[lit-ideas] Re: Rhetorical Grace
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 18:33:12 -0400 (EDT)
>>Rhetorical Grace
>Perhaps that's a typo for rhetorical Grice?
In a message dated 7/21/2014 5:19:53 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
Here's the link again.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/04/01/the-porcupine
Perhaps we can study the implicatures.
I provide some exegesis in ps. Cheers,
Speranza
---
It is in two parts, or three. "+>" signals an implicature. It's all
slightly adapted.
CONVERSATION I (phone conversation)
GOPNIK: Hi, is that professor Popper?
POPPER: Yes.
GOPNIK: How do I get to Bucks?
CONVERSATION II:
GOPNIK: Popper's cottage, please
TAXI DRIVER: Ah, Professor Pop! A very *smart* (+> intelligent, clever)
man.
GOPNIK: You’ve met him?
TAXI DRIVER: Oh, many times (+> Yes). He never talks. All the time he is
busy thinking, thinking.
GOPNIK: His books are very famous, though, you know.
TAXI DRIVER: I tell you, this is no surprise. To me. People going to pay
good for all that intelligence (+> that he has).
CONVERSATION II
GOPNIK: Hi Professor Popper. I'm Gopnik, from Canada. I'm staying in Oxford
and thought I'd drop by.
POPPER. Hi.
GOPNIK. It _is_ pleasant here (implicature: "And I thought it would NOT
be?")
POPPER (in a refuting mode): _Once_ it *was* pleasant here (implicature:
"but no more". But no more. (+> There's a noisy airport too near by). By the
way, I have something I wish to show you. [After pause] Here. I have just
received these two books in the mail this morning (+> It's not that I bought
them). Read the inscription to this one.
GOPNIK (reading) “To Sir Karl with admiration, I. Johansson.” Do you know
Johansson, sir? Any relation to Scarlet?
POPPER: No, no. The book by Johansson is yet another attack, no doubt (+>
So why should I care to read it, in spite of the mock polite dedication).
You know, people do not distinguish between intellectual criticism and
personal attacks. I do not receive criticism. They think it is enough to call
me
a fool.
GOPNIK: Who's they?
POPPER: People, in general.
GOPNIK: Oh, surely no one does *that*. I mean, people, in general.
POPPER: Oh but they do. *All* of my _students_ are attacking me now. To
exemplify: three of my students, all of them I helped to get positions, to get
chairs (and they *know* this) are *still* attacking me. Disgusting. And
I was only trying to help. But then, you know the British adage: never
forgive, never forget? Well, it now seems that when you do things for people,
with the best of your intentions, there are inevitably two types of reaction
you get. There are those who cannot forget you. And there are those who
cannot forgive you. And that's that. Do you see? This Johansson...
GOPNIK: I wonder if he's a relation to Scarlet.
POPPER: This Johannsson has read, hyperbolically, nothing of mine, of
course. He will still then attack this "imaginary" Popper. Since he already
knows what is contained in my works -- "words, words, words", to echo Hamlet's
answer to Polonius --, he needs not read my books, you see.
GOPNIK: This IS serious. Tell me, I pray: what criticism have you EVER
received in your career that has helped you, that you regard as, shall we say,
*really* useful?
POPPER: None. Honestly, I have *never* received any of helpful, useful
criticism, if I think of it. Come (+> inside). Let us go into the [+> my)
house.
GOPNIK. To change the topic: what do you think of so-called modern music?
POPPER: It is, in one word, terrible. And this is one of the most
interesting and encouraging phenomena of our time: the failure of the
historicist
propaganda for "the modern" in music. And I don't mean The Beatles. We have
been exposed to this propaganda for fifty years now, almost, and it has
been quite unsuccessful. There is something I must show you in this connection.
This book on Schoenberg. Read out the first paragraph of this book,
please, and loud.
GOPNIK (reading): "Schoenberg always thought of himself as an _inevitable_
historical force in the history of music."
POPPER: Now, what has this to do with music? We can wish, as musicians, to
do our work well. Think John Lennon. But this wish to do work that is ahead
of its time, this is nothing but historicist propaganda. Bach and Mozart
never wished to shock people. Salieri _maybe_. Bach and Mozart never worried
about the shock value of their work -- of their music, I mean. Perhaps
'shock' is the wrong word, but the German one escapes me.
GOPNIK: To change the topic: are there any contemporary, popular,
non-philosophoical authors you admire?
POPPER: There are a very few I have enjoyed (+> in the past). J. D.
Salinger, who lives in Ireland, is the one [+. author] I admire [the] most, I
should say. He has written one or two novels that are *quite* good. "The
Catcher in the Rye" is a very good study of adolescent psychology.
GOPNIK: It should become a film soon.
POPPER: I do not care for his latest book, though. Tell me, since you seem
to be in the know, and come from the New World, what has he published
recently?
GOPNIK: Well, he hasn't published anything -- in a decade, if you can
believe that.
POPPER: Why wouldn't I? In any case, like Schoenberg, Salinger is, no
doubt, a victim of historicism.”
GOPNIK: Ah well. But then, there's always science: your favourite topic!
POPPER: Indeed. But let me tell you something. It is quite a myth that the
success of science, at least in our time is mainly due to the huge amounts
of money that have been spent on big machines, like rockets. Think
Einstein. What really makes science grow is new ideas, including false ideas.
GOPNIK: I thought it's sentences that are true or false, not ideas.
POPPER: I hate the Lockean in you.
GOPNIK: You made, I must say, Einstein real easy for us.
POPPER: Really easy, you mean. You must understand, perhaps, that I learned
nothing from Einstein directly, as a consequence of our conversations --
even if they were in our mother tongues: German. Einstein (or Albert, as I
called him) tended to express things in, strangely, theological terms. This
was the only way I found to actually argue with him, if you excuse me the
split infinitive. I found it all finally quite _uninteresting_. Perhaps he
did too.
GOPNIK: To change the topic: what unsolved problems of philosophy still
interest you?
POPPER: Are you joking? In contemporary philosophy there are no such
problems (impicature: that interest me, qua contemporary philosopher). This is
owing to the nefast influence of [Witters]. As you know, [Witters] -- and I
knew him well -- we once met at the Moral Sciences Club, in Cambridge -- but
that's a longer story -- said that there are no philosophical problems --
only linguistic puzzles -- and pokers. This has been the predominant
attitude, first in Cambridge, then in Oxford, throughout my entire lifetime.
As
a result, there are no philosophers left; I mean _real_ philosophers who
grapple with _real_ [implicature: rather than 'nominal'] problems. There are
only professors who worry about words. And Witters was one of them!
GOPNIK: "Professors who worry about words" -- that's a good one! And
students who should then worry too?
But Popper did not answer. He turned and looked out the window, over the
wintry hills of a Home County quite denuded of philosophy.
He looked, as Holden Caulfield might say, in the vernacular, goddam
depressed.
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