Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Insomniac musings
Amid the sturm und drang of the CT thread on liberalism and conservatism, it occurs to me to wonder about other binary axes on which one could try to divide writers/philosophers etc. Take action vs. contemplation. On the 'action' side would be, for example, Machiavelli, Burke (?), Sartre; on the 'contemplation' side, perhaps mostly but not exclusively religious thinkers, from Augustine to Zen (apologies for forced cleverness). And maybe someone like Rousseau straddling the divide: he did write that the human who meditates is a depraved animal, but probably some other lines more favorable to reflection can be found in R's oeuvre. And where would Marx be? (Yes, very simplistic, but this is a blog; one has to throw in something like this once in a while.)
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12 comments:
I think the liberal vs. conservative thing is fair, actually (tho also bizarrely complicated by the fact that "liberal" means something totally different if you cross the Atlantic---or the Pacific!) But basically, I think it still makes sense to divide the political realm along a left-right axis. (I'm less fond of the newly popular two-dimensional matrices than some.) Anyway, liberal vs. conservative in the US context becomes a sort of stand in for the left-right matrix (because there's no actual left to speak of), and so it makes sense. I'm less fond of: what _is_ conservatism, philosophically? etc. But even there I think it's worth trying to tease out an ideological core, even if your answer is never going to be more than provisional. All that said, that thread was a little bizarre. I guess to be expected, given Holbo.
Also, I've been neglecting blogs recently (not entirely bad---I've been reading more!), but very much agree with your bit post on Rawls (unsurprisingly). Walzer is a bit flaky, if you ask me (I've also never been able to make through all of _Spheres_, though).
Sorry, I didn't mean to say "bit post", "bit" was meant to be deleted! Yikes.
@js
"Walzer is a bit flaky"
'Flaky' is a word that I'd never thought of in connection w him, though I think I know what you're getting at. It so happens I heard him give a talk last night about his latest bk 'Paradoxes of Liberation' (actually the talk was mostly about the Israel/Zionism aspect of that bk; the talk was at a synagogue, held under the auspices of a local Foundation for Jewish Studies, whose email list I happen to be on -- I forget how I got on the list and I've never bothered to unsubscribe, even though not interested in most of what they put on). I disagreed, as I expected I wd, w/ some of what Walzer said (incl his attitude about current I/P pol. situation -- he's insufficiently willing to have real pressure exerted on Israeli govt), but I think I may read the bk. (I'm not going to write a post about the lecture.)
Correction: Title of the bk is The Paradox of Liberation, not 'paradoxes' plural.
"I've been reading more!"
Non-fiction? Fiction? Graphic novels? Comic books? (just kidding, js., I cdn't resist, tho I'm v. aware there are serious fans and students of comics).
Btw whatever one's opinion of the Holbo thread (and I wasn't intending to be esp. derogatory about it), it's better than e.g. the LGM thread on the gilded age, where one commenter confidently asserts that the gilded age is 1907 through the start of the '20s. Um, no. (That's usu. labeled the Progressive Era.) So much for US history and the LGM commenters (or some of them, at any rate...)
Ha! Yeah, in my mind, "flaky" means something like "not rigorous (or systematic) enough"---I guess that's what years of studying philosophy will do to you. (And while some people complain about Rawls, I think deep down, his view is extremely rigorous---at least in TOJ, maybe not so much in Political Liberalism and some of the other later stuff.)
As for the reading, I like to balance out my fiction and non-fiction. The last two things I read were Foner's old book on the birth of the Republican party (because a book that's essentially about the social bases of political formations, written from a left-ish perspective by an author I already know and trust, that's basically catnip to me), and some Murakami. Which, to be honest, I love less than most people --- but a friend of mine *highly* recommended Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, so I thought I'd give it a try. (My tastes in fiction are probably a little austere.)
LGM is the perfect example of why I've been neglecting blogs and feeling good about it ;) (So much fucking output!)
Re the fiction:
I haven't read Murakami. Did you like Wind-Up Bird Chronicle?
I bought some weeks ago Phil Klay, Redeployment, a collection of short stories (won Natl Bk Award) mostly about Iraq from perspective of a former Marine who was there around '06/'07 (during 'the surge'). Very well written; depressing -- I stopped about a third of the way through. Might pick it up again.
Re Walzer as not "rigorous (or systematic) enough" -- personally I don't think rigor/system a la the analytic style of philosophy is the only way to go. Walzer's methodological (for lack of a better word) approach doesn't bother me and I think it can have certain advantages, though I don't always agree w his conclusions. I think 'Just and Unjust Wars' for ex. is, in its way, quite systematic, though (again) I don't nec. agree w all the arguments and conclusions. 'The Paradox of Liberation', though much shorter, proceeds in roughly the same case-study style, though there are only 3 cases and it appears they get somewhat more sustained treatment than some of the historical 'illustrations' in Just & Unjust Wars.
I liked Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, quite a bit actually. It starts out almost propulsively, then gets very strange and digressive in interesting ways. But then it has the failing that to my mind is all too common to modern narratives, where the "reveal", so to speak, is rather underwhelming. But it's extremely readable, in a good way. That's my capsule review.
I haven't heard of the Klay, but it sounds interesting. (I should say I don't really follow contemporary fiction at all closely. And I'm generally a big fan of formal experimentation, fucking with the narrative, etc. It's what I go for more often than not.)
Thanks for the capsule review.
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