my review of Alison Assiter’s recent book on Kierkegaard is now up on the Philosophers Magazine website. You can read it here.

it’s maybe a bit harsh, but at least honest.

So I’ve taken most of the summer off from blogging, which I think was a good thing. But with the start of a new term I hope to start posting again on a semi-regular basis.

For now, go read my colleague Brian Smith’s review of Graham Harman’s Prince of Networks over at The Philosophers Magazine.

see you all soon.

This could very well by old news, but a pdf of Hallward’s piece from the last radical philosophy is available here.

While this has been around for a couple of months now, I’ve yet to see any interaction with it on the world wide interwebs. This may due to lack of accessibility, or because this piece (as well as Hallward’s current project) seems to fall outside the realm of what’s ‘in’ in interweb based philosophy these days. Personally, I have lots of sympathies with his project, and will try to find time to post some thoughts of critical affirmation soon. As I said in a previous post, I was surprised with the hostility towards Hallward’s position which emerged at the Immanence/Materialism conference in London a few weeks back, so would be interested in hearing others thoughts on this piece, and the project in general.

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.

Following the lead of others I’ve decided to add a post regarding my summer ‘to do’ list. Hopefully publicly posting this will help provide some sort of motivation…

Writing

• Chapters on ‘Kierkegaard and Badiou’ and ‘Kierkegaard and Sartre’ for the collection Kierkegaard’s Influence on Social-Political Thought.
• Essay on Meillassoux and philosophy of religion for the volume Anthony Paul Smith/Daniel Whistler are editing.
• A paper (or, papers) on the concept of life in Badiou and Henry. One version with a more political bent for a conference on immanence/materialism in London, the other with a more ‘continental philosophy of religion’ approach for a conference in Liverpool.
• Editing half of my first chapter to submit for publication

Reading

• Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason Vol. 1 and 2
• Hegel’s Science of Logic
• The more ‘category theory’ oriented sections of Logics of Worlds, as well as some secondary literature on category theory.
• Random secondary texts on Sartre/Hegel/Marxism

Teaching

• Still haven’t found out what I’m teaching in the fall (it’ll be either the first or second year philosophy tutoring) but when I do, I’ll hopefully spend a bit of time familiarizing myself the material.

that’s all.  hopefully I’ll be able to provide updates when I actually do these things, and luckily, there are deadlines attached to most of these tasks which will hopefully keep me from straying too bad. although I wonder…how pissed do editors get if you get your chapter in a week or two late?

Peter Thompson left this comment today on an older post, and I think it deserves to be seen by all:

Dear All
one of the figures who has been largely forgotten or ignored in the whole debate about liberation theology is Ernst Bloch, who, as a Marxist, took as his starting point the attempt to define the message of exodus in the old and new testaments as a self-misunderstood rational for the uprising of the subaltern. Verso are just re-publishing this work in English translation and I think it could answer some of the debates going on on this (excellent) blog. He anticipates much of the stuff which Badiou, Zizek, Meillasoux etc. have argued and posits the possibility of transcendence without the transcendental. The book can be found at http://www.versobooks.com/books/ab/b-titles/bloch_ernst_atheism_and_christianity.shtml
or http://www.amazon.co.uk/Atheism-Christianity-Ernst-Bloch/dp/1844673944and has an interesting and very good new introduction (hey, if I don’t say it no-one else will!)

I have heard about Bloch before but have yet to read him, but I’m glad Peter has brought this work (which was has written the introduction for) to light. As soon as it’s available for order I will definitely be checking this out. Of specific interest seems to be Bloch’s work on transcendence.  If anyone here is familiar with Bloch’s work I’d love to hear more…

As many whom either know me personally, or know this blog digitally, have ascertained, one of my primary areas of interests is the work of Soren Kierkegaard, and specifically in developing a reading of his work which places him in proximity with the political and ontological concerns of the recent materialists (and/or ‘post-phenomenological’) traditions of European, and specifically French Philosophy. That said, there are two recent works which seem to share a similar concern, which is both exciting and encouraging.

The first, written by Latin American (but US based) Theologian Eliseo Pérez-Álvarez, is entitled A Vexing Gadfly: The Late Kierkegaard on Economic Matters.This one is not only interesting as its the first study (at least that I’m aware of) which takes Kierkegaard seriously on economic matters, and its about time. Even more interesting is that the preface to this book was written by liberation philosopher Enrique Dussel, on whom I wrote much of my MA (on liberation philosophy and theology). It’s always exciting when two seemingly disparate research areas converge. Regardless, I’m waiting for this to be available on amazon.co.uk, and I will likely post thoughts as soon as its in my hands.

The other book, written by Alison Assiter of University of West England, is titled Kierkegaard, Metaphyics, and Political Theory. Sadly, this is being published in the Continuum series which constantly publishes interesting sounding text in paperback only editions cost over £50, far out of the economic reach of this books prime audience, PhD students. That said, I’m hoping to get an inter-library-loan copy of this book to read, and I’m really looking forward to it. Taking Kierkegaard seriously in regards to metaphysics and politics is one of the issues which helps get me up in the morning, so its exciting to someone else with a similar concern. I must admit, however, that when I first heard of this book I was afraid that it would render my project un-original, but luckily, what I’ve seen of this work so far seems to be far from what I’m working on.

Regardless, both would be interesting for anyone wanting to reckon with Kierkegaard as a political (and inherently non-postmodern) thinker should give these a read. I’ll try my best to post some notes once I acquire these.

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…

After some looking around, I think I’m going to submit the chapter to the heythrop journal, as it’s a journal of philosophy-theology, and looking through the recent issues, has published pieces dealing with fairly interesting continental topics. And as much as I’m more keen to publish a philosophy-as-such journal, almost all of the interesting/important Kierkegaard scholorship in recent years has taken place almost exclusively in theology based journals. This may be because when taught in theology departments, Kierkegaard is more connected to issues of existentialism and phenomenology, while I’ve come across much recently ‘philosophical’ work on Kierkegaard with a heavy analytic taste to it.

that said, if anyone has any good reasons why I should not attempt to submit to heythrop, let me know!

A bit of advice is needed from anyone who would be willing to share…

I’m currently writing up a draft of the first chapter of my PhD, which will be called something like ‘Kierkegaard and the Politics of Outwardness’, and I’m hoping to submit it to a journal within the next month. Partly because it’s about time I start submitting things, and partly because we’re having an essay contest in my department where the best submitted essay wins 300 pounds.

In basic terms, the essay deals with two periods of Kierkegaard’s writings, first considering CUP and Two Ages, and then moving to a consideration of Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity. In the first section I critique the implicit existential ontology of the Postscript, basically arguing that Kierkegaard doesn’t need a transcendent ontology to accomplish what he hopes in regards to subjectivity and undecidability; in the second I reinforce Merold Westphal’s argue that Kierkegaard’s later writings move from the inwardness of ‘Religiousness B’ to a properly relational and outward ‘Religiousness C’, arguing that here we find not a break, but a consummation, of Kierkegaard’s earlier work, and one that provides a paradigm for radical socio-political thought and critique. Towards the end of the work I also re-think the notion of the religious in Kierkegaard in terms of a mode of relation, and also respond to Levinas’ critiques of Kierkegaard for being a-social and a-political.

All that said, I’m wondering where a good place to submit this piece would be? I’m hoping to find a ‘mid range’ journal, and something that wouldn’t be turned off by a piece that basically attempts to situate Kierkegaard as a precursor to contemporary materialism. Thus far I’ve thought about ‘Philosophy Today’ and the ‘Southern Journal for Philosophy’, but may have better chances with a philosophy of religion/theology journal with a Kierkegaard piece… but at this point, ANY advice would he helpful.

Thanks.