what just happened?

So, in the past 30 hours or so, everyone has collectively decided that they hate Badiou. What a burst of originality.

I’m glad at least some people are getting the ridiculous and sad irony in all of this. I’m not going to bother linking to all the ‘lets kill the father’ posts out there, I’m sure you’ve seen them or can find them, but almost all of them share one troubling thing, an odd absence of any philosophical or textual engagement with his work. And, if I can make a guess, at least a few seem to be written by people critiquing a book (LoW) which they have not read, or, understood.

As I said in a comment on one of the previously mentioned blogs, this reminds me of being 14 years old and turning violently against one of my favorite punk bands when they would sign with a major label or put a video on mtv.

Dark and obscure doesn’t always equal rigorous or interesting.

More Leiter

I should have figured this might have happened, but I recently received an email responding to my recent post by the man himself, Dr. Brian Leiter. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Burns,

A disadvantage of having a large blog readership is that readers often send me links “of interest,” including your long posting of June 2.

Ordinarily, one doesn’t publish e-mail correspondence without permission, but be that as it may, it is clear you took offense at our correspondence, which I regret, though I am disappointed by the way you chose to handle this.

I did not post your subsequent comment on the blog precisely because I did not want to cause a graduate student embarrassment on the Internet.    It would behoove you to realize that your perception of things from Dundee is not everyone else’s informed perception, and you would have done yourself harm, rather than good, by having your views on this particular subject recorded on my blog.

It is unfortunate that in your anger you also chose to insult Michael Rosen.  Rosen took his DPhil in philosophy at Oxford with Charles Taylor, wrote a book on Hegel early in his career, but is best-known for important work on the Frankfurt School.  If in fact his work, and its importance, is not known at Dundee, that would surprise me.   He was hired to cover 19^th- and 20^th-century Continental social and political theory at Harvard, the position held previously by Seyla Benhabib.

I am sorry for having caused offense.

Best wishes,

Brian Leiter

So my favorite part is clearly when I’m told that he didn’t post my comment on his blog to protect me from embarrassment. What does that even mean? I clearly had no problem posting what I had tried to say on my own blog, and have no idea why saying that a few online journals are in fact quite reputable would lead to embarrassment on my behalf. And how would I be harming myself by simply saying that to those of us working in contemporary continental philosophy, these journals are in fact useful and important? It also seems as if he is implying that my institution of study is somehow sub-standard due to my personal opinions on these matters.

I do, however, recognize my comments in regards to Michael Rosen may seem a bit rude, and I will admit that I am not familiar with his work, at all. He is likely very good at what he does, but I stand by my claim that he is by no means an important figure in recent European philosophy, and that he is surely not more notable than many of the figures Leiter previously disregarded.

Besides any regret I have for painting Rosen in an unfair light, I completely stand by my original claims. In an attempt to confront me and ‘apologize’ he managed to insult me a bit more. I have been lucky to come in contact with many well known and notable philosophers who have treated myself, and other students, with an un-necessary amount of respect and kindness, and thus, see no reason to excuse this blatant condescension and disregard on the account of Leiter having a popular blog. I’ve seen philosophers ten times his stature treat students in a kind and charitable fashion, this is just ridiculous.

Also, he had the time to email Graham as well, you can see their interaction here. The Limbaugh of analytic philosophy indeed…

A Leiter Report

In the past 24 hours I’ve somehow managed to enter into a bit of online disagreement with the (in)famous Brian Leiter, who is famous for, um, having a blog. Occasionally I check this blog to see what’s happening on the other side of the divide, and occasionally there is some interesting material. Yesterday there was a post asking why there was not more open access journals in philosophy.  The original post can be seen here. For those who don’t want to visit that site for moral reasons, here is the post:

I’d love to see philosophers discuss open access philosophy journals.  

Some observations:  (1) In many sciences, some of the most prestigious journals are now open access. 

 (2) In philosophy, only one open access journal (Philosophers’ Imprint) has a good enough reputation to be ranked among the 20 best philosophy journals (as per the ranking recently published in Leiter Reports); the top philosophy journals remain the usual ones.  

 (3) Some commercial publishers, such as Bentham, are now trying to establish for profit, open access philosophy journals, but their quality is questionable.

High quality, open access philosophy journals seem to be both desirable and feasible – witness Philosophers’ Imprint, not to mention the many prestigious open access journals in other fields.  Why aren’t there more prestigious open access philosophy journals?  Why haven’t open access journals been able to threaten the dominance of the old philosophy journals in the way they have done in other fields?

I found this an interesting issue, and since there are some very interesting online open access journals in recent European (or, continental) philosophy, decided to post a response, which read:

Not sure if this crowd will be a fan, but, there are a good number of quality open access journals dealing with recent European/continental philosophy. Some examples would be Cosmos and History, Parrhesia, and Phaenex [...] I can only speak for those working in contemporary European philosophy, but much of the work being produced in journals such as these (and, the new french/english online journal Nessiea:http://nessie-philo.com/) are putting out much more exciting research than many of the more ‘established’ print journals in contemporary European philosophy [...]

to which Dr. Leiter responded:

I do not have the impression that, even among those working in recent Continental philosophy, that these journals are especially well-regarded.

I then attempted to post a polite defense of my original post that said:

Brian,
I’m not sure if that’s true, I’m a graduate student [at a continental department] and some of the figures who’ve had work published in these journals: Alain Badiou, Daniel Smith, Adrian Johnston, James Williams, Alberto Toscano, Bruno Bosteels, Miguel de Beistegui, Alexander García Düttmann,Christian Kerslake; are some of the most well regarded people working in the field [...] And I can absolutely guarantee that these journals are all well read by graduate students who work in recent European philosophy.

This is where Dr. Leiter started to get mad at me. He refused to approve this comment, and sent me this email response:

Without a full name attached to these comments, no one can evaluate them.  But I also think it not advisable to pursue this.  The people you list, Badiou excepted, are minor figures, and the editorial boards of some of the journals you mention are extremely weak.  I don’t think you need to go out on a limb on this.

I was a bit surprised, as I said nothing aggressive or combative, and was surely not ‘going out on a limb’. If anything, I was just trying to share what was happening on the continental side of things in regards to open access journals. So I wrote him this response:

Sorry for the lack of full name [...] While those people may be minor figures to some, they are some of the most notable figures working contemporary European philosophy, and to any student/scholar working on people like Bergson, Deleuze, Sartre, Laruelle, or Badiou, they are household names. Sorry for bringing up a conversation on your blog you’d rather not have, but at the same time, for those of us working on continental philosophy in the UK, many of the people I listed are in fact notable figures. sorry for making it seem as if I was going out on a limb, just trying to share some open access journals that myself and colleagues have found useful.

At this point, I was still trying to be as polite as possible to someone who was treating me like an idiot. But of course, Dr. Leiter had to get his last word in:

Having recently finished editing with Michael Rosen The Oxford Handbook of Continental Philosophy, which included quite a bit on contemporary European philosophy, I do not share your assessment, and I’m sure Michael Rosen doesn’t share it either.   I think it would be highly misleading to students and young philosophers to suggest that these on-line journals would be good places to publish.

So, because Brian Leiter and Michael Rosen (prof. of government at Harvard), two figures I’ve never heard anyone working in recent European philosophy reference, edited a book that no one I know actually working in continental philosophy has read or taken seriously (in all fairness, a few really good people have chapters, but the book is clearly written for an analytic crowd, as the notre dame review evidences) he knows whats happening in continental philosophy and who the important figures are? Absolute bullshit. The guy has pretty much no idea what he’s talking about, and somehow gains some satisfaction from being a complete asshole to well intentioned graduate students on the damn internet.  Him telling me that a government professor wouldn’t agree with my assessment on interesting journals in recent European philosophy is equally idiotic, as being a graduate student in a well regarded continental department who actively participates in the British continental philosophy community, I think I can humbly say I’d be a better judge than him, or Leiter for that fact.

People like Leiter seem like they just take out the fact they were bullied in high school out on anyone who disagrees with them. His general attitude (as well as his ranking system) represents the sort of thing which is ruining the beauty of the discipline of philosophy. The guy is, to be blunt, a pretentious dick, and thus I see no problem in publicly proclaiming that here. But then again, what else would one expect from a guy who waits until someone (Derrida) dies and then mocks a well intentioned obituary. The worst thing about the internet is the way it’s created space for complete cowards, and bullies, to sit behind the safety of their computer screen mocking the world around them.

The report is out, Leiter is an ass.

brilliant advice…

from Graham:

Anything that helps you be productive should be treated as holy. What that may be differs for each of us. For me, it’s long multi-volume history books, as well as certain public sites that have been “lucky” places for me for thinking and working– the now-closed Café Trevi on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago, a specific cybercafe near Russell Square in London that still exists, etc. I do recommend treating these sorts of lucky rituals and places with a near-religious awe, because humans are all constantly within inches of turning into sulky, embittered procrastinators and aggressive resenters of the productive and the fulfilled. But you have to find your own holy places and holy relics. (OOP)

This is both brilliant advice, as well as utterly painful for me to read. While living in Nottingham for my MA I did most of my ‘good’ work at one of the many mellow pubs or cafes in the city. On moving to Dundee to start my PhD I figured I’d be able to do the same and find a few places possessing that certain ‘energy’ allowing me to work. Sadly, there is not even a shred of ‘cafe culture’ in this city, and the pubs are not the type of pubs that are used to people coming in mid-day with a stack of books under their arm. (A stack of alcoholism, maybe…)

Thus, I’ve been doing most of my outlining/writing in the small library cafe, and taking advantage of St. Andrews, which is right across the river, and being filled with mostly American and English students it has great cafes where you can buy one cup of coffee and sit for a couple hours comfortably working away. Although at times pretentious, at least St. Andrews ‘feels’ academic, and it’s not hard to walk into a pub and find an awkard looking academic with a pint of ale and a book.

Regardless, great advice.

on endorsements and logics of worlds.

a question…

why the hell did continuum have Joan Copjec write the only endorsement feature on the cover of Logics of Worlds? On the continuum website they have a lengthy, and appropriate, endorsement from Peter Hallward, who is, you know, a philosopher, and whom is more or less the english language Badiou expert; why the hell wouldn’t they put that on the published book? I mean, who working on continental philosophy (esp. the materialist strand) thinks of Joan Copjec as someone important?

Maybe I’m just missing something…

just a thought…

Does anyone else notice how (some of) the online scientific-realism contingent is basically becoming the reformed Calvinism of continental philosophy? This may reveal a bit of ‘naivete’, but are we really back at the place where continental philosophers need to take too seriously questions of determinism and eliminitivism? If the determinist are right, then almost all of the work in recent continental philosophy falls out the window, so one should either find one of the sub-groups within contemporary anglo philosophy who rejects free will. And as for eliminitivism, as I understand it, weren’t the Churchlands basically disregarded by the anglo philosophy world years (and years) ago? I confess I wasn’t studying philosophy a decade ago, and am only familiar with bits and piece of the literature, but speaking with people who were around then, and do know the literature, they seem astonished when they find out young Continental philosophers are taking this stuff seriously again.

I’m just not sure what motivates someone to ‘do’ philosophy if theories such as determinism and eliminativism are right? If there is no such thing as a freely existing subject…then shit…count me out.

(sorry for the micro rant)

Leiter on getting a job in the US with UK degree

There is a conversation going on right now on Leiter Reports regarding the success of students with a UK PhD applying for jobs in the states. As someone who plans to be doing just that in the next few years this is of some significance, as it is to many other students in my department; sadly though, the comments left so far have given the impression that the only reason to get a PhD is to get a good job. Now I obviously understand that we all have to make money one way or another, but if someone doesn’t have a passion for their field of study then they should just get a job in business and make a lot more money for much less effort. One comment literally gave the advice to make sure your adviser helped you develop a ‘marketable’ topic for your dissertation. As one who is planning on writing  PhD that will most definitely not be marketable in the states, I find it ridiculous that anyone would focus years of research around marketability.

The only advice that is really necessary for this situation is that one should study with the adviser and department that will best facilitate their field of interest and work their ass of for however many years they are there. Screw marketability. What is the point of spending years of your life in a department that doesn’t fit your academic interest for the sake of better chances in an unpredictable job market?  Eh.