Last time we visited Weber State University it was to note the existence of a forthcoming volume on The Undead and Philosophy. Now comes a more worthy venture: Bob Dylan and Philosophy. Suggested paper topics include: What It’s Like to be a Rolling Stone; Dylan’s solution to the Toxin Puzzle – Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright; and The Philosophical Significance of Wiggle Wiggle.
Can I claim first dibs on Harry Potter and Philosophy, or has that already been taken?
Let me second Chris’s recommendation of John Holbo’s posts (one two) on bad writing. Despite their brilliance, I don’t want to take up the thankless task John offers me. In part that’s because at this time of year I have quite enough thankless tasks on my plate. And in part it’s for an amusing theoretical reason.
John Holbo has a “quite brilliant extended post”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/loads_of_learne.html about the whole Bad Writing debate (and I’m not just saying that because of the nice things he writes about CT). In a “follow-up post”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/sometimes_a_sna.html John has more to say about how the targets of his ire get analytical philosophy wrong: they say that it is “bobbing along in the wake of logical positivism”. This is important, because people who do “theory” in the humanities often operate with a completely false idea of what philosophers think and do – a false idea that functions for them as a lazy self-defence mechanism and comfort blanket.