Some passages are too delicious not to quote (do you catch my meaning?):There are obvious difficulties with presenting the arguments in the original works of Derrida or Lacan, or Baudrillard. They do not write in any natural language, they do not put the premises before the conclusion, the conclusion is distributed over the text rather than appearing in any one sentence, positions are assumed to have been established outside the texts one is actually reading, in previous texts, or perhaps future ones, and so on.James Franklin, What Science Knows and How It knows It 42 (Encounter Books 2009).
For some unknown reason, Franklin's comments about postmodern folk put me in mind of a different kind of strange philosophy -- J.L. Austin's. Austin's "ordinary language" philosophy is still thought of as having been a respectable sort of thing. But some of Austin's extraordinary ordinary language can make one wonder why:
Are cans constitutionally iffy? Whenever, that is, we say that we can do something, or could do something, or could have done something, is there an if in the offing—suppressed, it may be, but due nevertheless to appear when we set out our sentence in full or when we give an explanation of its meaning?J.L. Austin, “Ifs and Cans,” Proceedings of the British Academy (1956), in Philosophical Papers, p. 205 (Oxford: 2nd ed., 1970)
Sometimes I'm quite glad I decided to become a law professor rather than a modern (or, worse yet, postmodern) philosopher.
It's here (more or less): the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post.
Browser-based evidence marshaling: MarshalPlan in your browser
4 comments:
... and they got paid to say that sort of stuff ... what a racket!?!?
I know, I know: I'm just a know-nothing.
No, no, I say: I'm a know-something!
I cudda been ... I cudda been ... an ordinary language philosopher!
Most of us get paid to teach, not (primarily) "to say that sort of stuff"! Still, that is a pretty hilarious parallel that you've drawn. You won't find too many philosophers to claim that our discipline -- at least in its 20th/21st century forms -- is distinguished by its purple prose.
(That said: are you mocking Austin's insights, or his odd way of expressing them, or both?)
Dear Philosoraptor, Even though Austin's philosophy is ultimately unsatisfying (I think unrooted, as it were), I also think Austin made important contributions (though I would be hard pressed at the moment to say what they are). It is at least interesting and important in another sense that Austin influenced, apparently, the Oxford legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart ("Concept of Law"), my former law teacher & occasional employer James H. Chadbourn (performtaive utterances & the hearsay rule [subtoptic verbal scts doctrine]), and some contemporary hearsay theorists who seem unaware or have forgotten that Chadbourn's use of J.L. Austin predated theirs by ca. 20 years.
Someone once said it's impossible to write French and be unclear. But then Sartre showed you can write French with full German obscurity.
But don't gloat. I recently saw a law review full of articles on Derrida, deconstrucing recent decisions, and with nary a skerrick of traditional legal analysis.
The barbarians are within the gates!
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