> On Wednesday, September 24, 2003, at 09:33 PM, Eubulides quoted Tanner:
>
> > DT: [snip] they had a secret language, Latin;
>
> Latin wasn't a "secret language" -- it was the language of education in
> those days, as well as the common language of European culture.
================
Seems to me she was using 'secret language' as a euphemism for describing certain latin terms as positional goods in securing advantage in an adversarial setting, especially with respect to the written word prior to the printing press.
> Granted, they ought to have educated kids in the vulgar languages of
> the various countries, as eventually came to pass centuries later, but
> then they ought'nt to have had a feudal system, either -- which was
> eventually overthrown centuries later.
>
> > It was not a search for knowledge, it was honing your disputation
> > skills so that
> > you could publicly defend a thesis and attack a thesis. This is the
> > history of our intellectual tradition. The Western tradition has
> > placed a
> > lot of emphasis on oral disputation. This is different from the
Chinese
> > and other Asian traditions, which would have found oral disputation
> > quite
> > unbecoming a sage....
>
> Back to Buddhist history again -- "oral disputation" was a very
> important feature of most Buddhist traditions in Asia, including those
> in China. Where does she get her idea of what would have been
> "unbecoming a sage"? Well, Asia is the great happy hunting grounds for
> useful ignorant historical examples for people who don't know diddley
> about that part of the world, but don't care about their ignorance.
==================
Methinks you're conflating disputation with adversariality and aggressiveness. And, you've just engaged in an ad hominem; what does that accomplish other than you've made one of her points for her.....Your knowledge of her knowledge of communication practices/norms in Asian cultures is, what, based on one example from an interview on the internet and yet you feel free to attack her?
> That's not what scholastic debates were like in medieval Europe *or* in
> ancient China, and she ought to know better. But what does she care
> about historical accuracy? She's a famous, frequently interviewed
> cultural critic -- she has the right to make history bend to her
> arguments.
===================
You're right she's just a dilettante working at a rather respected university with a great linguistics department who was hired because she only writes pop books and she can't cut it in comparative history of philosophy. And she never discusses those issues with her colleagues from those departments/disciplines.........
http://www.georgetown.edu/departments/linguistics/
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/tannend/
Here's a classic case of male whining about female criticism of male communication:
Of course the guy never bothered to interview her.
Ian