[lit-ideas] Re: The Importance of Being Important
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2013 09:20:22 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 11/7/2013 3:36:40 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx in "Philosophers are ranked again" asks:
>Yet you want to talk about who is the best philosopher ever?
Well, to judge by the title of the link provided by R. Paul:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/03/so-who-is-the-most-important-p
hilosopher-of-the-past-200-years.html
it's rather who IS the most important philosopher of the past 200 years.
Suppose we say Wittgenstein:
The variants are:
Wittengstein is the most important philosopher of the past 200 years.
Wittgenstein WAS the most important philosopher of the past 200 years.
Note that without the 'qualification', 'of the past 200 years', the
'implicature' of
Wittgenstein was the most important philosopher
is that
he no longer is.
--- 18013
is taken as the year of beginning, which oddly, leaves Condorcet out of the
picture (while he is, as R. Paul, alluded to in the Condorcet vote system
used in the poll).
Condorcet, b. 17 September 1743 – d. 28 March 1794.
It also leaves out all the pre-socratic, the socratic, and the
post-socratic.
This reminds me of Sylvia Beach.
Sylvia Beach was an American expatriate from New Jersey who established
"Shakespeare and Company" in 1919 on 8 rue Dupuytren. The store functioned as
a lending library as well as a bookstore.
Note that Beach was never restricted in her choice to "who is the most
important author in the past 200 years", which in _her_ case, meant,
mathematically, since 1719 -- which would leave Shakespeare out.
---- "We thought 200 years makes a good amount of time".
"Amount of time" should be distinguished from "period of time".
In Florence there was, once, back in the Renaissance, a "Platonic Society".
The Londoners tried to imitate the move, some years later -- 1880, April
19 -- when they founded a rather posh "Aristotelian Society" in the heart of
the capital of the Empire.
Again, they were not restricted by periods of time, and 'important' was NOT
the epithet used.
Cheers,
Speranza
-------
ps. McEvoy is right about 'juvenile'. Grice, who is mentioned in the
Condorcet poll, wrote his first piece while on vacation back 'home' (his home,
not mine, but in English, the use of possessive here is thought of as
idiotic) in Harborne. He had been studying in Corpus Christi for some time,
but
the mimeo (which survives) features his parents' address. It's entitled
"Negation", and deals with Plato and Bradley on negation. Grice -- in what we
may call a 'juvenile right-reading' (as opposed to 'mis-reading') of Plato
and Hegel, claims that negation is psychological, rather than mathematical in
nature.
The British are well aware of 'juvenile misreading', and there is a whole
genre to cater for the period. It's called 'juvenile literature'. "Boys's
literature" is also used --. "Alice in Wonderland" would not be 'juvenile',
but "Verdant Green" and "Tom Browne in Oxford" would. Strictly, "juvenile"
applies to "The Boy's Own" (Annual), which, oddly, was not written, on the
main, by juveniles -- but as you browse the volumes you realise of the
quasi-tautology, "boys will be boys" and so would juveniles -- or, "Once a
juvenile, all ways a juvenile" (Frank Sinatra, "Juvenile Cardiovascularity",
or
'young at heart'.
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