Off-topic, I continue to marvel at the ferocity of people who are promoting an esoteric intellectual idea that is somehow understood to be good in some absolute sense. OK, so everybody is doing it, but a sense of history could be of value. Terry Eagleton writes in a book review in the New Statesman:
We inherit the idea of the intellectual from the 18th-century Enlightenment, which valued truth, universality and objectivity – all highly suspect notions in a postmodern age. As Furedi points out, these ideas used to be savaged by the political right, as they undercut appeals to prejudice, hierarchy and custom. Nowadays, in a choice historical irony, they are under assault from the cultural left.
It’s strange, but so it goes.
The best part of that article for me is “One mark of the classical intellectual (more recently dubbed a “theorist”) was that he or she refused to be pinned to a single discipline. Instead, the idea was to bring ideas critically to bear on social life as a whole… In fact, a snap definition of an intellectual would be “more or less the opposite of an academic” ”
His book “Figures of Dissent” is quite splendid along similar lines, I think, examining figures that have a bit of trouble surrounding them… although I’m still waiting for the definitive 400-page dissection on academic in-fighting. Apparently Derrida punched a student once.
The problem – or so it seems to me – is often that coming up with a great idea often entails the temptation to make universalist claims. When these claims are shown to be bogus the entire theory falls dramatically into discredit.
An example: Behaviorism clearly has a lot going for it but also has a bad name because Skinner and his co-conspirators fancied the idea that ALL learning could be described using the model.
Thus, much academic discussion in fact hinges on (stupid) universalist interpretations of theories that, when applied more locally, in fact make a lot of sense.
Are you Jesper recommending this review or not? I personally found it extremely confused.
I haven’t read the book, so I can’t really comment on the review as such – just thought it had a few interesting points.
Jonas – Where exactly did these extremist claims about learning appear? The fact that you refer to Skinner’s “co-conspirators” leads me to believe that you simply made it up. Aside from that, it wasn’t the universal application of behaviorism that was troublesome (to some), rather it was the idea of applying its theories specifically to language which was objectionable — to a certain group of modern linguists.
B. RICKMAN:
“Jonas – Where exactly did these extremist claims about learning appear? The fact that you refer to Skinner?s ?co-conspirators? leads me to believe that you simply made it up. Aside from that, it wasn?t the universal application of behaviorism that was troublesome (to some), rather it was the idea of applying its theories specifically to language which was objectionable ? to a certain group of modern linguists. ”
Forget about the co-conspirators and think about Skinner himself. He overemphazised the extent to which learning can be understood in stimulus-response terms. Which may have obscured the fact that _some_ learning can surely be understood in this way.
Oh, and your reference to a “certain group of linguists” leads me to assume that you simply made it up.
– Jonas