From: Greg Burch (gregburch@gregburch.net)
Date: Sun Jun 01 2003 - 09:52:59 MDT
[First post in a looong time; been busy ...]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org] On Behalf Of Lee Corbin
> Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 12:15 AM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: RE: Yakyakian Sentence
>
>
> Damien writes
>
> > At 02:39 PM 5/31/03 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
> >
> > >I was television baby, and so many of the
> > >19th century type sentences uttered by writers of the
> latter century
> > >don't stick will enough in my short term memory to enable me to
> > >follow them very well.
> >
> > Ha! Try Hegel or Kant! Here's an interesting attempt to justify
> > Hegel's porridge (from Judith P. Butler, *Subjects of Desire.
> > Hegelian Reflections in Twentieth-Century France*, Columbia
> University
> > Press, 1987)...
>
> Well, interesting to you, perhaps ;-) The crucial point, of
> course, is that in the final analysis Hayek *does* make
> sense, it's just a little... difficult.
>
> But you have waded deep into the waters of post-modern
> structuralism or post-structural modernism, or modern
> post-structuralism, or whatever it is. Was. Moreover, you
> have seemed to emerge from this quest with your mind and
> rationality more or less intact. So the ultimate question
> that must be asked of you, is, how did you ever determine
> that it wasn't all one glorious Waste of Time?
>
> Once at university, I chanced (while heading down the wrong
> corridor in the library) upon a huge fat volume entitled
> "Being and Time", or "Time and Nothingness", or something
> like that, written by one of the usual suspects Sartre or
> Heidegger. I took it over to a table and sat down. The next
> thing that I remember is that the book was back at its place
> on the shelf, and that I had a splitting headache. I even
> stayed away from that part of the library henceforth.
>
> I am sure that the prejudice so gained is, was, logically
> unfounded. But you evidently escaped a similar fate at an
> impressionable age. I wonder how.
>
> Lee
Reading really technical philosophy was a chore for me, even in my teens
and twenties when 1) I did a lot of it and 2) my brain was more plastic
and able to learn new things. But don't despair. There are writers who
make the subjects more palatable. Bertrand Russell's popular philosophy
books are very accessible to the lay reader (I recommend "History of
Western Philosophy", "Why I am Not a Christian" and "The Problems of
Philosophy" and "Unpopular Essays" -- all are very readable).
Greg Burch
Vice-President, Extropy Institute
My blog: http://www.gregburch.net/burchismo.html
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