Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Fundamentally unsound


Reading submissions for a conference that I shall not name, I was hit by several inane, content-free sentences that bloat the importance of the papers using incomprehensible jargon... and it struck me, PGW had said it best:
I had got as far as this in thinking the thing out when that `Types of Ethical Theory' caught my eye. I opened it, and I give you my honest word this was what hit me:
Of the two antithetic terms in the Greek philosophy one only was real and self-subsisting; and that one was Ideal Thought as opposed to that which it has to penetrate and mould. The other, corresponding to our Nature, was in itself phenomenal, unreal, without any permanent footing, having no predicates that held true for two moments together; in short, redeemed from negation only by including indwelling realities appearing through.
Well --- I mean to say --- what? And Nietzsche, from all accounts, a lot worse than that!