Hi Marsha, > Greetings Platt, > > I offer this for your consideration. It's a comment I extracted from an > interview, conducted by Daniel Blue, with the Nietzschean scholar, Christa > Davis Aumpora: > > http://www.nietzschecircle.com/interview.html > > DB: I had no idea that it was that hard to republish works. That > strikes at the heart of what might seem a purpose of academia. > > CDA: Right. The purpose of a university press used to be to identify > and publish the very best quality research it could find without > regard for its financial viability. In those days you knew that > university presses didn't have to direct their acquisitions decisions based > on marketing considerations. Now university presses have a requirement to > be financially self-sustaining, so increasingly, marketing decisions are > playing a role in acquisitions decisions. And as for journal publishing, > Blackwell owns very many of the quality philosophy journals, and since it > is a commercial publisher, and so its very reason for being is to make > money and as much as it can, it can name its price. It's very hard to > escape, and that was my greatest nemesis.
Thanks. A fascinating interview. Here are a couple of points I underlined with comments: "I think philosophy always has the responsibility to identify and address our current questions." (The reason why I bring up current social/political problems with ideas about how the MOQ might address them.) "I find the rejection of competition to be flat-footed and potentially harmful for women, given the realities of social and political life." (I didn't know competition was an issue with women. Now I know.) " . . . so philosophers are trying to give the naturalistic account of everything under the sun. But I have the impression that very often naturalism in philosophy is conceived as a sort of crude scientism." (I take this to be an oblique reference to the dominate subject/object mindset of modern intellectualism that Pirsig finds incapable of doing a good job in directing the social level because it lacks a moral sense based on empirical reasoning.) "I just want to talk about the interplay between science, philosophy and art." (Exactly Pirsig's goal -- to unite these disparate disciplines by showing why and how moral values are the common denominator.) "There is a model for this in the sciences: you identify what you call a center for excellence." (Isn't this what Pirsig would approve of? Maybe Ant or Arlo could establish such a center for the MOQ which would serve "as a magnet for drawing and coordinating resources." Of course I would be banned from contributing. :-).) Thanks again for sharing a thought-provoking interview. Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
