From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk Date: Fri, 03 May 1996 11:12:16 +0100 Subject: Re: Bhaskar and Bad Writing... Dave, Congratulations. I must be perverse, but I actually like these rambling all-embracing tirades. They seem to have a life all of their own, dragging you in, forcing you, without drawing breath, to indulge yourself. It almost like being on a roller-coaster. Can you _feel_ the speed. > >As some of you may recally I entered some sentences from _Plato etc._ >in the PHIL-LIT bad writing contest. Yesterday I heard the following: > >> The PHIL-LIT/_Philosophy and Literature_ Bad Writing Contest: >> Results for round two. > >> First prize goes to David Spurrett of the University of Natal in >> South Africa. He found this marvelous sentence--yes, it's but one >> sentence--from Roy Bhaskar's _Plato etc: The Problems of Philosophy >> and Their Resolution_ (Verso, 1994): > >> "Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of >> Foucauldian strategic reversal--of the unholy trinity of >> Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian- >> Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, >> fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, >> capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other >> ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old >> alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, >> ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy >> with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by >> Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist >> monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling >> dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute >> idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean >> eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism >> through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a >> Baudrillard." > >Says the list-owner: > >> It's a splendid bit of prose and I'm certain many of us will now >> attempt to read it aloud without taking a breath. The jacket blurb, >> incidentally, informs us that this is the author's "most accessible >> book to date." > >Just thought you'd like to know. >The "Instant Intellectual" >(just add funding) >--------------------------------- > Say that you do no work, > and that you will live forever. > - Ezra Pound > -------------------------------------------------------- Colin Wight Department of International Politics University of Wales, Aberystwyth Aberystwyth SY23 3DA --------------------------------------------------------
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