From the Philosophical Lexicon, I present some definitions to help you on your way to better understanding the tangled mass of current Western philosophy:
buber, v. To struggle in a morass of one’s own making. “After I defined the self as a relation that relates to itself relatingly, I bubered around for three pages.” Hence buber, n. one who bubers. “When my mistake was pointed out to me, I felt like a complete buber.”
heidegger, n. A ponderous device for boring through thick layers of substance. “It’s buried so deep we’ll have to use a heidegger.”
habermass, (from the Middle High German halber Marx; cf. ganzer Marx) n. A religious ceremony designed to engender an illusion of understanding through chants describing socio-economic conditions. Hence also, habermass, v. “He habermassed Einstein; he attempted to deduce the special theory of relativity from the social structure of the Zurich patent office.” “Nothing but a gadam habermass” – H. S. Truman.
lacanthropy, n. The transformation, under the influence of the full moon, of a dubious psychological theory into a dubious social theory via a dubious linguistic theory.
lyotard, n. The new clothes of the present King of France.
quine, v. (1) To deny resolutely the existence of importance of something real or significant. “Some philosophers have quined classes, and some have even quined physical objects.” Occasionally used intr., e.g., “You think I quine, sir. I assure you I do not!” (2) n. The total aggregate sensory surface of the world; hence quinitis, irritation of the quine.
I’m not really a huge fan of the work of Daniel Dennett, the editor, but oh, this was a great page to discover on a really slow day at work…
The other day I was watching this Icelandic movie (I mentioned it on my blog). This guy who runs a bookstore is sorting through all of his stuff, trying to get rid of things, and when the main character comes in he’s reading Kierkegaard. “Total rubbish” — or something like it but in Icelandic — he says and throws the book in the garbage. “What more could you expect from a guy whose name means ‘cemetery’?” … I thought it was funny.
Do you know if it really means that in Icelandic? Or Danish – isn’t Kierkegaard Danish? Or do you know if they just said that to make it amusing?
And aren’t you coming to Chicago in something like less than a week? Are there goings-on to which former members of the Jenna crowd are invited, or is it appointments only?
The name means “churchyard” in Danish/Dano-Norwegian, so, no, they really weren’t making that up. And, yes, I’ll be in Chicago from Monday afternoon to Wednesday evening. I’d love to see you and Ben! No plans have been made yet, so whenever works for you works for me!