[lit-ideas] Re: [Christmas Special] What percentage of 'great' and 'not-so-great' philosophers are 'dysfunctional'?
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:58:10 -0330
These thoughts make we wonder why we are so enthralled with the private lives of
philosophers. Is it of any relevance to their philosophical work? I don't think
so. That Rawls and Hegel had a lisp, that Habermas had ... whatever it was that
he had, that Foucault may have been homosexual, that Kant suffered unrequited
love and was raised in a very strict religious family, that Voltaire had a soft
spot for young damsels forced to work the cold, lonely nights of Paris, and that
a few Oxford and Cambridge philosophers of old saw fit to pay scant attention to
certain norms and mores of "social propriety," what relevance to their
philosophical arguments do such sundry, personal and private biographical
details actually have? Shouldn't a philosopher be judged by the cogency of her
arguments? (It's not as if we were politicians, or Hollywood celebrities, after
all.)
Walter O.
The Rock of the Avalon
(after we've shovelled it out, of course.)
Quoting Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>:
> >>Witters: Is easy, four of our five brothers committed suicide and the
> other was a concert pianist who lost his arm in WWI.
>
>
> Yet this pianist, Paul, commissioned two fairly important concertos for
> the left hand alone -- Ravel's and Prokofiev's. While he liked Ravel's
> work, he found Prokofiev's weird and never performed it. (Ravel's work
> is often touted as a profound anti-war piece, but if you just look at
> the music it's hard to see that. Prokofiev's is a witty neoclassical
> joke -- it starts with a scherzo -- that didn't get its premiere until
> after Prokofiev got on the boat toward that guy in yellow fishing bunting.)
>
> Paul, by his commissions, expanded the repertoire for future pianists
> (like Leon Fleischer and Gary Graffman) who blew out their right hands,
> not in war, but in overperforming. He's one of the hall-of-famers for
> turning lemons into lemonade.
>
> Not a bad guy to have as a bro.
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