Subject: Re: Quest.
Date: Sun, 6 May 2001 19:10:03 +0100


Tom,

At the risk of having you think me an agressive and overly combative
non-academic boor, spoiling the sweetness and light of the spirit of
intellectual pluralism, (and in an attempt to keep this thread afloat) I must
pick you up on something you said:

>Should the initial question precipitating this discussion be taken
hyper-literally?

What was the initial question?

> >"What is Bourdieu's most significant contribution to philosophy?"

You say my understanding of this question is not only literal but hyper-literal,
excessively literal. What is it to take something literally? Among several
things, it is to take it at face value, or according to its standard usage,
rather than figuratively. So the charge of hyperliteralism amounts to the charge
of being obtuse in not seeing the figurative -- metaphorical, allegorical,
synecdochic -- meaning of the question above. Philosophy, then, in the
sentence above is not to be taken in its normal sense. It is instead a figure, a
metaphor, a trope, at all events not the crudely literal thing I take it to be.
But what -- for heaven's sake! -- could it be standing for? What could this
already excessively abstract and amorphous thing, philosophy, be a metaphor for?

Still more puzzling, the question does not -- on the superficial face of it --
ask what the relation of Bourdieu's thought is to philosophy but wants to know
what his "most significant contribution" to the literal-figurative thing is;
i.e. the unmistakable implication is that Bourdieu has made some
contributions to philosophy, one of which can be judged most significant. Most
people -- I mean, people in my non-academic, "rhetorically flat" neck of the
woods -- would take this to mean philosophy in its literal, oh-so-concrete
sense. How do you understand it? Do tell.

Regards
Simon










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