[lit-ideas] Re: Eric Banks's Antiphilosophical Philosophy
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 22:18:30 -0400 (EDT)
It seems the antiphilosophical philosophy is Eric Banks's?
Cheers,
Speranza
---
Banks is the former editor in chief of Bookforum and currently the
president of the National Book Critics Circle.
In a message dated 8/22/2012 9:49:07 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx writes:
From _a review of Witold Gombrowicz's diary_
(mailto:http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/019_02/9472) . Literature, philosophy,
Lit-Ideas
Whatever confessions fill these pages, they are as philosophical as they
are personal, though in Gombrowicz’s universe the two can never be neatly
separated. It would slight his arsenal of caustic bad humor to say he
reserved the driest of his ammunition for those who would philosophize from on
high, but he savaged the engagé model of the intellectual with special glee
whenever the occasion arose. Look at how he pulled the rug out from under
Sartre:
When I applied maximum consciousness to life, in an attempt to found my
existence on [authenticity], I noticed that something stupid was happening to
me. Too bad, but no way. It can’t be done. It seems impossible to meet the
demands of Dasein and simultaneously have coffee and croissants for an
evening snack. To fear nothingness, but to fear the dentist more. To be
consciousness, which walks around in pants and talks on the telephone. To be
responsibility, which runs little shopping errands downtown.
This dismissal of all philosophy “speculated in isolation from life”
would carry much less of a spark had it not come from a writer who had studied
philosophy as a young man in Paris, whose Ferdydurke was championed as a
kind of naive but no less sage anticipation of the postwar gospels holding
sway on the Left Bank, who in fact peddled a course in philosophy in Buenos
Aires as a way to help supplement his income. Yet how decisively Gombrowicz
lets the air out of the philosophical balloon!
It's cranking up to be another blistering August day in Yokohama.
Cheers,
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
_jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx)
_http://www.wordworks.jp/_ (http://www.wordworks.jp/)
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