In the continuing discussion around Jerry Fodor’s LRB piece about Analytic Philosophy, Jason Stanley makes the following observation in a discussion thread on Brian Leiter’s blog:
There is a certain kind of very influential academic who has a difficult time recognizing that they are no longer a rebellious figure courageously struggling against the tide of contemporary opinion, but rather have already successfully directed the tide along the path of their choice. Chomsky is one such academic, and Fodor is another.
This reminds me of a comment my advisor, Paul DiMaggio, made to me a few years ago. He’d just turned 50, and when asked how he felt about it, he said that, seeing as he couldn’t really be an enfant terrible any more, he would have to content himself with merely being terrible.
Would this be the “traipses around campus wearing a black leather jacket and Jewfro looking like he’s the eighth Ramone” Jason Stanley?
The American academy is really good at training and encouraging you to be Galileo. But nobody ever wants to be the pope.
The American academy is really good at training and encouraging you to be Galileo. But nobody ever wants to be the pope.
How old waS Kant when he published his first Kritik, again?
this statisitc helps corral the Rimbauldians and all their wannna-bes.
Actually, it’s kind of nice to be in your fifties, still bearded and long-haired, to realize that you’ve changed things in small ways, that specialists in your field are familiar with your work.
Having some money is definitely a nice thing, too. Not as good as being young, perhaps, but a decidedly less perishable commodity.
My nephew admired my hat and asked where I got it. “At the Tie Rack”, I replied. He nodded, thinking that resolved it.
“On the Boulevard Saint Germain”, I added, to undermine his confidence.
“There is a certain kind of very influential academic who has a difficult time recognizing that they are no longer a rebellious figure courageously struggling against the tide of contemporary opinion, but rather have already successfully directed the tide along the path of their choice.”
If you’re Hilary Putnam you can use this strategy every 5 to 10 years:
“my previous arguments for that position were completely wrong. I now believe these arguments which lead me to this new, radically different position”
apparently it only works if you’re Hilary Putnam.
I’m going to be a little bit more serious:
there are actually hundreds of (published) stories about the last 50 to 100 years of analytic philosophy, each written by an author with an axe to grind:
for example see Hilary Putnam’s here, and Rorty’s on his web page, and a bunch of others by googling or index searching for “history analytic philosophy” or something similar.
about Jason’s comment, false rebellion is funny; half the monographs I’ve read claim to be rebelling against mainstream ideas that are wrong, wrong wrong. Philosopy, or Science, or Literary Criticism. It doesn’t matter.
I don’t know why that narrative is appealing, but it isn’t the only way to look at it. There’s constant change in the discipline, so one can’t help being for and against a lot of things.
But back to definitions being an excuse to weave grand narratives. A lot of these pieces tend to be a mix of (a) look at past and present to derive a lesson or two for the future, (b) whiggish history with villains and heroes (or pessimism and villains and author as hero above the fray), © prediction of the future of the discipline based on semi educated guesses about major topics that (surprise!) the author is intensely interested in, (d) axe grinding turned into “the history of where this disciple went wrong” also titled “apparently my own little corner of philosophy is the key to understanding everything that’s wrong with philosophy”. (e) etc. but you can frame it any way you like.
At least as far as politics goes, I don’t think Chomsky cares about being “a rebellious figure courageously struggling against the tide of contemporary opinion”, or about having “successfully directed the tide”. I think he cares a lot more that mass opinion hasn’t turned, and that’s why he goes on about never being on news programmes. In the context of his idea of a consensual propaganda model, it matters little if the majority of academia or journalists know about, say, Iran Contra, if the majority of the public still think Reagan was a saint, and the media plays along with that in its publications. We’ve got several Iran Contra convicts back in power, for example, and there is still a widespread attitude that America only does good in the world.
On the linguistic front, the analogy might be more accurate - most current linguistic theories have developed from his early work, and nobody outside academia knows anything about the subject.
Jackmormon should know not to take the lord’s name in irrelevance.
Ginger, it’s pretty clear from the context that Jason is talking about Chomsky’s linguistic work and not his attempts at political persuasion.
Ginger, as Brian points out, I was talking about Chomsky’s demeaner in teaching his linguistics classes. In my experience sitting in on his classes, he too had a hard time with the fact that he represented, at that point in linguistics, The Man.
We disenfrachised young rebels who are in the business of overthrowing the confused dominant paradigms in our fields are very sensitive to this kind of irrational behavior by the power elite.
Jason, if you call Chomsky a “demeaner” people might get the wrong idea about his teaching style.
And Jeet: why yes, it is that Jason Stanley! And if you think he’s something now, you should have seen him back when he was your age :-)
À Gauche
Jeremy Alder
Amaravati
Anggarrgoon
Audhumlan Conspiracy
H.E. Baber
Philip Blosser
Paul Broderick
Matt Brown
Diana Buccafurni
Brandon Butler
Keith Burgess-Jackson
Certain Doubts
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
The Conservative Philosopher
Desert Landscapes
Denis Dutton
David Efird
Karl Elliott
David Estlund
Experimental Philosophy
Fake Barn County
Kai von Fintel
Russell Arben Fox
Garden of Forking Paths
Roger Gathman
Michael Green
Scott Hagaman
Helen Habermann
David Hildebrand
John Holbo
Christopher Grau
Jonathan Ichikawa
Tom Irish
Michelle Jenkins
Adam Kotsko
Barry Lam
Language Hat
Language Log
Christian Lee
Brian Leiter
Stephen Lenhart
Clayton Littlejohn
Roderick T. Long
Joshua Macy
Mad Grad
Jonathan Martin
Matthew McGrattan
Marc Moffett
Geoffrey Nunberg
Orange Philosophy
Philosophy Carnival
Philosophy, et cetera
Philosophy of Art
Douglas Portmore
Philosophy from the 617 (moribund)
Jeremy Pierce
Punishment Theory
Geoff Pynn
Timothy Quigley (moribund?)
Conor Roddy
Sappho's Breathing
Anders Schoubye
Wolfgang Schwartz
Scribo
Michael Sevel
Tom Stoneham (moribund)
Adam Swenson
Peter Suber
Eddie Thomas
Joe Ulatowski
Bruce Umbaugh
What is the name ...
Matt Weiner
Will Wilkinson
Jessica Wilson
Young Hegelian
Richard Zach
Psychology
Donyell Coleman
Deborah Frisch
Milt Rosenberg
Tom Stafford
Law
Ann Althouse
Stephen Bainbridge
Jack Balkin
Douglass A. Berman
Francesca Bignami
BlunkettWatch
Jack Bogdanski
Paul L. Caron
Conglomerate
Jeff Cooper
Disability Law
Displacement of Concepts
Wayne Eastman
Eric Fink
Victor Fleischer (on hiatus)
Peter Friedman
Michael Froomkin
Bernard Hibbitts
Walter Hutchens
InstaPundit
Andis Kaulins
Lawmeme
Edward Lee
Karl-Friedrich Lenz
Larry Lessig
Mirror of Justice
Eric Muller
Nathan Oman
Opinio Juris
John Palfrey
Ken Parish
Punishment Theory
Larry Ribstein
The Right Coast
D. Gordon Smith
Lawrence Solum
Peter Tillers
Transatlantic Assembly
Lawrence Velvel
David Wagner
Kim Weatherall
Yale Constitution Society
Tun Yin
History
Blogenspiel
Timothy Burke
Rebunk
Naomi Chana
Chapati Mystery
Cliopatria
Juan Cole
Cranky Professor
Greg Daly
James Davila
Sherman Dorn
Michael Drout
Frog in a Well
Frogs and Ravens
Early Modern Notes
Evan Garcia
George Mason History bloggers
Ghost in the Machine
Rebecca Goetz
Invisible Adjunct (inactive)
Jason Kuznicki
Konrad Mitchell Lawson
Danny Loss
Liberty and Power
Danny Loss
Ether MacAllum Stewart
Pam Mack
Heather Mathews
James Meadway
Medieval Studies
H.D. Miller
Caleb McDaniel
Marc Mulholland
Received Ideas
Renaissance Weblog
Nathaniel Robinson
Jacob Remes (moribund?)
Christopher Sheil
Red Ted
Time Travelling Is Easy
Brian Ulrich
Shana Worthen
Computers/media/communication
Lauren Andreacchi (moribund)
Eric Behrens
Joseph Bosco
Danah Boyd
David Brake
Collin Brooke
Maximilian Dornseif (moribund)
Jeff Erickson
Ed Felten
Lance Fortnow
Louise Ferguson
Anne Galloway
Jason Gallo
Josh Greenberg
Alex Halavais
Sariel Har-Peled
Tracy Kennedy
Tim Lambert
Liz Lawley
Michael O'Foghlu
Jose Luis Orihuela (moribund)
Alex Pang
Sebastian Paquet
Fernando Pereira
Pink Bunny of Battle
Ranting Professors
Jay Rosen
Ken Rufo
Douglas Rushkoff
Vika Safrin
Rob Schaap (Blogorrhoea)
Frank Schaap
Robert A. Stewart
Suresh Venkatasubramanian
Ray Trygstad
Jill Walker
Phil Windley
Siva Vaidahyanathan
Anthropology
Kerim Friedman
Alex Golub
Martijn de Koning
Nicholas Packwood
Geography
Stentor Danielson
Benjamin Heumann
Scott Whitlock
Education
Edward Bilodeau
Jenny D.
Richard Kahn
Progressive Teachers
Kelvin Thompson (defunct?)
Mark Byron
Business administration
Michael Watkins (moribund)
Literature, language, culture
Mike Arnzen
Brandon Barr
Michael Berube
The Blogora
Colin Brayton
John Bruce
Miriam Burstein
Chris Cagle
Jean Chu
Hans Coppens
Tyler Curtain
Cultural Revolution
Terry Dean
Joseph Duemer
Flaschenpost
Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Jonathan Goodwin
Rachael Groner
Alison Hale
Household Opera
Dennis Jerz
Jason Jones
Miriam Jones
Matthew Kirschenbaum
Steven Krause
Lilliputian Lilith
Catherine Liu
John Lovas
Gerald Lucas
Making Contact
Barry Mauer
Erin O'Connor
Print Culture
Clancy Ratcliff
Matthias Rip
A.G. Rud
Amardeep Singh
Steve Shaviro
Thanks ... Zombie
Vera Tobin
Chuck Tryon
University Diaries
Classics
Michael Hendry
David Meadows
Religion
AKM Adam
Ryan Overbey
Telford Work (moribund)
Library Science
Norma Bruce
Music
Kyle Gann
ionarts
Tim Rutherford-Johnson
Greg Sandow
Scott Spiegelberg
Biology/Medicine
Pradeep Atluri
Bloviator
Anthony Cox
Susan Ferrari (moribund)
Amy Greenwood
La Di Da
John M. Lynch
Charles Murtaugh (moribund)
Paul Z. Myers
Respectful of Otters
Josh Rosenau
Universal Acid
Amity Wilczek (moribund)
Theodore Wong (moribund)
Physics/Applied Physics
Trish Amuntrud
Sean Carroll
Jacques Distler
Stephen Hsu
Irascible Professor
Andrew Jaffe
Michael Nielsen
Chad Orzel
String Coffee Table
Math/Statistics
Dead Parrots
Andrew Gelman
Christopher Genovese
Moment, Linger on
Jason Rosenhouse
Vlorbik
Peter Woit
Complex Systems
Petter Holme
Luis Rocha
Cosma Shalizi
Bill Tozier
Chemistry
"Keneth Miles"
Engineering
Zack Amjal
Chris Hall
University Administration
Frank Admissions (moribund?)
Architecture/Urban development
City Comforts (urban planning)
Unfolio
Panchromatica
Earth Sciences
Our Take
Who Knows?
Bitch Ph.D.
Just Tenured
Playing School
Professor Goose
This Academic Life
Other sources of information
Arts and Letters Daily
Boston Review
Imprints
Political Theory Daily Review
Science and Technology Daily Review