>And as for his supposed greatness as a philosopher, it all rests on a pretty
>sophomoric view of truth and knowledge. He over-corrected an error that is
>more cleanly and powerfully corrected by people like Cornel West and the
>pragmatists he updates.
while I agree with this in a way, since I studied the pragmatists as an undergrad and grad and have a soft spot for them, it sweeps under the carpet some important distinctions -- distinctions that matter, I think, especially if you're interested in a little Marxist analysis of why intellectual traditions emerge as they do. Which is related to my other reason for objecting -- it's a different intellectual tradition, situated in France. Oh, we like to talk about the global community of scholars and how the local doesn't matter when it comes to questions of truth, Just Us and the American Waitress. Still, I think the local matters and I think it behooves us, as USers, not to attend to that, perhaps trying to understand why France needed _its_ particular over-correction. In France, doe they see Derrida et al. as unreadable and unimportant? Pragmatism is what we need. Maybe not what the French and Europeans more generally needed.
At least you least you didn't appeal to the genetic fallacy which i soooooooo despise.
k
*remembering how Angela kicked my ass on the differences between the development of Soc in the US and in Australia.
**Habermas's use of the pragmatists didn't ... oh, man, I'm a glutton for punishment.
"We live under the Confederacy. We're a podunk bunch of swaggering pious hicks."
--Bruce Sterling