info at pulpculture.org wrote:
>
>
> (And please, don't give me the crap about how someone else said it first:
> not an argument.)
Perhaps. But just why is it not an argument? There is a book review of Samuel Johnson's famous for one observation re the book: it "had much that was new and much that was true, but that which was new was not true and that which was true was not new." I'm not saying that applies to Butler, butif it _does_ apply, then "someone else said it first" is very definitely an argument -- especially considering the immense number of books and articles of importance out there that even a Hegel or a John Quincy Adams couldn't read them all, or even most of them..
Lenin once, in a burst of enthusiasm, declared that no one could understand Capital who had not studied Hegel. There was probably something to that, but I still suspect that a lot of people have gotten quite a bit out of Capital without having direct knowledge of Hegel. And I suspect that quite a few people can write _as if_ they were familiar with Butler without ever having read a word of her, simply because the principles involved _either_ are not new in Buther _or_ have been so thoroughly absorbed into other writers that they have become common property and their source (Butler or elsewhere) forgotten.
Carrol