NP but we've been here before

[Matthew Cissell]

AAGGH!

A philosopher with a column, bad start. Good for popular press but...   gawd, whar to start?

This is an example of philosphy biting at what it can't chew; did you notice how many times he mentioned psychology? You see he starts badly by giving us an argument without even talking about how it came to be. 

Perhaps it would be best to respond by saying that if life cannot instill in us "moral expertise" (a ridiculous term) than why should we expect literature to achieve this?

And as if the water were not muddied enough he takes us to aesthetics: "I have never been persuaded by arguments purporting to show that literature is an arbitrary category that functions merely as a badge of membership in an elite. There is such a thing as aesthetic merit, or more likely, aesthetic merits, complicated as they may be to articulate or impute to any given work."  Of course it is not arbitrary but that doesn't make his argument for aesthetic merit any more true.

This fellow might get some answers if he started to think of what people (who) "want to insist that the effort makes them more morally enlightened as well" and why. 

Perhaps this media-philosopher should read some sociologists like Pierre Bourdie who have contributed greatly to discussions of literary value, but that would require recognizing the value of sociology which is oddly left out of the article.

It might be interesting to see what people write in the comment section.

ciao
mc

________________________________
From: Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Sunday, June 2, 2013 1:30 AM
Subject: NP but we've been here before



Refute this guy,,,I start with a recent plister's (Monte, I think) mention of "mirror neutrons". 

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