[lbo-talk] popularizing philosophy

Mark Bennett bennett.mab at gmail.com
Mon Aug 29 00:27:53 PDT 2011


This Blog on the secret life of punctuation is amusing:

http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/

On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 9:57 PM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>wrote:


> On Sun, Aug 28, 2011 at 7:22 PM, Mike Beggs <mikejbeggs at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> As for Shag's initial question about the pop philosophy books, I have
> >> to admit to not having read a single article from any of the "_____
> >> and philosophy" books, not even The Big Lebwowkski volume. I know some
> >> people who like Alain de Botton, and I've watched some of his series
> >> on philosophers and thought it was pretty good, given what it was
> >> doing.
> >
> > Bring back the old Pelican paperbacks, I say. They were aimed at a
> > general audience and yet weren't gimmicky, didn't dumb it down, and
> > you really learn something from them. I switch into present tense
> > there because thankfully there are stacks and stacks of them for $5 or
> > less at any second-hand bookshop. I assume they were sold in the
> > States as well? When I want to get a basic outline of something, I'd
> > much rather read that kind of thing than something titled 'Colon: the
> > astonishing hidden life of the punctuation mark that became a cliche',
> > etc. (Actually, though, I exempt the 'history of the world in a grain
> > of salt' type books from this, because 'keyhole history' can be pretty
> > interesting - Kurlansky is a good example.)
>
> Yeah, as I say, I'd much rather they actually read Plato. Or whoever.
>
> But if you wrote that book on the colon, I might find a way to assign it.
> :)
>
> j
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>



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