{"id":690,"date":"2008-06-11T20:06:06","date_gmt":"2008-06-12T00:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=690"},"modified":"2008-06-11T20:06:06","modified_gmt":"2008-06-12T00:06:06","slug":"twaddle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=690","title":{"rendered":"Twaddle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/leiterreports.typepad.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/four-philosophe.html\">Brian Leiter<\/a>.&nbsp; Here&#39;s noted historian of ancient philosophy (and much else) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/bravenewworld\/articles\/2008-05-09-jbarnes-en.html\">Jonathan Barnes<\/a> on Contintental Philosophy: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[M]ost philosophers who belong to the so-called analytical tradition are pretty poor philosophers. (Most academics who do anything are pretty poor at doing it; and philosophy, or so it seems to me, is a subject in which it is peculiarly difficult to do decent stuff. A modestly competent historian may produce a modestly good history book; a modestly competent philosopher has no reason to publish his modest thoughts.)&nbsp; &nbsp;But there&#39;s a big difference between the analyticals and the continentals: <strong>what distinguishes the continental tradition is that <em>all<\/em> its members are pretty hopeless at philosophy. Myself, I&#39;ve read scarcely a hundred continental pages.<\/strong> I can&#39;t see how any rational being could bear to read more; and the only question which the continental tradition raises is sociological or psychological: How are so many apparently intelligent young people charmed into taking the twaddle seriously? <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Why bother indeed with straw men, they take so much time to construct, just to knock down in the end.  <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy of Brian Leiter.&nbsp; Here&#39;s noted historian of ancient philosophy (and much else) Jonathan Barnes on Contintental Philosophy: [M]ost philosophers who belong to the so-called analytical tradition are pretty poor philosophers. (Most academics who do anything are pretty poor at doing it; and philosophy, or so it seems to me, is a subject in which &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=690\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Twaddle<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,12],"tags":[193,192],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-straw-man","tag-continental-philosophy","tag-jonathan-barnes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}