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Dec. 10th, 2014
Maureen Dowd
Dec. 10th, 2014 09:22 amI've been trying to figure out what happened to Maureen Dowd, googling away and searching though the Times. She has been gone for over a month. I was wondering if she died, but the Times surely would have had a big article on it. Did she get laid off? Quit? Just a super-long vacation? What? I am not really that anxious about it. I don't feel the same vibe for her that I did ten years ago. She is old now and writes like it. Even ten years ago, she could still affect a flirty, college-girl feel to her prose. Still, old habits die hard, and I have not found new loves. I guess I am getting kind of elderly myself. I am afraid that I am no longer even capable of having crushes.
Rebecca Goldstein
Dec. 10th, 2014 02:47 pm<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
INTERVIEWER
A related question about the way Plato did philosophy—specifically about the dialogue form. Would it be fair to say that, in some sense, the form in Plato is the content? Or at least that we have to take the form in which he wrote philosophy seriously.
GOLDSTEIN
I think we have to take the [dialogic] form extremely seriously, and also be very sceptical of [Plato’s] doctrines—all of them, including the forms, the body-soul dualism and so on. Plato tells us, in the Seventh Letter, that he writes philosophy with reservations. But he wrote a lot and he chose the dialogue form, so clearly there is something important, philosophically, that he is telling us there. What I’d like to think [he’s saying] is that we can’t do it [philosophy] alone, it really has to happen in the clash of points of view. The things we really have to examine are so constitutive of our thinking that we’re not aware them, and so you need these other points of view. And I like to think that Plato is also telling us the more diverse the points of view the better.
-- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein at Prospect Magazine
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
INTERVIEWER
A related question about the way Plato did philosophy—specifically about the dialogue form. Would it be fair to say that, in some sense, the form in Plato is the content? Or at least that we have to take the form in which he wrote philosophy seriously.
GOLDSTEIN
I think we have to take the [dialogic] form extremely seriously, and also be very sceptical of [Plato’s] doctrines—all of them, including the forms, the body-soul dualism and so on. Plato tells us, in the Seventh Letter, that he writes philosophy with reservations. But he wrote a lot and he chose the dialogue form, so clearly there is something important, philosophically, that he is telling us there. What I’d like to think [he’s saying] is that we can’t do it [philosophy] alone, it really has to happen in the clash of points of view. The things we really have to examine are so constitutive of our thinking that we’re not aware them, and so you need these other points of view. And I like to think that Plato is also telling us the more diverse the points of view the better.
-- Rebecca Newberger Goldstein at Prospect Magazine
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Of Poetry and Death
Dec. 10th, 2014 08:23 pmAfter learning that he had terminal cancer, Richard Rorty penned this lovely piece on the meaningfulness of poetry.
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