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    Eileen Joy on uncharitable reading

    Very nice meditation on the "necessary of generous reading" by Joy HERE. I'm happy to let Joy have the last word* on the latest imbroglio over Nathan Brown's attempted polemic.** I found Joy's post to manifest what it preaches, but to be helpful to people like me who so often fall short of the explicated norms, and to be intellectually interesting in in its own right (especially given that many of the citations will be new to philosophy professors).

    *Along with David Wallace.

    **Which as a genre is generally imbecilic independent of Brown's attempt at engaging in it. I should say that my greatest professional regret involves the overly polemical nature of a couple of my earliest publications, and that I have friends with much better CVs than me that have the same feeling with respect to earlier pieces of their own. In a future blog post I'll expand on the imbecility of all polemic without mentioning any of the examples under current consideration.

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    6 responses to “Eileen Joy on uncharitable reading”

    1. Dyssebeia.wordpress.com Avatar
      Dyssebeia.wordpress.com

      I share most of your skepticism of polemic, but not all of it. Surely (some of) the work of Feyerabend shows that polemic can be realized in a fruitful manner. Then again he is the only example I can bring to mind of polemic done well.

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    2. Dyssebeia.wordpress.com Avatar
      Dyssebeia.wordpress.com

      Since I can’t edit my comment, I’ll add a further reflection: Feyerabend regrets at the start of one of his essays that he wrote it in a fit of self-righteousness (I forget which essay, sadly)—I think it may be his general avoidance of self-righteousness that makes his polemics valuable. Even though they were clearly polemical in style, the attitude with which he put them forth was along these lines: the only way to find out if what I think is mistaken is to present it to you (a paraphrase from the introduction of the same essay). I might call what he was doing polemic without the polemical mood.

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    3. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Ironically, one of my first internet polemics was on how we ought to do away with object-oriented ontology.* It’s a view I still have, but I don’t really talk about the alternative I envision largely because I didn’t think anyone else was interested in having that sort of conversation.
      I guess sometimes it’s nice to hear a polemic just to know somebody still cares.
      * Mandatory asterisk.

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    4. Terence Blake Avatar
      Terence Blake

      From Feyerabend “Experts in a Free Society”:”Let me start with a confession. I wrote this paper in a fit of anger and self-righteousness caused by what I thought were certain disastrous developments in the sciences. The paper will therefore sound a little harsh, and it will perhaps also be a little unjust. Now while I think that self-righteousness has no positive function whatever and while I am convinced that it can only add to the fear and to the tensions that already exist, I also think that a little anger can on occasions be a good thing and can make us see our surroundings more clearly”. (in Philosophical Papers, vol 3, p 112).

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    5. Dyssebeia.wordpress.com Avatar
      Dyssebeia.wordpress.com

      Thanks much, Terence.

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    6. Eileen Joy Avatar
      Eileen Joy

      I can agree that polemic, as a genre, should not be 100% avoided — after all, I am a pluralist. I also love the idea of a self-conscious polemic, such as those penned by Feyerabend: lovely quote that Terence provided as well. Anger has its place, as I’m well aware, but I also caution us to question whether anger is necessary in certain intellectual debates, the outcome of which goes no further than, say, how to read a text, or how to formulate a philosophy. Did Socrates and his interlocutors yell and scream at each other? No, although there were certainly passionate outbursts [think of Alcibiades at that famous banquet scene in the Symposium, and his tirade is actually beautifully instructive, and I’ve even written on that: http://www.siue.edu/~ejoy/On_Being-FuckedUp_KZoo2010.html%5D. Mainly, even when our ire rises in our throats and minds, I want us to consider more charitable ways to disagree, because I believe academic and intellectual life is a shared endeavour, and not a battle of minds [although some enjoy the boxing ring, wile others of us are trying to avoid getting in the way of the punches].

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