Comments on: The first philosophy blogger

By: Do Speculative Realists want us to be Chinese? | Love of All Wisdom

Do Speculative Realists want us to be Chinese? | Love of All Wisdom — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:02:12 +0000

[...] Graham Harman, has his own regularly updated blog.) This is not yet the future I’ve been starting to imagine where the Web replaces universities and book publishing as philosophy’s institutional locus, [...]

By: Amod Lele

Amod Lele — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:35:18 +0000

It has been very gratifying to blog and find people out there who are interested in the kind of wide-ranging inquiry I aim at here. I get to have conversations I could never have any other way. (Imagine how much it would have cost to have our comments in phone calls between the US and Italy, let alone face to face!)

By: Amod Lele

Amod Lele — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:32:39 +0000

I'm just starting to try and figure out Speculative Realism, as I noted over at your blog; one of the big reasons the Speculative Realists intrigue me is that they seem to be the first philosophical network whose primary institutional basis is the Web. Well, maybe not primary, since they do still mostly seem to be academics and still write books, but I get the impression SR would not be what it is without the Web.

By: Amod Lele

Amod Lele — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:27:27 +0000

Homer’s philosophy transgresses the bounds of linguistic conceptuality, and therefore commentary on it cannot be put into words.

By: elisa freschi

elisa freschi — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:20:42 +0000

Very interesting post. I agree about the fact that the medium does not enhance the result, but that it also does not necessarily damage it. We lost Pico’s and Cicero’s ars mnemonica, but we are probably more flexible and inquisitive. We do not know about our own cultural past, but we do know something about many more different cultures, and so on.
I also agree that the loss of academic positions is a pity, but that it does not mean that there will be no more critical thinking whatsoever.
Finally, blogging is not just an interesting new medium for people who already feel the need to write about philosophy. It also *makes* people interested in philosophy. As far as I am concerned, at least, it works like that: I am fascinated by team-work. Hence, I am happy to start inquiring on subjects my friends and colleagues find interesting. On the contrary, I feel frustrated since, after many years of efforts, I could hardly persuade anyone about the importance of studying the pattern of quotations in Indian philosophical texts, or M?m??s? hermeneutics!

By: don

don — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:25:15 +0000

When are you going to do a post on the best philosopher of all time- Homer Simpson.

By: skholiast

skholiast — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:19:06 +0000

I share some of your enthusiasm– online writing opens up a number of real possibilities for philosophy. I am most excited by the re-kindling of epistolary culture, which I think could do a great deal to foster real exchange of ideas about the deepest things. Above all, the cross-referencing, the sense of interconnectedness-of-issues, is potentially just the sort of thing that can jump-start insight. The danger is that it fosters the illusion that enlightenment is just a click away. In this sense it can easily turn into mere erudition, or even plain old posing. But every new medium has posed challenges that philosophy had to navigate. Plato already warns us that technology will undo our memory, and he was right– I no longer know any of my friends’ phone numbers. But Plato turned writing to the service of philosophy by exploiting the very things he warned about– e.g. the fact that it just ‘says the same thing over and over’. Even failing to attain Plato’s stature, the same accomplishment is possible in our day. There will be a Spinoza coming along eventually, assuming we survive long enough.