Подтвердите e-mail

Для публикаций, комментариев, реакций и сообщений подтвердите адрес.

←

Публикация

Предыдущая публикация
Pete Wolfendale

This isn’t to say I learned nothing from the other side. I learned a lot from Bill Brewer’s peculiarly Berklean approach to philosophy of perception and the history of empiricism. He once complimented me on being Humean, but I made the mistake of mentioning Derrida and his eyes visibly glazed over.

120
Pete Wolfendale

I also learned a lot from Stephen Butterfill in philosophy of language and logic (particularly the problem of vagueness), though my views and my exam answers in the latter did not necessarily reflect an honest engagement with what I took to be wrong about the standard semantic approaches.

Обсуждение

1 прямых ответов · 14 сообщений

Pete Wolfendale

But my favourite anecdote about Warwick is that, after being introduced to Brandom by a sufficiently open minded McDowellian ethics TA, I later discovered at least 9 copies of it on the shelves of various department members, but only Stephen Houlgate had read more than a couple chapters.

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
Pete Wolfendale

Which brings me to Stephen, the living avatar of Hegel on Earth. He probably had a bigger impact on me than any other single member of staff besides Greg, teaching me at both BA and MA levels. My greatest PG regret is that I did not pick him as a PhD supervisor. He’s an intellectual force of nature.

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
Pete Wolfendale

There was a moment during one week of Stephen’s course on the Science of Logic when during the discussion I observed that most philosopher (Aristotle, Husserl, Kripke) understand essence through identity and necessity and Hegel does the exact opposite. Stephen said this was a PhD thesis question.

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
Pete Wolfendale

What might have been. But just as with important insights learned from Greg, David, and others, it has taken me more than 15 years to really appreciate the deep structure underlying that observation, so maybe I’ll finally write the thesis (or at least the paper) I should have written back then.

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
Pete Wolfendale

Other members of the department on the continental side worth a few stories of their own that alas I can’t spend my night telling: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Peter Pollner, Christine Battersby, and Darren Ambrose (who taught me aesthetics on sabbatical cover, and much besides).

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
Pete Wolfendale

The graduated community were wonderful, and for all I am ragging on Derrideans, I miss the company of Simon Fuller, who is sadly no longer with us, and the motley crew of PhD students who we would spend long nights talking with well before I even hit my MA. Not to mention the UG crew.

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
Pete Wolfendale

What I don’t miss is getting trapped in circular arguments with people who think these circles are somehow enlightening. Though I must say that Lacanians and Laruellians can give Derrideans a run for their money in this regard. So maybe I’ll make my peace with Derrida eventually.

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
Pete Wolfendale

I don't know if @lastpositivist.bsky.social would enjoy this thread or not, but worth trying as I'm pulling ex-Warwick people into the conversation.

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
gypsydave5

I will continue the reminiscence with a mention of how much I loved working with Christine. Most of my friends did not get along with her, but by accident she supervised my undergraduate dissertation (Nietzsche and Presocratics) and we had a whale of a time with it.

Ответ для gypsydave5
gypsydave5

She was also excellent on Kant and the first critique, really teaching it almost like a novel, thinking about the structure of the book, the machinery, the plays. Wonderful.

Ответ для gypsydave5
gypsydave5

But the funniest thing I heard was to a third year seminar who were arguing away about something continental, and then in a pause Christine sighed and said that it was obvious that after three years they hadn't really understood anything. Loved her to bits.

Ответ для gypsydave5
Pete Wolfendale

I did her graduate course on the Critique of Teleological Judgement, which is always the piece of Kant people look over, and it made a huge impression on me. I combined it with her Foucault course and wrote 24,000 word double essay that she entirely reasonably refused to mark, but I got to resubmit.

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
gypsydave5

I can imagine the look on her face 😂

Ответ для Pete Wolfendale
gypsydave5

Indeed. I think things would have gone better for me too with that wonderfully cheerful Hegelian instead of trying to be all edgy. Oh well.