Guide to kulchur

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1. FreakLegionSep 2013
   As a historical point...

   All fine and good, but your claim was "academics...would consider him more of a 'crackpot' than Rand." That's what I replied to, because it's not true.

   You asked the parent commenter "have you actually read Nietzche?" Well, I have, cover to cover, including the Nachlass. More importantly, I've read exhaustively in the tradition that descends from him. Nietzsche had an enormous influence on Heidegger, Gadamer, Deleuze, Foucault, Blanchot, Derrida, and just about every other important continental philosopher of the last century. And then there are all the critics, novelists, poets, painters, sculpters...

   There's simply no point comparing Nietzsche's reputation to Rand's. No one credible has ever really considered him to be a "crackpot." Even analytic philosophers like Searle appreciate Nietzsche.

   He was widely (wrongly) viewed as tin foil hat (nihlist, etc) for 100 years.

   No, not widely, and not for 100 years. Nietzsche's impact was already being felt both philosophically and in the arts by the 1910s.

   PG's great essay on the history of philosophy doesn't even mention him

   A few things, here.

   1) It's not an essay on the history of philosophy, though it does have a section titled "History," which limits itself to a cursory discussion of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

   2) Much as I respect pg, I'm not sure why I should put any stock in the selection of thinkers in this essay or credit his views on philosophy. He was a philosophy major for "most" of college? Nifty, but like most humanities disciplines in modern universities, philosophy, at the undergraduate level, just gets you caught up with where you should've been when you finished high school, had high school actually done its job. Even from this short treatment, it's clear that there are huge gaps both in pg's knowledge and in his understanding of, for example, Wittgenstein and Aristotle. Which leads me to:

   3) The essay is simply wrong in many of its assertions. For example:

   "The proof of how useless some of their answers turned out to be is how little effect they have. No one after reading Aristotle's Metaphysics does anything differently as a result."

   If you're interested in just how off base this is historically, here are a few things that might interest you:

   [-] Any of James Joyce's novels, or any criticism exploring the philosophical undercurrents of his work, e.g. The Aesthetics of James Joyce by Jacques Aubert. Joyce had a Jesuit education. Aristotle's influence is immediate, palpable, and bears incredible fruit.

   [-] A fair bit of Ezra Pound's poetry and criticism (ABC of Reading, Guide to Kulchur, The Spirit of Romance, various essay collections like Machine Art and Other Writings, and so on). Pound was influenced not only by the Metaphysics but by the Nicomachean Ethics and the Rhetoric.

   [-] Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, by A.J. Minnis. I mention this in a last-but-not-least way, as Minnis traces a clear path from Aristotle to how we read today.

   Now, does the average person do anything differently as a result of reading Aristotle? Of course not, at least not as a direct result. The average person doesn't do anything differently as a result of much at all (that's what makes them average). But the people who set the terms of culture, the influencers? You bet your ass they do -- if not as a result of reading Aristotle, then as a result of reading some contemporary equivalent, e.g. Plato -> Baudrillard -> The Matrix -> Average Person.

   Sound familiar? Slightly Nietzshean?

   Not to me, no.

   in the sense of not being formalistically relevant to Academic philosophy

   For analytic philosophers maybe, but continental philosophers decoupled rigor from exactness long ago. Lack of exactness wouldn't stop them from reading Rand, if they thought there was value there.

   But you don't need to defend Rand to me. I'm indifferent, not hostile. I only popped into the discussion to point out that Nietzsche's place in the philosophical canon is secure.

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2. 082349872349872Aug 2020
   He may as well have been cancelled, as I'm utterly unfamiliar with him. Will report back on whether I got any useful bits out of "Guide to Kulchur" and "ABC of Reading" after I've read a bit of them.

   The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Sunfish was certainly worth some reflection, although Pound's willingness to translate chinese poetry without knowing much chinese may show his practice (as is most of ours!) was not quite up to his preaching. (Edit: he leads "...Kulchur" by quoting 一以貫之[1], so he is stronger in chinese than I.)

   Upon reflection: abstraction and instantiation are always dual, and just as we shouldn't exclusively fly abstract, neither should we exclusively rest concrete. There are more fascinating journeys to be had by skipping between both sides of the duality, passing between them adroitly, adjointly.

   [1] https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Chinese_Classics/Volume_1...

   Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzQWYHHqvIw

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3. dri_ftAug 2020
   ABC of Reading is a good but extremely curmudgeonly guide to poetry in English through the ages. (He would rather have written a guide to european poetry, and it shows, but his publisher (Faber?) insisted it focus on English for the sake of accessibility.) A large part of it is basically an anthology with commentary. His commentary in it (as elsewhere) is maddeningly condensed and hermetic - one senses the insight within it without always being able to work out what he is saying. It's hard to say who it's for - in some sense it takes the shape of a kind of 'beginner's guide', but he doesn't exactly offer the friendly helping hand a beginner might wish for. No politics, fascist or otherwise, are anywhere to be seen in it.

   I haven't read Guide To Kulchur but it seems like it edges towards the 'crazier' (late, fascist) side of Pound.

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