[lbo-talk] Re: Philosophical Gourmet

[andie nachgeborenen]

Well, there's dim bulbs and dim bulbs. It is relative. Analytical philosophy departments like Berkeley prize being smart (in the narrowest sense of being able to very quickly grasp, formulate, and atack complex abstract arguments) above all else, except being regarded as smart. The top ones, like Berkeley, can afford to stock their shelves with people who have this characteristic. The dimmest bulb in the Michigan philosophy department in my time there was very very smart, he was just sloppy. He'd been hired to do continental philosophy, which they didn't care about, figured it was fuzzy bullshit anyway, but the students wanted it. He couldf have been a lot better, but he mainly didn't care. He was an old hippy who wanted to smoke grass and fuck the coeds, which he did in large numbers. From my limited experience of Bennett's work, there is no possibility whatsoever that he could even be considered for even an adjunct position at a top fight philosophy department. He aint got the chops and the speed.  jks

Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:I don't quite know how it works, but I doubt that there's a department
in the land that doesn't have one or two real dim bulbs. In an aside in
a discussion in Critical Inquiry some years ago the writer (I believe a
Harvard professor) said that in the 1930s the head of the English
Department at Harvard was little known, even among members of his
department.

When I was at Michigan they had at least three full professors in the
English Department who could only be described as intellectually
embarassing. I'm sure there must be two or three of similar calibre
tucked away here and there at Berkeley, or any other university.

With an overproduction of Ph.D.s, in theory appointment committees have
a wider choice, and to some extent it works that way. I suspect it also
results in getting too involved in complex choices and coming up with
losers.

Carrol

Chuck Grimes wrote:
> 
> Bennett would never even get tenure in a phil department like Berkeley.
> 
> -- Luke
> -----------
> 
> Upgrade your sardonic humor program, Luke. It was a joke--about as funny
> as Bennett anointed Secretary of Education.
> 
> Chuck Grimes
> -
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk

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