I read this and couldn’t help but think of this year’s Eastern APA meeting. However, it’s probably better to be fair and simply substitute ‘academics’ for ‘busy man of affairs.’
Of all the ridiculous things it seems to me the most ridiculous is to be a busy man of affairs, prompt to meals and to work… Who could not help laughing at these hustlers? What do they accomplish? Are they not like the housewife, when her house was on fire, who in her excitement saved the fire-extinguisher? What more do they save from the great fire of life?” (Either/Or)
Perverse Egalitarianism 
Fire-extinguishers are objects, so double-plus good and certainly worth saving from a fire, preferably before saving any human subjects, you know because ever since Kant the subject has just had it too easy.
Speaking of which, I’ve always wondered whether it’s possible to enjoy Proust if you’re object-oriented. Because he has this frustrating tendency to make the significance of objects dependent on the narrator’s perceptions and memories and desires. All that poetic description of the church in Combray must pretty galling. I mean there’s just not enough church churching, just not enough church translating the bats in the belfry.
Can you guys stop with OOO? I am a philosophy student and tbh no one besides you guys cares about OOO or OOP or other such things. I actually polled both profs and students in my department, one that would be more receptive to OOO &c. than most others. Most of them do not know from OOO, OOP, POO. This is because even for Phd students and professional philosophers, OOO is unimportant and uninteresting.
Is there a shortage of Heidegger, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Wittgenstein and Husserl that we now need to talk OOO? Have you really mastered philosophy from Aristotle to Tugendhat and including Vico and Ficino?
Why does virtually every post on this blog, even when it’s completely unrelated, end in a series of comments about OOO/OOP?
Mea culpa. Yes, let’s talk about proper philosophy. And Either/Or is a good example. A very fine work, in every sense. And Chakira if you want to say something about Ficino, who I know little about, please feel free.
All the same, Kierkegaard’s reference to fire extinguishers almost begs for a quip about OOO/OOP. Almost…
“There should be some legal restraint aimed against inept and useless writers, as there is against vagabonds and idlers. Both I and a hundred others would be banished from the hands of our people.”
This looks like a misguided if not unwelcome throwback:
University of Dundee, Scotland
Friday, 13 May, 2011
‘Writing upon the limit: Writing in the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy’
This one-day workshop is intended to bring together academics and nonacademics from philosophy, French studies, and cultural studies interested in discussing post-Derridean ideas about writing. Writing is a recurring theme in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, for whom, writing “has its place at the limit.” Nancy coins the term exscription to describe a form of inscription that can be traced outside the text. This means that he pushes our understanding of writing into extended and external
bodies. The conference aims to explore Nancy’s ideas further, for instance in critical thoughts concerning the circumscribing of texts even in the extended domain of exscription and in relation to current interest in ideas
of the extended mind.
Submission of papers exploring these issues are invited. Papers should have a reading time of 20 minutes. Postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers are encouraged to act as respondents to present brief replies to open the question and discussion sessions.
We are pleased to announce confirmed speakers include:
Ian James (Downing college, Cambridge)
Chris Watkin, (Murray Edwards College, Cambridge)
Martin Crowley, (Queen’s College, Cambridge).
The deadline for receipt of submissions is 28 February 2011
Bataille, Blanchot, Nancy and the future of post (pre?) Derridean ideas all in 20 minutes will be interesting.
I think this makes Ian, Chris and Martin the Nancy-Boys?
The soggy bottom boys more like. Can’t they divvy up to get Nancy a ticket for the Eurostar?
Thanks for this, Shahar. It’s a perfect complement to Heidegger’s remark about science as “Betrieb” (ongoing, activity, “hustle”):
“…the decisive development of the modern character of science as ongoing activity also forms men of a different stamp. The scholar disappears. He is succeeded by the research man who is engaged in research projects. These, rather than the cultivating of erudition, lend to his work its atmosphere of incisiveness. The research man no longer needs a library at home. Moreover, he is constantly on the move. He negotiates at meetings and collects information at congresses. He contracts for commissions with publishers. The latter now determine with him which books must be written.” (“Age of the World Picture” in QCT, p. 125)
Here’s a post of mine on the subject.