[lit-ideas] SOS-Reflections on Progress So Far
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 10:36:11 +0900
I am, I must say, delighted that my gambit of suggesting a close
reading of Charles Taylor's _Sources of the Self_ has generated so
much thoughtful conversation of a philosophical and literary kind.
A part of me wants to leap in and follow along with the thread as it
is currently developing.
Like Mike, I, too, find in Richard Rorty a source of inspiration. His
proposition that, at the end of the day, we talk about nothing but our
prejudices rings a bell. It recalls for me the moment in Claude
Levi-Strauss's _Tristes Tropiques_, where the eminent French
anthropologist remarks that we all wind up elaborating arguments for
views we held around age fourteen.
Like Lawrence, I, too, wrestle with the significance of autonomy, at
once the blessing of liberty and the threat of alienation. How free
should free be? How much do I owe to others? How much does a
fulfilling life depend on meeting those obligations? How much depends
on living up to a self-image that may require a violent response to
threats to my dignity or the safety of the nation of which I am a
citizen?
But another, scholarly, curmudgeonly part of me notes that the most
vocal contributors to the thread so far have been people content to
avoid the down and dirty work of grappling with the primary source,
preferring instead to layer commentary on commentaries without giving
careful attention to what Taylor actually says. If one takes
conversation here to be what I usually take it to be, a species of
someone pretentious bar talk, the temptation is to say, oh well,
that's life, the Web is no place to get too serious. More
pomponderously, one might exclaim, "You see, this is precisely the
modern predicament that Taylor describes. All conversation is reduced
to bar talk in which the radically autonomous 'I think' trumps all
other argument and, agreement being impossible, all frameworks are
reduced to tattered webs of fairy dust."
I would, thus, like to see if there is any hope of proceeding with the
original project, to read Taylor carefully and to better understand
what he says before haring away to our own (in this Mike is right,
largely pre-ordained) conclusions. In this respect, it occurs to me
that both Phil and I have stumbled out of the gate by writing too much
in a too wannabe authoritative mode. I ask for advice from anyone who
may have had a more productive experience running a reading group not
composed of students who (at least in principle) must do what teacher
tells them.
Awaiting your advice.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
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