josh blog

Ordinary language is all right.

One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.

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13 May '13 04:36:45 AM

'Show them life…'

11 May '13 04:13:33 AM

'Thesis Fifteen: Philosophical progress is not made by patiently carrying out research programs to the end. Such programs all eventually trickle into the sands. It is made by great imaginative feats. These are performed by people like Hegel or Wittgenstein who tell us that a picture has been holding us captive. Many people on both sides of the analytic-continental split are spending much of their time waiting for Godot. They hope someone will do for us what Philosophical Investigations or Being and Time did for our predecessors—wake us from what we belatedly realize to have been dogmatic slumber.'

11 May '13 04:11:03 AM

'Thesis Twelve: Sometimes those who walk away from worn-out disciplinary matrices offer new philosophical research programs, as Descartes and Carnap did. Sometimes they do not, as in the cases of Montaigne and Heidegger. But research programs are not essential to philosophy. They are of course a great boon to the professionalization of philosophy as an academic specialty. But greater professionalization should not be confused with intellectual progress, any more than a nation's economic or military might should be confused with its contribution to civilization.'

11 May '13 01:52:37 AM

Timothy Burke on generosity and trust in teaching and advising.

9 May '13 06:40:36 PM

'The worms Thoreau-ize their hosts…'

4 May '13 01:52:31 AM

'… intended for introverted people to give a kind of performance for themselves…'

4 May '13 01:30:06 AM

'No one here is saved, no one totally lost.'

3 May '13 10:10:24 PM

Yeah, or sleet, OK, better.

3 May '13 04:55:37 PM

Snow.