4-F

We're all grateful for food, family, and friends; but let us also give thanks (to Ian this time) for the latest Philosopher's Carnival! A bountiful harvest indeed – check it out!

Zing!

Well, Aristotle hell is over, only to be replaced by Hellenistic hell. (Is Stoic hell even possible? After all, that pain is bad is a pathos, a mistaken value judgment about that to which we should be indifferent. Stoic Schultz: "I feel nossinkk!") Looks like substantive philblogging must wait until the post-Augustinian era. In the meantime, here's something I saw in the latest issue of Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, which sometimes runs obituaries ("Memorial Minutes") of departed philosophers, often with anecdotes documenting our man's cleverness. Craig Staudenbaur, previously unknown to me, "was an expert on the Cambridge Platonists, especially Henry More" (also previously unknown to me, as it happens). Let me turn the floor over to Professor Staudenbaur's Michigan State colleagues Charles McCracken and Ronald Suter:

[W]hen he wrote a review of a book by a French scholar that purported to show strong affinities between theosophy and Henry More's philosophy (a thesis Craig thought without merit), he began the review by saying, "This book fills a much-needed gap."

Oh, that's good. (I had to read that twice.) It seems that Professor Staudenbaur had many talents, having written a novel called Cosmos Lycanthropos: Planet of the Man-Wolf. I'm afraid I won't have time for that one any time soon (see above).

Goobernatorial cornucopia

Election Day will soon be upon us, and with it, I hope and pray, blessed respite from those insufferable campaign ads (“In 1970, my opponent kicked a cute, helpless puppy; oh, and, uh, he’ll raise your taxes” and so forth). Recently New Jersey residents received our ballot facsimiles, complete with official statements from ten candidates for governor. And a wonderfully diverse lot they are. Leading off we have the two major-party candidates. One tells us that

it’s time to take back New Jersey from the politicians and power brokers who have raised our taxes and turned a blind eye to corruption, and return New Jersey to the people.

(This candidate’s party is not currently in the statehouse.) From the other one, we have this:

I pledge to cut waste, increase efficiency, and reform the budget process. Common sense tells us that we should grow our economy, instead of increasing taxes. We must replace the failed practice of ‘tax, borrow, and spend’ with a new strategy of ‘invest, grow, and prosper.’

At the moment, he’s ahead in the polls.

Judging by these two, you might think that all New Jerseyans are boring. Not so! For instance, we have not one but two Socialist candidates. The Socialist Workers Party candidate is a traditional socialist, with the traditional socialist love for the imperative mood (“fight cop brutality”), capital letters (“IT’S NOT WHO YOU’RE AGAINST. IT’S WHAT YOU’RE FOR!”), and exclamation points (“U.S. hands off Venezuela!”). The Socialist Party USA candidate, on the other hand, is more lyrical: “We need to dawn a new day; we must usher in a era of new hoe and restored aspirations.” He also has a laundry list, but by the end of it he’s just as concerned with taking digs at other parties as with explaining himself:

A lottery similar to Spain’s Christmas Lottery and Japans Quarterly (High Annuity). The Green agenda and way of life is only a ad-hoc liberal come socialist program. Socialist achieved world wide which the Greens credit themselves for. The Socialist Parties are the Parties whom people in many lands turn to for change. In the Socialist Party USA we stand on our History and Accomplishments. We where once America’s Alternative, Third Party and will be again.

Moving on. The Green Party candidate is either oblivious to the slight from his SPUSA opponent, or he takes the high road, asking simply “When will we, the people, say ‘ENOUGH!’?” Similarly, the One New Jersey candidate concentrates his fire on the major parties:

My fellow New Jerseyan’s, you DO have a choice.
You can waste your vote on the Democrat or Republican, or vote for me.
So when your tax bill goes up again, remember, you made that choice.
The bottom line is we’re ALL New Jerseyan’s FIRST.

I assume the ambiguity in the third line is unintentional. (If not, he’s a sly one.)

Skipping over Libertarian, Independent, and Education Not Corruption candidates, each of whom is more boring than the other ones (and you thought the more-boring-than relation did not allow this!), let us turn at last to the cream of the crop: the Legalize Marijuana candidate. I’m tempted to reproduce his entire statement, but I will content myself here with some of the choicer excerpts. He is running, he tells us, not to win (demonstrating his sure grasp of political reality), but instead

to give the “FINGER” state-wide to our Demo-publican party politicians who wage their LIE based “WAR on US”. […] I personally chose to use the “GOD GROWN HERB MARIJUANA” so I fight our governments war on it’s “POT-FRONT”. The fact that I can obtain marijuana any day of the week I chose is testimate to the failure of our governments racist war on drugs.

You see, it’s a free speech and free-exercise issue:

In our Governments 21st century drug war ‘RASTAFARI’ is as illegal a religion to practice in America as Quakerism was in England in 1690, or Faluan Gong is in China or Christianity is in Saudi Arabia today.

Naturally, he’s not simply speaking in the abstract; it has affected him personally:

While I’ve also denied the Right to change my own name to NJWEEDMAN.COM.

After a ringing peroration (“we in America today have more reason to revolt than the colonist did in 1776”), he leaves us with:

“TAKE A TOTE, THEN VOTE”!
“ENEMY OF THE STATE”

(Quotes in original.) So I’m to bring a bag to the polls with me. Not sure what the point of that would be. It’s too bad he’s not running to win – if he did win I’d be sure to read the paper more often. I can just see it now:

Governor NJWEEDMAN.COM Blows Smoke at Legislature

Ooooh - that's scary!

Philosophers carnivalling, that is. Chill your bones here.

Ancient and modern

Aristotle hell continues, but I have to say I'm learning, or re-learning, quite a bit about our friend the Stagirite. I may even have to gird my noetic loins and check out Metaphysics Zeta sometime. Some time in the future, that is. When I return to the land of the living, among those not concerned with how, if the unmoved mover is immaterial it can move physical objects (answer: by being an ideal object of desire for the outer heavenly bodies, which are, as you know, ensouled), I hope to respond, or at least react, in some way to this post (hat tip: Leiter, or his recent guest blogger - I forget) about the "fogbank" of Postmodernism by Keith DeRose at the epistemology blog, Certain Doubts. (Spoiler: he's agin it.) It's pretty long, so start now. (On the other hand, you've got time.)

Excess and defect

Again I must apologize for the lack of postage. I am in the midst of Aristotle hell (in a good way though!). I hope to return to the virtuous mean soon. In the meantime, here's a veritable excess of philosophical revelry (i.e., another Philosophers' Carnival) -- thanks Gillian!

A Stitch in time

Lest anyone get the silly idea that the only movies reviewed here (if that's what's happening) are artistically respectable ones, I should reveal that one recent viewing was of Stitch: The Movie, a straight-to-video number not to be confused with the forthcoming Lilo & Stitch 2, also s-t-v, I believe, which depicts events occurring after the first L&S, obviously, but before this earlier film. Not content simply to extend the franchise to video sequels, S:TM stoops to setting up the premise to the Lilo & Stitch TV show. (I know this, alas, because I have actually seen an episode of said TV show, which was, not surprisingly, not worth the time.) I liked the original movie a lot – Stitch (a.k.a. Experiment 626) is the most entertaining Disney character since, well, I don't really know Disney that well so never mind. Anyway, he's great. (I love it when he tries to speak English – and when he doesn't even try.)

The premise of this one, if you care, is that a previously unknown Evil Genius (Dr. Hämsterviel, who seems to be channeling John Cleese's abusive French knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which makes sense given the latter's taunt that "your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries," or was it the other way around) is determined to capture all 626 experiments for himself, and sends the put-upon Captain Gantu to Hawaii to track them down, with predictable and not particularly well-drawn results. Although Stitch's antics never really take off this time, there are a few laughs to be found among the film's 64 minutes: the clueless but game Pleakley (voiced by Kevin McDonald of Kids in the Hall fame) attempts to locate the kidnapped Jumba by whipping out a galactic phone directory and calling each planet, in alphabetical order ("Planet Aaaaaaa? Is Jumba there?" "Do you know what time it is??" "Sorry!" ... "Planet Aaaaaab? Is Jumba there?"), and it's still funny to hear the galactics regularly refer to our planet as "Eeyarth." Anyway, the other 625 (actually, 623) experiments get loose, and in the TV show each episode is concerned with recapturing a particular one of them, with even more predictable and even less well-drawn results. I'll probably watch L&S 2 too (sigh).

A first

Nicholas White's Plato on Knowledge and Reality is a barn-burner, even if it is 30 years old. In a chapter on the Phaedo, he relates Plato's use of an odd example in his argument for the reality of transcendent Forms. At 74a9ff, Socrates contrasts the equality (in size, presumably) of pieces of wood or stone with "the idea of abstract equality, which is different from them" (F. J. Church translation). Pieces of wood are only qualifiedly equal (e.g. to this but not to that), but the Equal is equal without qualification and therefore metaphysically prior. As White remarks (p. 69), Plato "does not see ... that it makes dubious sense to say that any object is equal unqualifiedly (i.e., without being equal to anything)." A little later, he adds (p. 70):

Some will be inclined to think that the view just now described is too clearly mistaken, and even bizarre, to be rightly ascribed to Plato. Such an impression, I think, is the result of an overexposure to contemporary philosophical discussions, in which such logical and quasi-logical matters as relational predication are so thoroughly and unremittingly scrutinized. Even Aristotle, who criticized this aspect of Plato's doctrine, himself had no very clear understanding of relations (as a glance at Categories 7 and Metaphysics V. 15 will show), and perhaps nobody did until late in the last century.

At first I didn't understand; but then I realized: he means the nineteenth century. This is the first, for me, of what will surely be a long series of such double-takes in coming years.

Petit is beautiful; grand, not so much

So my grand jury duty is over (as of 9/1, to be precise). Just in time, because it was starting to get old, what with getting up well before noon to truck (bus) down to the county courthouse and all. Also, of course, most of the cases they presented took no thought at all on our part. Again, grand juries hand down (or "up," actually) indictments, not verdicts, and all we hear is the prosecution side. And naturally the cases they are most likely to pursue are the ones where the guy clearly did it, and probably won't ever go to trial, having pleaded it out once we indict.

So a lot of the time it goes like this (drug cases are the worst), reminding one uncannily of a Socratic dialogue:

Prosecutor: You were on duty on the afternoon of March 22, 2005, correct?
Witness [invariably a police officer]: Yes, that's right.
P: And you pulled over a car which was going 80mph in a 50mph zone?
W: Yes.
P: You asked the driver for his license and registration?
W: That's correct.
P: And then you noticed a glassine bag filled with a greenish-brown vegetation which you took to be marijuana?
W: Yes.
P: ... and which was later tested at the police lab and determined actually to be marijuana?
W: Yes, that's correct.
P: And it was determined to weigh 8.26 grams?
W: Yes.
P: And you also saw another glassine bag with a whitish powdery substance?
W: I did indeed.
P: ... which was later tested at the police lab and determined to be cocaine?
W: It is as you say, o madam prosecutor.
P: And cocaine is a derivative of the coca leaf?
W: Only children and fools would disagree.
etc.

You might be wondering why this isn't "leading the witness." The answer is that the prosecutor has the police report in front of her and she's picking out the key facts that show what happened to be the particular crime she says it is (we don't want to hear every insignificant detail). It gets to be testimony because every few phrases the witness puts in a "that's correct." I bet police officers hate grand jury appearances. And yes, most of the prosecutors were women (real ones, though, not impossibly cute ones like on Law & Order).

By the way, they have to say that part about the coca leaf every time because the law in question doesn't actually mention "cocaine," just "derivatives of the coca leaf." One prosecutor told us (after the case) that there's one law which was on the books for some time before they corrected it (I think they corrected it!), where the legislature had made a mistake, and the law read "process" where it should have said "proceeds" -- so each time, the prosecutor had to get the witness to talk about "process" instead of "proceeds." So by now that's a fairly well established way of talking. Interesting method of language change.

Sometimes it goes like this:

Prosecutor: After making the buy, you then engaged in a drug-related conversation with the suspect?
Witness: Yes, I did.
P: ... during which he affirmed that the drugs were of a particularly high quality?
W: Yes.

I always wanted to know (you're allowed to ask questions, and they're actually very patient at repeating or explaining things, but I didn't feel like I could mess with them for my own amusement) if the witness could remember the actual words of the "drug-related conversation." After all, the suspect surely didn't say "I hereby affirm that the drugs which I have sold you are of a particularly high quality." I swear I saw a hint of a smile on one detective's face at this point, as if amused by the incongruous legal language.

And yes, over the course of 9 weeks and some 75 cases with several hundred charges, we indicted Every. Single. Time. Exceptions: a couple of times they asked us not to indict (the decision not to prosecute came so late in the process that we had to not-indict in order to clear the case from the system). Not all votes were unanimous though. I guess it's worthwhile, if it keeps flimsy cases from going to trial. Plus I got paid $5 per day (check to arrive in 6 to 8 weeks), plus coffee vouchers (I saved them up and got an egg sandwich on week 7) and a Certificate of Appreciation!

The third what now?

Tonight on the news there was a woman from San Francisco, or at least California, who said that a while back (before 9/11) there was a FEMA drill or simulation that dealt with three scenarios: a terrorist attack on NYC, a hurricane in NO, and an earthquake in SF, and what with the first two having come to pass, she was "waiting for the third shoe to drop." It's clear what she means, of course, but that struck me funny.

Oh, and there's a new Philosophers' Carnival.

Feat of Clay

I had seen the blog 3 Quarks Daily listed on a blogroll or two, but I didn't go there until last month, when I discovered that it rocks, although it overwhelms one with material (more like 3 kazillion quarks per second if you ask me). A natural comparison is Arts & Letters Daily, rather than a proper blog, and more geared toward science and global culture than the latter site. Check it out!

I also discovered that it's run by a friend of mine from grad school whom I had lost touch with. How about that! In a post last month, Abbas tells us of his great admiration for Muhammad Ali (i.e., "The Greatest," as opposed to "the Great One," who is someone else entirely), and urges us to see the documentary film When We Were Kings, the story of the 1974 Ali-George Foreman fight known as "the Rumble in the Jungle" (the Zaïrean jungle, to be specific).

So I did that, and I was very impressed. I had forgotten the details – I was a mere lad at the time, and I have to confess that, although, or perhaps because, I was not a boxing fan then, I was rooting for Foreman, because I thought Ali was kind of a hot dog (true enough, but as they say, it ain't bragging if you can do it), and Foreman was the highly favored champion (which seems more like a reason to root against him, but there it is). The fight was promoter Don King's doing, and it was a big pan-African extravaganza, with lots of publicity and concerts and Ali mouthing off and Foreman glowering. The music footage is great, with James Brown in fine form, but the best part is Ali riffing on black pride and African unity and (on) stomping on Foreman's defeated body. And then, finally, the fight itself, with Norman Mailer and George Plimpton, of all people, giving their reminiscences (and there are some great stills with Plimpton and Don King). At the end there's an amazing sequence of photographs of Ali with everyone from Malcolm X to the Beatles.

I missed my favorite piece of historical footage though. In an interview which must have been after the first Liston fight, though I'm not sure, Ali is exultant, naturally, and yells: "I'm pretty! I'm a baaad maaan!" Classic Ali – I wonder why they left it out.

Phew!

Long time no blog. Sorry about that - I really do mean to make it worthwhile for people to stop by now and then. I'm teaching a class this semester in an area of philosophy that is (*cough*) not my specialty, so it's taking a lot of work to overprepare for it. MavPhil has a saying: nulla dies sine blogposta (with a macron on that last "a", I suppose, to mark the ablative), but that's going to be a non possum. Let's try for every week.

Here's something you will have missed if you don't read the ridiculously short New Yorker letters page. In the 8/22/05 issue, Jim Holt, who clearly has some background in philosophy, though it's not clear how much, reviewed that old Frankfurt article (I mean "new book"), as well as Simon Blackburn's new popular effort, Truth: A Guide. I like Holt's work, but sometimes he's in over his head. (Hell, I think Blackburn's in over his head too, but these are particularly deep and treacherous waters.) In the article Nietzsche plays his standard role as proto-pomo looney tune; I'm surprised Brian Leiter didn't blow a gasket, given what he said the other day about that relatively innocuous Times book review about Curtis Cate's Nietzsche biography.

I sent in as short a letter as I could manage, "leaving the hash Holt makes of Nietzsche to the outraged Nietzsche scholars," but they didn't print it. In today's issue (9/18), though, there is a letter from a Michael Stern of Eugene, Oregon:

Jim Holt, in his discussion of Simon Blackburn's new book, "Truth: A Guide," says that Blackburn "accuses Nietzsche of sloppy thinking" (A Critic at Large, August 22nd). Holt argues that Blackburn's protest arises from Nietzsche's claim that we are limited by our perspectives. However, this is to ignore the Nietzschean "will to power," which interprets, and seeks to engage with, as many perspectives as possible. Nietzsche sought to describe the complex relations between perspectives and how we organize the multiplicity of existence as knowledge. Simplifying Nietzschean perspectivism in this way effectively pulls the teeth of a complex argument in order to declare in the next moment that it has no bite.

Well said! In fact, that's the best short explanation of the connection between will to power and perspectivism in Nietzsche that I've seen. W.t.p. engages other perspectives in order to dominate them (naturally). It sees (we see) difference as disagreement (that is, as someone else's error), and it attempts, Borg-style, to assimilate the truth available from other perspectives into our own while quashing the error, and thereby showing/manifesting its own superiority. Of course that's not always possible (but tell that to the w.t.p.). Note Stern's cognitivist, rather than skeptical or relativist, account of perspectivism: our (re-) organization of the multiplicity of existence results in knowledge. And if "describing the complex relations between perspectives" is what perspectivists do, then I need not feel self-conscious in appealing to Davidson and Wittgenstein in pursuing a "perspectivist" project (for which I have taken some guff).

This was much better than my own letter, which basically said:

Jim Holt has Sidney Morgenbesser saying "The trouble with pragmatism is that it's completely useless." I heard it this way: playing off the supposedly pragmatist claim that "truth is what works," he said "Pragmatism is true, but it doesn't work." This is quite different (look again at that first part).

Come to think of it, I may even have heard him utter those very words (recalling his remark for us, that is, not making it for the first time).

I have arrived

I got my first comment spam today (see below). I'm so proud! Let's see if Blogger's word verification thingy works. (Let me know if it doesn't.)

For all x, x ≠ love, you = Baby, I cannot give you x

Watching [name of movie revealed below] recently, I was reminded of my intemperate comments a while back about Bringing Up Baby, a movie which left me cold, so I went back just now and added a second thought or two, moderating the intemperance a bit (only a bit though).

So what movie was it that brought BuB to mind? Was it The Philadelphia Story, or maybe His Girl Friday? No and no (good guesses though). No, it was the only other movie I know of in which a character sings the song "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby" – not as a musical performance but rather for some extra-musical reason. In BuB Kate and Cary sing it in order to pacify/retrieve Baby the leopard; here nightclub owner Cosmo Vitelli, away from the club on the desperate errand of the film's title, phones to check in on how his somewhat erratic troupe of entertainers is faring in his absence. Unfortunately the bartender to whom he is speaking is little help – he doesn't even know the songs they sing, even after seven years in Cosmo's employ – so Cosmo sings the song in question to remind him which number it is (it doesn't help).

Yes, I refer here to John Cassavetes's The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, with the inimitable Ben Gazzara in a tremendous performance. The Criterion Collection has several Cassavetes releases out, but this is the first one I've seen (I think the only other Cassavetes film I've seen at all is Gloria, which for some reason was remade recently with Sharon Stone, iirc). I will be checking the others out for sure, because KCB was really something. I'm not sure it's a great film, but wow, what a compelling time capsule. The CC release has two discs, one with the original 1976 version, which apparently bombed, and a 1978 reissue which is half an hour shorter. I watched the latter, and it's hard to imagine that the edit didn't improve the film substantially. It's bursting the seams of the narrative as it is – any more scenes with the performers, say, or his girlfriend's family (interesting as they were), would definitely overload it, resulting in the flabby mess the critics undoubtedly said the first one was. On the other hand, now I would like to go back and check the other one out (but it was due back at the library). Kudos to CC for giving us the different versions complete, rather than only the latter plus "deleted scenes."

Anyway, Gazzara is terrific as the reflective would-be big shot in over his head, who still manages, somehow, to hold his own (or so it seems ...). The atmosphere is pure '70's: besides the surreal dialogue (love those gangsters) and perversely ruminative pacing, there's lots of underlit scenes (in the nightclub and out), casual showgirl nudity, and intimate handheld shots. Of course if this is your idea of heaven, you're already way ahead of me. It's not mine, exactly, but I'm certainly looking forward to more. Although KCB is supposedly atypical (the blurb says that JC "engages film noir in his own inimitable style," which makes it sound like a one-off deal), I hear A Woman Under the Influence is pretty good.

Summer's almost gone ...

... but there's still time for one more Philosopher's Carnival! Thanks CK!

By the way, philosophers, CK says that there weren't too many entries this time. So let's get thinking!

Too many cooks spoil the brouhaha

Which is one reason why I didn't join in the Theory's Empire dustup (now in remission) over at The Valve and other related sites. (Another is that I didn't have the book.) I did follow along, though, and I was struck by how defensive some people were about the very idea of such a collection. Isn't it obvious that taking a critical view of Theory isn't the same as (in increasing order of horrificness) 1) embracing bad old theories of literary meaning; 2) duh, being a troglodyte; 3) voting Republican?

However, I recently picked up the volume, and I have to admit that my first impression of it was that such viscerally negative reactions are perfectly understandable (if not particularly constructive). Like many other defenses of culture against Theory, the overall tone here seems – so far, anyway – to be not of level-headed engagement with esteemed but misguided colleagues, but instead of pouring boiling oil onto the barbarians at the gates (or on those already inside, raping and pillaging defenseless literature). I have still only skimmed it, but I've already run across some seriously snarky rhetoric: words like "glut" and "parrot" and "gospel" and "otiose" and "pervasive" and "gurus" and "bizarre" and "labyrinthine" and "obsessive." (No naked emperors yet, though; could we really have seen the last of that one??) The introduction sets the tone to which I refer; I was struck, for example, by this poisonous patch of purple prose, the peroration of the piece:

[I]t is evident that today's theoretical vocabulary has led to an intellectual void at the core of our educational endeavors, scarcely masked by all the posturing, political zealotry, pretentiousness[,] general lack of seriousness, and the massive opportunism that is particularly glaring in the extraordinary indifference to or outright attacks on logic and consistency (p.13).

Holy smoke! Not surprisingly, the most common digs at Theorists, here as elsewhere, are the ones attributing to them not simply some intellectual failing, but also some moral vice, usually hypocrisy: they reject all dogmatism – except their own! They claim to be working for the downtrodden – but they're self-absorbed fatcats! They claim to be doing new and exciting things – but they're unoriginal conformists, just putting new labels on the same tired old crap! Et cetera!

Now I would be the last to deny that this old shoe can find plenty of feet to fill it. (I actually have no clue as to the extent of the problem, as described. I last took an English course in 1980 (which was perfectly fine), and I haven't really run into it that much myself. On the other hand, there is a vaguely analogous doctrinal divide in philosophy between "analytic" and "continental" philosophy; but it's not the same – even though Hegel, for example, is making a half-hearted comeback, no-one's getting rich and famous touting Hegelian Theory, and stacking whole departments with ambitious acolytes. It did get ugly a while back, though, I understand, with power grabs at the annual convention, etc. But nothing like the Theory wars, since no-one cares about philosophy anyway.) The more worthless the material in question, though, the less informative it is to hear that we need to rouse the troops to combat it. Politically motivated sophomoric-relativist nonsense? Sounds ghastly; let's get rid of it. But 700 pages of abuse is not going to get us there, so I sincerely hope this isn't all there is to the book.

Of course the editors are as concerned to deny personal animus as they are to disavow regressive tendencies (i.e., "the predictable charges hurled against critics of Theory"). No,

what is particularly noticeably in our authors' writings is the general lack of ad hominem attacks, even when confronting some of the more preposterous and unreadably convoluted theories. They concentrate not on personality—as central an issue as Theory's stars have made this in cultivating their public personae—but instead on logic, reason, and evidence, concepts without which [oh, thanks so much for pointing this out] it is impossible to have any sort of fruitful intellectual exchange. They are mindful [...] that the habit of many theorists to make claims without showing any awareness of the highly contentious nature of their premises and reasoning is a symptom of the poor standard of argumentation prevailing in modern literary theory (p.7).

Amazing. An ad hominem attack right in the middle of a passage trumpeting the virtuous lack of same. Not promising. However, Morris Dickstein, a contributor to the book and the editor of a decent anthology on pragmatism, assures us that "Theory’s Empire confines itself to serious academic critiques," so I suppose I should keep reading.

Of particular interest to me are the selections making up the section entitled "Restoring Reason," which discusses the science-wars aspect of the matter (with perhaps predictably heavy emphasis on the Sokal affair). I turned to these first, because that's where the stuff about truth and objectivity is (our barbarians are relativists, after all, when they're not being dogmatic). I have mixed feelings about the results, but that's a topic for another post.

Now that's acting

Olivier Gourmet (nice name) won the Best Actor award at Cannes in 2002 for his performance in the Dardennes' The Son, and having finished up viewing the film last night (I shouldn't watch movies in installments, and I'm sure this one lost a little impact because of it, but as it turned out there was plenty left), I can see why. He plays a carpentry instructor at a trade school, who for reasons I will not go into (we ourselves only find out half an hour in), is torn between two opposing emotions and corresponding courses of action, both compatible with what we actually see him do. In an interview included on the DVD, Gourmet (looking quite different) explains that it was very hard to play "I don't know" – a single motivation, even a complex one, can be signaled in any number of conventional ways, but how do you show one emotion "canceled out" (I would rather say "held in check") by another, so that neither is manifested overtly during the struggle? We find ourselves noticing any clue, however small – a tic, a frown, a snappy remark. Gourmet's control over his body is remarkable; check out his gait for example, or his brisk, efficient movements when washing his hands or doing carpentry. The camera, most if not all handheld, is in his face (or on the back of his neck) throughout – there's one shot where he sends a student to get something from across the room and the camera remains on Gourmet's staring face the whole time. There's also an amazing, apparently continuous shot where someone in the passenger seat of a car (shot from the back seat) steps into the back seat to lie down, which must have required some serious acrobatics by the cameraman (who of course ends up in the passenger seat). Very intense film. Now I have to see La Promesse (same actor, same directors, same Cannes result).

Duck days indeed

Some odds and ends for these hot summer days:

Here's a handsome lad.

And in other news, those philosophers are carnivaling again. Thanks Gracchi! I particularly liked the post from TAR about non-philosophers' ideas of what we do; some great stories there, plus some interesting reflections. Check it out!

Coincidentally, today's Dilbert addresses the same issue, believe it or not. Dilbert is out on a date, and addresses his companion thus:

Dilbert: No one ever wants to take more than half of what's left of the last doughnut. That's why I call it Xeno's [sic] doughnut. Hee hee!

Dinner companion drains glass.

Passing waitress, to dinner companion: I heard some of that. Do you want to switch to hard liquor?

Dinner companion, holding out glass: Hurry.

Sigh. Of course, that's Zeno of Elea he's talking about, not Zeno of Citium! Zeno of Citium's doughnut would remain untouched on the plate! Ha ha! (Oog.)

Cinema of war

The other night I watched a movie about a ragged but plucky band of comrades and their valiant resistance against the oppressive force occupying their country. I am of course perfectly capable of telling the difference between this and that; but I have to say it was a just a bit creepy being encouraged to cheer when our heroes carry out a roadside ambush against the occupying army's passing vehicles. The film was Roberto Rossellini's Roma, città aperta (a.k.a. Open City), made amazingly soon after the war (in 1945, in fact). It's a very effective example of its type (which of course was new at the time). Two things stood out for me: first, in the screen time she's allotted Anna Magnani is a force of nature (see her also, equally forceful if not more so, in Pasolini's Mamma Roma); and second, the gripping ending -- not only the final scene, but the scene before that, especially the spectacular shot of the tortured prisoner and the priest's reaction to it. You absolutely cannot get away with that kind of thing anymore, but in the days before our (in this sense) jaded age, it would have worked perfectly (exercise for the reader: how would Bresson have done it, or Renoir?). Oh, and another spectacular shot (of a different kind): when the Nazi soldier peers out the door and looks toward the camera, with a fleeing resistance fighter still visible, pausing, in the background behind him. Wow.

One problem, though: the subtitlers are frustratingly chary with their aid, sometimes rendering no more than every third line. Luckily my (operatic) Italian is serviceable, so I didn't miss too much, but be warned.

Body beautiful?

Maybe you heard about that museum in Vienna that let you in free to see their exhibit of early 1900's erotic art if you showed up (as the Times puts it in today's Arts section) "nude or scantily clad." My attitude: whatever. But they need to get their story straight. The Times quotes the museum's Elisabeth Leopold as explaining: "We find a naked body every bit as beautiful as a clothed one." Fair enough, depending perhaps on which body we're talking about (Henry Kissinger: keep your clothes on). But the museum isn't showing Raphael or even Bernini; they're showing Klimt and that twisted perv (and I mean that in a good way) Egon Schiele (one of my faves). This is presumably why director Peter Weinhaupt says that he hoped to (again in the Times's words) "create a mini-scandal reminiscent of the one that first surrounded the paintings." Again: whatever. But if "mini-scandal" is the point, the idea that nudity is no big deal makes no sense. And of course if you know Schiele at all, you know: it ain't the nudity. What is interesting about Schiele, and what makes him great, is that the self-portraits are just as twisted, and, seemingly, in the same way, as the erotic ones. And that's the scandal.