Guest post by Bruce Everett
CN: Talk of spousal murder. And Nazis.
…
You know what I’d do if I were compulsively obsessed to fine-parse the ideas and beliefs of a certain group of people in order to find them guilty-by-association? I’d start looking for links to the works of Louis Althusser – because while the work of Althusser may have been picked up and expanded upon by some feminists, the guy strangled his wife to death. (And let’s not forget debate over his supposed turn towards neo-conservatism in his later years).
Then I’d start looking for links to Heidegger… because, well… Godwin’s Law. The work of Heidegger, and its derivatives (i.e. a lot of Left Bank philosophy) do turn up in theory in the Humanities, and not at all infrequently. It’s also become increasingly clear in recent years that no, his work isn’t entirely disentangled from the the politics of his friends in the jack-booted Halloween costumes.
It’s really easy to play this game. I have no intention of playing it. It’s a puerile game for puerile minds with puerile wants.
It’s not that these things can’t be discussed, or that they’re not relevant. And it’s not that Anglophone philosophers don’t deserve criticism along similar lines to the mentioned Continentals (e.g. see Locke and slavery).
But the fact that you can draw associations between philosophers of dubious character, with not a few bad ideas, and some of the ideas of the person in the same conversation as you, at base tells you nothing at all about the character of the person you’re presently engaged with.
The selective application of this kind of fine-parsing risks making a person a hypocrite. Applying it universally to imply guilt results in absurd results – suddenly throngs of feminists become misogynists, and some of the most dedicated anti-racist academics become Nazi sympathisers. This is obviously silly.
It’s a lack of consideration of this kind of thing that increasingly has me wondering just how much of the theory being invoked by some people has actually been read and comprehended, and just how seriously it’s being taken.
Well that was brilliantly put, wasn’t it?
I think so.
Beats the shit out of me pointing at bad people and running after them with sticks.
We need BOTH.
Yeah, but I’m never really sure what to do when I’ve caught them.
You’re not supposed to catch them, just chase them.
Really?
*SHIT*
Look, I bought 500 torches at a discount. I’m not just going to sit here and not use them. I’m going to WIELD these suckers, even if I have to stretch the limits of credibility in choosing my targets.
(On phone with Amazon) No. No! The order was supposed to be for 500 pitchforks, dammit! What’s an angry peasant mob going to do with 500 pitch pipes?
I think we’re still on a fire-ban.
No burning!
Clubbing is OK.
Pitch-pipes….whistle them into submission?
The whole angry peasant mob scene just hasn’t been the same since the advent of automatic sprinklers.
FIRE BAN?!
*rages*
MrFancyPants #12
Fire bans are necessary.
I, and a few people I know, can make a perfectly safe fire.
Anywhere, anytime.
The Rest Of Them need to be constrained.
@ ^ chigau (違う) : Even on a forty six degree celsius (114 F) day with hot northerly winds here in my state? Not so sure about that! But yes, fire bands are definitely necessary.
Spot on. Quoted for truth.
Torches? Pitchforks?
DUAL WIELD.
While torches and pitchforks are traditional, we are in the 21st Century. It’s now flashlights and combine harvesters.
500 pitchpipes? Maybe there’s someone named Joshua around here? Hey Mr Spokesgay, do you have a trumpet?
Its the philosophers with bad ideas that really count. And Nazism (and all its Blut und Boden racialist, anti-rational, anti democratic precursors) are Bad Ideas.
And our contemporary ‘progressivism’ is still riddled with them.
Do you know who else bans things? HITLER. Ignoring fire bans is a stand against Hitler!
When I was a kid there were fire bans in the North Yorkshire Moors when the bracken was dying off and ridiculously flammable. Hopefully there still are. This was because – as it turns out – there’s no shortage of people who shouldn’t be allowed to have fire. It’s not their stuff they’re fucking up. People need to farm that land, other people need to enjoy it and plants and animals need to live there.
And there’s no need to go around lighting fires. Even in the North East of England, which isn’t very warm at the best of times. I can make you a marshmallow toaster that’ll look even cooler than fire and is guaranteed to not destroy half the national fucking park and hundreds of people’s livelihoods or kill untold alive stuff.