… in the Guardian online, over here.

“Metaphysics is a restaurant where they give you a 30,000 page menu and no food.”

Pirsig is an interesting character.  I’ve read both the motorbike and the boat book and confess to thinking of him as a bit of a new age character, even though one that derives from Western philosophy.  It’s a while since I’ve looked at his work and I suppose I’m not surprised that he’s disapointed with his reception by western philosophy, but then Pirsig always seemed to be a little like one of those philosophers who doesn’t read philosophers, at least not contemporary ones, and who therefore produce interesting ideas but in such a way that they can’t really plug them into any actual debate amongst philosophers.  Of course this isn’t to denigrate Pirsigs’ work at all, merely to suggest that philosophical debate requires the philosopher to engage in that dialogue, to respond to other philosophers around them as well as to Plato and the classics.  Having said that, Wittgenstein was famous for having read very little philosophy and perhaps was just more lucky in being taken under the wing of an active academic (Russell) who could offer him some shelter inside the academy, something that never happened to Pirsig apparently.  Pirsig’s story also has a certain frisson of tragedy, personal and intellectual, that almost requires that he feel somehow disappointed in his success.  Personally I’d rather be in his position, I think – able to publish my ideas in my own way and be successful with them, rather than any ‘academic’ success (whatever that is exactly – well, essentially the sort of sucecss to which one can respond, ‘it’s academic though’ and mean, ‘it’s not really important’, not really ‘engaged in life’).  Still, the grass is always greener…

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The following came through the philos-l list the other day and is good news – the hist-analytic site run by Steven Bayne does an excellent job and is worth a regulalr trawl for some fine essays from the days when analytical philosophy was regularly producing intersting new philosophical ideas.

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society has given Hist-Analytic the extraordinary opportunity to present for the first time, online, early essays of enormous importance to philosophy. Read the rest of this entry »

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(This is a list produced by Alan Sondheim – not me – and something that he does maybe once or twice a year. I’ve known Alan online for a good few years now, in fact since I was first at University as an undergrad, and his eclectic and curious reading patterns are reflected in his strange and fascinating work as both a theorist and artist. He also simply offers leads and possible avenues of reserach that I simply couldn’t find anywhere else and as such is a fantastic connection to plug into. Numbers 2 and 3 in this list are probably top of my priorities to read…)

I haven’t done these in a while; I’m fairly behind schedule. But there
are so many exciting things, new and used, that I feel the need to
begin, even if the reviews are encapsulated.

1 Prevention of Railroad Accidents or Safety in Railroading, George
Bradshaw, 1912. This is a small semi-paperback, profusely illustrated.
There are sections on how to move explosives and warnings about not
climbing on the front of a locomotive while it’s moving towards you.
“Don’t try to open knuckles as cars are about to come together.” This
curious work opens a whole new world of course. Look for it!

2 The Book of Talismans, Amulets, and Zodaical Gems, Thomas and
Pavitt, 1914. This is a wonder; there are ten plates plus one colored
plate, covering gnosticism, Egypt, India, the Koran, and so forth. A
lengthly section deals with the mystic qualities of gems. I believe
this has been reprinted..

3 The Ochre Robe, an autobiography, Agehananda Bharati. This is a
troub- ling book by an Austrian who wrote the brilliant The Tantric
Tradition. Bharati was somewhat of a follower of Bose; his account
is oddly harsh, “no-nonsense,” and thereby wonderful. Bharati was
an expert, among other things, on Wittgenstein and the British
philosophical tradition; his use of language is precise. I can
recommend both of these books without hes- itation; The Tantric
Tradition for example has an important section on intentional
language. (1970-80)

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I’ve been ill these last few days and aside from musing on set theory, differential calculus and the virtual/actual distinction in Deleuze, have come across a couple of lists of interesting books that I’d like to take a look at. The first, a list from someone I’ve known online for years, is an eclectic and strange list with numerous suggestions that I’ll no doubt follow up in the course of time. I’ll post the list in another entry just after this one.

The other odd list of books derived from a link on ‘Arts and Letters Daily‘, an excellent gathering place of all sorts of strange and wonderful things. It works a little like boingboing, digg, and the like in forming a kind of clearing house for articles around a theme but unlike the others has an agenda that – shall we say – ‘panders to the intelligentisa’. It’s a little knowing and bourgeois but nonetheless an execllent resource.

The link that I followed began with ‘philosophical detective novels…‘ and is a short discussion of a variety of such novels. Aside from the supposed instigator of this genrte – Umberto Eco and his ‘Name of the rose’ – a whole range of other authors, both philosophers and non-philosophers, are mentioned. The ‘Critique of criminal reason’ caught my eye, for example, and I think I may somehow see if I can pass this list around to my family and encourage them to buy some of the books here as their gifts.

The reason the detective novel link caught my eye is because Deleuze, in his introduction to ‘Difference and repetition’, talks about the need to write philosophy in a new way and specifically mentions the detective novel as an exmaple or suggestion as to what exactly this new mode of philosophy would look like. It’s curious, in a sense, that this genre is already developing ‘naturally’ (as it were) and is something that reflects an increasing awareness, perhaps, that one of the main skills philosophy offers is the ability to disentangle threads of reality.

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