--- "Michael Dawson" <MDawson@pdx.edu> wrote:

Hey, Jim, I was a philosophy minor in college.  Not that that makes me an
expert, but I've actually read almost all of DeBotton's sources.  By the
way, why do you think he's stupid?  What has he said that's empty?

JG: He turns sophisticated and often difficult ideas that can be 
interpreted in many different ways into glib feel-good 'wisdom'. I 
can't quote because I refuse to add to his royalties - I read 
Consolations of Philosophy in a bookshop, and turned down all the 
pages to make sure no one else bought it either. He patronises his 
audience and turns thought into mush.  He should at least have the 
intellectual honesty of other therapeutic popularisers and talk about 
his personal experiences instead of pretending that Nietzsche thought 
just like him. I'm afraid I get a bit hysterical about De Botton.
It's mainly jealousy - if an idiot like him can make it, why can't I?!


MD: As to Derrida, I ask it again:  What did he say that is so profound?

JG: In my opinion, nothing whatsoever. But that doesn't make him any 
less great. Your challenge to summarise his greatness is a ruse, I 
think. If you asked me to tell you - in an e-mail - what is so great 
about Marx?, any answer that I give will seem glib.  I could either 
jump in to politics and say, he gives us ideas to change the world. 
Or I could say, he was a great materialist dialectician who turned 
Hegel on his head. But that means nothing without a lot more 
explanation.

For me, Derrida's importance is that he showed how meaning is tied up 
in relation to other versions of meaning, rather than being attached 
to the world.  By understanding texts in relation to other texts 
we can bring to light meanings that are hidden.  Stated so baldly, I 
am aware that this sounds stupid. And it's not an approach that I 
agree with.  But as an answer to your question, it works for me.

MD: I agree that important readings are sometimes created by poor 
writers.  Marx himself, despite flashes of brilliance, wasn't exactly 
the model of clarity.
But obtuse composition, as Mills said, is just as often a disguise for 
shallowness.

JG: This is true, but a writer's shallowness should be judged on its 
own terms, not asserted on the basis of style. I was once a big fan of 
Orwell's Politics and the English Language, which is a powerful 
argument for 'plain English'.  But I've come to see it as 
condescending. A lot of brilliant thinkers just can't write well, and 
they're no less great for that. And there are some ideas that are 
just plain difficult.  

James Greenstein