Truth in Fashion
Someone read (some of) Why Truth Matters about a month ago. Found it a bit of a drag in places, apparently.
…and now Why Truth Matters, a real headache-maker. There were some times I wondered “why am I reading this?” Passages like this one tended to blur the eyes and crease the forehead: “Although Montaigne might have found the Pyrrhonist epoche a satisfactory response to the problem of the missing criterion of truth, Rene Descartes did not. In Discourse on Method, he tells how in his youth he had been haunted by the spectre of uncertainty…”
Well…we did our best, that’s all I can say. Sometimes a little forehead-creasing is worth it. (Other times, of course, as in the case of Foucauldian nurses, it’s not.) And he apparently ended up liking it anyway, despite the eye-blurring.
‘Fascinating. A good book to get your brain thoroughly awake, and looking at the world you find yourself in. Not bedtime reading!’
Well good! Fascinating and brain-awakening and world-examining-getting; that’s my idea of high praise for a book.
What could be better than getting a bright kid to think critically?
(Speaking of bright kids, guess whose daughter just got straight ‘A’s at A level.)
Oooh – congratulations to bright daughter!
Actually, I suppose what could be better than getting a bright kid to think critically would be getting an average kid to think critically. Ideally, everyone should learn to think critically. I do think it can be taught (she said optimistically).
That blogger points to the quote,
“Although Montaigne might have found the Pyrrhonist epoche a satisfactory response to the problem of the missing criterion of truth, Rene Descartes did not. In Discourse on Method, he tells how in his youth he had been haunted by the spectre of uncertainty…”
as an example of his reaching for an analgesic.
When discussing the origins and evolution of nihilism, and the “nothing can be known” crowd, I would assume Pyrrho was mandatory.
Has Ward Churchill reviewed your text yet? That should be an interesting read.
Yes. I almost said that, then just said we did our best. But yes, Pyrrho and the history of skepticism were pretty much mandatory, as was the passage from Herodotus on custom. (I’ve seen exactly that passage in about six new books this year, blushing each time: I wish we’d attached a disclaimer saying something like ‘everybody cites this; apologies; but we can’t leave it out’. Well it just was an influential idea, there’s no getting around it!)