Yeah, (the specifically) inimitable Nietzsche loved to make fun of pretensions of all kinds. He's a great read. You should check out E.M. Cioran, another superb aphorist who, like Nietzsche, won't be read as a philosopher until he finds his hero-worshiper (by which I mean, a heroic-sized philosopher who comes to worship a predecessor, and by virtue of his own status, raises the previous guy up to his own level, i.e. Heidegger in Nietzsche's case). Find Cioran's A Short History of Decay--just marvelous stuff.
I think a well-written, though very (very) scholarly book is Brain Vickers's In Defense of Rhetoric. It might give you a broader historical canvas of the fates of the Sophists on which to think. Skip the first part (which is all technical rhetoric stuff--fascinating for me, though not for everyone), and dive right into Vickers' trashing of Plato in the Gorgias and Protagoras. He spends a _gigantic_ chapter going almost line by line, beating the tar out of Plato's treatment of the Sophists and rhetoric. To me, it eventually gets tedious, but it is all astute and well-argued and gives you a good sense of where the bias came from and how to directly confront it at the source (he blasts him on every level, philosophical, moral, political). And then the later chapters continue the historical tale of rhetoric's fate (which is tied to the Sophists, though less and less directly about them). And just when you think you couldn't hate Plato more, try reading the first half of Alexander Nehamas' The Art of Living. It is the most beautiful (his most recent book is about beauty and art, in fact), penetrating and _dense_, though lucidly written book on Socrates/Plato, though it's not just about Socrates. It was the Sather Classical lectures from some years ago, which are like the primo honor for classicists to give, and Nehamas is a philosopher, not a classicist. So the first part of the book gives an amazingly close reading of irony and Socrates (and Plato), and the second half of the book gives a chapter each to _the symbol of Socrates_ in Montainge, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Just an amazing book--changed my life. Nehamas has the distinctive honor of being the premier American philosophical-scholar of _both_ Nietzsche and of Socrates. He was taught at Princeton by the neglected Walter Kaufmann (the earlier King of Nietzsche Scholarship, whose translations were for almost 50 years the only ones you could find) and the venerated Gregory Vlastos (the earlier King of Socrates Scholarship, who was chairman of the Princeton Philosophy Department for years and, oddly enough, was the guy who hired Richard Rorty to his first important professor-post, to--of all things--teach Greek philosophy). > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2009 14:17:14 -0400 > Subject: Re: [MD] Rorty's Relativism > > > Yes, way! And I loved the book. I like calling myself a Relativist, I like > reclaiming words. I call myself a witch too. Like Werner Heisenberg has > said "There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about > them." (But I'm not joking.) I've read Kant, Hume, Descartes, etc., lordy > they inspire a need for some humor. Nietzsche was cool! I would like to > learn more about Paul Feyerabend, from what little I know he is a very > interesting character. - Because of reading 'Rereading the Sophists' I have > more respect for the Protagoras and Gorgias, and more distain for Plato and > Aristotle and their rationalism, and huge amounts of increased good cheer > (if that's even possible) for our modern-day and greatest Sophist, Robert M. > Pirsig. If 'Protagoras and the Challenge of Relativism' is even half as > interesting, I will be pleased. > > Thanks for writing Matt. I like sharing an interest in the sophists with > you, and the reading of a great book. > > > Marsha > > p.s. Senator Russ Feingold is a good man. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® is up to 70% faster. Now good news travels really fast. http://windowslive.com/online/hotmail?ocid=PID23391::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HYGN_faster:082009 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/
