. Care to see if you can bluff your way through this one?

Ghs

[seymourblogger]

Here's the ROOT of the problem between you and me.

(part of the quote bolded by seymourblogger)

I'm not interested in giving you any 'smart' answers. I'm interested in gettting - in the course of a mutual exchange - to the root of an issue

I am not in your Discourse. There is no origin of a problem and no idealistic horizon we are aspiring to get to. That is your Hegelian Dialectical Dominating Discourse. I am not in it. There is NO ROOT to this problem. There is only a genealogy of it. I am not going to spend the next couple of years doing that for you. Just accept the fact that I am not in your Discourse.

The statement "I am not in your discourse" merely signals an inerlocutor's unwillingness to enter into a communicative exchange with another individual.

Yes, you are absolutely correct in saying this about what I said.

It is therefore of no objective relevance to the actual topic that is being discussed.

There is NO ROOT to this problem. There is only a genealogy of it.

Every problem has a cause (or causes). If you trace it back, you can call it 'genealogy'.

Good. This is simple. Thank you. Genealogy is not linear, not chronology. A genealogy can have numerous "cuts" that all exist at the same time, but which were first made at different times, in different eras. This has no impact or influence on the genealogy, or the understanding of it. This is a very important distinction. If you go to my blog http://moviesandfilm.blogspot.com and look under Eclipse, there is one review detailing how Eclipse is a genealogy of the history of sexuality. This itself is just one way to read the film Eclipse. It is not the right way, the wrong way, the correct way, the smart way, the stupid way, etc. It is just reading Eclipse through Foucauldian genealogy. From what I have just written, genealogy is not in linear time, but in discontinuous time. This is Nietzsche and Foucault following Nietzsche.

Cause and effect belong to linear time. Cause and effect do NOT belong to discontinuous time. So you cannot use genealogy and cause and effect within the same argument. They belong in different categories. You are arguing genealogy and cause and effect together, and that cannot be done. Not logically.

So that's why I refuse to get involved in explaining myself within a category that is not the category I am thinking in.

"I have no intention of being a flyswatter", and it was Nietzsche who first said that, and , I believe, Rand said it too at one time. This is what often frustrated her in Q & A at NBI. But she had not differentiated the two categories, and she was constantly getting caught betwixt and between. Her genius was in her fiction just as Nietzsche's genius was in his Zarathustra. Foucault disagrees here as he was most influenced by Nietzsche's genealogy from his essay The Genealogy of Morals.I hope this clears some things for you as to my refusal to engage in a Discourse that is invalid for what I am saying and writing.

I await your reply.

In case you think that the causality (or genealogy) chain is virtually endless: one doesn't always have to try tracing it back endlessly in order to get "at the root" of a current problem.

Proceeding exclusively by an endless causality chain would make any progress impossible because the effect of such thinking is 'psychologically immobilizing".

"Getting at the root" is therefore to be interpreted as "tracing it back as far as it makes sense in terms of finding a solution. "

I am continuing to reply to you because Brant made a statement about your basic honesty and integrity.

[George H. Smith]

Here's the ROOT of the problem between you and me....There is NO ROOT to this problem.

Hmmm.... Those Foucauldians are a tricky tribe.

Ghs

... and quite versed in 'concept stealing' ('The root of the problem is that there is not root of the problem').

For the background of my reply you would have to spend a lot of time with Foucaut's The Order of Things.

I have spent a lot of time with The Order of Things. In fact, I reread large chunks of it over the past few days. Given how you misuse Foucault's ideas, you don't seem to understand Foucault any better than you understand Rand. You merely throw around a few of his phrases here and there in an attempt to impress people, but you are not fooling anyone on OL.

My earlier offer to participate in a thread about Foulcault's ideas is still open. I will even start the thread for you, after which you can post of a summary of what you regard as his most important contributions. You won't do this this, of course, because you cannot do it. You are a fraud.

Ghs

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

No I'm the hillbilly looking at the stars.

. . .

This is not about me, Michael. I am not interested in arguing an idea back and forth ad infinitum within the dialectic.

Seymourblogger,

At least one good thing can be said of your inner "dominating discourse." You have a most casual relationship with logical consistency, if not outright contempt.

What kind of response is, "No, I'm the one who yada yada yada..."?

Are we in a kindergarten version of "back and forth ad infinitum within the dialectic" all of a sudden?

Incidentally, I am literally a hillbilly--born in Wise County, Virginia and raised by hillbillies. I was born in neighboring Norton because Coeburn (where I should have been born) didn't have the medical facilities to handle my mother's difficult delivery.

You're a hoot, though. I've never seen a person try to bluff about being a hillbilly as an intellectual plus.

Michael

[Xray]

Sacred Orders and Secular Orders are different categories. They don't mix until their boundaries become permeable, and that doesn't happen until their orthodox attributes weaken. And now we can talk about objectivism and where that fits in. Is it a closed system or is it open? If it is open, does it survive?

All open philosophical systems are subject to permanent transformation.

As for closed systems, in what form do they 'survive'? Mostly it is in the form of dogma, but then no dogma can survive in the long run.

All opening up Rand's Objectivism has done is produce a folly of different opinions and thoughts and more arguments.

You are a closed-system advocate then?

[seymourblogger]

Sacred Orders and Secular Orders are different categories. They don't mix until their boundaries become permeable, and that doesn't happen until their orthodox attributes weaken. And now we can talk about objectivism and where that fits in. Is it a closed system or is it open? If it is open, does it survive?

All open philosophical systems are subject to permanent transformation.

As for closed systems, in what form do they 'survive'? Mostly it is in the form of dogma, but then no dogma can survive in the long run.

All opening up Rand's Objectivism has done is produce a folly of different opinions and thoughts and more arguments.

You are a closed-system advocate then?

Orthodox Hebrew religion is a closed system. Christianity is not. I believe it was Paul who opened up the teachings of Jesus to non-Jews, over the demand of circumcision. It was then, at that cut (no pun intended) that Christianity really opened up. But it was eclectic from the beginning. It has spread all over the world because it opened up. It has also spawned many splits, controversies, interpretations, arguments, etc etc etc. It really has not very much to do with Jesus and his teachings anymore at all. It is something quite different.

Rand knew this. If she opened it up, then she would lose control. Just as Jesus would have, only he was martyred which saved his teachings. For awhile. Yes, as long as it is closed it has the taint if not the substance of dogma. I think this can be said of orthodox Objectivism.

You are a closed-system advocate then?

Now you are asking me a question that forces me to enter the dialectic of pro and con in order to answer you. Bacon has said that a question well-asked is 1/2 the answer. Actually I do not have a dog in this fight. I do not advocate open or closed. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. That's all I am saying. There are two POV and I am just observing them.