In my experience watching Steve's channel, it seems that if a book, or author, is difficult or demanding (James Joyce, William Faulkner, Nietzsche) he has a tendency to dismiss it; even going so far as to claim that Nietzsche never wrote a sane word in his entire professional life--which is not true. I, obviously, could be wrong, but this is my take. Great video, by the way.
That’s a good point. The effort-reward tradeoff is something we all consider to varying degrees, and it’s important to not turn it into a judgement about the text (independent of self). Thanks for watching and for your comment. I enjoy Nietzsche and find him extremely inspiring. Haven’t had a chance to get into Faulkner or Joyce yet.
I don't think that is quite fair. He is a big fan of authors like George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Thomas Pynchon, and not to mention the ancient classics, which are not easy going themselves. What he doesn't like is intellectual masturbation (the author basically saying "look how clever I am!") and arrogance of an author who lets their big ego hinder their work as a novelist (He criticized Pynchon's book Bleeding Edge for just that), or Pseudo profundity masking as something revelatory (such as Faulkner). He has an idea of what a novel is/ should be and works from that (which makes sense in his profession as a book reviewer).
Thank you. I enjoy your style of presentation, and the way you articulate your thoughts. I'm new to your channel, but I'm looking forward to watching more of your videos. Steve's channel is a favorite of mine as well. Great to experience differing perspectives. A welcome workout for my lazy mind.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I think we are all lazy for the most part with occasional periods of exertion, where we take a bit more responsibility over our thinking. Regardless, we are always thinking together and need to do so. Welcome to my channel.
This is a very fair view, and I honestly think that if you sat down and discussed this with Steve you'd both be a lot closer in agreement than you think. Great thoughts!
Thanks! You might be right, though I am less interested in talking about (or evaluating) a specific individual than in understanding (and evaluating) positions, because individuals can always change over time, or be inconsistent in other ways. Steve contributes to our understanding by embodying-clarifying a particular anti-philosophical position, which then enables us to ask about, and inspect, other relevant features related to that position, including cultural-political links, by observing his other statements.
Not sure in what sense the "I think" could be replaced with we "we think." It's much more easy to grant Descartes that the observation of ones thinking is irrefutable, but it's trivial to refute necessity of the existence of a we, namely by solipsism. Since solipsism isn't falsifiable, the existence of others and a we is not verifiable. So "we think" can't function in the same was as Descartes cognito.
If we grant that the “I” (especially with its capacity for language) is an achievement of a community, then “we” takes primacy over “I”. Of course, the “I” achieves moments of independence, but the ability for independence is learned after substantial interaction (and learning) with others. You’re right - this line of thought isn’t immune to the solipsism objection, but Balz’s aims are also different from Descartes. He is offering a defence of epistemology.
Now I’ve heard of Steve Donoghue! As I told you and John the other night, I was ignorant. I can see where Steve is coming from, but, following your response, I think Donoghue is critiquing “system philosophers” perhaps as if they represent all philosophers. But Plato’s dialogues strike me as pretty concise, clear, and even beautiful, so it depends which philosophers we’re discussing. And can we really have a “common sense view” of justice? Everyone I guess thinks its “self-evident,” but that’s part of the problem, right? “Common sense” is used to justify atrocities…All people are equal, but it’s common sense that some are more equal than others…And so the trouble starts… I don’t think many of the great philosophers woke up one day and said, “I want to be complex today”: generally, I think what ends up happening is that they “poke” our “common sense” view of freedom, and suddenly the whole thing shatters and they frantically find themselves trying to put something back together. For me, even though I don’t like giant “systems” myself, what made me stop being critical of “long-winded philosophers” was trying to answer a question fully myself. I mean fully. Like, all the way. And if you actually try to do that (as everyone should), it quickly becomes clear that it’s really really really really hard and takes a lot of time. I would encourage anyone to try to write a paper on “What is freedom?” (people can pick whichever topic they like) and see how they do…They might be surprised how quickly the phrase “brevity is the soul of wit” starts to feel like an effort to rationalization avoiding the effort… I see Steve has videos on Augustine and Plotinus though…So perhaps he doesn’t dismiss all philosophy and/or theology equally? He perhaps makes distinctions between philosophy and theology somewhere…He also praises Hume, so I’ll have to get to know him better to get a fuller sense of his perspective. As always, your video was wonderful.
Thanks a lot for watching, Daniel! Now you are all caught on this little TH-cam controversy. I think it is a very interesting case. After reading your comment, I went and watched Steve's video on Plotinus (I hadn't watched that one before) and (to put it mildly) he didn't have too many nice things to say about Plotinus. I think you're absolutely right - Sometimes these strong positions seem to result in the desire to save time: "If you don't have an hour, I'll just summarize my position for you in one sentence: Philosophy isn't worth it." But then the person later forgets that was just a shorthand. Besides, shorthands aren't open for discussion.
@@DavoodGozli You did my homework for me, thank you! Maybe his views on philosophy are indeed consistent…The “temptation to summarize” is indeed very prevalent, and sometimes it feels justified, but I’m increasingly convinced that more is lost than we realize. After all, if I summarize Being and Time and someone never read it, then that person would never realize what they were missing, and so my summary almost necessarily has to be “a good summary.” That’s perhaps part of the temptation: when I summarize to people who want summaries (who don’t read for themselves), I can’t fail, but when I tell readers what a book means, I could be wrong and challenged. And why would I ever want to take that risk…(cough, cough)…
Haha! Our judgment of whether someone is long-winded is, indeed, very relative to our interest. With a topic we are interested in we usually don’t mind a long exposition, whereas without such interest even two minutes can feel unnecessary and long-winded.
Perhaps some topics are better approached indirectly, as a byproduct of pursuing another topic/genre. The poetry-philosophy relationship might be an example of this (at least for some readers). The pursuit of poetry might render philosophy acceptable as an incidental byproduct. This is similar to how certain topics, which might be acceptable in the form of irony or flirtation, might become unacceptable in a serious and committal tone. Thank you for watching.
Steve, I have found Steve Donoghue to be one of the most philosophical of BookTubers I am not sure he intends it given his stance of being anti-philosophy Interestingly "Great TH-cam Algorithm" threw up your video on this topic - I am interested in philosophy, theology and watch a lot of Steve Donoghue's videos too. I am intrigued by the idea of negotiations in the Deleuze book The English title is "negotiations" but the French title is "Pourparler" I will have to check it out. (I discovered when I read Lévinas in English that you loose a great deal so I read him very very slowly in French so my knowledge of French is schoolboy mixed with academic philosophy LOL)
Thank you! I agree with you about Steve being a philosopher. The anti-philosophical stance tends to be a philosophical one and philosophy itself has given rise to many people and viewpoints who proclaim (or initiate) the end of philosophy. I’m also planning to get into theology a little more. Alas, I am a very slow reader in all languages.
@@DavoodGozli If you are interested in Jung he wrote a short book "Answer to Job" (Antwort auf Hiob) on the role of the Book of Job What I remember of it it was very Jungian too Jungian for my taste but it might be a gateway to theology and it was very short 150+ pages
That first point he makes is very strange to me. I mean let's say we take it for granted that philosophy is not quite readable. Okay, but that's not a reason one can have to not like or reject philosophy. I think philosophy is necessary anyway. We can quite well express that it's a bad circumstance that philosophy isn't nice to read, but that doesn't help me with the fact that I should still read it.
Haha! Yes. Readability is relative to what we have read before and to our expectations. I also think philosophy is necessary, but I don’t see it being necessary for everyone to the same degree. It’s like a buffet-everyone should come and take what they need (and bring what they can).
That is what happens when one reads too much fiction. He becomes too sensual and needs examples and analogies to understand anything. Of course for these who are used to "feeling" every concept and idea reading philosophy is like hell, because it aims at ideas and concepts in their most abstract and pure form. So what? I cannot understand anything when I read papers about biochemistry or astrophysics but that says more about me than the disciplines themselves. That does not mean that they have no value. Any discipline has its own language and method of thinking and if you are not familiar with them these disciplines will have no value in your eyes. It seems to me that Steve refuses to acknowledge philosophy as a discipline like physics, biology, mathematics and etc.
Thanks for writing. You may be right, although I have encountered lots of philosophy in fiction, too. Think, for example, of Milan Kundera. Many other works of fiction incite and intensify thinking, without being explicitly philosophical. One has to go out of one's way to take an anti-philosophical stance. To be fair to Steve, he has expressed fondness for David Hume (whom most people consider a major philosopher) and he includes Plato and Aristotle on his Western canon lists. So the matter is probably more complicated than it seems. I am currently reading "Hatred of Poetry" (by Ben Lerner) and his discussion of the varieties of stances and reasons against poetry reminds me of similar attitudes against philosophy.
Thank you for your reply. I think Stevens case is not unique in any way. He holds a typical positivist position, which is very outdated. These Hume fanboys all have one thing in common, they actually do not hate philosophy in general, but only its metaphysical part, because it the most speculative realm of philosophical thought and has a very theological undertones (Aristotle actually used the word theology instead of metaphysics). But since it is impossible to throw away metaphysical problems positivists rebrand them as epistemological problems instead. That is precisely what Hume aspires in his famous work. He basically leaves room only for empirical sciences. But it is impossible to get rid of metaphysics, since even anti-metaphysical positions are founded on metaphysical presuppositions, which they take for granted without ever acknowledging their metaphysical nature. Thus even though Steven may be displeased by the speculative, abstract and un-empirical nature of metaphysics, when it talks about essences, beings, causes and etc., but there is no way out, that is the best we, humans can do, since we are "condemned" to be metaphysicians.
I’m with you. In addition, I think the anti-philosophical or anti-metaphysical stance isn’t just a position against “useless” speculation. Philosophy tends to promote counter-conventional and counter-cultural thinking. Hegel emphasizes this about the role of Socrates-and why he was condemned-namely, after Socrates it was no longer possible to simply rely on convention and authorities. This might be a coincidence, but people who share Steve’s position have tend to be (in my experience) cultural conservatives. Metaphysics might seem useless, but (among other things) it is a major training ground for radicals and revolutionaries.
Hi Olle. There is certainly more substance in Steve's written reviews. Have you ever read his book reviews published on Open Letters Review? I suspect he intentionally keeps the TH-cam videos personal and not necessarily substance-oriented, to show a different side of himself. Anyways, are there BookTubers you enjoy watching?
In my experience watching Steve's channel, it seems that if a book, or author, is difficult or demanding (James Joyce, William Faulkner, Nietzsche) he has a tendency to dismiss it; even going so far as to claim that Nietzsche never wrote a sane word in his entire professional life--which is not true. I, obviously, could be wrong, but this is my take. Great video, by the way.
That’s a good point. The effort-reward tradeoff is something we all consider to varying degrees, and it’s important to not turn it into a judgement about the text (independent of self). Thanks for watching and for your comment. I enjoy Nietzsche and find him extremely inspiring. Haven’t had a chance to get into Faulkner or Joyce yet.
I don't think that is quite fair. He is a big fan of authors like George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Thomas Pynchon, and not to mention the ancient classics, which are not easy going themselves. What he doesn't like is intellectual masturbation (the author basically saying "look how clever I am!") and arrogance of an author who lets their big ego hinder their work as a novelist (He criticized Pynchon's book Bleeding Edge for just that), or Pseudo profundity masking as something revelatory (such as Faulkner). He has an idea of what a novel is/ should be and works from that (which makes sense in his profession as a book reviewer).
Beautiful perspective on philosophy. Thank you!
Thanks for listening!
Thank you. I enjoy your style of presentation, and the way you articulate your thoughts. I'm new to your channel, but I'm looking forward to watching more of your videos. Steve's channel is a favorite of mine as well. Great to experience differing perspectives. A welcome workout for my lazy mind.
Thank you for your thoughtful comment. I think we are all lazy for the most part with occasional periods of exertion, where we take a bit more responsibility over our thinking. Regardless, we are always thinking together and need to do so. Welcome to my channel.
This is a very fair view, and I honestly think that if you sat down and discussed this with Steve you'd both be a lot closer in agreement than you think. Great thoughts!
Thanks! You might be right, though I am less interested in talking about (or evaluating) a specific individual than in understanding (and evaluating) positions, because individuals can always change over time, or be inconsistent in other ways. Steve contributes to our understanding by embodying-clarifying a particular anti-philosophical position, which then enables us to ask about, and inspect, other relevant features related to that position, including cultural-political links, by observing his other statements.
I loved it every time you smiled and this was a great reply
Thank you!
Not sure in what sense the "I think" could be replaced with we "we think." It's much more easy to grant Descartes that the observation of ones thinking is irrefutable, but it's trivial to refute necessity of the existence of a we, namely by solipsism. Since solipsism isn't falsifiable, the existence of others and a we is not verifiable. So "we think" can't function in the same was as Descartes cognito.
If we grant that the “I” (especially with its capacity for language) is an achievement of a community, then “we” takes primacy over “I”. Of course, the “I” achieves moments of independence, but the ability for independence is learned after substantial interaction (and learning) with others. You’re right - this line of thought isn’t immune to the solipsism objection, but Balz’s aims are also different from Descartes. He is offering a defence of epistemology.
Now I’ve heard of Steve Donoghue! As I told you and John the other night, I was ignorant. I can see where Steve is coming from, but, following your response, I think Donoghue is critiquing “system philosophers” perhaps as if they represent all philosophers. But Plato’s dialogues strike me as pretty concise, clear, and even beautiful, so it depends which philosophers we’re discussing. And can we really have a “common sense view” of justice? Everyone I guess thinks its “self-evident,” but that’s part of the problem, right? “Common sense” is used to justify atrocities…All people are equal, but it’s common sense that some are more equal than others…And so the trouble starts…
I don’t think many of the great philosophers woke up one day and said, “I want to be complex today”: generally, I think what ends up happening is that they “poke” our “common sense” view of freedom, and suddenly the whole thing shatters and they frantically find themselves trying to put something back together. For me, even though I don’t like giant “systems” myself, what made me stop being critical of “long-winded philosophers” was trying to answer a question fully myself. I mean fully. Like, all the way. And if you actually try to do that (as everyone should), it quickly becomes clear that it’s really really really really hard and takes a lot of time. I would encourage anyone to try to write a paper on “What is freedom?” (people can pick whichever topic they like) and see how they do…They might be surprised how quickly the phrase “brevity is the soul of wit” starts to feel like an effort to rationalization avoiding the effort…
I see Steve has videos on Augustine and Plotinus though…So perhaps he doesn’t dismiss all philosophy and/or theology equally? He perhaps makes distinctions between philosophy and theology somewhere…He also praises Hume, so I’ll have to get to know him better to get a fuller sense of his perspective. As always, your video was wonderful.
Thanks a lot for watching, Daniel! Now you are all caught on this little TH-cam controversy. I think it is a very interesting case. After reading your comment, I went and watched Steve's video on Plotinus (I hadn't watched that one before) and (to put it mildly) he didn't have too many nice things to say about Plotinus. I think you're absolutely right - Sometimes these strong positions seem to result in the desire to save time: "If you don't have an hour, I'll just summarize my position for you in one sentence: Philosophy isn't worth it." But then the person later forgets that was just a shorthand. Besides, shorthands aren't open for discussion.
@@DavoodGozli You did my homework for me, thank you! Maybe his views on philosophy are indeed consistent…The “temptation to summarize” is indeed very prevalent, and sometimes it feels justified, but I’m increasingly convinced that more is lost than we realize. After all, if I summarize Being and Time and someone never read it, then that person would never realize what they were missing, and so my summary almost necessarily has to be “a good summary.” That’s perhaps part of the temptation: when I summarize to people who want summaries (who don’t read for themselves), I can’t fail, but when I tell readers what a book means, I could be wrong and challenged. And why would I ever want to take that risk…(cough, cough)…
I had to chuckle a bit when you talked about Steve criticizing philosophy for being long-winded.
Haha! Our judgment of whether someone is long-winded is, indeed, very relative to our interest. With a topic we are interested in we usually don’t mind a long exposition, whereas without such interest even two minutes can feel unnecessary and long-winded.
Steve loves poetry and poetry can be very philosophical. It is probably more in the presentation for him. This was an excellent video.
Perhaps some topics are better approached indirectly, as a byproduct of pursuing another topic/genre. The poetry-philosophy relationship might be an example of this (at least for some readers). The pursuit of poetry might render philosophy acceptable as an incidental byproduct. This is similar to how certain topics, which might be acceptable in the form of irony or flirtation, might become unacceptable in a serious and committal tone. Thank you for watching.
Great video! I liked your points about academia and research publication.
Thanks, Jeremy! I have got Project Hail Mary after your recommendation. Hopefully I can start reading it soon.
@@DavoodGozli Wonderful. I'd love to hear your reaction to the novel. :)
Steve, I have found Steve Donoghue to be one of the most philosophical of BookTubers
I am not sure he intends it
given his stance of being anti-philosophy
Interestingly "Great TH-cam Algorithm" threw up your video
on this topic - I am interested in philosophy, theology
and watch a lot of Steve Donoghue's videos too.
I am intrigued by the idea of negotiations in the Deleuze book
The English title is "negotiations" but the French title is "Pourparler"
I will have to check it out.
(I discovered when I read Lévinas in English
that you loose a great deal so I read him very very slowly in French
so my knowledge of French is schoolboy mixed with academic philosophy LOL)
I have BTW subscribed to your channel.
Thank you! I agree with you about Steve being a philosopher. The anti-philosophical stance tends to be a philosophical one and philosophy itself has given rise to many people and viewpoints who proclaim (or initiate) the end of philosophy. I’m also planning to get into theology a little more. Alas, I am a very slow reader in all languages.
@@DavoodGozli
If you are interested in Jung
he wrote a short book
"Answer to Job" (Antwort auf Hiob)
on the role of the Book of Job
What I remember of it
it was very Jungian
too Jungian for my taste
but it might be a gateway to theology
and it was very short
150+ pages
That first point he makes is very strange to me. I mean let's say we take it for granted that philosophy is not quite readable. Okay, but that's not a reason one can have to not like or reject philosophy. I think philosophy is necessary anyway. We can quite well express that it's a bad circumstance that philosophy isn't nice to read, but that doesn't help me with the fact that I should still read it.
Haha! Yes. Readability is relative to what we have read before and to our expectations. I also think philosophy is necessary, but I don’t see it being necessary for everyone to the same degree. It’s like a buffet-everyone should come and take what they need (and bring what they can).
That is what happens when one reads too much fiction. He becomes too sensual and needs examples and analogies to understand anything. Of course for these who are used to "feeling" every concept and idea reading philosophy is like hell, because it aims at ideas and concepts in their most abstract and pure form. So what? I cannot understand anything when I read papers about biochemistry or astrophysics but that says more about me than the disciplines themselves. That does not mean that they have no value. Any discipline has its own language and method of thinking and if you are not familiar with them these disciplines will have no value in your eyes. It seems to me that Steve refuses to acknowledge philosophy as a discipline like physics, biology, mathematics and etc.
Thanks for writing. You may be right, although I have encountered lots of philosophy in fiction, too. Think, for example, of Milan Kundera. Many other works of fiction incite and intensify thinking, without being explicitly philosophical. One has to go out of one's way to take an anti-philosophical stance. To be fair to Steve, he has expressed fondness for David Hume (whom most people consider a major philosopher) and he includes Plato and Aristotle on his Western canon lists. So the matter is probably more complicated than it seems.
I am currently reading "Hatred of Poetry" (by Ben Lerner) and his discussion of the varieties of stances and reasons against poetry reminds me of similar attitudes against philosophy.
Thank you for your reply. I think Stevens case is not unique in any way. He holds a typical positivist position, which is very outdated. These Hume fanboys all have one thing in common, they actually do not hate philosophy in general, but only its metaphysical part, because it the most speculative realm of philosophical thought and has a very theological undertones (Aristotle actually used the word theology instead of metaphysics). But since it is impossible to throw away metaphysical problems positivists rebrand them as epistemological problems instead. That is precisely what Hume aspires in his famous work. He basically leaves room only for empirical sciences. But it is impossible to get rid of metaphysics, since even anti-metaphysical positions are founded on metaphysical presuppositions, which they take for granted without ever acknowledging their metaphysical nature. Thus even though Steven may be displeased by the speculative, abstract and un-empirical nature of metaphysics, when it talks about essences, beings, causes and etc., but there is no way out, that is the best we, humans can do, since we are "condemned" to be metaphysicians.
I’m with you. In addition, I think the anti-philosophical or anti-metaphysical stance isn’t just a position against “useless” speculation. Philosophy tends to promote counter-conventional and counter-cultural thinking. Hegel emphasizes this about the role of Socrates-and why he was condemned-namely, after Socrates it was no longer possible to simply rely on convention and authorities. This might be a coincidence, but people who share Steve’s position have tend to be (in my experience) cultural conservatives. Metaphysics might seem useless, but (among other things) it is a major training ground for radicals and revolutionaries.
Steve has no substance in anything he talks about. I believe he lies alot
Hi Olle. There is certainly more substance in Steve's written reviews. Have you ever read his book reviews published on Open Letters Review? I suspect he intentionally keeps the TH-cam videos personal and not necessarily substance-oriented, to show a different side of himself. Anyways, are there BookTubers you enjoy watching?