Things are bad in Britain today. This is dawning on me. We could blame it on the slavish middle Englanders with their Daily Mail and their ressentiment; we could blame it on the the complete dominance of capitalism - a dominance which has no outside, which rules out any conception of true opposition. Everything has become "recuperable", in the language of the marxists. Culture, literature, film: all reduced to commodities. Of course this has been said many times before. But the horror of it can only be appreciated when it is experienced, when one is struck by the realisation that all those dark claims about this and that sorry state of affairs, were not simplifications or mistaken misanthropy. We can shrug when sitting on the bus, listening to M shouting about how London winning the Olympics and the philosophy of mind coup d'etat in our department are "the same thing." Except that I am realising, for all the silliness of it, that maybe he was right.
I had the radio on in the background the other evening, when a programme began. It was called Composer's Notes. "Ah", I thought, "maybe I can learn a thing or two about music." Can you imagine my dismay at discovering, within a few seconds, that the show was all about how much money a composer was paid for his work.
"Rimsky-Korsakov: rich or poor? Let's find out!" To this, I can say only one thing - Firing squad.
In other news. The latest departmental shenanigans have developed out of two issues: i) the gradual metamorphosis of the 'history of philosophy' into the 'history of British philosophy'. Less Spinoza and Leibniz, more Hobbes, Mill, Bentham etc, and Kant being made optional for joint honours students and pushed into the final year (if my memory serves me correctly - I do have more important things to think about, you know). What follows from this is that Post-Kantian philosophy gets completely marginalised, and will eventually fall away completely.
And ii) a ridiculous selection panel for the new 'aesthetics' post in the department. Dave Distiller knows his mind, but I doubt he knows anything about the philosophy of art. 'Analytic aesthetics' is a contradictio in adjecto if ever there was one.
While those cunning guttersnipes are raping and pillaging their way through the prospects for continental philosophy next year, this year's students have arranged an interdisciplinary football match. Think of the game played between Tommy and the Fritz on Christmas day during WWI. Except that this is more like WWII, in terms of enmity and war crimes.
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