Bullshit, BS and Shit of the Bull

I’m writing a couple of exams WAY overdue these days, so I haven’t got much time for anything else. I’m lagging behind in a class on Perception, which is the most terrifying and bizarre metaphysical works ever written. Each writer seems to _willingly_ misread the other, and there are no foundational works (no real tradition) because those bastards kicking this off in the 60’s felt so goddamn advanced that they forgot 2000 years of metaphysics.

So everyone’s talking about objects, properties, representatons — usually regarded as the same thing but from different perspectives — without getting into the ontology at all; because "everybody knows" continental philosophy is bullshit. The professor even laughed at some notes from Heidegger written on the whiteboard one morning, even though the class reaches right into a few subjects in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. What a bullshit attitude.

I have this extreme resistance against the field that I struggle through every page. (And I read Hegel in German!) It is probably because most of it is so shallow, obviously ignorant of philosophical traditions, and IN ENGLISH — which is a terrible language to dissect states of being in because you need constructs like ‘the ..ism of the .. of .. of the … in the ..ist view is wrong with regards to .. of .. in ..!’ In German (and Norwegian), these constructions can be joined together to form intelligible concepts, thus avoiding the huge potential of misidentifying ‘x of y’ with the subset of x that is y, when y was intended as an ontological aspect of x ("y’s-x" in ONE term).

I have 5-6 days to write 10 pages, but I am considering just forfeiting this exam and focus on the other one (which gives 2x the points). The closing date is May 16th, so I will read today and tomorrow and see where I’m at. Forfeiting costs me real money that I don’t have, however. Better just get on with it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.