5 responses so far ↓

• 1 Jim Henley // Jan 20, 2007 at 5:58 pm

  I thought you said you weren’t (very) gay.

• 2 Rue Des Quatre Vents // Jan 22, 2007 at 4:18 pm

  You genuflect before strange altars. (Not to mention with clever young man analogies which might win you a place at a cool lunch table.) Read the review of Williams’ books in TNR by Blackburn. It serves as a good reminder of how inadequate academic philosophy is: you have a stale but intelligent English professor pretending, in equitone, to mimic the moral pose of the Regency literati, bestowing accolades on some marginal academic who has the smell of a good club. Underneath all of it, Blackburn, Williams and others, runs a lesson we should remind ourselves of from time to time. “The striving for an irrevelevant precision served only to exclude from philosophy most of the questions of philosophy.”

• 3 Julian // Jan 22, 2007 at 10:02 pm

  Well, that certainly puts paid to Williams’ views on opera, I’m sure. But I wonder: To which table do an affected superciliousness and a ready supply of obscure Marshall McLuhan quotations win one an invitation?

• 4 Rue Des Quatre Vents // Jan 23, 2007 at 1:28 am

  Well, certainly not one in All Souls, let alone the Ryle Room. But then again, Williams’ picture graces that wall to remind you of that. At any rate, if think Williams isn’t marginal, then you’re heading in the wrong direction. I fully grant you some of the vitrues his essays and books have shown. But I’m willing to wager he’ll be completely forgotten in 20 years–revived only here and there in footnotes. This point becomes comical in light of TNR’s subtitle for the Blackburn piece: “How one man changed the meaning of human reason.”
  Come on! That “Internal vs External Reasons” article didn’t change anything.

• 5 Julian Sanchez // Jan 23, 2007 at 5:15 pm

  I find Williams an interesting thinker and an engaging writer; this is not contingent on whether posterity determines him to have been a figure of World Historical Significance.