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Nur ich und ich und ich und Tinitus
Dec. 10th, 2011 01:32 pm
Currently at Toronto Pearson: -2.
Here is the kind of thing that, from time to time, I write and then delete:
I have just come across, in Christopher Hitchens, a stylistic affectation that drives me up the wall, and it drives me to despair that Hitchens is doing it and the editors of Vanity Fair are allowing it: rendering "God" with a lower-case "g" (thus putting this "god" on a level with, for instance, bell hooks and e.e. cummings--careful now, perhaps God should be so lucky). Every time my students do that, to demonstrate their atheistic enlightenment, I note: "capitalize 'God' as proper name". I refrain from adding: "Do you insist upon 'santa claus', or, for that matter, 'harry potter'?"
Because what, after all, is the good to be served by saying that out loud, or anything much, really. (Actually, I'm especially reluctant to say that sort of thing anymore, because it makes it sound like I think my students, collectively speaking, are stupid and I dislike them, which, perhaps surprisingly, is not true.)
I spent some time yesterday fretting over whether I ought to include in my profile on my PhD program's alumni page sentences such as: "In October 2011, he caught an 18.5-inch smallmouth bass", and "Like Kierkegaard, he believes that the growth of advanced statistical metrics in baseball is symptomatic of petty-bourgeois spiritlessness", and "His current research is directed toward apprehending and describing the form of the good; when this project is complete, he will reluctantly consider becoming a philosopher-king." For a while, I prefaced the whole thing with: "One of [Dr. C.'s] ongoing concerns is with what it means to be properly serious in philosophy, and life."
I have just now written and deleted some stuff about All Things Shining. And so on.
Here is the kind of thing that, from time to time, I write and then delete:
I have just come across, in Christopher Hitchens, a stylistic affectation that drives me up the wall, and it drives me to despair that Hitchens is doing it and the editors of Vanity Fair are allowing it: rendering "God" with a lower-case "g" (thus putting this "god" on a level with, for instance, bell hooks and e.e. cummings--careful now, perhaps God should be so lucky). Every time my students do that, to demonstrate their atheistic enlightenment, I note: "capitalize 'God' as proper name". I refrain from adding: "Do you insist upon 'santa claus', or, for that matter, 'harry potter'?"
Because what, after all, is the good to be served by saying that out loud, or anything much, really. (Actually, I'm especially reluctant to say that sort of thing anymore, because it makes it sound like I think my students, collectively speaking, are stupid and I dislike them, which, perhaps surprisingly, is not true.)
I spent some time yesterday fretting over whether I ought to include in my profile on my PhD program's alumni page sentences such as: "In October 2011, he caught an 18.5-inch smallmouth bass", and "Like Kierkegaard, he believes that the growth of advanced statistical metrics in baseball is symptomatic of petty-bourgeois spiritlessness", and "His current research is directed toward apprehending and describing the form of the good; when this project is complete, he will reluctantly consider becoming a philosopher-king." For a while, I prefaced the whole thing with: "One of [Dr. C.'s] ongoing concerns is with what it means to be properly serious in philosophy, and life."
I have just now written and deleted some stuff about All Things Shining. And so on.
