[Wittrs] Where to from here?
- From: "SWM" <swmaerske@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:13:51 -0000
"6. CULTURE AND VALUE
Sean, replying to J.P. DeMouy wrote: "I don't know what to do on this. You
quote something of mine and simply can't "get it." I assume you just are just
being silly on purpose. I never had any issue with Culture and Value. I love
that as much as I would his letters and other typescripts-manuscripts (Stuart
are you even around to catch this one?)."
I've been following along sporadically, Sean, although not very closely, and
can surely attest to your appreciation of Culture and Value, particularly in
contradistinction to my own somewhat critical comments re: the quality of that
material and the wisdom of putting it out there for the public, as if it were a
genuine Wittgenstein work rather than a bunch of personal notes cobbled
together by his executors (and the mistake many make of treating it the same as
the works he actually wrote -- and polished obsessively -- for publication).
Overall though, vis a vis the current debate, I have chosen to keep out of it.
This is partly because, as you know from our off-line correspondences, I have
some disagreements with your approach (I don't think Wittgenstein was
intellectually faultless or beyond all criticisms and I don't think that
Wittgenstein's insights can be fully appreciated outside of a context within
which analytical philosophy forms a substantial part).
While I have my own issues with Walter (he and I have not, for a long time,
been able to communicate for any period on a reasonably civil level -- I
ascribe this to his apparently dyspeptic personality and refusal to say
straight up what he means, he to my persistent bullheadedness in missing his
points!), I find myself thinking that he had a point when he accused you of
standing on superiority of insight alone and noted that that has no
intellectual standing at all. Of course, sometimes there is nothing to argue
about.
One can simply see there is no point in arguing with a dolt, but Walter and the
crew on Analytic and analytic philosophers in general are hardly dolts. Yes,
they have a certain commitment to a particular way of seeing things and a
prejudice against Wittgenstein is often rife among many (albeit not all) of
them, but finally nothing is gained by calling others dolts and then
endeavoring to argue THAT point.
Whoever is genuinely a dolt is simply not worth arguing with. It's enough to
say so and cut them off. You cannot justify that position, though, by giving
them reasons because, if they really are dolts, the reasons are lost on them
from the get-go. And if the reasons aren't lost, then they aren't dolts after
all and giving them reasons that they are has no traction.
I have never felt that philosophical thinkers of other schools are less than
Wittgensteinians. They simply have a different take on many of the matters that
concern philosophy and it has always seemed interesting to me to explore such
takes in order to discover the extent that Wittgensteinian thinking resolves
such concerns -- if it does. (My view, often expressed here and elsewhere, is
that Wittgenstein's ideas find their greatest use in the arena of what are seen
by many as traditional philosophical problems.)
It's true that I have been the object of scornful and sometimes bitter attacks
on Analytic by certain parties there in the past and that you (while not always
agreeing with me on substance) often stepped in to provide support and,
ultimately, a better environment in which to participate in discussions. But,
that said, I cannot agree with the position you have sometimes taken which
suggests that Wittgensteinians (if they are good Wittgensteinians, anyway)
stand apart from and are more simply profound (because more insightful)
thinkers than those who aren't Wittgensteinians. As you know, my own view of
Wittgenstein seems, often enough, to diverge from the orthodoxies of some in
the Wittgenstein camp so where would that leave me with regard to such a view?
I have no brief for J. P. DeMouy, who I have found to be a rather arbitrary,
didactic and usually tiresome intelocutor, but he isn't entirely wrong in this
case. I think you dealt harshly with Walter (however bloody his own "fangs", as
you rightly put it). Walter was being insulting in his usual ascerbic way but
you kind of brought it on yourself by hammering the philosophy (and list) he
loves: Analytic. There are many, many highly intelligent thinkers in the modern
analytic tradition with plenty to say that's worth our attending to, whether we
think them ultimately right or not and Wittgenstein himself may rightly be
counted, in many ways, in that same tradition.
Walter, while demonstrating nothing original that I have ever detected, is no
intellectual slouch and is a knowledgeable and highly competent commentator on
most of the things he elects to comment on (if his personality and demeanor
leave something to be desired) so I wish your discussion with him had not gone
as it did, if only because I think it highly useful to have intelligent people
with divergent views in any group to keep the intellectual juices flowing.
Condemned to a list of the like-minded we must all inevitably waste away
intellectually.
As to the current thread with DeMouy, I have never held him in as high esteem
as you have seemed to do though I agree he is a competent Wittgenstein
expositor with some degree of subtlety at his command. His own ego, however,
has it seems to me diminished that but perhaps this last is just a personal
artifact carried over from my own earlier and decidedly unpleasant experiences
in discussion with him. In the present case, I think all here would be better
served by a general ratcheting down of the rhetoric and a return to substantive
talk about Wittgenstein and the insights he generated.
SWM
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