Posts tagged `philosophy`

Wednesday’s Word: a priori

a priori
adj. known ahead of time
adj. based on hypothesis rather than experiment
a posteriori
adj. involving deduction of theories from facts.

Appropriated directly from Latin in the early 18th century, these epistemological phrases have become favorites of mine, to the point that my neologistic streak kicks in and I start using them as nouns because they flow so much better. The correct usage would be to modify nouns like “truth”—i.e. “an a priori truth.” But that’s beyond the point.

Literally, the two words mean “from what comes before” and “from what comes after,” respectively (think “prior” and “posterior”); that is, inductive and deductive reasoning. Which is to say, the first is a conclusion from previous knowledge (or more pejoratively, a preconceived notion), whereas the latter is a conclusion from either deductive reasoning or empirical observation.

Immanuel Kant was famous for arguing a mixture of the two, inevitably the former as a transcendental sort of cognition and the latter as a kind of experienced content; this was in direct opposition to the more skeptical conclusions of his contemporary David Hume.

Interesting sidenote: though the usage is not conventional, some have taken to deriving nouns from these phrases; hence the words “apriority” and “aposteriority,” slight reworkings of existing words.

§1971 · February 6, 2008 · (No comments) · Tags: , ,

The Daily Show and Philosophy

The Daily Show and Philosophy The Daily Show and Philosophy ed. Jason Holt
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
Year: 2007
Pages: 280

I think it’s fair to say that The Daily Show has fairly well entered the cultural zeitgeist. For some reason, ever since John Stewart took over the reigns in 1999, it’s continued to rise in both its quality and notoriety. Especially leading up the the 2004 presidential election, The Daily Show was often cited as the only source of television that didn’t pander to sensationalism or corporate sponsors.

The Daily Show and Philosophy is a collection of essays, edited by Jason Holt, that seek basically to explain The Daily’s Show place in the zeitgeist, its importance as a check of the media, and the various and sundry reason why its format works and the other news shows’ don’t. It’s fitted into a very loose wrapper that ostensibly looks at the show in relation to philosophy, although I’m skeptical that this is a reliable framework. At its most relevant, the essays might compare Jon Stewart to Socrates, or discuss cynicism in the ancient Greek tradition, but mostly it’s run-of-the-mill essays about politics or metafiction or what-have-you.

Honestly, it’s a mixed bag; I was immediately depressed when the first section of essays read like mediocre essays from Philosophy 101. The pedantic, forced nature of some of these pieces is painful to read. Add to this the fact that The Daily Show‘s importance is not news anymore: it’s already been commented on (for better or worse) by every jealous mainstream journalist and every pseudonymous blogger from here to Timbuktu, and reading it in Intro-Body-Conclusion doesn’t do much to make it any more interesting or relevant. Also, it seems like most of the essays in a particular section all invoke the same instances: the 2004 Crossfire episode, for instance, is mentioned more times than it ever was when it happened, for god’s sake.

I sound harsh here: really, I agree with most of the works here, however redundant they may be. You can hardly blame these writers for trying their best to legitimatize a comedy show as one of the most important cultural/political features of the recent decade. But who are they convincing? Part of the nature of The Daily Show is that its audience is people who are already more culturally intelligent than their counterparts, and already know that it’s a smart show.

It’s not all bad, though: there were some ideas broached that were genuinely new and interesting to me—or at least seemed new and interesting in the way they were broached. One, for instance, was The Daily Show as The Fifth Estate; that is, an institution that checks the Media, which is supposed to check the Government (but doesn’t).

Another essay actually went on for pages and pages about the semantic differences being “lies” and “bullshit” and the political ramifications therein—I bullshit you not. Does that have any place in a book ostensibly about the philosophical nature of The Daily Show? Perhaps not. But then, I’m not sure this book ever had any business being written in the first place. Honestly, it’s a blog post. Or at least it should have been— or was. There’s probably no idea here that I haven’t read (or couldn’t find) on the internet in the last 5 or 6 years.

§1960 · January 21, 2008 · 1 comment · Tags: , , , , , ,

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Year: 1999
Pages: 320

A reviewer at Amazon wrote of this book: “This is either a book of philosophy masquerading as a novel, or a novel about the lives of four or five characters with pretensions to be a book of philosophy.” I went into reading this book knowing nothing about it but the name, which for some reason I’ve known as a phrase for a number of years (same with “through a glass darkly”). I was surprised to find that it was only about 20 years old. I had expected something from mid-century, at least.

The strength of the narrative itself is nothing to cream your pants over. Actually, the writing is extremely elementary (taken as a work of fiction): the characters are fascinating, but entirely developed by flat exposition, where Kundera tells you that Character X does this because her mom did this, or Character Y has a certain philosophy, &c. There is no semblance of narrator, because Kundera is clearly the narrative voice, and lapses into first person exposition at points.

All this leads me to believe that of the choices presented in the initial quote, this book is clearly a philosophical treatise with the trappings of fiction. It certainly is daring: it wanders all over the place, at times clearly polemicizing against the Communist presence in Kundera’s home country of Czechoslovakia, at others ruminating that man is defined by his treatment of animals. I’m telling you: it’s all over the place.

The greatest portion of the book is made up by sex, as the main characters are tied together (though not in any significant way) by an artist named Sabina, who has trysts with the two main male characters. Feminists especially may have a difficult time putting up with the characters, as the males are regretless philanderers (of an enormous scale) and their wives are all weak and helpless or devious and arrogant. What’s more, there is very little by way of their development.

But, as I said, the point of this book is not the characters, but rather Kundera’s philosophical musings about lightness and weight, drawn from the prior musings of Greek scholar Parmenides. I won’t get into any discussion of Kundera’s musings here, as you would be better off reading them yourselves, but I must admit that they didn’t quite live up to my expectations. Unbearable Lightness of Being is supposed to be a landmark work, but it strikes me as somewhat immature in style and muddled in execution. Maybe I’m just picky.

§781 · October 3, 2005 · (No comments) · Tags: , ,

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