Philobloggery

(of course that's actually a bad title, since it just means "love of bloggery" - but people have taken the prefix to be more associative than the suffix in the case of philosophy...maybe because we associate "soph" on its own primarily with the sophists? heh).

I've always wanted to utilize the strengths of internet discussion to advance philosophy. Back when I had a livejournal (oh, those wacky halycon days of youth) I created a group called "SublimeThinking" which was designed to bring together people interested in academic philosophy, to have monthly extensive discussions about group readings, as well as just general topics. While I did spend a great deal of time tracking down every gothy Nietzsche lover, Deleuze freak, and Kant nerd on livejournal, we never consistently did the planned discussion thing, and posting was infrequent. Since I gave up livejournal years ago, I stopped trying to moderate it...my tiny vision of building a spontaneous community of free thinkers somewhat dashed (although the group does live on to this day).

But now that I'm doing that blogging thing (I really wish they would invent a new word for it), I figured I ought to go see what the options are out there for continental philosophy-esque minded folk like I pretend to be. And, unsurprisingly, there is a lot more nowadays. I'm hoping that I'll make better use of my downtime at work to read these kinds of sites instead of, say, read about silly things. So you'll see me adding links to places I find that seem worth checking out.

For starters, I stumbled across a philosophy blog where someone gives a kind of snooty critique of the notion of continental philosophy...so I felt compelled to offer a snooty response. I feel like I owe it to everyone to catalog all of my petty internet comments.

Here's another comment I put on a site I came across, agreeing with the post's criticism of the Leiter Report (a rather sore subject to me):

I concur whole-heartedly. The Leiter Report is exceptionally awful at listing what schools are well regarded in the continental tradition. Depaul is an exceptional program if you’re interested in phenomenology, social philosophy, feminism, and the history of philosophy (among other things), one of the few best, really - and it doesn’t appear.

I don’t have a problem with a study that is unobjective in its dislike of continental philosophy, and subsequent refusal to solicit the opinion of any authoratative figures in the field (Leiter’s claim is that analytic studies of continental figures are the only way continental work should be taught, since “you can’t train the next Nietzsche” (paraphrasing)). I do, however, have a problem with the fact that he sees fit to pass judgment on a type of philosophy in an area that isn’t deemed fit to be actually represented. I was lucky enough to have professors who were able to fill me in on the larger picture, but I feel very bad for those looking for guidance on applying to continental programs and relying on the absurd lists of the Leiter Report.

I also agree that the reaction to eliminate all attempts at school rankings is juvenile. The best situation would be if there were a plurality of rankings, with full disclosure of their biases, specializing in giving information about programs in different areas. Then we wouldn’t have the problem of a biased monothilic ranking system without any visible dissenting voices.

But my grand ambition, aside from snooty comments that aide my procrastination fetish, is to meet thinkers from other schools, and find means of connecting outside the normal guise of academic circles to share and be exposed to as much insight as I possibly can.