Blog
Thought for the day 24/11/2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
A wiener and his bangers. -- Our butcher has two battered old cars with the number plates "W WURST 1" and "W WURST 2". And the certificate in his shop window says that his pig head is beyond belief.
Thought for the day 23/11/2009
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Remark on method. -- Nietzsche wanted to philosophize with a hammer; Kant with an etching needle; Socrates with a pair of forceps. I'll have the dentist's drill, please.
Thought for the day 22/11/2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Insult and injury. -- The most annoying people in Cambridge are the high-table radicals. They sit at posh formal dinners in Trinity College (the third-biggest landowner in the land) and defend the proletariat. And the shadowy proletarius who fills their glasses with port wine is working for little more than the minimum wage.
Thought for the day 21/11/2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
Young and old. -- Don't complain about your toddler's intransigence, it is just a mirror image of your own.
Thought for the day 20/11/2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Night shift. -- An aphorism is a crystallised hour of insomnia.
Thought for the day 19/11/2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Inspiration lost. -- "I refuse to be your muse", she said, and pulled the blanket over her head.
Thought for the day 18/11/2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Self-reflection. -- Germans are die-hard pessimists. Can you blame them?
Thought for the day 17/11/2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Torn. -- I can't decide when I love my children more: in the brief moments when they show minute inklings of obedience or in the long hours when they challenge every single one of my requests and views.
Thought for the day 16/11/2009
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Tolerance and argument. -- In order to reach a stable and respectful state of the "Let's agree to disagree", it is often necessary to first make a genuine and prolonged effort to convince each other.
Thought for the day 15/11/2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Remembering the obvious. -- One can be an advocate of radical democracy within a society without believing that each and every one of its institutions must be governed by an assembly of its respective employees and customers. It may well be crucial for the good of the society as a whole that certain of its institutions are not ruled from the inside.
Thought for the day 14/11/2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Unholy alliance. -- When it comes to resisting meritocratic principles in universities, the most intelligent and progressive students invariably end up siding with the least accomplished academics -- precisely those academics who (usually unintentionally) prevent these students from fulfilling their intellectual potential.
Thought for the day 13/11/2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
War of the generations. -- "Remember old man, toothless helplessness is cute but once in a lifetime." -- "I was twenty only yesterday, young fool, and I can see the flesh rotting on your cheeks already."
Thought for the day 12/11/2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Conflicts. -- What is more difficult: to have a feud with someone whose work one respects, or to have a feud with someone whose work one despises? The first scenario is uncomfortable because of the contrary pulls of aggression and respect. The second scenario is complicated since one's contempt for the other easily makes one overshoot the target and alienate the neutral bystanders.
Thought for the day 11/11/2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Leaving academia. -- Asked why he had exchanged the university professor's tranquil world for the party politician's ruthless jungle, former Finnish president Mauno Koivisto replied that compared with the bitterness of academic feuds and fights, "real politics" felt like a most kind and polite form of interaction.
Thought for the day 10/11/2009
Monday, November 09, 2009
Drowning by numbers. -- You are a small philosopher if there are one or two people who think they have refuted you. You are a great philosopher if there are one or two hundred people who think they have refuted you--and who now fight over who was first, and whose cut was the deepest.
Thought for the day 9/11/2009
Sunday, November 08, 2009
Distorted perspectives. -- Every seventy-year-old academic believes that his or her field is stagnating because it ignores the dominant ideas from forty years earlier. Just as other old people complain about the degeneration of language.
Thought for the day 8/11/2009
Friday, November 06, 2009
Karl Kraus revisited. -- Prophets of cultural decline are but symptoms of the malaise they purport to diagnose.
Thought for the day 7/11/2009
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Made for each other. -- Almost everything I write here must have been said before, and expressed much better, by far greater minds. But I am not worried: I am writing for the philistines.
Thought for the day 6/11/2009
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
In a word. -- "Bildung" is the shibboleth of the Austrian and German chattering classes.
Thought for the day 5/11/2009
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
No compromise. -- There are two "Kuhnian" ways to think about philosophical work. According to the first, philosophy ought to be conducted as a puzzle-solving "normal science". (Though one does not have to be scientistic or naturalistic to favour this ideal.) According to the second way, becoming a puzzle-solving normal science is the worst fate that could ever befall philosophy. -- Oddly enough, there have been many revolutionary thinkers endorsing the first conception, and many entirely unoriginal parrots advocating the second.
Thought for the day 4/11/2009
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Kant and the draft dodger. -- In 1978 I tried to get myself formally recognised as a "conscientious objector" (in West Germany). The three members of the panel making the decision were a retired military officer (as chairperson), a housewife and a petrol-station owner. I defended my stance of radical non-violence drawing on Kant's various formulations of the categorical imperative. My application was rejected on grounds of "immaturity of reasoning". (The chairman added informally that my argument was in any case fatally undermined by my short haircut.)
Thought for the day 3/11/2009
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Robbespierre on campus. -- Don’t think you can prevent me from criticizing your paper by batting your eyelashes. They don’t call me “the Incorruptible” for nothing. If you want to stop me, you will have to drag me to the Place de la Révolution.
Thought for the day 2/11/2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
The victim complex. -- Wittgensteinians, phenomenologists, Continental philosophers, pragmatists, feminist philosophers, bioethicists, logicians, historians of philosophy, ... endlessly complain about being marginalized by the big, bad mainstream. But there is no such thing. The so-called "mainstream" is nothing but a loose and disparate bundle of philosophical disciplines, schools or orientations that endlessly complain about being marginalized -- by the big, bad mainstream.
Thought for the day 1/11/2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Fake philosophers. -- Don't think you look the part just because, while talking, you close your eyes, or stare at the ceiling.
Thought for the day 31/10/2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Backward causation. -- No sooner has a politician announced a "moral agenda" that he is caught with his pants down -- sometimes metaphorically, usually literally.
Thought for the day 30/10/2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Go gentle ...-- When I give "good night" kisses to my children and jokingly shut their eyes, I often can't help thinking ahead to the day when they will close mine, and for the final time.
Thought for the day 29/10/2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Family resemblance. -- Many (even otherwise admirable) politicians do not know when to quit. And hence their careers end in defeat and humiliation. The same is true for many philosophers. (I hope for friends who will tell me when my time is up.)
Thought for the day 28/10/2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Irrational preference. -- I prefer being cremated over being burried: the thought of lying in a closed and tiny coffin makes me feel claustrophobic.
Thought for the day 27/10/2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monsters and prices. -- We in the affluent West find it unacceptable when cost-benefit analysts put a price-tag of no more than three million U.S. dollars on our respective lives. At the same time, we are unwilling to have our taxes raised so that each and every child in the developing world could be vaccinated against all major illnesses--and for just $15 per head. (Maybe we aren't worth even the three million ...)
Thought for the day 26/10/2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Here and there. -- For much of their history, universities have been one of the tools by means of which socio-economic elites have carried forward their domination into the next generation. That much is common European heritage. But there are interesting and odd differences, too. In some states, the elites are willing to make financial sacrifices in order to secure for their offspring superior professional and political competence. In other countries, the elites act as if the main function of universities were the diffusion of titles rather than of expertise.
Thought for the day 25/10/2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
The old academic's lament. -- Thank God for the need for letters of recommendation. Without it one would not hear from some former students ever again.
Thought for the day 24/10/2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Pride. -- At last I am at a university where the students have the courage to protest visibly and loudly against underfunding (e.g. by squatting in the main building). Unthinkable in Cambridge -- and not (only) because underfunding is unknown.
Thought for the day 23/10/2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Grandmother's wisdom. -- Some people cannot be tamed. If you are kind towards them, they react with contempt of your alleged weakness. If you treat them harshly, they double their hostility. But do not despair: it is them who are trapped, not you.
Thought for the day 22/10/2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Blast from the past. -- Leaders of the Austrian right-wing "Freedom [sic!] Party" often emphasize that they owe nothing to National Socialism. The claim is contradicted (for example) by the election posters of the "FPÖ". These borrow heavily from the iconographic techniques of Nazi-era anti-semitic posters: the political opponent is depicted in black-and-white, placed in the background, as overweight, ill, threatening and arrogant. The FPÖ-leader's face is shown in colour, in the foreground, blue-eyed and smiling (he isn't a dental surgeon for nothing). The texts inside the picture speak a similar language: the political opponent is claimed to support massive immigration, the FPÖ promises to restrict it. The language used invariably recalls 1920s and 1930s Viennese Nazi posters that promised to stem the "tide" of immigrating Eastern-European Jews.
Thought for the day 21/10/2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Trapped. -- The problem with changing a corrupt system from the inside is that the plausible moves all involve bribery.
Thought for the day 20/10/2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Reality imitating art. -- Often it is art that reminds us of certain features of, and situations in, the natural world. But when it comes to heystacks in sun-flooded fields, the relation is reversed (for me anyway): I cannot help seeing the scenary as a copy of paintings by van Gogh.
Thought for the day 19/10/2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Commonality. -- The true beauty of towns and faces can only be appreciated when they are drenched with rain.
Thought for the day 18/10/2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The slow progress towards *ataraxia*. -- Does the Moon have a sleepness night when a dog barks at it? No, but probably even the Moon needed about fifty years to get to its state of robust tranquility.
Thought for the day 17/10/2009
Friday, October 16, 2009
For Obama. -- Nobel prize winners are the saints of a secularised world. If only the decision making and data collection took as long as it did, and does, in the religious sphere.
Thought for the day 16/10/2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The ultimate argument against legalising handguns. -- The number of times I have been prevented from committing a crime by not having a gun in my pocket ...
Thought for the day 15/10/2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
The race against time. -- A substantive chunk of my adult intellectual life is spent trying to free myself from the biases, prejudices and stereotypes that I swallowed as a child. And I increasingly doubt that my life will be long enough to get rid of them all. (Even if I live to be eighty.)
Thought for the day 14/10/2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Limits of my understanding. -- I can just about see why a certain generation (of 1918) might have found Spengler's *Untergang* a work of genius. But even after decades of reading and re-reading, I cannot understand how anyone (even in early twentieth-century Vienna) could have responded to Weininger's *Geschlecht und Charakter* with anything but contempt and ridicule.
Thought for the day 13/10/2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
History repeating itself. -- Relativists are often attacked with arguments that resemble the ways in which, two hundred years ago, "enthusiasts" tried to discredit sceptics like Hume. Here is a famous contemporary philosopher writing about relativists (in 2005): "Today's relativists, persuading themselves that all opinions enjoy the same standing in the light of reason, take it as a green light to believe what they like with as much conviction and force as they like. ... today dogmatisms feed and flourish on the desecrated corpse of reason. Astrology, prophecy, homeopathy, Feng shui, conspiracy theories, flying saucers, voodoo, crystal balls, miracle-working, angel visits, alien abductions, management nostrums ..." And here is James Beattie (in 1771) about Hume's *Treatise*: "The corrupt judge; the prostituted courtier; the statesman who enriches himself by the plunder and blood of his country; the pettifogger, who fattens on the spoils of the fatherless and the widow; the oppressor, who, to pamper his own beastly appetite, abandons the deserving peasantry to beggary and despair; the hypocrite, the debauchee, the gamester, the blasphemer, -- prick their ears when they are told, that a celebrated author has written a book full of such comfortable doctrines." -- All this gives me hope: after all, we now laugh about James Beattie, don't we?
Thought for the day 12/10/2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Tricking Mary. -- Since 1925, the village of “Maria Gugging” (about 10 miles outside of Vienna) sports an exact replica of the “cave of St. Barnadette” at Lourdes. It attracts pilgrams and devotion, and similar miracles are said to have occurred in both places. -- The logic of the believer really is radically different from that of the non-believer: it never occurs to the former to be worried by Mary’s apparent inability to distinguish the fake from the original.
Thought for the day 11/10/2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
Telling it how it is. -- The genius of a football (soccer) coach can be measured by the number of ways in which he can express one and the same simple truth: a football is an imperfect sphere.
Thought for the day 10/10/2009
Friday, October 09, 2009
Approaching fifty, again. -- Nordic walking (instead of jogging) is fine, but you got to stop racing the Zimmer-frames.
Thought for the day 9/10/2009
Thursday, October 08, 2009
The rap-catcher of Vienna. -- The leader of the Austrian far-right "Freedom [sic!] Party" records his political slogans as rap songs. -- If only he moved on to catching rats.
Thought for the day 8/10/2009
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Counterfactual history. -- Next to Freud's old flat on 19 Berggasse now lives the "Kafka" family. (You couldn't make it up.) Makes you wonder whether psychoanalysis and twentieth-century literature would have developed differently had Franz and Sigmund been next-door neighbors.
Thought for the day 7/10/2009
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
The silly question again. -- "Why should there exist anything at all?" To ask this question, and to feel it as pressing, does not force one to give it a theological answer. Too many philosophers act as if it did.
Thought for the day 6/10/2009
Monday, October 05, 2009
Living with contradictions. -- I wonder how many non-believers (like me) light candles in the churches they visit.
Thought for the day 5/10/2009
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Sunday tourism. -- The Baroque churches and monasteries of Austria are truly stunning. But there is no denying: they make me appreciate anew the clarity and simplicity of Romanesque art.
Thought for the day 4/10/2009
Saturday, October 03, 2009
The aura of the toy shop. -- The best inroad into Walter Benjamin's oeuvre are his "radio talks for children". In these lectures Benjamin offers fascinating and witty sketches of the economic, social and political landscape of late 19th and early 20th century Berlin. And he manages to introduce or illustrate many of his central ideas with a wonderfully light touch and many unforgettable examples. -- If only more of our philosophical masters had attempted a similar feat.
Thought for the day 3/10/2009
Friday, October 02, 2009
Self therapy. -- Malcolm reports: "Wittgenstein once said that a serious and philosophical work could be written that would consist entirely of jokes." -- Maybe, but not by you, Ludwig, not by you. (You got to snub your philosophical heroes occasionally so as not to become their uncritical admirer.)
Thought for the day 2/10/2009
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Not gone native quite yet ... -- The next time, some servile character calls me "Herr Professor" at the rate of ten times per minute, I am going to scream.
Thought for the day 1/10/2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Approaching fifty. -- It's time to design your famous last words, lest you end up echoing the lines of your favourite poet or philosopher: "Mehr nicht?" or "Tell them I've had a good wife."
Thought for the day 30/9/2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Night thought. -- Once you are past the age at which one of your parents died, you feel you live on borrowed time.
Thought for the day 29/9/2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
The duty of thought. -- It has become such a fashion for philosophers to run out and proclaim their atheism that I have started to doubt my own.
Thought for the day 28/9/2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Amputating the extended mind. -- Why do we keep books on our shelves even though we find them unworthy of publication; we lack all respect for their authors; and we long since have fallen out with their donors?
Thought for the day 27/9/2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Divisions in the park. -- The "Augarten" is one of Vienna's most charming parks (not counting its two grotesque World War II flak towers). All too often it is a microcosm of a divided world: the Jewish children play in one corner, the Turkish in another, and the Serbo-Croats in a third. And my daughters cycle or run from corner to corner, annoying every single ethnic group by screaming and shouting at each other. (Lack of volume control seems to run in the family.)
Thought for the day 26/9/2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Depression. -- You know that the political Left is doing badly when the only entity that proudly uses the name "revolution" is a pub chain.
Thought for the day 25/9/2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Claustrophobia. -- Why are the English content to live in houses the size of a double-decker caravan? And how can they be be happy with gardens no bigger than a grave?
Thought for the day 24/9/2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The moral authority gap. -- German intellectuals tend to assume that being a member of a nation of perpetrators gives them a special moral authority -- and even concerning the social and political affairs of other countries. Alas, these other countries usually lean towards the view that being a member of a nation of perpetrators undermines one's claim to moral authority once and for all.
Thought for the day 23/9/2009
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
No laughing matter. -- The English take the question of the superiority of their sense of humour far too seriously.
Thought for the day 22/9/2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Waterloo and beyond. -- The playing fields of Eton have a lot to answer for.
Thought for the day 21/9/2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The threshold of achievability. -- There must be a number, N, of years of one’s life, such that, before reaching N, one thinks "I can make it, I’m still young". And having reached N one thinks either: "I’ve made it", or "I’ve failed, it’s too late for me now". N varies with different historical periods, cultures, classes, genders, professions …
Thought for the day 20/9/2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Auditory Gestalt switch. -- I used to find the sound of ocean waves crashing onto the beach soothing and relaxing. The tsunami of 2004 changed that (forever?).
Thought for the day 19/9/2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
An offer you can't refuse. -- If you stop procrastinating by reading my "thoughts for the day", then I shall stop self-indulging by writing them.
Thought for the day 18/9/2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Reflecting on modesty. -- It is difficult to try to become truly or really modest, and to monitor or safeguard one's improvement by reflecting on one's actions. The natural inclination of even the moderately modest (reflective) person will be to be concerned about the possibility that any observation as to her progress might be marred by a self-congratulatory attitude: an attitude of being immodestly modest. Perhaps one can become truly modest only by learning not to think too much about it. (Honesty seems to have similar problems.)
Thought for the day 17/9/2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
"Des espaces autres". -- Every culture has spaces in which one can tell anyone anything and without any consequences: the moment the space is left behind, all participants instantly treat the confession as forgotten or as never having taken place. In Finland this space is the restaurant car. I have heard more tall sob stories on Finnish long-distance trains than in Finnish pubs, flats, offices, churches, summer houses and igloos put together. (Too bad I don't recall any of them.)
Thought for the day 16/9/2009
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Sic transit gloria mundi. -- Josef Labor was the Wittgenstein family's favorite composer. (There wasn't much else that Ludwig and his siblings ever managed to agree on.) Today only a single short piece by Labor can be heard and bought on a CD. And not even Kirchberg hosts "Labor-Festspiele".
Thought for the day 15/9/2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Grand old men. -- It is almost always disappointing to meet one of the grand old men of philosophy in person. The things they say in conversation are usually just pale copies of brilliant ideas familiar from their old publications. (But then again, most of us never publish any brilliant ideas at all, and we don't casually insert them into our conversations (or aphorisms) either.)
Thought for the day 14/9/2009
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Charity. -- Scholars who specialise in one of the philosophical giants of the past -- Kant, Hegel, Wittgenstein -- tend to be extraordinarily meticulous and generous when trying to make sense of their heroes' texts. But the same specialists are often unbelievably sloppy and unfair when they turn to interpreting other, later, philosophical writers who offer non-standard readings of their masters, criticise the latter, or announce new ideas of which (allegedly) the respective classics knew nothing. -- It is as if we each had only a limited amount of interpretational charity to spare, and as if the mentioned specialists had used theirs all up in the effort to prove the continuing philosophical relevance of their favourites.
Thought for the day 13/9/2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
De vous à moi. -- In 1988 I spent a couple of weeks in Jerusalem doing archival work for my doctoral dissertation. Jacques Derrida was attending a conference in Israel at the same time, and his Finnish translator arranged for me to meet "le maître de déconstruction" over a coffee. He was most kind and encouraging and didn't mind at all that my knowledge of his work was rather superficial. The only tense moment was due to my (simple-minded and flat-footed) insistence that he should pay more attention to analytic philosophy. "What -- you haven't read Kripke?" I exclaimed at one point. Derrida replied (ever so slightly annoyed): "I once started reading *Naming and Necessity* but I found it so trivial that I gave up after a few pages." (Ask a silly question, get a silly answer.)
Thought for the day 12/9/2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Philosophical imperialism. -- Wittgenstein says somewhere: "Die Methode der Philosophie ist, auf alle Stimmen zu hören und sie alle miteinander zu versöhnen." (Roughly: "It is the method of philosophy to listen to all views and to reconcile them all with each other".) One has to go back as far as Hegel to find a philosopher with a similar imperialistic ambition. But at least Hegel had the good sense to admit that "the feet of them which shall carry thee out are already at the door".
Thought for the day 11/9/2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The eleventh commandment. -- "Thou shalt not use an aphorism to ridicule philosophers who are still alive." -- Fair enough. But there are times when I succeed in honouring this demand only by having my children hide the laptop; by getting my wife to tie my hands to the bedposts; and by forcing myself to listen to an "Ocean Waves" relaxation CD.
Thought for the day 10/9/2009
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Material culture. -- What did the architects think they were doing when they replaced the old facade of the ground floor of 19 Berggasse with two big glass (shop) windows and a modern glass door? Why did they have to rob us of the possibility to recapture something of the original visual and tactile experience of walking up to Freud's front door and ring the bell ... with sweaty palms and trembling knees ... for a first psychoanalytic consultation?
Thought for the day 9/9/2009
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Disappointment. -- David Lewis once wrote: "'Why is there something rather than nothing?' -- 'If there were nothing, you wouldn't be here to ask the question.' Ask a silly question, get a silly answer ..." -- I don't deny for a moment that Lewis is one of the most important metaphysicians of recent times, but his quick dismissal of the ultimate metaphysical question as "silly" strikes me a disappointingly superficial.
Thought for the day 8/9/2009
Monday, September 07, 2009
Dream of fame. -- I long for the day when Nietzsche improves content and style of one of my aphorisms to such an extent that Mahler wants to set it to music.
Thought for the day 7/9/2009
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Lightness of Being. -- I think I understand what Heidegger means when he writes: "Erst wenn wir uns denkend dem schon Gedachten zuwenden, werden wir verwendet für das noch zu Denkende." (Roughly: "Only once we thinkingly turn towards the already-thought will we be tuned to the thinking-to-come.") What I want to know is this: Did Heidegger chuckle when he hit upon this nifty formulation? Or did he sigh deeply and pregnantly? If only the former were true!
Thought for the day 6/9/2009
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Philosophical amnesia. -- The "Arcadencafe" was one of the main meeting places for members of the Vienna Circle. Now it is called "Votiv Cafe"; Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe greet from pictures on the wall; and the current owner could not care less about history. All he remembers is that he bought the place six months ago, and that it had been a Bavarian beer garden before. -- But not all is lost of the tradition of the Arcadencafe: the espresso is cheap and excellent; it is fifty yards from the philosophy department; one notices the occasional customer clutching a text by Kant or Hegel; and I have made it "my second office" (but only when I think about "Protokollsätze" or "die Überwindung der Metaphysik").
Thought for the day 5/9/2009
Friday, September 04, 2009
Cheer up. -- Freud claims that "humanity, in recent times, has had to endure from the hands of science, three great outrages; three great outrages, upon its naïve self-love". Copernicus convinced us that we are not at the centre of the universe; Darwin showed us that we have common ancestors with the apes; and Freud himself made us realize that we are not even masters of our own minds. -- There is something strangely reassuring about Freud's idea: it is hard to imagine that any future scientific result could possibly humiliate us to the same degree again. We seem to have the worst behind us.
Thought for the day 4/9/2009
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Academic Leviathan. -- Academia can be as nasty as a Hobbesian state of nature would be -- if only it had a competitive promotion structure.
Thought for the day 3/9/2009
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
"Must Do Better." -- I am fascinated by philosophers who have the confidence to tell their colleagues where the discipline "ought to go" so as to be on the proper path of a science. I always feel transfixed for a while -- like a rabbit facing the hissing snake. But once the serpent is out of sight again, I hobble along as before, down my semi-scientific garden path.
Thought for the day 2/9/2009
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Viennese abundance. -- I have been walking straight past Beethoven's "Sterbehaus" every day for the last four weeks, and didn't even notice.
Thought for the day 1/9/2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
What Camus missed. -- Methinks Sisyphus complained too much: for heaven's sake, he only had a single boulder to push.
Thought for the day 31/8/2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
A problem shared is a problem halved. -- No-one dies alone: 0.8 other human beings and billions of animals die the very same second. A bit crowded at heaven's door. Are we supposed to take a number?
Thought for the day 30/8/2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
No-brainers. -- "Recent neurophysiological research has shown that our brains shrink when we suffer stress." Reading this news item made me realise how many of the people around me must have suffered severe stress for a very long period of time. (Okay, okay, me too ...)
Thought for the day 29/8/2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Contradiction. -- No other field of inquiry emphasises its universalistic credentials as much as philosophy does. And yet no other field of inquiry continues to be divided as much along linguistic and national borders.
Thought for the day 28/8/2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Helsinki and Vienna. -- You cannot live in Vienna without developing strong views about architecture (however little you understand of it). Here is one: What the Vienna skyline is lacking is a large dose of Alvar Aalto.
Thought for the day 27/8/2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Architectural arrogance? -- From an overheard conversation between two Spaniards in Vienna: "Hundertwasser = Gaudi + a few plants".
Thought for the day 26/8/2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Love and death. -- Does our death constitute such profound and total loss that it would be better never to have been born than to suffer it, and know of it? I dont't think so. First, faced with the two options of (A) being able to enjoy the love of my wife and children but facing death, and (B) never having been born, I certainly prefer (A). Second, I have always felt that there is something profoundly right about Proust's and Parfit's idea according to which there are many selves that successively live and die within us.
Thought for the day 25/8/2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Graffiti classifieds from along the Danube. -- "Car drivers are from Mars, cyclists are from Venus." "Cyclists are from Mars, pedestrians are from Venus." "Car driver seeks date with pedestrian. GSOH."
Thought for the day 24/8/2009
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Armistice. -- When two siblings agree on an answer, one of them hasn't listened to the question.
Thought for the day 23/8/2009
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Crime and Punishment. -- Maybe ornament really is crime; but then surely Loos' architecture is the punishment.
Thought for the day 22/8/2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Unwanted humour. -- From a notice in a Viennese registrar's office: "Newly-borns need proof of their nationality."
Thought for the day 21/8/2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Tying the knot. -- Whenever I knot my tie, I can't help remembering the millions who died at the gallows.
Thought for the day 20/8/2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Consolation. -- Every time I see an orthodox jew walking the streets of Leopoldstadt (in Vienna), it feels like a triumph of good over evil.
Thought for the day 19/8/2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
A city of contradictions. -- How can one and the same city honour its murdered Jewish citizens with such moving memorials and yet, at the same time, celebrate its notoriously racist former mayor, Karl Lueger, with pompous monuments and by naming one of its most important streets after him? (The official address of Vienna University is "Dr.-Karl-Lueger-Ring 1".)
Thought for the day 18/8/2009
Monday, August 17, 2009
Encounter. -- In the summer of 1988 I was permitted to visit Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg in order to discuss my doctoral dissertation with him. Our exchange began in his downtown university office in the middle of the afternoon. By nightfall we walked across the centre of town to a beautiful garden restaurant -- Gadamer leaning on my shoulder since he no longer felt secure on foot. There we continued our intense discussion for several hours, drinking wine in considerable quantities. I was no match for the great man, especially since my excitement about the encounter had prevented me from eating anything all day. Eventually Gadamer realised my precarious situation and walked me across the centre of town to a taxi stand -- with me leaning on his shoulder since I no longer felt secure on foot. It did not matter to him: we carried on the next day in his garden. And when I finally had asked all my questions, and he had become tired, I was allowed to mow his lawn. -- May he rest in peace.
Thought for the day 17/8/2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Analysis. -- Migraine feels like claustrophobia of the brain.
Thought for the day 16/8/2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
From your own correspondent. -- Opposite Freud's old home at Berggasse 19, there is now a mattress shop. The ad in the window reads: "Here you dream better."
Thought for the day 15/8/2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Positive thinking. -- You know that your life is going well when you wake up worrying about the starting line-up of your favourite football team.
Thought for the day 14/8/2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Against hubris. -- It is sometimes said that even an "idealized future physics" will offer no more than "extensions" of our current physics, and leave the latter's basic principles in place. This confidence puzzles me. We have only done physics for a few centuries and its basic assumptions have been overthrown many times. Is it plausible then that in
500, 1000, 5000 or 10000 years future generations will still be working within the basic parameters of our physics? I cannot even begin to make sense of a "yes" here; I cannot even make a prima facie case for it.
Thought for the day 13/8/2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Social pathology. -- Disrespect is the cancer of the social body.
Thought for the day 12/8/2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Liars. -- Who lies more: children to parents or parents to children? The case is far from clear.
Thought for the day 11/8/2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Whose Vienna? -- Janik's and Toulmin's *Wittgenstein's Vienna* is still the best guide to the many late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Viennese ideas to which Wittgen- stein paid attention. But Janik and Toulmin give us only one half of the balance sheet. We also need to note the numerous important, and frequently dangerous, artistic, intellectual, and political developments that Wittgenstein ignored. They too tell us a lot about his thinking -- especially its blinkers. An excellent source here is Brigitte Hamann's *Hitler's Vienna*.
Thought for the day 10/8/2009
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Non-philosophical observation. --- Naval-gazing is easy when you are six months pregnant.
Thought for the day 9/8/2009
Saturday, August 08, 2009
False authenticity. -- Many philosophers think it vane and inauthentic to practice their talks. As if a stuttering and obscure delivery were more authentic and more likely to be true.
Thought for the day 8/8/2009
Friday, August 07, 2009
Advice. -- It's not enough to work like a mule -- you have to stop thinking like one.
Thought for the day 7/8/2009
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Academic life. -- Not a greasy pole: greasy bars.
Thought for the day 6/8/2009
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Plus ça change ... -- In the 1970s we were warned by scientists that a new ice age was imminent. By the 1990s we learnt to fear a catastrophic global warming. That’s how quickly the climate has changed.
Thought for the day 5/8/2009
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Therapeutic advice. -- Ignore thyself as you ignore thy neighbour.
Thought for the day 4/8/2009
Monday, August 03, 2009
A thought from the Berggasse in Vienna. -- We all want to be understood -- but not too deeply.
Thought for the day 3/8/2009
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Social Paradox. -- The paradox of social beings like us is that we need, in our dealings with our loved ones, precisely those sensitivities that make us vulnerable in our encounters with enemies.
Thought for the day 2/8/2009
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Love. -- Plato says that we love those whose company we believe will make us better human beings. Perhaps. But the reverse is certainly not true: I can love someone without believing that my company makes her a better human being.
Thought for the day 1/8/2009
Saturday, August 01, 2009
Trivial observation. -- Most philosophers take criticism like a man: badly.
Thought for the day 31/7/2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Philosophical hypothesis. -- It is surprising that the Wittgenstein industry has paid so little attention to the numerous family resemblances between Wittgenstein and Kafka.
Thought for the day 26/7/2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
A thought for the road.-- A lot of great philosophers have moved from Vienna to Cambridge, London, and Oxford. Maybe it is time that a small philosopher travels in the opposite direction.
Thought for the day 25/7/2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Advice to the Wittgensteinians. -- Remember to climb down the ladder before you have it thrown away.
Thought for the day 24/7/09
Thursday, July 23, 2009
What philosophers tend to miss. -- Most coffins could do with less nails.
Thought for the day 23/7/09
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Dilemma. -- When a student disagrees with me, I worry that I am a bad philosopher. When a student agrees with me, I worry that I am a bad teacher.
Thought for the day 22/7/09
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Boundary work. -- Write a single philosophical book, and philosophers will count you as one of them. Publish ten philosophical books and one sociological essay, and philosophers will say: “he is really a sociologist”.