Reblogged from AGENT SWARM:

Reblogged from Adventures in (Post) Gradland:

C. W. Kilmister (1965). Review of Jose A. Bernadette ‘Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics’ Philosophy, 40, pp 262-263.

The paragraph above shares a structural similarity to this discussion:

EVER since Hume and Kant, and now with Wittgenstein, the credentials of the metaphysician have been subjected to the severest scrutiny, and found wanting. One is almost tempted to liken the metaphysical ascent to the fabulous Indian rope-trick, one end suspended in midair, the other lost in the clouds. Houdini is reported to have said that, though he had often met people who had met people who had seen the Indian rope-trick, despite all his extensive inquiries he had never succeeded in meeting anyone who had seen the Indian rope-trick.

 

Benardete continues:

Yet the metaphysical impulse is not readily quenched. If it is checked in one direction, it is liable to break out in another. Abandoned by reason, it may invite the sponsorship of irrationality itself, as we have unhappily seen in our own time. Philosophy in its original sense was understood to be a kind of tropism whereby the finest flower of the intellect was oriented toward the. cosmos; it was the opening of a great window onto the universe. It is that very directedness of man’s reason ordered toward the cosmological horizon that I should wish to recover in this fairly extcmive sheaf of metaphysical reflections. How melancholy today to find the lovers of reason content with what Kant styled critical, and what is currently termed analytical, philosophy, and to find metaphysics-by default-embraced in large measure by the devotees ofobscurantism and mystification. If I confess to feeling almost alone in my endeavor to restore the credit of rationalistic metaphysics, I am not unaware of the many latent sympathies that my investigations are likely to awaken, some from sceptical, others from ‘critical’ or even analytical, slumbers. 

 

But I must not promise too much. Philosophers, past and present alike, have invariably been prone to be long on promises and short on performance. Priding themselves on their ‘solutions’, they are in fact remembered and cherished for the problems which they raised. Their ‘solutions’, above all, have proved to be-for us-problems. I know ofscarcely one philosopher (Socrates always excepted) who ever raised a problem as aIn·oblem. I mean terminally as a problem, not merely by way of entry into his theme. Thus Zeno himself never viewed his paradoxes as problems; he advanced them only as proofs calculated to establish the impossibility or unintelligibility of motion. There have been dogmatic and there have been sceptical, but there have been no problematic philosophers. More precisely, there have been no problematic philosophers eo nomine, though in fact none has succeeded in being anything else. They have lacked self-knowledge. They have failed to understand the true dignity of their achievements. For the problematic character of philosophy, certainly of all philosophy up to the present, need not be altogether a misfortune. It is the happy suggestion of Leo Strauss that Plato understood the eternal Ideas to be the great range of problems that preside over man’s deepest reflections and that it is in being open to those problems, as problems, that he acquires Socratic ignorance, which is the same as Socratic wisdom.

 

1) The dude was involved in the process – I don’t care how he came to be involved, but his involvement happened and it was accepted by the parties involved. No one just wanders off the street into this. Sure, maybe there were some issues – don’t care. The fact of involvement is established.

2) The dude got no mention in the book at all. We can argue the finer points of what does and does not constitute editorship – everyone knows high ranking folks don’t do shit on edited volumes, but still get listed at the top of the bill so books can sell – but the final fact remains – his name is nowhere in the final book.

I (and two other students at the time) helped my adviser edit a volume when in grad school. I helped him finish the last part of the introduction. Should I have been included as an editor? No. But he did generously acknowledged my help in the Acknowledgements section. If he didn’t, I would have survived but I would have been pretty annoyed.

To sum: if someone’s involved in your project and negotiates a contract on your behalf, don’t be a dick, even if things go sour later, mention the dude in your Acknowledgement. Period.

____________________________________________________

Read this story and weep, comrades!

I wrote to Simon about this and let him know how much work I put into securing the contract for him. The next day I received a single sentence email from him stating the following: either you accept the new amendments or else I take everything and leave. I wrote back and asked him if he understood how many months of intense work I put into the project and he responded by letting me know that he would, of course, detail my work in the acknowledgements section. While I was still a little bitter, I nonetheless thought that this was better than nothing. At least I would receive a little bit of credit for my work.

I received a copy of the book today and my name is nowhere to be found.

Lesson: Volunteering your labor to help others is overrated, especially when academic egos are involved. Beware!

“I have a question for you:

What is the proportion between the time you spend, on the one hand, reading and thinking and writing in your field, and the time you spend, on the other hand, selling yourself by writing proposals and applications, shmoozing with colleagues and professors, and so forth?

And I have another question:

Did you know that the most cold-blooded corporations spend on advertisement anywhere between about %1 of their revenues (in the retail business) and about %7 (for companies selling packaged goods)?

This is just an educated guess, but I have a feeling that, on average, successful academics spend a much bigger chunk of their intellectual resources on self-promotion than what good capitalists spend on marketing their wares.”