Skip to main content

Posts

Hermeneutics

For undergraduates, perhaps this passage describes the goal of academic writing, but I am surprised that a respected scholar would write so lazily about hermeneutics. But when, for example, I turn to Sir David Ross's magnificent commentary on Aristotle's Physics I do not do so in order to cover what the learned Sir David thought -- I do so in order to cover what Aristotle thought[…] But I am not in a sense, reading Y: Y is transparent, and I read Aristotle through him. I suspect that the author Jonathan Barnes, in the introduction to the Cambridge Companion to Aristotle , does not mean to say that an interpreter of a text can achieve the goal of transparency, only that transparency is the goal. But it is a bit disingenuous for the editor of an introductory book of essays to suggest to his novice audience that the contents therein might be taken uncritically as the word of Aristotle himself. It is even more disingenuous after explicitly noting the many necessary omissions and,
Recent posts

Reading (and Writing) Critical Theory

Il faut ĂȘtre absolument moderne. - Rimbaud , Un Saison en Enfer Long Sunday has dusted itself off for a series of essays on Axel Honneth 's new collection of essays : Pathologies of Reason . Unfortunately, I have not read the book. But many of the essays have been published previously in English, collected now under the rubric of the "legacy of Critical Theory." What I intend to do here is not to review the book, but to reflect on a few issues illustrated by the symposium at Long Sunday. I comment at considerable distance from the text itself: a response to responses at Long Sunday to an edited volume of essays translated from German. What Honneth really says is thus not an issue for me. This fact however points our attention towards a truism: that 'Critical Theory'—here more narrowly construed than in Craig McFarlane 's contribution—is a discourse sustained by readers and commenters. There is not only a set of primary texts that form the foundatio

Muppets Vs. Sesame Street

Like I told Luke, I want to debate more on the decline about random topics, or important ones. But I decided on our first debate: Who wins in a puppet fight, the main Muppets or the main Sesame Street puppets? Sesame Street Gang: Bert, Ernie, Big Bird, Grouch, Count, Elmo, Zoe, Cookie Monster, Aloysius Snuffleupagus, and Grover. Muppet's Gang: Kermit, Ms. Piggie, Fozzie, Gonzo, Swedish Chief (not main but certainly fan favorite), Sam Eagle, Rolph, Animal, Statler, and Waldorf (The two old guys) To me this could go either way but for the sake of starting an argument I'm going with Sesame Street's Gang. I love the Muppets and all but as I see it the Muppets are mismatched in to many of the fights. I matched everyone up with I felt the best suitable character from the other show and these were my projected outcomes and the reason I chose Sesame Street. Kermit vs. Elmo -battle of the team bitches but with Elmo being easily ticklish and Kermit having battle experien