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Monthly Archives: October 2011

A Philosophy Paper Start To Finish: Pt. 2, What We Talk About When We Talk About Philosophy Papers

Sunday, October 30, 2011

I always begin a class with grandiose plans. I decide that not only will I — of course — read and understand whatever is required, but I will also contextualize the whole by powering through a given philosopher’s full corpus. Then, about a month later, the realization hits me that I’ve been dithering around in [...]

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A Philosophy Paper Start To Finish: Pt. 1, Situating the Project

Saturday, October 29, 2011

My friend, the maphman, has been liveblogging the composition of an “analytic exposition” paper for his MA studies. I like the way this sort of self-exposure serves the ideal of representing concrete individual modes of scholarship — as the Mills quote, which I won’t bore you by repeating yet again, promotes. So I thought that [...]

Filed in 20th Century Philosophy, Education, Gratuitous Advice, Materialities of Intellectual Life, Mereology, On Academia, On Me, On Writing, Phenomenology | Tagged , | Comments (2)

One Thing At A Time

Friday, October 28, 2011

A while back I wrote about the organizational epiphany that I don’t have to work on the subject matter for every class every day, now that I’m in grad school. (Instead, I can dwell for several days on one subject; I can really get properly ruminative.) I’ve had a further and related insight. When one’s [...]

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Some Thoughts on BC’s MA Comps Exam

Thursday, October 27, 2011

As a PhD candidate in philosophy at Boston College, I’m required to take the MA comps exam at the end of my first year of study. MA students take this exam at the end of their third year, having had plenty of time to study the reading list — which is really quite extensive. Having [...]

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A Brief Triangulation of Plato On Law

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Perverse as ever, having left an academic domain where Calvin was the unchallenged saint, to enter one where saints are the unchallenged saints, I am now just as aggravatingly liable to drag a Calvinist idea into a discussion as I used to be to drag a Thomistic one in. Yesterday, for example, discussing the important [...]

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…rarely any calls for vivid writing…

Sunday, October 23, 2011

The one sentence refutation of those who confuse the excellence of Graham Harman’s philosophical style — and other excellent philosopher-stylists — with a dry rigor that depends upon naive over-assumptions of intersubjectivity: There are too many calls in philosophy for clear writing, but rarely any calls for vivid writing. From: An interview with Graham Harman

Filed in Commonplace Book, On Writing | Tagged | Comments (1)

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: An Excursus on the Materialities of Intellectual Life

Saturday, October 22, 2011

It’s odd of me to report that I’m up at 1am on Saturday morning because I’m enthralled by a book about running. But when this book is by Haruki Murakami, and when this book turns out, in fact, to be a perfect example of the kind of memoir that takes account of the materialities of [...]

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