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Re: any views on book reviews
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Hi Andy,
If you haven't already started your review of On Grammatology, then I'd say
say go for it!
I recently attended a talk on continental philosophy, at which the speaker
made two rather interesting points (amongst others):
1. The ratio of book reviews to papers in English speaking philosophy
journals has reversed over the course of the 20th Century as people shifted
away from continental philosophy (which tends to concentrate on entire
systems of thought, typically described at length in the form of a book)
and towards analytic philosophy (which tends to concentrate on tackling
specific, narrowly defined problems within an existing theoretical
framework, and usually takes the form of individual papers). Of course,
this is a huge generalisation, but there does seem to have been a decline
in the number of book reviews, which is perhaps due to the adoption of an
explicitly scientific model of progress in Anglo-American philosophy as a
whole.
2. Continental philosophy often proceeds by reinterpreting and
re-evaluating existing philosophical works in order to create a new or more
historically relevant understanding of the issues in question. Thus,
elucidating a particular interpretation or aspect of a philosophers work is
seen as a vitally important source of philosophical progress, rather than
being thought of as a purely derivative or unoriginal activity, as may be
the case in more analytic circles. Unfortunately this leaves continental
philosophy open to the charge that it is basically just a historical
discipline, but this criticism surely misses the point.
Being a continentalist yourself, you no doubt already knew all that, but it
suggests to me that the book review is a much underrated format, and that
writing about a 40-year old -- or 2,400-year old, for that matter -- book
can be just as much a source of good philosophy as writing conventional
analytic papers. (I'm sure others will shoot me down in flames for saying
that, but such is life...)
It's all about keeping it alive, and let's face it, what is philosophy but
a series of revisions and reinterpretations of the same questions that the
Greeks were asking 2,500 years ago, and others before them?
Yours controversially,
Keith.
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