‘everything said amid the games and niceties of academia is ‘somehow beside the point’, and that anything interesting or important is out of place, I guess because it doesn’t quite fit in the rules of the game.’
I’m also taking a year off academia while applying for PhD study, and though my field is history I found this piece resonated entirely with my own experience. The rejection of feminised forms of criticism, informal discussion in place of formal structures which no one really gets much out of, the desire to ‘prove’ the value of the humanities by stripping some of their crucial components (especially where scientific subjects are prized). I could go on and am sure you could too. Thank you for such a beautifully articulated piece.
Side note: when I took political philosophy classes as an undergrad, a (male) tutor once responded to my point by saying ‘that’s more in the field of critical than analytic philosophy. We don’t really do that here’.
Thank you for saying this! I'm glad it resonated with you. and that phrase, "We don't really do that here", works great as an illustration of the academic attitude i find frustrating haha
I love this. I have had this debate before about Anna Karenina. I read it and loved the book (and loathed the characters). I eventually summed it up as "A long story about a mentally ill woman in a terminally sick society."
It was her obvious mental illness that was the story. It was not, for me, a love story because healthy love was not possible in that society and with her psyche. I like that you call it a question of moral philosophy, but I am not sure the question of whether she had to die even matters. She died, and the story made her desperation believable - so the story is whether it was a "rational" act or just like so many suicides in real life, the momentarily rational act of an irrational mind.
Beauitful, and really nailed the exact pain in my heart. I'm taking a year off from applying for a PHD because I've had the exact same issue. A law student turned MA philosophy student spent 3 hours with me just talking in the law gardens and I feel like I had garnered more information on everything from international trade to sacred music than I had done in an entire module dedicated to law and philosophy - that was regimented in order of speakers and strict "logical only" arguements. One lecturer wrote down all our backgrounds/interests but when it came to actual presentation marking or seminars; this was all thrown out of the window for vague disjunctivism shakesphere thought experiments in which the artist in the room was in utter despair at any notion of the "artist eye" being thrown out, At the end of it, only one the 11 MA students only 1 went to continue on into philosophy (who was a peak professional, yes man, didn't do the reading but knew how to write what the lecturer wanted), Everyone's diversity, everyone's "encounter" gone in the wind. Any sort of colliding wills, the fun ad hoc attacks because someone liked Chomsky said in good faith. The comraderie against a lecturer who said "autists" , the much much older professor who everyone would listen to his stories as he shared biscuits with us. those are the treasured things that should've been recorded in our essays, but never was. How crippling it was for students to say "just write what they want, stop writing what you want" when a lecturer sits there with a smile telling they want soulful insights while maligning everything as "not philosophy". I saw the damn philosophy happening with smiles and fights!
I recognize that my experience was about her as a human and relative to my own life and the lives of those I have encountered. Removing that context takes all the life out of the book. At that point who the f cares whether she needed to die, she's a fictional character!
‘everything said amid the games and niceties of academia is ‘somehow beside the point’, and that anything interesting or important is out of place, I guess because it doesn’t quite fit in the rules of the game.’
I’m also taking a year off academia while applying for PhD study, and though my field is history I found this piece resonated entirely with my own experience. The rejection of feminised forms of criticism, informal discussion in place of formal structures which no one really gets much out of, the desire to ‘prove’ the value of the humanities by stripping some of their crucial components (especially where scientific subjects are prized). I could go on and am sure you could too. Thank you for such a beautifully articulated piece.
Side note: when I took political philosophy classes as an undergrad, a (male) tutor once responded to my point by saying ‘that’s more in the field of critical than analytic philosophy. We don’t really do that here’.
Thank you for saying this! I'm glad it resonated with you. and that phrase, "We don't really do that here", works great as an illustration of the academic attitude i find frustrating haha
I love this. I have had this debate before about Anna Karenina. I read it and loved the book (and loathed the characters). I eventually summed it up as "A long story about a mentally ill woman in a terminally sick society."
It was her obvious mental illness that was the story. It was not, for me, a love story because healthy love was not possible in that society and with her psyche. I like that you call it a question of moral philosophy, but I am not sure the question of whether she had to die even matters. She died, and the story made her desperation believable - so the story is whether it was a "rational" act or just like so many suicides in real life, the momentarily rational act of an irrational mind.
ever read heidegger?
yes :) why do you ask?
Felt like his thought, or at least as it's been explained to me through reading Charles taylor
Beauitful, and really nailed the exact pain in my heart. I'm taking a year off from applying for a PHD because I've had the exact same issue. A law student turned MA philosophy student spent 3 hours with me just talking in the law gardens and I feel like I had garnered more information on everything from international trade to sacred music than I had done in an entire module dedicated to law and philosophy - that was regimented in order of speakers and strict "logical only" arguements. One lecturer wrote down all our backgrounds/interests but when it came to actual presentation marking or seminars; this was all thrown out of the window for vague disjunctivism shakesphere thought experiments in which the artist in the room was in utter despair at any notion of the "artist eye" being thrown out, At the end of it, only one the 11 MA students only 1 went to continue on into philosophy (who was a peak professional, yes man, didn't do the reading but knew how to write what the lecturer wanted), Everyone's diversity, everyone's "encounter" gone in the wind. Any sort of colliding wills, the fun ad hoc attacks because someone liked Chomsky said in good faith. The comraderie against a lecturer who said "autists" , the much much older professor who everyone would listen to his stories as he shared biscuits with us. those are the treasured things that should've been recorded in our essays, but never was. How crippling it was for students to say "just write what they want, stop writing what you want" when a lecturer sits there with a smile telling they want soulful insights while maligning everything as "not philosophy". I saw the damn philosophy happening with smiles and fights!
I recognize that my experience was about her as a human and relative to my own life and the lives of those I have encountered. Removing that context takes all the life out of the book. At that point who the f cares whether she needed to die, she's a fictional character!