The Philosophers think their discipline is divided into "English" and "Continental" factions. I have no idea what the importance is of the languages is supposed to be, but they think there is a gigantic difference between philosophy that gets done by people working English and those who work in European languages. And it is more a mess because some English speaking philosophers claim allegiance with the Continental philosophers. They write works about what the European language philosophers think. That's their philosophy. But the only real difference comes to this. The English language philosophers, the ones who don't report the ideas of the European language philosophers, try to out argue each other. This is what they do when they think that someone has said something important. They try to bludgeon it. And then they say how smart the guy who thought of the bludgeoned idea is for having thought of it. I get that. But the English speakers who ally with the European language philosophers don't do that at all. They just root for each other. In evaluation letters, they never say anything critical; they just heap praise. The hyperbole is amazing. It's like they're a group of highschoolers with self-esteem problems.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
The following was overheard; it was said by a recently retired university administrator who is not trained in the Humanities, but apparently had overseen a lot of Humanities hires, promotions, and tenure cases. I'm told this is nearly verbatim. Make of it what you will.