Clifford Robinson

Maybe we won’t reach mutual comprehension by tweeting at each other.

@IanNelsonMills @erin_zoutendam @jrmcmanaway @philipgporter Fwiw, my impression is that Philosophy has a deeper, but more contentious relationship with W than any other field. In those other fields his thought has been too quickly assimilated to other then current trends, so that poststructuralism continues to overshadow his thought.

@PubliclyHuman @erin_zoutendam @jrmcmanaway @philipgporter Maybe I'm misunderstanding the metaphor, but doesn't feel dormant from where I'm standing. I'd say most humanities profs under 60 are familiar with basic points of PI. Though sometkmes read through Cavell or Rorty. Most I know in Phil depts engage some part of Witt in their work.

Duke students know Wittgenstein in German

@erin_zoutendam @IanNelsonMills @jrmcmanaway @philipgporter About him too*

@erin_zoutendam @IanNelsonMills @jrmcmanaway @philipgporter Yeah, I was thinking about, as well as the Philosophy Department, where another family resemblance prevails. I still think W’s legacy may be the sleeping giant of 20th c. thought, even in spite of all these tentacular connections.

@erin_zoutendam @IanNelsonMills @jrmcmanaway @philipgporter Yes, that would be a rather different orientation! I suppose these two areas of Wittgestein interpretation at Duke are connected by Sarah Beckwith, whose Shakespeare book, I think, is in dialogue with Moi’s Ibsen book.

@IanNelsonMills @PubliclyHuman @jrmcmanaway @philipgporter Among the historians at Duke Div, Wittgenstein often comes mediated through Quentin Skinner. I like Skinner a lot, but it's a different Wittgenstein than Toril Moi's Wittgenstein.

@AntigoneJournal @ProfEricAdler @nishanciefendi @ProfEricAdler has an excellent article on the topic in CW 108.2!

@ProfEricAdler @nishanciefendi Fascinating. Will chase up.

this was the offending editorial referenced in the book? A mild statement of the journal’s priorities?

@jrmcmanaway @philipgporter Not precisely—but I was a lurker around many of the Literature programs brilliant people and W had a footprint among that group and in the English Department. For me the crucial thing was Toril Moi’s powerful example—which leads beyond post-structuralism in distinctive ways.

@PubliclyHuman @philipgporter I'm 100% in. Does W loom large in Classics at Duke too?

@jrmcmanaway @philipgporter We should talk about this some time!

@philipgporter I want a history of the fascination with Wittgenstein at Duke. It's longstanding and, I admit, I do not get the appeal. I want to and I ask anyone with a passing interest in W to tell me why. But I think Lonergan solved all the problems for me.

Neo-Latin Texts Written Outside of Europe: A Resource Guide, from The Library of Congress guides.loc.gov/neo-latin

@Eklundsays That it terminates necessarily at some point.

@Eklundsays He told me an enjoyable anecdote about Derrida and a presentation on the Van Gogh shoes. The point of the presentation was to run out of time by working through a plentitude of such representations—paintings, pictures from magazines, ads, etc.—to show that discourse always ends.

This is a Michael Wood appreciation post. He has had more of an impact on my work and thinking than any other scholar. Everything he writes is Bible.

@Eklundsays Couldn’t agree more—I just met him at an event for Daniel Heller-Roazen’s new book and he was both insightful and a genial presence.

Between Nabokov and Michael Wood, I’d probably take Michael.

@JanieH @oodja @MerriamWebster There’s a lot of consternation among Classics peeps w/r/t the Roman lead poisoning claims that come up every so often. That said, there’s something here for sure! I’d love to know more about the contexts in which ‘plumb-‘ derivations were used in the intervening centuries!

@oodja @MerriamWebster @PubliclyHuman Did you know this?

The Periodic Table Symbol for lead is 'Pb,' which comes from the Latin 'plumbum,' meaning "lead." Early pipes were made of lead, so people who worked with pipes became 'plumbers.'

Really interesting thing on TikTok where the "dark academia" obsession has led a certain set of influencers into designing and following "personal curricula" - basically reverse-engineering the autodidact Victorian miners. Overwhelmingly positive, I think

I wrote an essay in Norwegian for @Morgenbladet on Hannah Arendt. Encouraging interested readers to begin with books by Lyndsey Stonebridge, @Samantharhill, Richard Bernstein. The more Arendt I read, the more I admire her capacity to grasp the significance of contemporary events

Great books leftists: there are dozens of us!

As the university system collapses and millions succumb to tech-induced brain rot, the concept of the autodidact—a self-educated person who loves learning for its own sake—will become more important than ever. Read widely. Form study groups. Let the library be your college.

@second_sailing Quite so! Thanks for sharing (and for writing). Maybe it will motivate me to put my own thoughts together on TLS. There’s another point of contact here between the two books and the absence of fathers, which your essay helped me to see.

@PubliclyHuman I think the upshot is a little bit different:

I finished The Last Samurai and am a little overwhelmed by what it has in common with the other best novel of the millennium, Ravelstein.

@second_sailing I haven’t read “Ravelstein” in a very long time, but I liked it when I read it. Does it share the closing argument of TLS, that mostly we thoughtlessly squander human potential? Or is its upshot somehow different?

Both Ravelstein and Sibylla are gifted educators who rightly view boredom as the greatest enemy

@jrmcmanaway It worked brilliantly—that’s why no one has ever heard of Martin Luther and his message reached so few people.

Ironically, nobody who writes a post like this would be in danger of being "sent to a monastery," because it's not only untrue, it's absurd.

@jrmcmanaway I’ve been meaning to make room for a while now!

@PubliclyHuman The more I read, the more articles I find. I am finding it handy to situate Peter's work in the larger world of late Roman scholarship. That he names his particular influences when he was working on a project is very helpful! I'd recommend it, if you have room on the docket!

As I read through Peter Brown's autobiography, I have been downloading the articles and buying some of the books he mentions. I majored in Classics in undergrad and my M.A. program was housed in Classics and Theology at ND, so I had read many of the authors he names.