A&L Daily Observed

Speaking of Niall Ferguson, he has an article in the Wall Street Journal linked to from the Arts & Letters Daily website. It's a review of a new book on the Suez Canal. But who cares about the book when we can read Niall! Right? He's the Gilderoy Lockhart of the World of History. (The Doc can't understand that, of course, since he has not yet dipped into the world of Harry Potter. And may I just add that people who search through Harry Potter looking for libertarian themes need to do other and better things, like shower regularly, and brush top and bottom, not just in front, to get all the Doritos residue out of their teeth.)

A&L Daily had a couple of other links in the last few days which I thought led to very interesting stuff. They linked to an article in Pravada, I mean the Chronicle of Higher Education which details, ro quote its headline, "Rescuing the History of Philosophy From Its Anaylytic Abductors." It's an interesting read.

Some good anecdotes...

At Harvard, regarded by the analytic establishment as a premier department despite its weaknesses in history, W.V.O. Quine, analytic epistemology's towering figure, declared philosophy and history of philosophy to be separate fields. A Harvard professor teaching early modern philosophy could abashedly ask his charges, as one did, "Descartes -- was he before Newton or after Newton?"

At Princeton, similar to Harvard in its ahistorical orientation, a philosophy professor famously posted a sign on his door, "Just Say No to the History of Philosophy!" Folks there frequently referred to major figures from the past as "Locke starred" or "Hume starred" to signal that the version of the philosopher cited wasn't historically accurate. "Locke starred" could be stipulated (for argumentative convenience) to hold a particular theory about color or consent, even though the real Locke didn't. It was a kind of "Do asterisk, don't tell" policy.

Reading those anecdotes put in mind of what political theorists do to political history. To heck with context, or development, or lack of development...just rip the ideas from the dead hand of the past, and slap them up wherever you feel like. It's not simply a question of methodology. It's a lack of sympathy, of aesthetic appreciation. Theorists can be such selfish little troglodytes.

So stay the hell off my lawn, you darn theorist kids!