A mostly academic pastiche book (extended)


Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward (or 0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
PDF available at: https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWAMA-2.pdf
And: https://www.academia.edu/109122786/A_mostly_academic_pastiche_book
And: researchgate.net/publication/395238974_A_mostly_academic_pastiche_book_extended


        This little book contains a small selection of pastiches I have done. I was inspired by pastiche books, such as Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland from 1912, but I have imitated quite a few academic authors below. I have preserved my many apologies and excuses for doing so, by the way. The first attempt is perhaps not successful, hence the question mark. Some will find "mostly academic" in the title misleading, and perhaps this is a mere booklet!


Contents (8th October 2025; first version 19th Nov 2023)
Timothy Williamson, the belief-value distinction, and social anthropology (with some autism-face chat in appendix 2; a poor Helen Beebee imitation) - p.4 
H. BEEBEE STYLE: why are television comedy sketch shows hit and miss? - p.15
Philosophy and fiction: common problems, uncommon solutions? (By D*n*ld D*vids*n?) – p.24
On Parfit's disagreement with Nietzsche (by D*n*ld D*v*ds*n) – p.26
The logic of Bourdieu, by C*rrie Ichik*w* J*nkins – p.28
The ignoring of Raymond Tallis on literary theory, by C*rrie Ichik*w* J*nkins – p.31
Economists, university rankings, and leaving the European Union, by M*l*n K*nder* – p.37
On what is offered, by M*l*n K*nder* – p.39
Notes on a paragraph from 1922, by M*l*n K*nd*ra  – p.41
Moved by the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, by M*l*n K*ndera  – p.45
Further responses to Mary Beard on Frazer and colonialism, with M*l*n K*nd*ra  – p.48
Methodical types: on Gabrielle and Michelle plus – p.51
What is a public intellectual? By M*l*n K*nd*r* -p. 53
Paradoxes from an imitation of Milan Kundera - p.57
Words misunderstood: "what is your type" by M*l*n K*nd*ra (an imitation) – p.59
Imitation of Milan Kundera addressing the theme of feminism - p. 60
Why did Mishima build up his muscles? A not quite Hobbesian answer – p.63
R.K. Nar*y*n on Derrida and Bourdieu  – p.66
The will to be a great university, by Fri*drich Ni*tzsche – p.71
What is the most powerful critique of Rawls? (In the style of Nietzsche - don't try this) – p.74
Troubles for English anthropology at home (in the style of Nietzsche - don't try this style yourself; apologies for any offence) – p.76
Das Freunde: two warnings (imitation of Nietzsche) – p.78
On the nonsense of psychiatrists (Nietzsche imitation - don't try this)  – p.79
Relativism about greatness (imitation of Nietzsche - don't try this please) - p.80
Inequality and the saying, "It's who you know, not what you know," by J*seph R*z – p.81
What is an ideal theory in political philosophy? (J*seph R*z) – p.85
Conceptual schemes and truth, by J*seph R*z – p.88
Paradox University by La*ra R*ding - p. 91
Choice and the invasion of Ukraine, by Ren*t* S*lecl – p. 93
Education, choice, and the uncanny father, by Ren*t* S*lecl  – p.98
The rules of philosophy, by Ren*t* S*lecl  – p.102
Intransitivity of translation, Le Débat, and the primacy of the signifier, by Ren*t* S*lecl   – p.106
Laughter, custom, and liberal societies (imitation of Renata Salecl)  – p.110
One man's meat is the same man's poison? Social democracy, Rawls and romance (imitation of Renata Salecl) – p.113
Hysterical violence in the state of nature (imitation of a Lacanian sociologist, my apologies) - p.117
Literary Girls, by Kathleen St*ck: chapter 2, the low-high culture divide – p.122
Literary Girls, by K*thleen St*ck: chapter 4, pastiche of the long dead – p.130
Literary Girls, by K*thleen St*ck: chapter 5, realism  – p.139
"Writing the exotic": a pastiche of Marilyn Strathern – p.145
Strawson III? On a paradox concerning an anthology of literary theory - p.147
Williams style essay, on anarchism and character development – p.152
On the romantic appeal of anarchism (B*rn*rd W*lli*ms)   – p.155
An imitation of Bernard Williams' style, on system-building philosophers - p.157


Note. The Conservative Party is in the news, so it is probably time to refine old work, rather than move ever forward with the new. I will probably not add any more imitations to this document, but I might start another pastiche book. No artificial intelligence was used to produce these imitations, unless one wants to count the spelling and grammar checkers of Google docs and any AI used in Internet search engines: chiefly Google, also Bing, and Duckduckgo. I confess a fear: if I go further with adding pastiches in this book, AI will intervene! (You know, the volume of poetry in which Laura Riding's most memorable poem, The Wind Suffers, first appeared has a table of contents with a surprising misspelling of its title, or other error? "You cannot reach this level with full middlebrow functionality." Pastiches below all online already, by the way.)
________________
Timothy Williamson, the belief-value distinction, and social anthropology (with some autism-face chat in appendix 2)


Author. Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper is a response to Timothy Williamson's description of what is covered by social anthropology. Amongst other things, he describes the social anthropologist as attending to the beliefs and values of a people studied. But why distinguish beliefs from values? In this paper, I present two accounts of the distinction in philosophy and apply these to social anthropology. I argue that there is a reason for why the social anthropologist can overlook the belief-value distinction. (This paper before the appendices is an attempted imitation, by the way. "Of whom?" Helen Beebee; Helen Beebee with my specialist knowledge.) 
Draft version: 2 (2nd September 2025; first version 14 August 2025)


Mama mia Hen doesn't like Amartya Sen
If she wrote on it, she would just say, "This is sh*t."


1. Introduction
        Timothy Williamson has recently added to the set of philosophical books in Oxford University Press's A Very Short Introduction series (2020). His topic is Philosophical Method, and so is his book title. Many readers of this journal will be interested in the book as an accessible guide to Williamson, but the book will also be purchased by philosophy students and members of the interested wider public as a guide to philosophical method, wondering even if there is such a thing. Isn't philosophy just having some thoughts about a topic and writing them down?
        A third set of readers will be specialists in philosophical method. They will be interested especially in whether Williamson's short book overcomes the main criticism directed at Chris Daly's accessible effort An Introduction to Philosophical Methods (2010). A criticism of that book (Ichikawa 2011) and also a criticism often directed at the analytic tradition as a whole, by outsiders and by some within, is that it overemphasizes the significance of the natural sciences. Williamson seems as if he aims to avoid this criticism. Chapter 9 of his book is entitled "Using other fields" and it has sections on these fields: history, social anthropology, linguistics, psychology, economics, computer science, biology, physics, and mathematics. I shall focus on social anthropology below. In the next part of this paper, I shall specify the Williamson material on social anthropology which I shall focus on: his description of social anthropologists as attending to beliefs and values. The description gives rise to a question: what is the difference between beliefs and values, which merits distinguishing them when thinking about what the social anthropologist does. In the third part of this paper, I shall present two accounts of the difference: the classical account and the emotivist account. (About classical philosophy, the intended object of imitation once said to me: I don't know anything about that. Said in 2004? "I was young then." Dead around 70: G.A. Cohen, Bernard Willliams, Derek Parfit.) The classical account seems irrelevant to social anthropology. In the fourth part of this paper, I shall propose a use for the emotivist account: it helps the social anthropologist: to distinguish between worldview and ethos. In the fifth part, I shall present one reason for why a social anthropologist might reject the proposed use: it seems useless in a major debate. (Note: Pete Wade said to me, 2000/2001, my paraphrase: "The fact-value distinction, is it not a foundational part of our Western house, Terence?")


2. Beliefs and values quotation
        This is Timothy Williamson's opening paragraph of his section headed "Social anthropology":
Social anthropology studies diverse human societies and cultures: how they are organized; what people in them believe, value, make, and do; how they think, feel, and behave. As far as possible, a social anthropologist studies another society from within, living in it, perhaps for years, observing life day by day, learning the language, asking questions. Despite the contrast between history and anthropology, both help us understand how other societies, past or present, are in some ways very different from ours, in others very similar. We learn to see another society from within, and our own from outside. (2020: 102)
A social anthropologist looking in might think of this as basically the point of view on social anthropology of the educated general reader in the nineteenth century, omitting the reference to primitive societies as the main focus. This reader expects a large two volume or more book on a people, typically an exotic people, and it will have chapters, such as "The Island's Nature, Racial Composition, History, Customs, Cosmology, Ethos, Artefacts, Trade..." (Remember: The Pagan Tribes of Borneo by Charles Hose and William McDougall, 2 volumes.)
        But when we examine the quotation from Williamson more carefully, there is evidence of the specific point of view of a contemporary professor in philosophy. He makes a distinction between what people believe and what they value. Anthropology is a science. Its question is not those of a conservative trader: are they good people and can we trade with them? When a scientist asks a question of the form, "What do the X people value?" for example "What do the Bororo value?" they appear to be asking about a small subset of beliefs. Among other things, they are interested in what do the Bororo believe people ought to do, what do they believe is good to do, and what do they believe is beautiful and ugly? ("This is beautiful AND ugly.") Other beliefs, such as beliefs about whether the world is flat or round, are not being asked about. The best explanation for Williamson's distinction is his background as a professional philosopher, in which questions such as what is a belief and whether moral discourse consists of expressions of belief are regularly discussed.


3. The belief-value distinction: two accounts
        Why not say that a person's values are beliefs with propositional content of a certain form (or set of forms), for example, values are beliefs, each belief having propositional content either of the form "Person P ought to do PHI" or the form "Person P ought not to do PHI"? There are two bodies of philosophical literature one readily turns to for answers to this question.
        The classical account? According to the classical account, there are objective value properties (or qualities, to use the earlier term). They exist whether or not you or anyone else believes in them. For example, there is a young child in a morally bad situation on television. The situation has the quality of being morally bad (the property of being morally bad; the feature of being morally bad; it is morally bad in the way that it is; etc.) This quality exists independently of our minds, which we can here forgivably assume to be the minds of all beings with minds. For it to exist independently does NOT mean that if you take the child, with his/her/... mind, out of the situation, then the situation will continue to have the quality of being morally bad. It means that even if none of us believe that the situation has the quality of being morally bad, the situation still is morally bad. Belief is one thing and values are another. But the classical account seems irrelevant to social anthropology, because it is asking about what a people's values are, not what value properties independently exist.
        The emotivist account. The emotivist account is often traced back to Charles Stevenson. It was popularized through A.J. Ayer. To introduce it, let us focus not only on what is thought but also what is said. You have observed that snow is white and you believe that snow is white. You say, "Snow is white," to express your belief that snow is white. The sentence "Snow is white" conveys a proposition, which can also be presented in French or German. The proposition is true or false. It is true, I think; obviously snow can get dirty but.... Now consider the sentence "You ought not to steal." Does it convey a proposition? It appears to and some will say that it does. "It is true if (and only if) you ought not to steal. Otherwise it is false." But not all agree with this. Emotivists will say that it cannot be true or false, so it is not a proposition. To understand their position, imagine that you are watching a sport. You have an emotional reaction of aversion to a player and then you say, "Boo," to express your aversion. "Boo" is not true or false. It is just an expression of your reaction of aversion. Saying, "You ought not to steal," is like saying, "Boo" to stealing. A person does not express their values by means of sentences conveying propositions, unlike with their beliefs. The emotivist focuses on value language (usually moral language), rather than the inner thing being conveyed, but the emotivist would seem to hold that a person's values are their emotional reactions to things: aversions and attractions and mehs. (Or maybe the reactions they actually communicate in words? By the way, I imagine a reader thinking, "You must use express here and convey there?" Sorry, can't address every point of view; social intelligence increment, increment, increment... madness!)


4. A use: clarifying the worldview-ethos distinction
        What is the use for social anthropologists of distinguishing between beliefs and values, as the emotivist does? I shall focus on one use only. It is useful for distinguishing between a worldview and an ethos. One might have a chapter in a social anthropology book on a people entitled "The Worldview" and another chapter entitled "The Ethos." The distinction between the two is quite an old one in social anthropology. The famous American social anthropologist Clifford Geertz seems fond of the distinction. The fifth essay in his The Interpretation of Cultures is entitled "Ethos, World View, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols." There he writes:
In recent anthropological discussion, the moral (and aesthetic) aspects of a given culture, the evaluative elements, have commonly been summed up in the term "ethos," while the cognitive, existential aspects have been designated by the term "world view." A people's ethos is the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood; it is the underlying attitude towards themselves and their world that life reflects. Their world view is their picture of the way things in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, of self, of society. (126-127)
A people's worldview consists of a set of beliefs, typically of a high general character, for example the belief that an event resembles what caused it (as a foundation for voodoo?). The beliefs are expressed by sentences conveying propositions. An ethos consists of a set of emotional reactions to things, but especially to things of a more general character, such as stealing in general or rape in general or imperialism in general. There are emotional reactions of aversion and attraction.
        Now someone is sure to pose this question: how can the social anthropologist know the inner beliefs and feelings of people? There is a well-known answer, which is that the social anthropologist does not tell us about inner stuff but shared public commitments. For example, everyone in a certain society says, "Hurray," when the topic of imperialism is raised. Are they actually all inwardly keen on another imperialist adventure? Perhaps not. (I am wondering whether the emotivist theory, with its focus on public sentences, was developed partly with the aim of trade with social anthropology.)


5. Objection to the use
        The main objection to the proposed use in British social anthropology is that it seems irrelevant for "one" of its major and prolonged debates. Should anthropologists do group worldview description or should they not? We can divide the history of British social anthropology into the functionalist period, in which functionalism dominated British anthropology (the 1920s to the 1960s), and afterwards. The debate exists in both periods.
        Functionalism. Functionalism in social anthropology conceived of a society as like an organism, with different institutions like organs, which each have a role to play in ensuring the continuing functioning of the organism. It abandoned the earlier view that some practices in a society (or even some whole persons) are just useless remnants from a previous stage of development. Also functionalists were influenced by Cambridge historian Robertson Smith, though functionalists don't get involved in doing history of the so-called primitive tribes they focus on, because of the lack of written records (and "we don't trust the native on their own history" of course). Robertson Smith says that the ritual starts up and then people find reasons for it afterwards (see Edward 2022). The functionalist view is that different people will give different interpretations of what a ritual is about and different justifications, but the social anthropologist should focus on what is involved in the ritual and how it contributes to the functioning of the society. "Study the ritual not the belief" is a slogan attributed to functionalists (Jarvie 1967 [1964]). With this debate, there is no clear value in distinguishing between beliefs and values. Consider: one informant says, "The ritual prevents teenage sexual intercourse from occurring. That is what it is for. And this is a good thing," and another says, "The ritual does not prevent teenage sexual intercourse from occurring. This is a good thing." The functionalist does not get involved in these justifications.
        Strathernism? Most anthropologists in recent decades believe that anthropologists should describe beliefs as publicly expressed (and publicly expressed values, if they are different). But should they focus on reporting a shared set of beliefs (Marilyn Strathern's position) or individual beliefs, such as Jane believes this but Julian believe that (Nigel Rapport's position)? It does not seem that there is any use for the distinction between beliefs and values in this debate. Assuming they are different, if you are on Strathern's side, you will focus on shared beliefs and ALSO shared values, an "and also" which you probably intended to convey anyway. If you are on Nigel Rapport's side, you will focus on individual beliefs and ALSO individual values. I am mostly on Strathern's side in this particular debate.
`        (There is an important use for the philosopher's distinction, as some of you perhaps know, but I am not convinced it would appear in an imitation of Helen Beebee. I have this joking, by the way. If you imitate Helen Beebee, do journals more or less write to you asking to publish it? By the way, this style properly done seems ideal for convincing people you are sane, it seems. "No locking them in the attic in this century"?)


Appendix 1: referencing and social class
In the University of Manchester, we have 10% of an essay mark allocated to referencing, or that was the case in various departments I taught for in the school of social sciences. I made a list of common referencing mistakes (or errors?) that students make, unfortunately losing easy-to-keep marks, such as not putting the page number for a Harvard in-the-text reference of a text. (A text with page numbers, that is to say. Anyway, I should learn from some really impoverished bibliographies probably, now that I am uploading often.) I thought my document was really useful and I showed Professor Helen Beebee. She really liked it. Soon in the Philosophy guidebook a trimmed version appeared with no credit to me or consent from me! I also told Doctor Richard Child of Politics about the document in a marker's meeting or something and he just loudly said words to the effect, "You're a stickler for those things?" It was to help students not lose marks which are easily not lost, by using the list. Should I conclude that I have inputted something into "people" of the same social class and the output is problematic, though exactly how might vary? This individual does this and that individual does that, but all find it problematic ("If students really find that list helpful and it is not intentionally that they lose referencing marks, then they should not be here"??? "The problem of the micro-object"???). Here is a challenging something for you. (Premise 1) If Richard Child and Helen Beebee both react in a problematic way to something I did, then a whole social class finds that action problematic. (Premise 2) Richard Child and Helen Beebee both react in a problematic way to something I do. Therefore, by modus ponens: (Conclusion) A whole social class finds that action problematic.


Appendix 2: autism and the face
Various schools of social science and psychology ignore facial expressions. For example, Lacanians focus on the words said, not raised eyebrows, tongues stuck out, and so forth. I am worried that autism is a rational response to the problem of reading people's faces. Unless you are 9/10 in face-reading or above, it is pointless reading faces with any subtlety. This man is happy to see me or not? I showed a friend a video of economist Professor Chris Orme and my friend said, "Look at that expression," and he made the expression in a more exaggerated way to convince me that this person is aggressive.


References (forgive me if omitted)
Ayer, A. 1936. Language, truth and logic. London: Victor Gollancz.
(I am not sure what to refer to from Charles Leslie Stevenson, but I have read him.)
Daly, C. 2010. An Introduction to Philosophical Methods. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.
Edward, T.R. 2022. Social anthropology summary: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown's objections to Sir James Frazer. Available on PhilPapers.
Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Available as PDF on nevercometoAsiaagain dot net or something like that. (Selected essays. What about the other essays?)
Huxley, A. 1928. Wordsworth in the tropics. Life and Letters 1 (5): 342-355.
Ichikawa, J. 2011. Review of Introduction to Philosophical Methods by Chris Daly. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Accessed on 18th January 2022 from:
https://ndpr.nr.edu/reviews/an-introduction-to-philosophical-methods/
Jarvie, I.C. 1967 (revised edition). The Revolution in Anthropology. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
McDougall, W. and Charles, H. 1912. The pagan tribes of Borneo; a description of their physical, moral and intellectual condition, with some discussion of their ethnic relations. Volumes 1 and 2. London: Macmillan. Volume 2 found on Internet archive (archive dot org) using my smartphone. Both volumes were in the main library of the University of Manchester.
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R. 1952. Structure and Function in Primitive Society. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press. (For information about Robertson Smith and the requirement to not refer to history.)
Rapport, N. 1993. Diverse World-Views in an English Village. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Strathern, M. 1992. After Nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Williamson, T. 2020. Philosophical Method. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
________________


H. BEEBEE STYLE: why are television comedy sketch shows hit and miss?


Author's name (parents' draft): Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor)
Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really."
Author's name (my first draft): 0161__Rajivan
Abstract. This paper addresses a question briefly considered by newspaper reviewer Rachel Aroesti but not originally raised by her: why are television comedy sketch shows hit-and-miss? I formulate the puzzle more precisely, introducing some simplifying assumptions. I then examine each of the three solutions that she lists: that humour is subjective; that nobody has good enough ideas to have a series composed of all funny sketches; and that one puts unfunny sketches so that the critics find fault with those rather than finding other faults. I then propose my own solution: that audiences need a break after a good sketch. This paper is intended as an imitation of Helen Beebee's writing, but I am not confident that she would address a topic which seems so ephemeral: here today and gone tomorrow.
Draft version: version 3 (October 8th 2025, tiny changes; first draft September 7th 2025)


"A literary signal for you to wake up
For upon this puzzle you must sup"


1. Introduction
        British television is famous for its comedy sketch shows, such as Monty Python's Flying Circus, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, French and Saunders, Goodness Gracious Me, Smack The Pony, Little Britain, and That Mitchell and Webb Look. The duo who starred in the last of these examples were on television yesterday, with the first episode of a new series: Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping. Today I read a review in the newspaper The Guardian. Amongst other things, it addresses a puzzle about television comedy sketch shows. The puzzle addressed is not why the television comedy sketch show, which was once so popular, now seems to be almost extinct, though the reviewer is very aware of this puzzle. "What is it then?" Henceforth I shall simply use the term "sketch show" for television comedy sketch show. Episodes of sketch shows, in my experience, are normally around 30 minutes long and feature a number of brief comedic scenes: sketches, as they are called. In some shows there are recurring characters, in others there are not. Anyway, the puzzle addressed is why, instead of being composed of all good sketches (funny ones), sketch shows are generally uneven, or hit-and-miss to use another expression for uneven. With a sentence opening echoing to Jane Austen, reviewer Rachel Aroesti writes:
It is a truth universally acknowledged – even by Mitchell and Webb themselves, who riffed on this topic in their original series – that sketch shows are hit-and-miss. Why, I don't know? – because humour is subjective? Because nobody has ever had enough good ideas to burn through 10 of them in 30 minutes? Or, as Mitchell wryly put it, because "If we didn't perversely include about 50% unamusing material" people would be driven to find other faults with them? (Aroesti 2025)
This is an interesting puzzle and she provides a useful beginning list of solutions. But it is half-baked work! The solutions need to be examined in more detail and before that the puzzle needs to be formulated more precisely. In the next part of this paper, I try to formulate the puzzle more precisely. In the third part, I consider the subjectivity solution. In the fourth part, I consider the not-enough-good-ideas solution. In the fifth part, I consider the direct-the-critics solution, and in the sixth part I consider a solution not listed above, which has probably already occurred to expert television reviewer Aroesti: that viewers need a break after a good sketch.


2. The puzzle precisified
        The puzzle, as formulated by Aroesti, is that sketch shows are hit-and-miss. But what is a sketch show? Ordinarily, one wants to count a one-off sketch show of around half-an-hour length as an instance of the type sketch show, a token of that type to use the language of philosophers. But the famous sketch shows are not one-offs. A famous sketch show, such as Little Britain, is composed of episodes which are members of a series, and each such show has run for multiple series. Each episode is around half-an-hour in length (more than 20 minutes certainly) or longer. And a series is composed of six episodes or more. The puzzle applies specifically to sketch shows of one series or more, I shall suppose.
        What about "hit-and-miss"? What does that mean? When an ordinary viewer evaluates a sketch, they may judge one particular sketch to be very funny, another sketch to be quite funny, and a third sketch to be not funny at all, at least to them. But when initially formulating the puzzle, it is useful to think in terms of only two evaluative options: funny/good and not funny/bad. The finer system of evaluation used by the ordinary viewer, which allows for "This is funny but this is even more funny" is not of use in initially formulating the puzzle. Now if they watch a certain sketch series and find every sketch funny apart from one, they would not feel it is apt to describe the sketch show as hit-and-miss. But when is it apt to describe it as this? Certainly if half the sketches are funny and half are not, it can be described as this. What about if two-thirds of the sketches are funny and one third are unfunny? What then? It is difficult to know what to say, but for my purposes below I can work with a simplifying assumption: if every possible viewer rates every sketch show series, evaluating each sketch as either funny or not funny, based on their personal reaction only (how much they laugh), each series to each viewer has half of its sketches as funny and half as unfunny!
        There is, unfortunately, no way to generate the puzzle in a form suitable to begin with unless we make unrealistic simplifying assumptions (which the critics of economics hate, though with this puzzle we are not dealing with economics it seems).  Here then are a list of our starting assumptions for the puzzle of why sketch shows are hit-and-miss, or at least my starting assumptions:
* Each sketch show takes the form of a series, with episodes around an half-an-hour length (certainly longer than 20 minutes) or longer, and composed of brief sketches.
* Each sketch is evaluated by each possible viewer as funny/good or not funny/bad.
* A viewer evaluates a sketch as funny if they laugh and unfunny if they do not laugh.
* For any sketch show series, all possible viewers regard half the sketches as funny and half as not funny.
I should also note that the emphasis of the puzzle is on why sketch shows are hit-and-miss, as opposed to being entirely hit (all funny sketches), NOT on why there are no entirely miss sketch shows.


3. A solution? Humour is subjective
        Aroesti proposes as one solution that humour is subjective. But what does "humour is subjective" mean? A person who asserts this would seem to mean this or roughly this: there are many cases of some individual A finding something funny and some individual B finding it not funny and in any such case there is no truth of the matter. (Note: saying that there is no truth of the matter is different from saying that there is a truth of the matter but we are not in a position to know it, such as the matter of whether Socrates' grandmother was called Daphne. "She was called Daphne" is true or false, but we lack the historical records to say which.)
        Let's grant that humour is subjective. But a television sketch show is typically aimed at a large audience, of thousands if not millions. Don't show writers therefore identify a widely shared sense of humour in a country and simply appeal to that, even if there are some individuals in the country who do not share that sense of humour? How else can one make a sketch show? But if we sensibly assume that sketch show makers target a large audience with a shared sense of humour, the puzzle remains. They are evaluated as hit-and-miss by their target audience, our precisified puzzle implies, and the question remains of why this is. Saying that humour is subjective does not appear to get us anywhere with solving the puzzle.
        Perhaps there is some way to make progress by appealing to the subjectivity of humour, however. Instead of assuming that there is one large target audience, sharing a sense of humour, let us assume that there are two target audiences: one large audience, who share a sense of humour, and a small but influential other audience, who have a different sense of humour (which members of it share with each other). For example, the masses find sketch 1 funny, but the newspaper and academic critics find sketch 2 funny. Owing to the influence of the latter group, sketch show writers write for them as well and half their sketches are in fact for them. Thus a mass audience find a sketch show hit-and-miss and so do the critic-few, but for any specific sketch differ between the two groups. This solution can actually be accepted by people who think there is an objective standard of what is funny and what is not. But it is EASIER TO SUGGEST by saying that humour is subjective, because the claim draws attention to variation amongst individuals and cultures in what is found funny and the thought of that suggests the thought of different sketches directed at different audiences, with different senses of humour. I am not sure whether to accept this solution, but it is worth registering.


4. A solution? Not enough good ideas
        The second solution that Aroesti proposes is "Because nobody has ever had enough good ideas to burn through 10 of them in 30 minutes." The argument of this solution seems to be roughly as follows.
(1) If there is a strong incentive to make a sketch show series but no individual has enough good ideas, then any sketch show series will never feature all good sketches.
(2) There is a strong incentive to make a sketch show series but no individual has enough good ideas.
Therefore (by modus ponens):
(3) Any sketch show series will never feature all good sketches.
Perhaps the incentive to make such a show is much lower now, in the age of the Internet sketch, but one can imagine considering the argument while in the 1960s or 1970s or 1980s or 1990s or early 2000s.
        Premise (1) Is false, as I understand "no individual has enough good ideas." Having enough good ideas is a matter of an individual themselves coming up with the ideas. But even if no individual has enough good ideas in this sense, a team of comedians could have enough and the sketch show could be written by the team. It seems very likely to me that a team would have enough good sketch show ideas for a wholly good show. Aroesti's "Because nobody has ever had enough good ideas to burn through 10 of them in 30 minutes" is countered by the possibility of teams with enough good ideas.
        Anyway, is it really the case that no individual has ever had enough good ideas for every sketch in a series they write to be good? The evidence from previous sketch shows only indicates that this is the case on (roughly) this condition: there is a fair system of writer selection which favours the individual writer with more good comedy sketch ideas. I cannot see any reason to think that this is how the comedic world works. If it did, there would be writers from a variety of backgrounds, I suspect, whereas British comedy sketch shows at least are dominated by the white man (and occasional white woman). By the way, when I first went to watch gong show competitions at the Frog and Bucket club in Manchester (2018), the comedians competing were entirely white and the audience was entirely white apart from me. Suddenly brown people started appearing. Does the comedic world work as one where if individual A is better than individual B, individual A gets more rewards? I suspect this is a more realistic conception: there is a (mostly white) social class who dominate comedy and if you are outside of it but significantly better than all of a set of comedians sent by that class to compete with you, then you get in!


5. A solution? DIrecting the critic
        A solution Aroesti takes from David Mitchell is: "If we didn't perversely include about 50% unamusing material" people would be driven to find other faults with them. The expert comedian probably has a sense of what the critics will focus on as a flaw given certain comedic material and uses that knowledge to control critical reception, deliberately putting in lesser material to produce a certain critical reaction. But why not just do one's best and let the critic find other faults? It is a reasonable requirement on an adequate solution to a puzzle that it should not simply generate another puzzle, of equal weight, and this question seems to be an equally weighty puzzle. So Mitchell's remark is not an adequate solution at present.
        But reflecting on it more is perhaps useful for understanding the circumstances of various comedians. Let's suppose that a critic watches the productions of Mitchell and Webb and rates them as medium rank (which may not fit well with our puzzle assumptions, according to which every sketch show series has the same hit rate for every viewer). What would it take for them to be ranked high, rather than medium? Probably it is not only the case that they have to replace the unamusing material with amusing material. They also have to correct other faults, which the unamusing material distracts attention from. And perhaps the entire process is so demanding that it is simply not worth doing more than they currently do. It is not worth putting in the extra effort to ensure that all the material is amusing, assuming this is extra effort, because there is little or no chance of moving up a rank in the critic's assessment.


6. My solution: the viewer needs a break
        I have come up with a solution to our puzzle, though I am no expert in comedy sketch shows. My solution is that audiences need a break after a funny sketch. One funny sketch and another funny sketch is just too much for them. Too much laughter is painful even and people don't desire such pain. So after one funny sketch, the sketch show writer puts an unfunny sketch. I believe that this solution occurred to Aroesti, but she does not list it. Is that because it is so obviously wrong in her eyes that she does not consider it worth listing? Or is she leaving some space for a novice with evaluating television comedy to contribute? I don't know.
        Anyway, to illustrate my solution I shall refer to a sketch which featured in the episode of Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping yesterday. (I watched it online, by the way, where it does not require a TV licence.) The basic idea for the sketch was how the ordinary Western toilet - the water closet as it was called in Victorian times - was once "received," focusing on one person promoting it and others, conservatives of the time, expressing doubts about its value. (Or at least that's how I understood the basic idea.) In the sketch, the conservative characters favour continuing to throw excrement out of the window, into the streets of London. I know a bit about the reception of new technologies and other things historically, such as the Victorian debate over whether novels are bad for people. Sometimes I contemplate how what were once new technologies were initially received and probably many others do as well. But I found this a very astute choice of technology reception for a comedy, as did Aroesti: a bit clever but not very clever (which would surely have discomforted lots of people) and interestingly not done before, to my knowledge, despite feeling as if it were just waiting to be done. I was wondering how historically accurate it is. Maybe some technologies were simply not received in the past in terms of our general conception of promoters and conservatives. I watched some histories of the toilet afterwards. Probably another comedy sketch with so much to reflect on straight afterwards would have been too much for me. I anticipate someone's saying, "Your example is supposed to be a sketch which is so funny that you need a break, not so deep, so profound." Okay, nevermind!


References
2025. Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping. Available at 4 on Demand.
Aroesti, R. 2025. Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping Review - it's comfortably surreal to see them doing sketch comedy again. The Guardian September 5th 2025. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/05/channel-4-mitchell-and-webb-are-not-helping-review-sketch-comedy
Trollope, A. 1905 (1883). Autobiography of Anthony Trollope. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co.
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Philosophy and fiction: common problems, uncommon solutions? (By D*n*ld D*vids*n?)


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. I consider a proposal for what the relation between philosophy and fiction is: the same problems appear in both, but fiction explores solutions which are not available to philosophers. I use Joe Horton's all-or-nothing problem to illustrate the proposal, but pose an objection to it.
Draft version: Version 1 (2nd September 2022)


What is the relation between philosophy and fiction? Philosophy as a field is large – with topics including what there fundamentally is, what we can know, and why be moral. Fiction too is large – with its many genres. The sensible answer is that there are various relationships between various parts. I wish to focus on one proposed kind of relationship: in some cases both philosopher and fiction author share a problem, but the author explores solutions which are not available to the philosopher.
        To illustrate the proposal, take a problem which Joe Horton developed by adapting an example from Derek Parfit, namely the all-or-nothing problem. This is the situation in abstract. Two children are at risk of death. It is a severe risk to your health or life even for you to save one, and so it is morally acceptable for you to leave them to die. But if you do attempt to save, there's no greater cost with saving two than one. In which case, it seems morally wrong to save just one. But then saving two and saving none are the morally acceptable options: saving one is somehow worse than not saving any. The problem is how to avoid this counterintuitive conclusion.
        According to the proposal, the fiction writer can explore solutions not available to the philosopher and that is the proper role of fiction regarding the problem. One such solution comes to mind readily: any attempt to save one is sure to go wrong. If two children are at risk of drowning and you take your boat out to where they are, they begin to cling to each other as you approach. It is as if they understood your troubling intention in advance. How can you now save only one? If they are trapped in a building and to jump into your arms would lead these arms to break and you withdraw after the first child jumps, the cradled child mysteriously dies as well. A philosopher who proposed these solutions in a research seminar would find they are dismissed as speculations about the nature of reality that we have no reason to accept – in practice they would not even be mentioned, says the proposal. But there's nothing stopping the fiction writer from introducing them. The concepts of philosophy and fiction are used to organize a plurality of solutions, some placed under the heading of the former, some under the latter.
        However, the proposal faces an objection: "You have just written a work of philosophy and incorporated solutions apparently only available in fiction." The domain of philosophy cannot be so easily restricted, nor fiction I believe.


Reference
Horton, J. 2017. The All-or-nothing Problem. Journal of Philosophy 114: 94-102.
________________


On Parfit's disagreement with Nietzsche (by D*n*ld D*v*ds*n)


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper presents a Davidsonian perspective on Derek Parfit's disagreements with Nietzsche. I have actually gone further, too far perhaps, and tried to imitate Davidson's attractive essayistic style.
Draft version: Version 1 (2nd October 2022).


"If you broke the taboo and feel disgrace,
Then take the eyes out of your face!"


Human beings are moral beings. Though some may wish to deny the fact, we inevitably find ourselves appealing to moral values. We are outraged at a funeral met with laughter, say. But human beings as moral beings must also face the fact of moral disagreement. One group disagree with another in their moral judgments. A reaction to such disagreement is despair. There can be no resolution. And if there can be no resolution, moral values are not objective. But then why be moral at all?
Philosophers from Socrates to Kant to John McDowell have believed in the possibility of resolution and I share their optimism, though not the detail of their views. Derek Parfit confronts his differences with Nietzsche, including the view that suffering is good in itself. For Parfit, this is no challenge to the thesis that reflective beings with suitable knowledge, absent of distorting influences, would converge in moral judgments. Nietzsche's suffering was a distorting influence; to hold that suffering is good in itself enabled him to cope (2011: 572).
Parfit writes of a thrilling claim that is clearly false, but do we even understand what is claimed? An interpreter arrives among Nietzsche's master race. She finds that they utter strings of noises. Under what circumstances would she be justified in attributing to them a sentence meaning "Suffering is good in itself"? Genuine suffering is what we have reason to avoid, unless reason itself finds in it a means. Any interpreter who entertained the hypothesis that one of the native sentences meant that would have grounds for preferring an alternative interpretation. The interpreter has no choice but to take the natives as largely correct by her lights, if she is to make sense of their language at all.
  Individuals or groups who disagree take different perspectives on a shared matter, but there can be no disagreement without much common ground. Too little common ground and we wonder, are they even talking about the same thing? Meanwhile, with common ground comes method for resolving disagreement.


Note: even without Davidson's theoretical apparatus, why does Parfit assume that he and Nietzsche are talking about the same thing, given that in Parfitese "Suffering is valuable in itself" is so obviously false?


Reference
Parfit, D. 2011. On What Matters, Volume 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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The logic of Bourdieu, by C*rrie Ichik*w* J*nkins


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper contains a brief pastiche of analytic philosopher Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins, responding to the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu.


I was reading the book Bourdieu: A Critical Reader and thought it would be nice if a response by Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins was included. To my knowledge, she does not write on Bourdieu and perhaps she is not interested in entering this secondary literature, so I wrote how I imagine her responding.


        Pierre Bourdieu is well-known as the source of a distinction between different senses of the term "rule following." A typical case of "rule following" in the first sense involves a subject who is aware of some rule R, abides by rule R because they intend to do so, and has a disposition to make a statement to the effect "I was following rule R," if asked in suitable circumstances why they performed certain actions. In another sense, a researcher constructs a model of what is going on in a social situation and this model features agents who behave in certain regular ways, with behaving in such a way described as following a rule. But the typical participant in this situation may lack awareness of these regularities and, consequently, the intention to behave in these regular ways, and the disposition to explain their behaviour in terms of following rules requiring such regularity.
        Bourdieu is opposed to explaining success and failure within a field, such as philosophy, entirely in terms of following or not following rules. I agree with his point in broad outline. A subject can follow a plausible set of rules of philosophy – author citation rules, rules to clarify specialist terminology, rules of inference, etc. – and yet not succeed professionally in philosophy, in contrast to others whose track record of rule-following is poor in comparison.
        I find it easier to make sense of Bourdieu through secondary literature. His own texts leave me with questions of whether the writing makes sense. In "The Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas," he throws into relief a number of issues to do with the reception of ideas across social contexts, such as what sorts of ideas gain an international reception and whether attracting foreign readers is evidence of long-term value. I was trained in the analytic tradition and this is a quotation from the text to illustrate the obstacles an analytic philosopher is likely to face when reading Bourdieu directly:
Doubtless, many people here wonder how it was that the French became so interested in Heidegger. There are many reasons of course, perhaps too many, but one particular reason leaps out to the eye: the fact that Sartre held the intellectual field in a stranglehold throughout the 1950s (as Anna Boschetti has demonstrated quite convincingly in her book Sartre et les Temps Modernes). One of Sartre's major functions for the French was to diminish Sartre's impact, with teachers saying for example that all of Sartre's major ideas were already there in Heidegger, where they were better elaborated. (1999: 223)
So here are four propositions:
1. The question is why the French became so interested in Heidegger.
2. Jean-Paul Sartre is French.
3. Bourdieu presents an answer which does not explain why Sartre himself became interested in Heidegger
4. His answer is satisfactory in this context.
Analytic philosophers will wonder, how can we reconcile (1)-(4)? Why do the French read Nazi philosopher H? If the answer given is to stop French writer S from reading Nazi philosopher H, this just seems to push back the question. We now want to know, why did S start reading H? (Was it somehow an unFrench act?) 
        The reform of philosophy so that contributors who follow certain rules are rewarded and those who break these rules are not would probably be good for improving access to the field, but that would actually give a reason for excluding Bourdieu.


Reference
Bourdieu, P. 1999. The Social Conditions of the International Circulation of Ideas. In Shusterman, R. (ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
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The ignoring of Raymond Tallis on literary theory, by C*rrie Ichik*w* J*nkins


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. The second edition of Raymond Tallis's book Not Saussure includes a preface which describes how the first edition of his book did not meet with the reaction he expected from the community of literary critics. In this paper, I consider why Tallis's arguments have been ignored, imitating the style of Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins.


It seems to me that Carrie Jenkins uses slightly different styles for more popular and more "academic" work (often on highly specialized topics), and this paper aims to imitate her more academic work. Perhaps it is easier to deliver some points by means of this approximation.[1]


Raymond Tallis's book Not Saussure is a response to post-structuralist literary theories, such as deconstruction, which suppose that the textual and other evidence under-determines defensible interpretations. He seeks to attack a background linguistic theory derived from Ferdinand de Saussure which is committed to an anti-realist semantics, notably rejecting the proposition that the meaning of a term is fixed by its having been introduced to refer to some independently existing thing and also the proposition that it has this meaning because members of a linguistic community are disposed to refer to that thing with that term.[2] For example, the meaning of the term "the morning star" is not fixed by its having been introduced to refer to an independently existing astronomical body or by speakers' being disposed to refer to that body as "the morning star."
A second edition of Tallis's book appeared in 1995, which contains a preface raising concerns about its reception. Tallis, a former medical professor, says:
I expected a scandal to result and the post-Saussureans to die of shame or to apply for re-training as useful citizens. I was astonished when the arguments of both books were largely ignored and it was business as usual. Not Saussure received a handful of largely hostile or dismissive reviews. In Defence of Realism went unreviewed and is out of print – though it, too, is shortly to be re-issued – and the deconstruction industry continued to boom. (1995: x-xi)
Tallis also provides an explanation for why he was largely ignored:
I blame this naivety on my training in science, where competing theories are usually evaluated on their basis of the relevant factual evidence, their internal consistency, their power at predicting new facts and the success or failure of their applications. This training left me ill-prepared for the standards and practices of the intellectual community whose views I criticised. (1995: xi)
Sometimes I write something and upload it onto the Internet and I think to myself "Lots of people are going to engage with this. This will go worldwide!" but reality doesn't fit with my expectations. In the case of Tallis, there are lots of possible reasons for why his objections have been ignored so far, not all of which require judging post-structuralists to be unscientific, such as there is a queue of objectors waiting to be dealt with and some other objections have priority for respondents, e.g. they are more likely to win acceptance. The average literary critic using one of these frameworks may be unsure how best to respond to some objections – much like the average specialist in psychopathology may not know how to respond to the objection that a term they use is ambiguously defined – and so may pass them on to more philosophically-minded critics, who know a lot more about the foundations of literary criticism, and these people may be very busy. I can't say that this is the case with Tallis's objections, but it's a possibility.
        I'm not a post-structuralist; I work in the analytic tradition of philosophy, but for me there's a problem with Tallis's work as it stands. But I'm going to start with something good. Here's a reconstruction Tallis makes of post-structuralist thinking (1995: 18-19):
1. Initial Truism: 'Language has its own rules'
2. Invisible general principle: 'Whatever has its own rules is an autonomous system'
3. Intermediate conclusion 'Therefore, language is an autonomous system'
4. Second invisible general principle 'All autonomous systems are sealed off from whatever is outside of them'
5. Final paradox 'Therefore, language is sealed off from extra-linguistic reality'
I take it an invisible general principle is a general premise which the arguer is relying on but hasn't been stated, or which they're charitably interpreted as relying on. So the most charitable interpretation is that (iii), the intermediate conclusion, is being deduced from (i) and (ii), not just (i), which the texts state. It follows from those premises. And (v) is being deduced from (iii) and (iv). Does (v) follow? If you define extra-linguistic reality as that which is outside language, then I suppose it follows. Let's say it does. By the way, the conclusion seems to be classed as a paradox not in the sense of being a contradiction validly inferred from plausible premises but a highly counterintuitive conclusion, given our commonsensical starting point.
It's a normal feature of texts and conversations that we don't state all of our premises. But when reconstructing an argument, it's good idea to identify those unstated premises. And it's a good idea not to attribute to someone inferential errors unnecessarily: inferring a conclusion from a set of premises when that conclusion doesn't follow from that set. Tallis meets this requirement. And various people who have the professional status of analytic philosophers don't, especially on the political philosophy side. So that's something good about Tallis here.
        My concerns about his work are about what he says afterwards. Let's assume that (i)-(v) is a good reconstruction of his opponent's thinking not just in terms of avoiding unnecessarily attributing inferential errors to them, but also in terms of the contents of the premises – that is the best way of making sense of the arguments in those texts. If you ask various philosophers in analytic philosophy to assess the argument Tallis has reconstructed, what they're going to say is "I need more clarifications of the terms involved." I think many of them are going to latch onto "sealed off" as a metaphor. How do we cash that out? A worry is: is there a clarification of the relevant terms in which this argument is uninterestingly true – "sealed off" just means distinct say – and another clarification in which it is highly controversial and probably false?
        Tallis sounds like he has some problem with the terms used but no detail is given. Here's his response:
Not infrequently, both the intermediate statement and the final paradox are literally unthinkable or unimaginable; so the reader has greater difficulty in envisaging counter-arguments and even greater difficulty in thinking up counter-examples. The method can therefore be summarised as a passage from the obvious to the paradoxical via enthymeme and obscurity. (1995: 19)
In light of the first sentence, it's plausible that what Tallis is saying is something different, which is that this argument is something we now understand with sufficiently clarity, following his reconstruction, but we can't use the normal method of drawing attention to counterexamples to assess it. It's like a sceptic's argument that my whole life could be a dream or a simulation of experiences by a mad scientist tampering with my brain. I can't say "What about this?" drawing attention to an example, such as injuring my finger, because the sceptic would just insist that that too could be dreamt or simulated.
Tallis does mention obscurity in the next sentence but there are at least two ways of making sense of his commentary:
1. he is objecting to undefined and insufficiently clear terms;
2. he regards the terms of the argument as adequately clarified now, but the argument is not available to usual methods of assessment, such as by counterexamples, or very difficult to assess like this, leaving the reader feeling unsure how to assess it.
Reading (a) is a natural reading of the second sentence quoted, owing to reference to "obscurity," but he doesn't single out terms in need of clarification in the previous sentence. He doesn't say things like "Sealed off is a metaphor. How should we understand that?" Reading (b) fits well with the previous sentence. As stated above, it isn't obviously an objection, but probably he thinks that influential figures in literary criticism shouldn't pressure the average critic into working with unassessable and highly counterintuitive theories.
Some skilled analytic philosophers might ignore work by Tallis as well, despite his appropriating analytic methods and references to canonical figures and concepts, owing to such difficulties of interpretation as this one – what exactly is Tallis's objection? – and that has consequences for whether literary critics pay attention to it: "If these people don't, why would I?" But I can't say that the process is fair; it's very plausible that all sorts of factors play a role. Some of Tallis's objections seem worth considering, but there's a question of which ones were known earlier – the objection to linguistic relativism as inconsistently referring to a mind-independent nature that gets carved up differently probably was (1995: 52-53); the objection he singles out in another book as the most important from Not Saussure sounds more novel, but as stated can be interpreted in quite different ways (1988: 94).


References
Tallis, R. 1988. In Defence of Realism. London: Edward Arnold.
Tallis, R. 1995 (second edition). Not Saussure. A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan
________________


Economists, university rankings, and leaving the European Union, by M*l*n K*nder*


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. In this paper, I present some responses to an argument made by an economist in an online video: that when Britain leaves the European Union, it will be taking many high ranking universities with it, which will lead to an innovation deficit in the union. I present some responses by means of a pastiche of a widely read European fiction writer.


        Banaka is a Japanese novelist who once appeared in a novel himself. His appearance in that novel has made him a local celebrity. He lives in a provincial town in the west of Europe and students of literature flock to his apartment every year.
        Banaka, the philosophy professor, and Bibi are watching an online video. It is 2016 and a referendum will soon be held in Britain on whether to leave the European Union. Some economists based in an institute in the United States are explaining the benefits and drawbacks of a decision to leave.
"I will miss the British," says Bibi.
        "You are assuming that the British will vote to leave," replies Banaka.
        "Yes, that's true."
        "Shhh," says the philosophy professor. "This man is going to talk about the costs for the EU."
        The economist in the video sounds like a European himself. He tells viewers that if they examine the global rankings of universities, they will find that the European universities in the top 50 are mostly British. So if Britain leaves, a deficit in innovation is to be expected.
        "He is assuming that all innovation happens in universities," protests Banaka. Banaka is generally regarded as a seventh rate novelist.
        "There is another objection," says the philosophy professor, the joy of realizing it masked by smoke from his pipe. "It is an innovative argument, but these economists are all from an American institute. Have you heard of it?"
        "No," replies Bibi.
        "Definitely not," replies Banaka.
        "It's probably unranked. How can this economist account for his own innovation?"
        Banaka and Bibi contemplate the argument in silence. The philosophy professor smokes his pipe.


Notes
(a) The argument is by Simeon Djankov and appears in a video by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which seems reputable, but would not appear in university rankings. (b) If I used university global rankings as a guide, I would be puzzled by how most countries function at all. Their lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc., must mostly be much worse!


References
Djankov, S. 2016. Long-term impacts of Brexit. In a Peterson Institute for International Economics video. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z0MyjPP5m8
Kundera, M. (translated from French by A. Asher) 1996. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber.
________________
On what is offered, by M*l*n K*nder*


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. I distinguish two senses of the word "offer." I do so within a brief pastiche, which I put down to the influence of the European Union.
Draft version: Version 2 (July 17th 2022, Davidson reference added).


11
Hugo has invited Tamina back to his apartment. He has made her an offer: he is offering her the best night of her life. But let's not get carried away with excitement. Even a novelist must clarify their terms. What does Hugo offer? When I contemplated the question, two definitions occurred to me.
1. The offer is within Hugo's words. We look into those words and we know: Hugo is offering Tamina the best night of her life. For some reason, I compare it to opening a coffin and peering inside at a corpse.
2. The offer is what Hugo will actually provide. It is what the fellow, with his bad teeth, is actually able and willing to offer. It is a night in his apartment, certainly not the best night, but also not the worst.
Worse, much worse: back in her homeland, Tamina is hiding from the police in a closet. A neighbour has reported that she left the house twice yesterday. The police want to know if she had a certificate for that. In the closet, she holds onto a piece of paper but it is actually a love letter. Tamina cannot read the letter in the dark. She feels a sensation of warmth and loses a button.


12
        Noise from the apartment above is spoiling their date. A popular song called Blurred Lines is playing. A little girl is dancing to it. She seems to me as if she stepped out of one of Papa's art history books, but here she is: a child interpreting sexiness, to a mindless rhythm. An ostrich too is dancing to it. Each is so preoccupied with their own dance moves that neither notices the other.
 
References
Davidson, D.  1973-4. On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47: 5-20.
Kundera, M. (translated from French by A. Asher) 1996. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber.
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Notes on a paragraph from 1922, by M*l*n K*nd*ra


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper is written as a pastiche of a notable European novelist, and essayist – it is the essayist who is being imitated, my first effort at this. I make some notes on a paragraph from a well-crafted fiction by Stacy Aumonier. I use the pastiche mode not just for fun but because readers may prefer the bolder and less qualified style, despite some information loss.
Draft version: Version 2 (31st August 2022, removed "any")


"Exiled again—
It was only a matter of when!"


        We are all familiar with stories of exile from what were the communist countries of Europe: Czechoslovakia, Poland, and so forth. But to be exiled from France, cradle of the Enlightenment – to attend a conference in England and find that one's passport is suddenly invalid – is another matter altogether. I contacted a friend, an engineer, who contacted a friend of his and information was passed along a chain until I was told what to expect. Forgotten fictions would be taken from attics and the question would be posed: why is your work any better than this?
How to read such fictions today? How, for example, to read this paragraph from 1922:
She had never been out of England before, and she had a horror of travel, and an ingrained distrust of foreigners. She spoke a little French, sufficient for the purpose of travel and for obtaining any modest necessities, but not sufficient for carrying on any kind of conversation. She did not deplore this fact, for she was of opinion that French people were not the kind of people that one would naturally want to have conversation with; broadly speaking, they were not quite "nice," in spite of their ingratiating manners. (1923 [1922]: 25)
I offer some notes.
(a) All the English regard the French as rude. Their driving is unruly. They won't speak English to tourists, even if they know the language. Of course, little was different in 1922. The character is surely not travelling to the France of common experience. She is travelling to the France of literature. Recall the opening paragraph of the opening letter of Voltaire's Letters on the English Nation, the Quaker who complains "The people of thy country are too full of their bows and compliments."
(b) It is a predictable dialogue, endlessly repeated, with trivial variations: "This character is so prejudiced." To which someone replies: "You have to take into account the time in which she lived. It was different then, when prejudices were acceptable which today are not" But we must not be fooled. Anti-racist discourse was there from decades before (Rossetti 2005 [1870]: 81), if not centuries. Liberalism is of England's essence. Even in 1922, there would have been readers who reacted against the prejudice and no doubt we are meant to, as well!
(c) In one of his essays, striking a humanistic chord, Max Beerbohm tells us:
At the school where I was reared there were four French masters; four; but to what purpose? Their class-rooms were scenes of eternal and incredible pandemonium, filled with whoops and catcalls, with devil's-tattoos on desks, and shrill inquiries for the exact date of the battle of Waterloo. Nor was the lot of those four men exceptional in its horror. From the accounts given to me by 'old boys' of other schools I have gathered that it was the common lot of French masters on our shores; and I have often wondered how much of the Anglophobia recurrent among Frenchmen in the nineteenth century was due to the tragic tales told by those of them who had returned from our seminaries to die on their own soil. Since 1914, doubtless, French masters have had a very good time in England. (1921 [1919]: 297-298) 
Beerbohm – now almost forgotten, along with the laughter he records – was widely read at the time amongst literary figures. We can be sure there was once a project of tracking all the ways in which the English interact with the French and our paragraph is a contribution. In place of the whoops and inquiries into the date of Waterloo this: in the jargon of social science, a pragmatic sub-conversational competence.
(d) The character in our object of analysis comes from the sleepy cathedral town of Easingstoke. Furthermore, "in her were epitomized all the virtues and ideals of Easingstoke." (1923: 24) By implication the paragraph awakens in us consciousness of a problem: even if some have all the formal qualifications for making conversation, they have passed all their French exams with flying colours, they cannot actually make conversation with anyone but those of similar prejudices. Or they can but it is unnatural and such a person does not engage in the unnatural.
Nevertheless, she finds herself in a complicated situation, our Miss Natural. But I leave this for interested readers. Of course, the unnatural is nothing strange for a novelist in exile. The novelist in exile must write for audiences who lack his formative experiences of life. He must find ways to communicate what few others would. We can compare him to an engineer: by his writing he must engineer a bridge between himself and readers. And why does he write at all? Whether exiled or not, he writes for future audiences, of whom he can only have the murkiest notions.


Note: I do not wish to personally endorse the final paragraph of the pastiche above, but at present I more or less favour the interpretations expressed prior to it.


References
Aumonier, S. 1923 (originally 1922). Miss Bracegirdle does her duty. In E.J. O'Brien and J. Cournos, The Best British Short Stories of 1923. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company.
Beerbohm, M. 1921 (originally 1919). On Speaking French. In And Even Now. New York: E.P. Dutton and Company.
Rossetti, C. 2005 (originally 1870). Pros and Cons. In Commonplace. London: Hesperus Press.
Voltaire, F. 1733. Letters Concerning The English Nation. London: C. Davies and A. Lyon.


________________


Moved by the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, by M*l*n K*ndera


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper offers a brief analysis of what it is to be moved by a death. It is written as an imitation of a famous European writer and it has an analysis of some newspaper material as well, which was just some gentle fun, if it be permitted.
Draft version: Version 1 (September 1st 2022)


"In the name of liberty
Brothers in mockery are we"


        We who still swim in the river of world history are moved: when a figure we all know from the news and who has a secure place in the textbooks dies, we cannot but be moved. But what is it to be "moved"? Even a novelist such as myself must define terms.
1. To be moved here is to be saddened by the death.
2. To be moved here is to be the subject of cause and effect. The death is the cause – or the news of the death – and there is some effect on us. We are like physical objects affected by other physical objects, but this sense leaves open how.
Exiled in England, I went to a convenience store and I saw his face covering one half of the newspaper: more than the size of a column horizontally, but not the whole side vertically. I glimpsed at his famous birthmark and read the sentence: "Mikhael Gorbachev, 1931-2022: leader who ended the cold war dies at age 91."
        We are today living in the age of the image, not the sentence – the image with all its immediate power. What does a child today think when they see this image? What do they think if they read the words below? That he replaced cold with hot, like a plumber fixing a water problem? I said, "Look he is dead," to a boy walking past in the street, showing him the cover page, and he opened his hand in a claw-like gesture. I then returned to my apartment and read the newspaper. I turned to the second page to finish the article. The third reported a murderer. There I could see images of men who looked like Gorbachev. I had to look again. Even on the second page, there were Gorbachev-like men. All these Gorbachevs! And a photograph of Ronald Reagan with the great Russian leader, below. He seemed to be laughing, not the shared laughter of two men struggling towards a common goal, but laughter he could not share, laughter that divides rather than unifies. Yes, he was certainly laughing at Gorbachev. And Gorbachev too seemed to be mocking, mocking the glamorous American.
        I am not a young man now. Tired I fell asleep and dreamt. The scene was entirely black and white. I was in the audience of a great crowd. It was snowing. On a palace balcony stood a man with a hat and a glove, and next to him Gorbachev, shivering. The man offered Gorbachev the hat. He rejected it. The man threw the hat into the crowd. It flew an enormous distance, with the ease of a gull, and reached me. I caught it. People started whooping. I did not have Gorbachev's confidence. I felt it would be an insult not to wear it and I did. Then the man on the balcony offered Gorbachev a glove. He wore it. He opened his hand to the audience; it was a strangely clawed glove. Then I suddenly awoke, sweating, fearing that to sleep any longer would have been a fatal error.
The next death was coming soon. I had remembered him, reflected and dreamt; and it was time for us to part ways.


References
Roth, A. and Harding, L. 2022. Mikhail Gorbachev 1931-2022 Soviet leader who ended the cold war dies aged 91. The Guardian 31st August 2022: 1-2.
Knaus, C., Bucci, N. and Meade, A. 2022. After 40 years and a hit true-crime podcast, teacher is found guilty of wife's murder. The Guardian 31st August 2022: 3.
Syal, R. 2022. UK asylum seeker deal leaves Rwanda genocide survivors homeless. The Guardian 31st August 2022: 2.
________________
Further responses to Mary Beard on Frazer and colonialism, with M*l*n K*nd*ra


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. There are some further responses I have to Mary Beard on the relationship between Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough and British colonialism: her claim that it provided an image of the empire as a whole. The paper contains two objections, very minor ones perhaps, and some highly speculative defences. But I find the defences difficult to present in the traditional manner, so I have written the responses as a pastiche imitating a widely read European writer.
Draft version: Version 1 (November 18th 2022)


Behold a cake
From the remaining cornflake


        Tamina is sitting on the beach of the children's island, gazing at the waves. She is thinking to herself, or that is what she appears to be doing. I don't know and it does not matter. A beautiful young girl walks down and sits next to Tamina. She arches her knees just like Tamina and imitates her posture and expression. She waits for a response. Tamina registers the imitation, but passes over it in silence. Then the girl speaks.
        "What is the relationship of The Golden Bough to colonialism?" she says, breaking with her imitation and trying to sound like a British professor.
        Tamina is silent. She does not want to be here. The girl continues. "The relationship is not only that it provided a practical aid for colonialists, with governing the natives. It also provided an image, an image of the empire as a whole, a representation of the empire as a whole, in words!" The girl is immensely proud of her statement.
        Tamina remembers The Golden Bough. She had to study its opening pages as an ideal example of British prose, in her home town of Prague.[3] "The Golden Bough is about an ancient rite. A brutal rite. Why did that rite happen?" she replies.
        "It provided an image of British colonialism!" asserts the girl-professor aggressively. She is so short compared to Tamina and decades younger, yet so bossy. "It reported the customs of all the different peoples of the empire."
        "If someone wrote a book doing that, they would just call it The British Empire and Its Peoples. It's so hard to do. And then it's confusing for readers, with its opening!"
        Suddenly the girl gets up and walks towards a mound of sand, or what seems to be a mound of sand. She starts dusting away sand, golden grains of sand. There is a copy of Frazer's famous book beneath the sand, a New York edition. And a spectacles case as well. The girl opens the spectacles case and wears the glasses. She quotes from the opening: "Page 6: 'It remains to try whether the survey of a wider field may not yield us the clue we seek.' That is British for: I am going to provide a survey of our whole empire. No one was confused, only you." The girl decides that something more is needed for her message to be received: "Tamina, you are really stupid!"
        Tamina feels a strong desire to attack, but suppresses it, favouring a question instead: "Why did he not just call it The British Empire and its Peoples and cut out the ancient rite stuff? Isn't that what anyone who made a survey would do?" 
        "Tamina, do I have to explain everything to you? Are you the stupidest person in the world? People tried that and it always failed and then the clever British realized that you have to proceed indirectly."
        Tamina refuses to be taught by this girl, who would say anything to defend her views. "No, it's not about the British empire. It's about an ancient rite. There was a tree in a grove and to become the high priest of the goddess Diana you had to, you had to…"
        "Shut up, Tamina!" the girl shouted.
        "You had to be a runaway slave and break off a branch of the tree."
        "Shut up, Tamina!"
        "And that entitled you to a fight to the death with the current priest. There's a painting by Turner."
        "o do shut up, Tamina! That painting is unspeakable!"
        Tamina has had enough. She begins to chase the girl. There will be a punishment for this, but she does not care. She will be not be lectured to by this child.


References
Beard, M. 1992. Frazer, Leach, and Virgil: The Popularity (and Unpopularity) of the Golden Bough. Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 (2): 203-224.
Kundera, M. (translated from French by A. Asher) 1996. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber.
________________
Methodical types: on Gabrielle and Michelle plus


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper observes a problem with part three of Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, on a natural interpretation. There is a higher level of methodical student to which his lesson doesn't apply.
Draft version: Version 1 (30th January 2023)


In part three of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera presents us with two American girls from a summer school. They are the best students in their class, but they arrive at conclusions about the text under study in a laboured way:
"I don't really get what it means, that they all turn into rhinoceroses," said Gabrielle.
"You have to see it as a symbol," Michelle explained.
"That's right," said Gabrielle. "Literature is made up of signs."
 "The rhinoceros is mainly a sign," said Michelle.
"Yes, but even if you assume that they don't really turn into rhinoceroses, but only into signs, why do they become just that sign and not another one?" (1996: 77)
I think it is natural to interpret Kundera as conveying that while these two may be careful methodical students, they lack a kind of intuition and without this intuition literary texts are difficult or impossible to understand (see Edward 2023b). Kundera in contrast has that mysterious intuition, which allows one to make sense of texts more quickly, and he goes on to make severe fools of these two.
        Recently I uploaded a dialogue with Gabrielle and Michelle analysing Kundera's own text, which from the data available to me is more popular than many other recent uploads of mine on the website academia.edu, with four views (see Edward 2023a)! What should I make of that? These are the opening lines:
GABRIELLE: I don't get what it means, that we wrote down every one of her remarks.
MICHELLE: Okay, here is a definition: something is a remark of Madame Raphael if and only if it is some assertion she makes.
I anticipate someone's saying, "These are not really Gabrielle and Michelle from Kundera. They are cleverer." Anyway, my worry is that the lesson Kundera invites readers to take is misleading. There is a better careful methodical student who does not appear to rely on literary intuition but whom more intuitive commentators are going to find harder to get rid of or make fools of.


References
Edward, T.R. 2023a. Reading The Book of Laughter and Forgetting analytically: what is a remark? Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/95692138/Reading_The_Book_of_Laughter_and_Forgetting_analytically_what_is_a_remark
Edward, T.R. 2023b. Terry Eagleton, literary theory, and understanding rhinoceros symbolism. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/95921120/Terry_Eagleton_literary_theory_and_understanding_rhinoceros_symbolism
Kundera, M. (translated from French by A. Asher) 1996. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber.
________________
What is a public intellectual? By M*l*n K*nd*r*


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper appropriates the style of Milan Kundera to address the title question, identifying three main kinds of public intellectual.
Draft version: Version 2 (5th June 2023, note added).


1
You have no doubt encountered this from a dozen bad American films. A superhero is named after an animal and dresses in a way to evoke that kind of animal, a bat or a spider for example. He counters crime, but he also has imitators, who present themselves as none other than the superhero, while lacking his charisma and physique. They too try to prevent crimes. Parisians look down on the movies – it is American vulgarity versus Parisian sophistication – but by the day Paris is more American.


2  
Bibi is traveling in a taxi with a man who declares himself to be Voltaire. He is stocky with grey hair and has a past as a country solicitor. He has taken on the name Voltaire for the purpose of defending the nation, though against what is hard to say, and is even wearing Voltairean costume.
"So you are planning to write a book?"
"Yes… No, not a novel, a book about the world as I see it," she says, anticipating his next question.
"So you are planning to become a public intellectual?"
"A public intellectual? I didn't think about it like that."
"But consider: what is a public intellectual?"
"A public intellectual? An intellectual for the public," Bibi feels the vacuity of her answer, and adds, "I suppose."
"Exactly. Ever since Hume, we have known that concepts are combined from other concepts. At the foundation is a set of non-combined atomic concepts. The concept of a public intellectual is combined from the concepts of public and intellectual." Bibi wonders: does he mean Hume Hume, or does he mean Hume as he is Voltaire? But she does not dare ask.
"In my experience," the Voltaire continues, "There are three main kinds of public intellectual.
1. Channelers. There are intellectuals who present the views of the public. Perhaps the public themselves have not stated these views, but if they encounter the presentations, they think, 'Yes, that's my view too,' or many of them would. They channel the public's thoughts, even its unconscious thoughts.
2. Doors. These intellectuals present views which perhaps no one in the public holds, but they are meant to give rise to a question, which someone will hopefully answer – what is wrong with this view? What is presented is like a door for a Socrates to go through. For example, what, if anything, is wrong with the view that the law must sometimes be suspended to protect the identity of the nation? Or disproportionate violence early on in war, to force submission?
3. Givers. These are intellectuals who answer the questions of the general public, which they are probably smart enough to ask but too stupid to answer. What will be the economic consequences of leaving the European Union? They labour to answer the question accurately, I should say."
"But I am not any of those kinds!" exclaims Bibi unhappily.
"Of course, the terminology is not ideal," the Voltaire says, somewhat ignoring her. "A person who prompts a question may be doing so on behalf of the public. The public has that question. The intellectual can be described as channeling something from the public."


Note
I am not sure if a dozen bad American films have this kind of scene, but I saw it in The Dark Knight, which I at least regard as a good film, and also saw some disturbing British news recently involving a man in superhero costume, though the date given for the article reporting it is almost two years ago.


References
Kundera, M. (translated from French by A. Asher) 1996. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber.
Osteen, V. 2015. Joker and the Fake Batman –The Dark Knight Real Clip. Available at: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2r1tz2
Weston, K. 2023. Thug in a Spider-Man outfit PUNCHES female Asda worker in the FACE as part of TikTok mob 'prank' to 'cause chaos for likes' linked to rapper who won BBC award. MailOnline 23 July 2021 (updated 24 July 2021). Available at:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9818869/Shocking-moment-thug-Spider-Man-outfit-PUNCHES-female-Asda-worker-Face.html
Zheng, Q. 2016. Carl Schmitt, Mao Zedong and the Politics of Transition. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
________________
Paradoxes from an imitation of Milan Kundera


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper presents some paradoxes within an imitation of the famous European writer.
Draft version: Version 1 (August 25th 2023)


10?
        The philosophy professor put down his pipe and began to utter sounds. "So you want to write a philosophy book? But today the position of philosophy is paradoxical. On the one hand, the philosopher with his vision of how the world should be, the philosopher who inspired revolutionaries, belongs to the past. Where is the philosopher today? On the other hand, philosophy is a luxury, suitable only for advanced societies. Only in an affluent country like France can there be so many philosophy students."
        "A luxury?" asked Bibi, troubled by the status implied about her book.
        "Yes, sex is a luxury," uttered the professor.
        "Yes, sex is certainly a luxury," said Banaka.
        "But--" Bibi was about to protest.
        "Yes, I know what you are about to say," the professor intervened. "If sex is a luxury, then how can we ensure the population is large enough?"
        "By migration," said Tamina, like an eager student. "No sex, instead migration."
        "But when Dédé is back from one of his trips--"
        "Admit it, Bibi," said Tamina, "You only had sex for the aim of complaining about it. Women like you are a paradox."


11?
        That night Bibi dreamt. She was rowing a boat to an island full of children, waiting to join the country. As she approached the shore, the children were opening their mouths and shutting them but noiselessly. What were they trying to say? She did not know. She felt frightened and rowed back. Some of the children threw stones at her boat.


Note
I suppose Tamina's paradox, which may not be limited to women, involves the proposition: no one would do that for such an end.


Reference
Kundera, M. 1996 (translated by A. Asher). The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber.
________________


Words misunderstood: "what is your type" by M*l*n K*nd*ra (an imitation)


Every man must face the question, "What is your type?" Faced with this question, he has but two choices: he must either answer or not. He does not, he erects a fortress of s ilence, in which he dwells. But what use is defence? Man experiences desire and sooner or later desire must reveal itself. And then it is studied, and thereby woman learns man's type. So he must speak. He must say, "This, this is my type and that is not." But here man, throughout all the ages, misunderstands woman. When a man says that a woman is not his type, he thinks of himself as a judge passing a sentence, a life sentence. This woman is not for him, not now and not ever. But woman does not think of the type she currently is as something she is condemned to: she does not think of it as her essence. Today she is one type, tomorrow she can be another. To be a man's type is merely to produce an effect. Knowledge of his type is the cause and becoming his type - assuming that appearance - is the effect. (Pastiche over. Poem time: What thanks do you get for suggesting to me this / First not firstly: learn how to kiss!)
________________


Imitation of Milan Kundera addressing the theme of feminism


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward (0161__Rajivan, if that helps)
Draft version: version 2 (8th October 2025; version 1 29th October 2025)


I wonder whether a foreigner, such as Kundera, would either be forced into the roles of misogynist or homosexual, but some will probably say that even if so he took to misogyny with relish. Anyway, here is the imitation.


Feminism: who in our time is not influenced by this political movement? It aims at the emancipation of woman, but what is emancipation? Ever since medieval times, since the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Europe has understood the need for distinctions. The distinction is our weapon in the great war which Plato, wisest of our philosophers, instructed us to partake in: the war against illusions. Do two parties in what appears to be a dispute actually disagree or is it an illusion? Are they speaking past each other, are they at cross-purposes? Conversely, do these two actually agree? Here we turn to the distinction as a stone with which to shatter the illusion: they are not using the same signs with the same meanings; are they even talking about the same thing?
                "Woman must be emancipated," says the student Gabrielle.
                "Yes, woman must be emancipated," agrees Michelle.
There there conversation ends for now. If only they continued to share their perspectives, they would realize how different they are. Emancipation for Gabrielle is her having and enjoying the rights of man. She too will labour for money, will be valued by what she does: will move from merely being to doing. Emancipation for Michelle is different: emancipation is retribution. For as long as woman has been enslaved, or otherwise made to serve, man must now be enslaved.


2
The Professor is speaking to a Japanese novelist below the first rank named Banaka. They are responding to one of those British newspapers which focuses almost entirely on celebrity gossip. The copy before them contains all manner of details about the affairs of a contemporary football star. A number of photographs of women seduced by the skillful lothario appear. The women all look the same.
        The Professor says, "For centuries man was a master. He was independent and woman was his faithful servant. The modern world has freed woman, but she has come to see him not as a fellow independent being, rather a machine, a robot even. Much as one presses a button and toast is delivered, so a type of woman arouses a certain man. It is only a matter of determining his type by experiment and he can be brought under control. But has woman ever thought this? A man who sleeps with all these similar women regards them all as a waste of his time, except one, and he is searching, forever searching, for this one."
Banaka replies, "Ever since the end of empires, man has sought his adventures, his search for the rare, in the bedroom. We have known this since the French-Czech novelist–" At this point, Banaka is interrupted. Tamina has arrived and loudly says hello. She is now an expert in Japanese fiction and hopes to help Banaka climb the ranks in his native league.


Reference
Kundera, M. 1996 (translated by A. Asher from French). The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. London: Faber and Faber.
________________




Why did Mishima build up his muscles? A not quite Hobbesian answer
Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. I consider an alternative to the explanation that it was just a macho time, a time of strong men in literature: a certain pessimistic evaluation system just leads in the direction of building up your muscles. The answer is presented by means of an imitation of the Japanese writer, as he reads in translation.
Draft version: Version 3 (17h November 2022, final sentence).


My copy of a famous Japanese novel has a photograph of the author on the back: Yukio Mishima. He looks a slim beautiful schoolboy to me. I should say that I like this novel: it scores highly on concept, on characterization, it is well-written, it has some striking imagery. If there is a mark scheme, it is doing well. The cover blurb says he did the best in school and I suppose this is the novel of such a person! (In the West, he did not get the prize he was after, but I believe there is a prize named after him. I suppose Mishima could say, "I didn't get a prize; I am a prize!" varying Salvador Dali.)
Anyway, there are these famous pictures of Mishima as a sword-wielding muscle-man. Why did he turn into that? That is my question. You might propose that it was a time of strong men in literature. For example, Ernest Hemingway! Mishima participated in the trends of his time, in his own way. But there is another explanation. What is it? Well, let's add a little value and try to present the explanation by means of imitating the iconic but troubling writer, at least as he reads in translation…


They were like two large water lily pads floating down a stream: the two umbrellas moving down the rainy street. Suddenly he stopped and she stopped and he bashed her umbrella into hers.
"WHAT?" she complained loudly.
"What's the problem?"
"I said it was good."
"No, there's some problem. Last time you said no one can understand it. What's the problem this time?"
"No problem."
In the semi-darkness the rain was getting heavier; the streets were deserted, apart from the two fledgling literary critics. He waited for her answer, as if waiting for a single drop, one particular drop, to fall.
"So many schools! What if someone else is good as well?"
"It's like talking to my mother! What if? What if?"
"But it's true. You think yours is the only good school."
"It's the best in the country!"
"There are other countries."
"With all this what if, I need to build up my muscles."
"Why? I didn't say that?" She smashed her umbrella against his. A frail leading student, he held on tight, unwilling to be moved.
"What if there's no law? And he's as good as me. People will gather around him, and care about his stories. So I need to build up my muscles. It's like what that English philosopher described."
She was in no mood for English philosophy. "Okay, build them up!" They continued on their journey, the two lily pads.


The explanation is that a certain mentality, pushed to quite an extreme, leads in this direction, but I don't wish to say that it is exclusive to or much more common in females, or mistaken for Mishima. The fiction may be ambiguous as to the details of the explanation, but the basic idea is that in a lawless condition preference is given to the physically stronger, for incorporating them into groups and caring about what they do. And I would not use the fiction to understand the biology of lily pads!


References
Mishima, Y. (translated by I. Morris), 1959. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. London: Secker and Warburg.
Mishima, Y. (translated by J. Bester) 1989. Fountains in the Rain. In Acts of Worship. Tokyo: Kodansha.
R.K. Nar*y*n on Derrida and Bourdieu


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. The controversial French philosopher Jacques Derrida is associated with the claim that, in the West, speech has historically been prioritized over writing. In this paper, I present some obvious counterexamples, though I am an admirer. I also raise a challenge to the social theories of Pierre Bourdieu, though I fear they are not wrong. The paper is written as a pastiche of a notable fiction writer from the Indian subcontinent, but set in the West.
Draft version: Version 3 (17th November 2022, spelling: "propagated").


Note: the content may not be very realistic and the style is slightly off target. If one cannot make this style or its descendants absorb French philosophy, probably the entire family will be targeted to extinction.[4]


        It was a cloudy day in Manchester and Uncle and his son were studying Western philosophy again, in the small apartment they rented. "Uncle, shall we study French philosophy today?" Everyone called him Uncle, even his own son sometimes, but in a joking spirit. Uncle felt mild irritation at this but passed over the kin term aberration.
        "Oh yes, let's study French philosophy. I love Foucault, Derrida, and even Lacan," he replied with his heavy accent,[5] and beneath his moustache let out a smile. Then he picked up a copy of a journal he had found. It had been discarded by a minor philosopher who lived in a nearby apartment and was called European Journal of Philosophy. "You know if the title is European Journal of Philosophy, it has to be good.  Those titles go first: Mind and Analysis, and then if you are late with founding a journal, you need a cool title and no capital letters." His son put on a pair of sunglasses to symbolize coolness.
The red cover gave Uncle a feeling of prestige. He glanced at the first page of the third article. Nothing much interesting there. He turned to the second page. The page number, 39, had been circled by his neighbour and some words had been underlined. Uncle did not like this minor philosopher, with his blunt arrogant manner, but faced with a stream of words, he decided to trust the fellow. "Okay, this is what Sarah Richmond says. 'According to Derrida, Western thought, from at least Plato onwards, has repeatedly pro-pa-gated a false hierarchy, placing speech above writing. Philosophers have regarded writing with suspicion, as a dangerous re-posit-ory of thought, in which the speaker's intentions are likely to be betrayed.' " Uncle wondered whether repository was something to do with digestive problems. He worked as a nurse in a nearby university hospital and it sounded medical. Propagated also sounded a bit medical.
His son spoke, disturbing Uncle's line of thought. "What about other people in Western thought? Did they also favour speech over writing?"
"Other people?"
"Yes, she's just talking about philosophers,"
"I think he means everyone. Mathematicians, botanists, everyone. Everyone has to do a bit of philosophy. We had to do some in nursing ethics. If a doctor can save one life—"
"Uncle, do we also favour speech over writing?"
"Of course, because we are in the West now. But we have a god of writing. East is different from West." Uncle smiled.
          "What about Chinese? Do they prefer writing?"
        "Of course, they love their writing. Also some footballers."
        "But how can it be that in the West they prefer speech, because the maths teacher always wants us to show our working. And then you have to write it down."
        "Good question." Uncle contemplated the matter. "That must be a recent thing. In the old days," Uncle looked tense as he made up some history, "you just gave the right answer – teacher is happy." 
        It began to rain. It often rained here. Uncle remembered how children write things in misty windows. His son said, "If I go to Aunty's flat, she will ask me to go shopping and get some small chilies from this small shop, some large chilies from that small shop, some garlic from next door, and I need to make a list. Otherwise she will say, 'What sort of person are you? I can't make a good meal now. Let's go and eat some fast good. Fried chicken.' " She wasn't the boy's mother, by the way.
        "I think shopping lists don't count as part of the history of Western thought." Uncle contemplated the matter. "In economics supermarkets, but not shopping lists."
        "What if someone comes to this country and rents a room? They want a written contract."
        Uncle thought about this problem too. Surely the great philosopher Derrida has not made such an elementary oversight. "I think the proper Westerner is very optimistic. He doesn't care about contract or anything. He just takes a risk." Uncle smiled. This was a clever response.
        "But—"
        Uncle interrupted his son, because he wanted to give his own counterexample. "Back home there was a magician."
        "Where back home?" asked his son, skeptically.
        "Oh, er, in… Malgudaraj. I didn't know him. I only heard about him. He was a Chinaman and he had opened a restaurant. But in his heart he wanted to be a magician. And when the customer asked for the total bill, he wouldn't say it. He would slowly write numbers on the tablecloth. Then when the customer went home, he would see the same numbers, on a sign or chalked on the road. It was a marvellous trick."
Uncle felt an itch. What was that itch? Had something bitten him? He scratched it. His son had taken the journal from him. "This article is very hard to understand. That must be why he discarded it."
"Shall we try Bourdieu?"
        "Who is Bourdieu?"
        "I don't know. We had to read him in the nursing ethics and sociology course as well. He's in this book." It was another book discarded by their neighbour. It had a greenish colour, which felt a little blue as well, and was called The Anthropology of Time, by Alfred Gell. There were two chapters devoted to Bourdieu, quite a lot of material. Uncle opened the book until he found a page with a passage underlined. Page 272. "Okay, imagine you are having some tea with some people and you want a job with them. You need to know how to talk. You can't just blah, blah, blah!" Uncle said these last words slowly, opening his mouth wide. "And the rules are not clear. It's not like don't talk with your mouth full. It's like jazz when they interact."
        "Jazz?"
        "Music, music. And then they give you information and only then you can have a career there."
        "But if they don't ask stupid questions, how can they understand what's going on?"
        "I think they have to hire someone to ask stupid questions. That's why there are some black and Asian people who have jobs in the arts faculty and even some white people." Uncle laughed.[6]
        His son switched on the television. "French philosophy is strange."
        "No, no, no, French philosophy is not so strange. English philosophy is stranger. Like words mixed with mathematics mixed with… co-lon-ial-ism." Uncle pronounced the word as if it were something medical as well.


References
Gell, A. 1992. The Anthropology of Time. Oxford: Berg.
Richmond, S. 1996. Derrida and Analytical Philosophy: Speech Acts and their Force. European Journal of Philosophy 4: 38-62.
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The will to be a great university, by Fri*drich Ni*tzsche


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. In this paper, I present some advice in the style of Nietzsche for a university aspiring to move from being good to great, as a nearby university is. 


It feels like the nineteenth century still
When you imitate that will


The University of Manchester has a plan of transforming from a good to a great university. Who knows about greatness, or at least appears to? Nietzsche does! (Perhaps they are actually hoping for advice directly from some people they hire, or once hired, but who are widely distrusted.) Below I present some advice in the style of Nietzsche to a university aspiring to greatness. It is based on distinguishing types, as Nietzsche often does (e.g. 1977: 42). It was just some fun, if that is permitted. (I recall reading that it is a bad idea to ape Nietzsche; I hope I am not about to find out why. One of my friends has a sketch involving such an effort: him first!)


We who desire to be great, and whosoever else may join us, must distinguish between the student who will bring glory to our institution and the false. And we must set aside once and for all that perpetual illusion that the results of examinations, ordinary examinations, will serve this end! Yes, for us higher examinations are needed, so that we may understand the student body, not just its many minds but its souls, its secret tremors and ancient vibrations. We must separate off those who can help us in becoming great from the rest. And here we must use the most sensitive of antennae to detect signs of the following types.


The barometer of fame. We, we who are experts, know that fame is a mysterious enchantress indeed. Take any field you like: between one famous figure and another, whom all regard as lesser, lie various obscure figures. Why is this fellow famous and why this other fellow but the ones in-between not? Our student who is a barometer of fame is part of this shadowy phenomenon. Everything in-between they ignore, every philosopher, every artist, every free spirit. They are of no use for we who seek greatness, for some who are more famous must be set aside while others who labour under dim light must guide us forward.


Trophy students. They come when our goodness is shown, hoping that here all problems are solved, or almost all – there must be something left for them to do! A little routine work, a faint touch of sparkle, in the steadiest of environments. What tests they make of us! If we can pass, they will stand there as a symbol of our robustness under all weathers: a trophy no less. But they are of no use for we who are climbing mountains and find that the climate is so different as we move higher, so strange, that all our previous instincts fail us and we must rethink how to perform even the most basic of acts.


The early specialist. Specialize, specialize, we must all specialize. But when must we specialize? A novelist depicts a young poet and a janitor's son forming a team of brains and muscle – whoever heard of such a thing amongst schoolboys?![7] Any village teacher can tell you: schoolboys mix with schoolboys who share their interests. But a great university is no village school and certainly we in our university will encounter the early specialists.[8] A single good result on an examination and the student plants their flag upon that territory: this be my specialism. But life is long and they must fit into one project and then another, and we who are wise know that and must push and pull them here and there. But how they resist!


Kith and kin. How to send the message to this cut-above-the-rest that his family is the rest?! "Either we all get in or we all leave" is his motto, or hers. They are not getting in, or they are not going further on this journey with us! Nothing could impair our greatness more than becoming the university of the family: he belongs to that family and so everything is different from him![9]


References
Kundera, M. 1986. Life is Elsewhere. London: Faber and Faber.
Nietzsche, F. (translated by R.J. Hollingdale). 1977. A Nietzsche Reader. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Strathern, M. (with a foreword by A. Richards and an epilogue by F. Oxford). 1981. Kinship at the core. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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What is the most powerful critique of Rawls? (In the style of Nietzsche - don't try this)
Yes, how could anything originate from its opposite? It cannot. And absurdity of absurdities: how can a great philosopher secure his reputation from the support of ones who know nothing of great philosophy? In his "Justice Beyond Equality," a Rawlsian (misleadingly) writes of a book, "It is certainly the most powerful critique of Rawlsian political philosophy ever written." But what about the most powerful critiques that are not written, that cannot be written even, or since we live in an age of universal inscription, are written but not published? Should we not look for the truly powerful critiques by their effects - by what they do to the behaviour; after all, what is a professional political philosopher but an animal, an animal with instincts like any other?! Rawlsians who encounter G.A. Cohen's book have not given up their Rawlsianism. Instead a literature has flowered defending Rawls against Cohen, a spectacle of progress on a single topic. What feeble power this is. Let's assume that all political philosophers are genuinely interested in a good set of basic rules for society, at the ridiculous level of their conscious minds. Rawls addresses this interest - this is undeniable. But we seekers of powerful critiques, we searchers, we must consider why so-and-so is not a Rawlsian, and even why so-and-so is one. Undoubtedly the bulk of Rawlsians reason as follows: "I value liberty, and socialism does not give enough of this - its track record is terrible; I value greater wealth equality, or a welfare state, and minimal state capitalism does not realize this value; Rawls is the most worked-out position in-between; one has to support the most worked-out position and raise it to dominance in order for our research community to have public impact." But what of his original position thought experiment? Who is moved by it? Only the strangest of creatures would conclude, "I favour Rawls's principles because they would be chosen in the OP." Yes, a scientific economist! Now let us turn to people who are not Rawlsian. Why, for example, is Carl Knight not a Rawlsian, or Martha Nussbaum? Something powerful has moved them away from support for Rawls, something we can only dimly perceive at best, we lovers of light. These people don't ever say, "Hey guys, this Rawls guy, he seems pretty good, guys, but there's a problem guys, a big problem, guys, which is..." Or anything neatened up which corresponds to their thinking! You would have to "torture" them somewhat to get their thinking, probably. They don't approach professional communication as we free spirits do; it is something they intend to win at, or not lose. The conversation function barely exists.
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Troubles for English anthropology at home (in the style of Nietzsche - don't try this style yourself; apologies for any offence)


Everything we do is merely human, but what is it to be human? That is a question for we far-sighted birds, we anthropologists. But of course today there is another seeker who calls themselves by the name of anthropologist. How these Englishmen pervert the use of words! The question of what is man has receded; they are fieldworkers, stiff English fieldworkers, seeking out the views of this individual and that, as if these individuals were not entirely creatures of the herd - as if distinguishing them were not as pointless an endeavour as identifying the heroic sheep. If the question figures at all, it figures only to prompt the views expressed, views which the anthropologist-fieldworker dare not himself evaluate, lest they ring hollow. Once the English anthropologist would enter the remotest of tribes, now he is confined to his own villages. But what picture can he paint of these villages and their individuals with their views, their views even of man? In a neat little book, one such fieldworker tells us of a farmer: "Doris feels that women are as different from men as Jersey cows are from Fiesians. Indeed, rather like Jerseys, women are anxious and unpredictable creatures. They are emotional and weak, nervous and prone to worry: they need patient handling. Meanwhile, like Friesians, men are large, predictable beasts. Also, they are independent 'loners' who do not show their true feelings, and they do everything to extremes, from working to drinking to fighting." (Nigel Rapport 1993: 88) Who in our day shares their views of man and woman, if they are even so brave as to suppose that these two exist? Yes, who offers up this juicy vein from which the fieldworker draws blood? Farmer Doris and friends! Only they are suitable for this English anthropology, this characteristic product of a scientific age, preoccupied with the facts of who said what, that it can observe and record; but what of those who will not talk with the fieldworker, or only talk after years? And what too of the speech which hides itself in mumblings or whisperings? The portrait is of these ready talkers, available for observation at any English pub, these garrulous types.
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Das Freunde: two warnings (imitation of Nietzsche)


We of course live in a scientific age, and in such an age it is impossible that a man does not measure his friendships. "This be my best friend," you say, for true science must always be public. "This be my second best friend" - located at a great distance of course. "This be my third best friend" - and the distance between second and third even greater. But then you grow old and where are these friends now, you short sighted fish? It is a scientific age, but you have still not adapted to it, and gave up ranking beyond third. Granted you have a table, but it is a ridiculous table of three. Consult the periodicals: nothing could be more ridiculous than a table of three. Then you encounter fourth and fifth, as you correctly hypothesized in your mind - your intuition is indubitable - but did not trouble yourself to verify. "Hello friend," they say ironically to you, a chemist too intoxicated to detect irony. Furthermore, how did you become friends with one, two, and three? Common interests, emotional bonds, sexual desire - what else would create that most absurd of things, a man who is friends with a woman, in the third case textbook displaced narcissism? Thus my first warning: rank beyond three and rank until you include the men of this sleepy town! But what good are they, anyway? What friends do you need, my friend? You are a mere animal guided by your instincts, but if science has taught us anything, it is the danger of our instincts. My friend, become friends with at least one random person. Let the computer decide, lest your unconscious drives intervene. Write one of those programs of yours, who in the West codes better? [Pastiche over: it is insane to imitate Nietzsche perhaps but is it billions of times more sane than any other "thing" I do?]
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On the nonsense of psychiatrists (Nietzsche imitation - don't try this)


We philosophers, we freethinkers, we ascenders of heights, we must not, desirous of marking out our high culture, regard ourselves as beneath psychology. We treaters of ailments, we healers, we must befriend psychology's medical sibling: psychiatry. The scientist of course is bound by a rule that distinguishes his herd: one must not utter nonsense. But who amongst the human can perpetually endure the bright daylight of sense: who can avoid nonsense altogether? But the psychiatrist, we can be sure, has an excuse for any nonsense he utters in the direction of his patient: "I was just testing, testing for lucidity." Upon being asked by a madman about what the contents inside the cell are, he includes the cell membrane. A lucidity test of course! Upon giving the madman bad advice on how to run his mad business - do not write on economics - he has his excuse ready: yet another lucidity test. Upon declaring a man mad merely because his house was cluttered, the psychiatrist is once again ready if charged with scientific crime: "who me, a responsible fellow testing for lucidity?"
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Relativism about greatness (imitation of Nietzsche - don't try this please)


"This is a great man": how quickly do these words fall from the mouths of those new to our higher culture. But are they not true? Not as these newcomers imagine them, for what is a great man to them but a man who, first, is great without aiming to be great to a people, a market, composed like all markets of the mediocre, and, secondly, who must be recognized as great for all. "Tall" says the Englishman, the English analytic philosopher pondering his predicates, is relative. A man may count as tall by the standards of one country and not by the standards of another. So it is with greatness. Even within a country this group and that group, this social class and that, vary in their standards, even amongst we lovers of higher culture. And the man recognized as great, I insist, is always a man who has found his people, figured out their standard, and acted in accordance with it: has realized their image of greatness, which may be no more than that of a Lisa Simpson type. But if it is as easy as all this, why are there so many failures at greatness, so many poor approximations? They are like so many failed businessman, and most amusing of all is he who finds this: he can reach a level of greatness above what this lower class count as great and so he does, but still falls below what this higher class count as great, and finds to his misfortune that there is no social class in his country, his continent even, to which he displays the image of greatness. If only he had the entire world as an audience, how his fortunes might improve. (The relativistic ideas in this Nietzsche imitation first appeared on my Instagram site, earlier today, without the Nietzschean style I assume.)


28th August 2025: https://www.instagram.com/p/DN4NO0TDSIk/


Inequality and the saying, "It's who you know, not what you know," by J*seph R*z


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper considers whether the saying, "It's who you know, not what you know" can be used instead of jargon-laden studies of inequality. I argue that it is not a good replacement in some cases and present a challenge to standard Bourdieusian explanations of inequality in some fields. The paper is written as a pastiche of the distinguished political philosopher Joseph Raz.


Joseph Raz polarizes readers, but is it because of his political stances or, paradoxically even, "Some pleasures should be discouraged"? I imitated Raz's writing style in 2011 from sheer enchantment and I thought I would try again, though I doubt I can get closer.


        Political philosophers respond to the fact of inequality, and they are joined in doing so by members of a number of other academic fields and also the public in general. Responses go beyond papers; some take the form of jokes or sayings. A saying used by English speakers to explain unjust inequality is "It's who you know, not what you know." Long and jargon-laden studies of inequality often leave the impression that they are communicating the same thing. What though is the saying meant to convey; what exactly does this saying say? An objection that may be put forward against its role as a substitute is that its meaning is insufficiently clear.
Below are three interpretations:
1. If two candidates apply for the same job and both have the essential knowledge for that job and the same relevant knowledge overall, but one does not have certain irrelevant social connections and the other does, that other person will be preferred – the social-plus interpretation.
2. If two candidates apply for the same job and both have the essential knowledge for that job and one has knowledge desirable for it but without certain irrelevant social connections, whereas the other does not have this desirable knowledge but has the social connections, the other will be preferred – the social-more-desirable interpretation.
3. If two candidates apply for the same job and one has the essential knowledge for the job but does not have certain irrelevant social connections, whereas the other does not have the essential knowledge for the job but has the social connections, the other person will be preferred – the social-over-essential interpretation.
There are other interpretations, but it seems that what the saying is trying to convey is captured by (C).  That interpretation makes best sense of its use of "not." I cannot see that the saying is unclear enough for this objection to work.
There is a further objection, which is that some works of research appeal to social connections in explaining inequality in a way that is not captured by the saying. All three interpretations overlook another way in which social connections lead to inequality, though it is no revelation. Who one knows (or whom one knows?) can often play a large role in determining what one knows. An example is if one is tasked to write on whether what counts as real is relative to a system of concepts, and one desires to make the objection that two systems can only divide up reality differently if there is a non-relative continuum to divide up. Has anyone made this objection before? Suitably-informed friends tell you about discussions which are difficult to locate in any other way, for some fall within titles referring to general themes and some within titles referring to specific philosophers (e.g. Tallis 1995: 52-53). The discussions are scattered. Perhaps some time in the future one can instruct a computer, "Tell me about who has made this objection" and an exhaustive list will appear, but at present most or all people do not have this solution. One person and another have the same talent for undertaking the evaluative task, but the other person's social connections enable them to get closer to completion, because they are aware of what has been said before.
The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is renowned for his attempts to explain why some fields are dominated by people from a narrow set of backgrounds. He introduces concepts of four kinds of capital, but the explanations for which he is well-known in the English-speaking world focus more on two kinds, namely cultural and economic. Features of style which do not transparently bear significance for a job and are easier to achieve if brought up in a certain affluent class, with its associated customs and habits, play an important role in selection, such as conversation style, dress style, writing style (Gell 1992: 272; Pinto 1999: 104). Skills in manifesting stylistic qualities Bourdieu refers to as cultural capital. These Bourdieusian explanations of inequality underestimate the extent to which social connections provide one with advantageous knowledge, largely independent of style – a wide range of stylistic options can be successfully pursued. In some elite institutions, one can obtain a lot of the more relevant information for various tasks through social connections. This prevents oversights, such as when producing commentaries and other literature. There is an argument in favour of explanations which focus on the quality of one's network of social connections, on social capital, rather than shared cultural style.[10]


References
Edward, T.R. 2011. Are there uncontroversial error theories? Philosophical Pathways 162. 
Edward, T.R. 2022. No brilliant friend? Literary acknowledgement between the sexes. Available at: https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWNBF
Gell, A. 1992. The Anthropology of Time. Oxford: Berg.
Pinto, L. 1999. Theory in Practice. In Shusterman, R. (ed.), Bourdieu: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tallis, R. 1995 (second edition). Not Saussure. A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
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What is an ideal theory in political philosophy?


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. I present two senses in which a political philosophy may be an ideal theory. They are not identified by Laura Valentini, in her much-cited paper. The paper is written as a pastiche of the distinguished legal and political philosopher Joseph Raz, who recently passed away.


        The characterization of a theory as ideal, given ordinary usage, is evaluative. The theory is praised as ideal. It is much as a couple evaluating houses to purchase may say of one they are viewing that it is ideal. Theories which specify general principles which the government should aim to implement are, in some cases, characterized as ideal. This usage can be continuous with ordinary usage, but the vocabulary of political philosophy is not necessarily continuous. The vocabulary within a field partly or wholly overlaps with widely used vocabulary, but is also prone to having senses fixed by local considerations. Two senses in which a theory can be judged ideal are identified below, both of which are descriptive senses, available to opponents of the theory.
Ideal form. The description of a theory of government principles as ideal theory is a description that can also be used to characterize theories in other fields of research. Ideal theories exist in economics and anthropology as well, in one sense. A field, or a subset of researchers within a field, places a high value on theories which take a specific form, with criteria used to specify that form. One may describe the researchers as pursuing ideal theory and as ideal a theory that meets their criteria. Consider an agent who has strong intuitions about what the government should do, that it should not become fascist for example. They also have weaker intuitions, of which they are less certain, for example that fascist family members should be disowned. If two theories both fit with the agent's stronger intuitions, in that the principles of both entail these intuitions, they prefer the theory that is simpler: theory 1 relies on three principles, of high generality and is embraced, whereas theory 2, with its reliance on sixteen, three of which concern situations that rarely obtain, is set aside. Such rival theories are not instead decided between by how well they fit with weaker intuitions. Simplicity of form is accorded priority.
These reflections on ideal theory may be summarized as follows:
1. Among researchers, or a subset of researchers, criteria develop for evaluating theories, which include criteria for which form should be prioritized, for example the form of simple general principles.
2. Theorists who aspire to meet the criteria are said to be doing ideal theory.
3. A theory which meets the criteria can be described as an instance of an ideal theory.
No revisions. An ideal theory may have no counterparts in other fields in this second sense. The theory specifies which principles institutions should seek to implement. In formulating an ideal, one is sensitive to intuitions which one is more certain of, and also perhaps ones which carry less certainty from one's point of view. Even if only the more certain are accorded a place in justifications, a theorist can of course develop an ideal based on them and think it could be a mistaken, including a procedure for revision within their design. A liberal procedure is based on principles concerning when and how to engage in revision of principles, and these revisionary principles are part of one's total theory. An example of a revisionary principle is one which demands a vote on whether to continue if enough signatories support the vote. But in the second sense an ideal theory does not include a revisionary procedure, or associated principles. It is as if it were conceived by an omniscient figure.


Reference
Valentini, L. 2012. Ideal vs. Non-Ideal Theory: A Conceptual Map. Philosophy Compass 7: 654-664.
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Conceptual schemes and truth, by J*seph R*z
 
Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper pays tribute to the distinguished legal and political philosopher Joseph Raz, who recently passed away. I present a response to Donald Davidson on conceptual schemes which tries to imitate Raz's writing style, which attracts me despite the difficulties it poses. The response includes a definition. After the pastiche, I present a note with further clarifications. 


        The term "conceptual scheme" refers to a system of concepts that organizes sensory data and also to a system of propositions. It is in this way ambiguous. The propositions form a totality of believed propositions, as is envisioned by W.V. Quine, or else they are together a set of foundational propositions, or axioms, and a repertoire of terms is used in a way that presupposes these. For example, the term "a law" is part of a repertoire of terms, including "a legal right," "a contract" and "a constitution," which presupposes legal axioms, e.g. that no law can exist in isolation and must be part of a whole legal framework. If something is said to be a law, an implication of this statement is that the law is part of a larger framework, such as Roman law or English law.
        A conceptual scheme as a system of foundational propositions provides a point of view on the world. A reason for adopting the conceptual scheme is that taking up that point of view serves some valuable end, for example understanding Roman culture. We can more exactly specify this sense of "conceptual scheme" as follows. Something is a conceptual scheme in this sense if and only if:
1. It consists of a set of propositions.
2. These propositions provide a point of view on the world, or some aspect of it, which there is a reason to take up.
3. A repertoire of terms, when used to identify features of the world, presupposes these propositions.
Conceptual schemes, in this sense, are sometimes said to fit or cope with reality.
        The description of conceptual schemes as fitting reality has been characterized as a metaphor, which gives rise to a question of interpretation: how in more literal language to cash it out? A proposed answer is that it means no more than "is true," this interpretation being offered as a stage towards concluding that there cannot be alternative conceptual schemes (Davidson 1973-4: 16). Truth, it is held, must be translatable and alternative conceptual schemes are not. The argument suffers from a number of weaknesses. One is that conceptual schemes, in this sense, are not necessarily judged to be true, as achieving a correspondence with reality, rather as valuable for some end.[11] Examples of ends served by conceptual schemes include understanding an unfamiliar culture, engineering a bridge, or predicting a country's economic fortunes as it meets climate change protocols. To judge that a conceptual scheme is valuable for one of these ends is distinct from judging that the propositions of the scheme are true, and no assumption need be made that the desired value could only be achieved by means of truth.


Note
Davidson's paper is concerned amongst other things with alternative conceptual schemes in science, but the point about conceptual schemes being valued without being regarded as true is probably easier to grasp if one focuses on disciplines whose ends are chiefly practical, such as engineering and economics, and whose relationship to standard examples of science is not transparent. Note also that in the definition above, the notion of a point of view is left undefined. A natural starting point for clarifying this notion is that the propositions composing the scheme must be general, so that they can be applied to specific case after specific case, and also consistent; but it seems something else must be added because a haphazard set could meet these conditions.[12]
 
References
Davidson, D. 1973-74. On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47: 5-20.
Quine, W.V. 1950. Two Dogmas of Empiricism. The Philosophical Review 60: 20-43.
Wang, X. and Xu, L. 2010. A Presuppositional Approach to Conceptual Schemes. South African Journal of Philosophy 29: 404-421.
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Paradox University by La*ra R*ding


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper presents a vision of a university in which each of the departments is based on having solved a paradox.  I do so imitating a notable modernist writer.
Draft version: Version 1 (14th December 2022).


        Paradox University was a place where people came to be clever. But you could only be clever if you were cleverer than other people, and so Paradox University was located in an anonymous town full of people without imagination, intelligence, wit, and even mere joking. The first department of Paradox University was the Department of Creative Writing. It was set up by Cosmima the Cosmic Scribe (Beebee and Mele 2002). She thought to herself, "What's so special about creative writing? Shouldn't it also be taught?" Then she encountered a paradox. Only economists would apply to the creative writing department. And you cannot be an economist and be creative. Everyone knows that. Also everyone knows that you cannot teach a person how to be creative. When Cosmima solved this paradox to her satisfaction, she founded a department.
        The second department to be founded was the Anthropology Department. Because how could you do fieldwork for one year and understand a people? You could do fieldwork amongst the brown people, the yellow people, the grey people. – still one year is not long enough. When Lady Malinowski solved this paradox, she too founded a department.
        Then a third department appeared: the Politics department. A department must be scientific but once you have understood politics, you learn to lie and cheat and use misleading rhetoric. Nobody knew if the Politics department solved this paradox, but they loudly said that they did, which convinced some people.
 


Reference
Beebee, H. and Mele, A. 2002. Humean Compatibilism. Mind 111 (442): 201-223.
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Choice and the invasion of Ukraine, by Rken*t* S*lecl


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper contains my attempt to pastiche the Lacanian philosopher and social theorist Renata Salecl. The pastiche focuses on the effects of coronavirus on liberal societies, the invasion of Ukraine, and offers a definition which I think is of interest to analytic philosophy.


Making pastiches of literary styles seems to have been a trend during the Edwardian period of English literature. But I wonder how hard this is to do, so I am trying to produce a little book imitating various academic styles. This is my attempt at imitating a member of the popular Lacanian school of social theorists, whose writings I enjoy, but it also contains some material which I think is of value for analytic philosophers: a definition of fashion. I attribute it to a fictional Greek philosopher. The pastiche makes me feel somewhat guilty, as if I were stealing something, but there are probably other pastiches of this author, if that helps. 


An aisle of a Manchester supermarket sells microwaveable ready-meals from around the world. There is hot lamb curry from Madras, spicy Caribbean chicken, and traditional English favourites, like mushroom pie.  A dizzying array of choices awaits the customer. A newspaper advertisement offers cruises around New Zealand or Greek Islands or the Arabian Gulf: there is a world of possibilities for you to choose from. The ideology of Western societies is that more choice is better. This ideology tells us that choice is what defines the West.


When the global pandemic began, some Western societies resisted introducing lockdowns. The UK government's policy was let's just wait and review the situation. Even after most of Europe was in lockdown, it was not. The spread of coronavirus directly challenges the Western ideology of choice. How can a society which defines itself by choice maintain its identity and deal with the virus? The virus continued its rapid spread and the UK government had to introduce a lockdown as well.


The shift from a society all about choice to a society not about choice seemed to happen overnight. People had to wear masks. They were told to only leave their homes for essentials or for exercise once a day. Most shops were shut. Rules in supermarkets did not allow shoppers to buy more than three of a product. Police drove up and down streets in vans, and periodically went into the supermarkets to check that no one was violating the new rules.


Each society has rules and norms. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan calls these rules and norms the symbolic order. The symbolic order goes with idealized images of what the society is like, what Lacan calls the imaginary. The spread of the virus required a radical change in the symbolic order. There was a rude interruption of something real, that the previous symbolic order was not suited to dealing with and is not part of our way of imagining what this society is about. What happens to a society during such a change?


An article for the BBC website advised people on how to have sex during the pandemic. But given the new rules, how can one have sex? Either someone is in a relationship or the rules are an obstacle. The article ignores the issue of how to overcome the obstacle. Society was still imagined as basically a liberal place, where people could just hook up; it was merely a question of what small adaptations to make.


Under conditions of extreme change, what we find is that even if the rules change, the imaginary does not change much. The same image of the society is maintained, with scant acknowledgement of the interruption.


The requirement to wear the mask did not apply to everyone. It did not apply to people with medical exemptions. I was able to enter shops without a mask. To avoid discussion, I found it convenient to print out a government document and make a card for myself, following its instructions. But wearing the mask is not a choice. However, there's a presumption that a person with a skin disorder doesn't choose that disorder. Psychoanalysts know that some symptoms are not entirely outside the realm of choice or the realm of enjoyment. Symptoms are stressful, but the subject also enjoys their symptoms. And while a symptom cannot be chosen in the way that we can choose meals from a menu or choose to watch another television channel, there is some ingredient of choice.


The invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin's Russia added another challenge to the Western ideology of choice. In non-Western states, this ideology is often a source of puzzlement. If citizens are all individuals free to make their own choices, what will happen if a country is invaded? How can it ensure that citizens carry out their duties to defend it? Won't each citizen look at where their comfort and individual self-interest lies? It seems the state must force a commitment on all citizens to defend it or else it will simply be taken over by another state.


The West has responded to the invasion with sanctions. Sanctions treat the Russian state as if it is composed of individuals worried about their comfort. How can they cope with more sanctions? It may be that the West is even trying to produce good liberal subjects. For the rest of the world, the invasion of Ukraine gives rise to questions such as what is to stop Vladimir Putin from invading more of Europe? Could he even invade England and France? And why do Western states have the boundaries they do? For example, why doesn't Germany invade Denmark?


Fashion provides one solution to the problem of how to react to an invasion. We tend to think of fashion as something superficial, but Greek philosopher and filmmaker Yanis Hatzymoysis defines fashion in a way that shows that fashion is deep. Fashion, he says, is when everyone has free choice but they all choose the same thing for a while. They all wear the same brand of shoes, despite several others for sale. This is a structural definition. It is not just about dressing and what we call the fashion industry. It is about a structure of norms and preferences, and applies to other fashions, such as fashions in literature and philosophy. And it can become a fashion to defend against the enemy. We are all free to choose not to but still we all choose to.


Reference
n.a. 2021. Sex and Covid: What are the rules? BBC News.
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Education, choice, and the uncanny father, by Ren*t* S*lecl


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper contains my second attempt to pastiche the Lacanian philosopher and social theorist Renata Salecl. The pastiche responds to the theories of social inequality and education of Pierre Bourdieu.


I don't have much rationale for this pastiche, but I like the style, find it more difficult to do than some others, and I confess I get a feeling of having got lucky if a style is only managed once.


The former leaders of socialist Europe would address their citizens like teachers addressing pupils. "You must study hard," and "You must learn, learn, learn," citizens were told. In Western capitalism, on the other hand, the dominant ideology is choice. How does this ideology apply to education? Of course, many parents in capitalist societies are just as concerned about education as parents in socialist ones, but the ideology of choice leads to puzzles. Is the child free to choose whether to learn or not learn, or must the child be forced to learn, so that they can have more choices later?


The anthropologist Gillian Evans' book opens with supermarket shelf stackers who want better jobs. Evans conducted fieldwork with a working class family in London. She describes how the middle class deal with the problem of how to apply choice to education, by organizing their children's days with education and activities, so that they can have an adequate choice of professions later, while Sharon, the mother of the working class family, passes on an attitude of do as you please now:
Sharon applies the same do as you please philosophy to her daughters' education. She says of them, 'If they want to learn they will, if they don't, they won't, and that's that.' Sharon explains that Tracey is the perfect example of the success of this approach because she has done relatively well at school, choosing to apply herself to school work because it pleases her to do so, not because she had been forced at home. (2016: 43)
Evans draws a strong contrast between middle class and working class ways, but both are responses to the one ideology of choice. That ideology does not clearly guide the parent on whether to give the child more choice, as working class mother Sharon does, or give less to enable more choice later, as English middle class parents do.


In the second half of the twentieth century, the leading theorist of educational inequality was the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu presents a social world divided into fields, such as philosophy and literature. Participants in a field have a set of behavioural dispositions for participating in a field, which are difficult to codify as rules – what Bourdieu calls a habitus. An individual's habitus is important in determining how successful they will be. For example, a teacher tells a student that they need to use more references. The student asks, "Could I use just these references and still get a first class?" The teacher tells the student that they could if they wrote somewhat differently, but it is difficult to explain exactly how. The student's stylistic dispositions make a difference, such as the vocabulary they use to express their points, and it is easier for a person to develop those dispositions if they come from an affluent social class, says Bourdieu.


Bourdieu's theory of educational inequality invites us to imagine what the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan calls a subject supposed to know. Applying the concept to Bourdieu's theory, this subject has the right background and so they can just instinctively make the right stylistic choices, giving them the rewards of high grades and educational certificates. But in Lacan's theory the subject supposed to know is a fiction. Perhaps everyone finds the education system puzzling in some respect, and there is no one who is totally at home within it. I scored well in school and approach topics as a perpetual good student, but I'm surprised by events, such as finding myself pastiched in France and England, and don't know how to react.


In the late 1980s, a medical professor at the University of Manchester began writing books against fashions in literary theory, novel writing, and continental philosophy. He was playing the role of the responsible father, against the excesses of these fashions, such as the claim that owing to the horrific nature of late twentieth century life, realistic fiction was no longer a suitable way of representing the world. He drew on the English analytic tradition (Tallis 1988: 20), but later compilations of articles on aesthetics, mainly by philosophers working in this tradition, exclude the professor. Why is that? Does Bourdieu's theory apply – is the professor's habitus preventing inclusion?


A Lacanian perspective distinguishes the symbolic from the imaginary. The symbolic, in this situation, is the set of rules required to qualify for these anthologies. The imaginary is the kind of person we imagine qualifying – what they look like and what their behaviour is like. It may be that the person who qualifies by the anthology rules does not appear as a father-like figure at all. It may even be that the father figure of the university, applying these rules, is uncanny; that an extreme divide between the symbolic and the imaginary has opened up.


One of Lacan's most quoted sayings is "Father or worse." In socialist societies, there is a close relationship between the symbolic role of the political father and the image of the father. That role is achieved by corrupting the formal voting process, so it never allows for alternatives, and by propaganda. Fatherly images of Stalin or Mao, or whoever the socialist leader is, appear throughout the country. But strictly keeping to the rules that constitute the symbolic, without ever compromising, can enable an uncanny political father to emerge – a figure who meets the rules for that role but does not fit the image. A clever-looking dark-haired Polish girl holding papers with media insights but not properly sharing them with a Chinese boy is the political father, for example. Her image is writ large on a screen outside a university library.


References
Evans, G. 2016. Educational Failure and White Working Class Children in Britain. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tallis, R. 1988. In Defence of Realism. London: Edward Arnold.
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The rules of philosophy, by Ren*t* S*lecl


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. How can we explain why certain historically discriminated groups are under-represented in English-speaking analytic philosophy? I present a hypothesis which appeals to rules, rather than using the social theories of Pierre Bourdieu. I do by means of a pastiche of Renata Salecl.


        We are all subject to rules, but what are rules? I have to give an undergraduate lecture at 11 am every Wednesday. That is a rule. The rule is in my contract, and if I don't do it, then the university can take legal action against me. But are there other kinds of rules?
        When I go to the bookshop in Deansgate, I find books of rules, for dating and for having a successful career and for having power. But are these really rules? They are not like the rules I agreed to when signing a contract. No legal action can be taken against me if I break them. They are not like the rules of some games, like chess, which if I break them mean I am no longer playing that game. They are more like instructions for achieving a goal. If you follow these instructions, then you can achieve this goal. If you don't, then you cannot. They are like what Kant calls hypothetical imperatives: if this is what you desire, you must perform certain action. You are not being rational otherwise. These are rules of rationality for people with certain desires.
But maybe these books are not even making such a strong claim. Maybe they are just saying if you don't follow them, you can achieve the goal as well, but the chances are much lower.
Recently there has been a lot of discussion of why some groups, which have a long history of being discriminated against, are marginal in English speaking philosophy, especially philosophy in the analytic tradition. Why are there few women and so few ethnic minorities? Maybe it is because they don't know the rules. Of course, they know rules of philosophy, like rules of logic, but they don't know the rules for succeeding in philosophy. It is not like dating, in which some people have had a lot of failures and written books about what works and what doesn't, and everyone reads these books. Nobody has written that book for analytic philosophy.
So, for example, you have noticed that philosophers write about what does this word mean and what does that word mean and you decide to write about what likes on Internet websites mean. You can click that you like such and such a video or online remark, but what does that mean? If you want to introduce this topic, you can just introduce it, explaining what you think that means, or you can introduce it as a neat paradox. You can find a paradoxical example, where clicking like is used to mean dislike, or appears to mean that, and then consider solutions to it. If you do not find that paradox, probably your work will be eclipsed by someone who thinks, "Worthwhile choice of topic, but I can introduce it in a much better way."  If you don't follow this rule, you are still doing philosophy, but the chances of succeeding in this horribly competitive market are much less – it's a rule for improving chances of success in this field.
One of the famous attempts to explain inequality in various fields, including philosophy, is by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. He was actually trained as a philosopher, but not in England. Bourdieu especially emphasizes stylistic factors which are not transparently relevant and are difficult to codify. We can't say, "Do X, Y, and Z and you can achieve that style." So imagine that one student and another both write on the same question, "Is the mind the brain?" and they make the same arguments and both write clearly, but the other student has an elegant writing style. Let us suppose that the other student is favoured because of this. But how do you achieve such a style? Bourdieu thinks you cannot explain how to achieve elegance. And he thinks the ability to achieve these stylistic extras, which actually play a decisive role in who is successful, correlates heavily with class background. People from some class backgrounds find this easier.
Maybe Bourdieu is right, but there is this other hypothesis: it's like dating; nobody has explained the rules in public and a lot of newcomers, and people from discriminated groups, don't know the rules. It does not even occur to them that it is better to look for a paradoxical case when introducing a new topic. Now maybe it will be said that there are no instructions for how to look for such a case. "How do I do that? This is no better than saying: write elegantly." But a paradoxical case seems more relevant to philosophy than elegance – Bourdieu says that stylistic factors which are not clearly relevant are playing a decisive role – and it is one thing if you don't know that it is a good idea to look for that and another if you do. Some people from discriminated groups, if they know that, will stand a much better chance of making it in philosophy. Anyway, there is more information we can give about how to uncover a case – it won't guarantee success but it may help a bit: when examining Internet sites, keep an eye out for unusual likes, and consider what is that doing there?


Note. I wrote this pastiche in response to a paper by Lucy McDonald, but she won a prize for it and I found some of the information useful.


Reference
McDonald, L. 2021. Please like this paper. Philosophy 96: 335-358.
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Intransitivity of translation, Le Débat, and the primacy of the signifier, by Ren*t* S*lecl


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper is a pastiche of the Lacanian philosopher Renata Salecl, my fourth attempt, combined with a note. In it I present a response I anticipate from analytic philosophy to the thesis that the signifier has priority over the signified: that this thesis is either trivially true or obviously false.


        People often ask me, why do you write in English? Why don't you write in your native language and get a translator? Some people even mock me for wanting to be an English lady, but of course that is not why. The problem is that it would probably involve more than one translator. The best translator I can get would translate my writing into another language, such as Urdu or Polish. And then that translation would be translated into English. And as everyone knows, translation is not transitive: there can be a good translation of something said in language A into language B, and then a good translation from language B into language C, but what is said in language C is not a good translation of what was originally said in language A.
        Even French translation can suffer from this problem. Like most Europeans I am concerned about the future of France – will it remain in the European Union or join Britain in its journey into the unknown? I was watching Emmanuel Macron debate against Marine Le Pen and I am sure he said, "France: patriarch of the Enlightenment." Then it probably got translated into a Canadian dialect: "France: handmaiden of the Enlightenment." And finally subtitles for English viewers: "France, cradle of the Enlightenment."[13]
        Watching the French debate, it occurred to me that French voters are facing a puzzle, even that France is kept in by a puzzle:
1. We want to leave the European Union.
2. We don't want to ban the hijab.
3. In order to leave the European Union, we have to vote for Marine Le Pen, whose policy is to ban the hijab.
A solution to this puzzle is to accept, with Lacan, that the signifier has primacy over the signified. I find that this is one of the most difficult theses for English philosophers to understand, but a Le Pen victory would help them understand it. If the French public vote for Marine Le Pen, they are sending out a message but what is that message? Is it a message that they want to ban the hijab? Marine Le Pen has done her best to create an association between voting for her and being against the hijab, but in this situation we would merely be faced with the words "Le Pen," on the front page of every newspaper and in reports, all over the world, and these words would eclipse the policies of her party and even Marine Le Pen herself – the signifier "Le Pen" would have primacy over what it signifies. People could then interpret it as meaning something else.
        This may seem an isolated example and the primacy of the signifier over the signified may seem absurd, but the consequences of denying it are even more absurd; yet they are embraced by American analytic philosopher Donald Davidson. Just imagine that you are a sailor and you find yourself shipwrecked on an island. The natives there seem to be speaking, but no matter how hard you try to understand them, you cannot figure out what they are saying. You entertain the thought that they speak a language that cannot be translated into your language, but Davidson argues that the impossibility of translating something into your own language is evidence that the sounds being made are not speech at all (1984: 185-186). Is it not better to just accept that these people are having conversations, that you are faced with a sequence of signifiers but without knowing what is signified? If the signified has primacy, then you must translate before you can say that this is language.[14]


Note. Moving out of pastiche mode, I am not sure how to understand the thesis that the signifier has primacy over the signified, but one way is that it is a rejection of the criterion of languagehood advocated by Davidson. There can be the following situation:
1. Others are producing a sequence of sounds.
2. These sounds are only signifiers if they signify something.
3. We do not know what they signify, and will probably never know.
4. We know that these others are using a signifying system – that this is a language.
From the point of view of the analytic tradition of philosophy, the thesis risks being caught between this interpretation, which makes it seem unexcitingly true, and a highly dramatic interpretation, but one which leaves the thesis looking obviously false – an interpretation according to which some peculiar situation is in fact the norm. 


Reference
Davidson, D. 1984. On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme. In Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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Laughter, custom, and liberal societies (imitation of Renata Salecl)


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper analyses why the female newscaster "suffers" from uncontrollable laughter in the 1989 Batman film, directed by Tim Burton. The paper is written as an imitation of philosopher-sociologist-psychoanalyst Renata Salecl and it considers three explanations. It also engages with Thomas Nagel on what it is like to be a bat.
Draft version: version 2 (31 July 2025)


        Today it is the norm in Western societies for both men and women to be employed. But in the early days of the feminist movement, there were great fears about women being employed. The Feminine sphere is the domestic, the home—women, it was said, are not suited to going to work. But what exactly is it about women which makes them unsuitable for work? One problem is that women are conceived as closer to nature, rather than being truly cultural beings. At work, one must hide one's emotions, one must mask them in accordance with a set of workplace norms, the workplace culture. The shop assistant must behave in the same professional and courteous way with one customer and the next customer and a third customer, regardless of their private feelings. The same is true of the nurse attending to patients, or the doctor. But women cannot do this well, it was thought, and it still is in right-wing circles. Their faces and voices are expressive. However, a popular song today is "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga. "Can't read my, can't read my, can't read my Poker Face," she sings - a song of female triumph over the right-wing critics.
        Decades before, in 1989, the film Batman was released, featuring a stylish makeover for its superhero: a crime fighter who identifies with bats. This stylish Batman is not meant to be the object of laughter, but we are all familiar with the problem of having a new stylish outfit, in our own eyes, which merely provokes laughter in the eyes of others. Can one even know what it's like to be a bat? The analytic philosopher Thomas Nagel argues that bats are very different from human beings, so different that we cannot know what it is like, even if we know all the physical facts. But surely there is some fact about what it is like to be a bat. Nagel therefore distinguishes between the mind and the body. There are facts about the mind, such as the minds of bats—what it feels like to have such a mind—which are not physical facts at all.
        Batman is set in a fictional city, Gotham. One of the most interesting scenes in the film involves television crew making a news report. A newscaster reports the deaths of two fashion models, surely a warning to Batman himself: Bruce Wayne, in his new stylish bat-like costume is next. The other newscaster, a man, begins to announce Gotham's 200th birthday when urgent news comes in. There have been more deaths. But he is unable to complete his report, because he is interrupted by laughter from his fellow newscaster. She cannot control her laughter, eventually falling off her chair. The whole news report is then interrupted by an advertisement from arch-villain The Joker.
        Why does the female newscaster laugh? Why this laughter, which takes over her body and prevents her from functioning in her capacity as newscaster, which makes her unsuitable for employment even? It is not the laughter of The Joker at all, or is it? One answer is that she finds the further deaths amusing. It is an inhumane laughter, which does not mourn the dead.
        Another answer is that she finds the interruption of the information about the city's anniversary celebrations by urgent news amusing. In today's liberal societies, we seem to be free to do as we please, as long as we obey the law, but we often find that we must still adapt to customs, such as having to buy Christmas presents for relatives we don't want to see. They are a hassle and we are happy when we are relieved of the duties they bring. The newscaster's laughter is the revenge of the liberal working woman on annoying customs. Custom too must know its place, when human rights have been violated or human deaths have occurred. The imposition of custom is always a violation of individual rights in fact.
        But there is a third answer, which contradicts this and coheres with the ancient view that we laugh when a person is unintentionally making a fool of themselves. The male newscaster who wants to read the urgent news does not realize that some concession must be made to custom. One cannot keep prioritizing news about human right violations, or just human deaths, over the city's 200th birthday. The postmodern liberal woman as newscaster is even like an ancient Greek, who believes that the Goddess Hera must be given her due, or else she will take vengeance. The female newscaster laughs at the foolish male newscaster and his masculine values of human rights and liberal justice, his depriortization of city customs.


References
Gaga, L. 2010. Poker Face. Youtube. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESGLojNYSo
Nagel, T. 1974. What Is It Like to Be a Bat? The Philosophical Review 83: 435-450.
PlayNowPlayL8tr. 2017. Joker's Brand New Product! Smylex. Youtube. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cROY4m4Ftiw


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One man's meat is the same man's poison? Social democracy, Rawls and romance (imitation of Renata Salecl)


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper presents how Carrie Jenkins' account of the currently popular ideology of romance is a challenge for John Rawls's theory of justice, or one way in which it is. The paper is written as an imitation of the philosopher, sociologist and psychoanalytic theorist Renata Salecl. (Some anticipated reactions (more pleasant ones): "This is not Salecl, but we cannot explain why, we just feel it"; "This is not Salecl, but we have no incentive to enter into details in order to explain why"; "This is Salecl enough if it were by various academics or freelance writers, but this role is not available for you." "We in continental Europe are holists not atomists, so you cannot be Salecl in this way without being so in a number of other ways.")
Draft version: version 1 (30th July 2025)


        After the second world war, many Europeans were of the view that this must never happen again to Europe: the nations of Europe must learn to live together in peace. But how to achieve peace? The opposition between fascist regimes and liberal democracy was soon replaced by the opposition between capitalism and communism, with its central planned distribution. Any nation must surely choose between these economic systems and consequently pick a side in conflicts. The European Union that we have today developed out of a series of treaties and agreements aimed at peaceful long-term cooperation between European states, and the economic system aimed at was naturally in-between the two extremes—what we call social democracy. It would combine the liberties of a capitalist system, and the gains of competition between businesses, with government policies against the excesses of wealth disparity and environmental damage that typically accompany capitalism. It would also be able to avoid all out conflict between communist and capitalist states, by being in-between.
        At a time when European states devoted their intellectual resources to developing a liberal and socially just legal framework for the continent, American philosopher John Rawls developed his vision of a third way. At the foundation of Rawls's system is an imaginary event which has the character of a ritual of initiation, as some secret societies are renowned to have. A set of individuals come together to form a society and decide on rules of justice for that society. Each is masked, or in Rawls's metaphor behind a veil of ignorance, lacking knowledge of their social class, income, sex, or plan in life. There are things which they all want, since these are useful in any plan of life: liberties, money, respect. They choose principles which ensure a set of basic liberties and secure an economy which is best for the worst off.
        We in the 21st century live in a time of rising nationalist movements all over Europe, the British vote to leave the European Union being the most striking evidence of that, and it is easy today to criticize Rawls for overlooking the passionate intensity of national identification. Feminists have also criticized Rawls for simply assuming that the monogamous nuclear family, the dominant form of family in European and American societies, is just, when Rawls is supposed to evaluate each of the major institutions by whether the veiled individuals would agree to these institutions.
        From a Lacanian perspective, Rawls attends to the Symbolic, even if by assumption only, but not the Imaginary. When it comes to the family, the Symbolic is the set of rules which individual members must meet to count as a monogamous family. The married couple must not have sexual relationships outside of marriage. The marriage must also not be incestuous, we usually think. The imaginary consists of standard images of the monogamous family, which we learn from countless advertisements and television programmes: the married couple love each other - romance is still strong - and care for their children, until they are ready to leave the home. Indeed, the 1980s and early 90s seemed a time when American television came to Rawls's aid against feminist critics. The monogamous family was portrayed as a place of justice in sitcom after sitcom, such as the Cosby Show. The many things that go wrong in actual families were overlooked. The actor who played the family partriarch, Bill Cosby, has since become known for drugging and raping aspiring actresses, in a striking instance of the return of the repressed.
        The monogamous family, from a Lacanian perspective, cannot have its dominant position without the accompanying imaginary: the idealized images of it. Marry for love or for money? For love of course. The analytic philosopher Carrie Jenkins has become publicly known for rejecting the monogamous family in favour of relationships of three. She has recently identified the  ideology of romance. Simplifying a little:
1. A good life is one full of love. A bad life is one without this.
2. The best things in life are free, i.e. love.
3. To have a good life you should prioritize finding and being with the one you love, rather than wealth or power or fame.
But what happens if Rawls's veiled individuals take this into account when deciding on the rules of their society? Rawls does not realize that the dominant position of the monogamous family goes with this ideology, and countless popular sources which promote it, yet it is incompatible with the preference of these individuals for as much wealth as possible.
        In 1997, Cosby himself said that he did commercials which did not target working-class African Americans to show that the black man can be as money hungry as the white man, and therefore that all men are brothers. In his different television roles, he seems to embody the contradictions within Rawls's system, at once requiring the idealized family and a rejection of the family values which give much less importance to money.


References
n.a. n.d. Bill Cosby in advertising. Wikipedia.
Jenkins, C. 2022. Sad Love: Romance and the Search for Meaning. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Okin, S. 1987. Justice and Gender. Philosophy and Public Affairs 16(1): 42-72.
Rawls, J. 1999 (revised edition). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press.
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Hysterical violence in the state of nature (imitation of a Lacanian sociologist, my apologies)


Author. Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper is an imitation and mostly does not express my own point of view. Doing it perhaps manifests a lack of ideal levels of impulse control, or conformity to the norms of analytic philosophy, but I think the perspective presented is very much worth considering and needs to be in our literature and I find it easier to present like this. The paper argues that life without a government and legal system to resolve disputes will be extremely violent, more violent than even Hobbes imagined perhaps. The hysterical subject will perform violent actions with the aim of provoking the law into existence, unable to tolerate life with a low amount of structure, even if they often rail against a sufficient structure of rules once in place.
Draft version: version 1 (7th August 2025)


        In Europe and America today, we live under stable systems of law and government, but the news sometimes reports of much poorer nations in which rule of law has deteriorated. What especially captivates the Western media is a white woman from an affluent background caught in the mayhem of these lawless states. In 2013, the story of a British woman Judith Tebbutt was reported by the BBC and other news services. She was holidaying in Kenya with her husband, who was killed, and she was taken hostage by Somali pirates. She did not lose her self-control though. She learnt how to say please and thank you in Somali, she built rapport with the pirates, and even refused to wear the full Somali dress. Why are these news reports so fascinating? From a numerical point of view, each report focuses on one person or two when thousands are on the brink of starvation and face many dangers. In the case of Judith Tebbutt, we of course think that there is nostalgia for the empire and for British stoic stiff upper lip. But could it be that when we observe these situations, we are looking much further into the pasts of our own societies, to the founding of states and the Enlightenment question of what life would be like without the state?
        Liberal philosophers today use a prisoner's dilemma model to capture what society would be like without a state. In a prisoner's dilemma model, two prisoners who have jointly committed crimes are separated from each other. Each prisoner has only two options: confess or don't confess. If both do not confess, then both will be released. If both confess, then there is a 10 year sentence, while if one confesses and the other does not, the one who confesses gets a 5 year sentence and the other gets a 20 year sentence. Unsure of what their partner in crime will do, both confess, in order to avoid the 20 year sentence. The model has been adapted to predict what life will be like without government and law: what Enlightenment philosophers called the state of nature. Two individuals encounter each other, but will they attack or will they proceed peacefully? If both proceed peacefully, there is no violence, but if one attacks and the other proceeds peacefully, the peaceful one will suffer injury and loss of property. If both attack, there will be violence but it is a risk worth taking in case the other does not attack, therefore both attack.
        A Lacanian perspective is quite different. Lacan identified three types of subject, based on how the subject relates to language: the psychotic, the perverse, and the neurotic. A common image of the psychotic is of a violent patient restricted in a straightjacket. But actually it is the normal case, the neurotic, especially the hysteric, who is likely to become most violent in the state of nature. The violence is not aimed at protecting his or her property. It aims to provoke law into existence. How can we live like this, people will think, and so enforce law. The pirates who captured Judith Tebbutt provided her with a structure. There were clothes she was obliged to wear, based on religious rules. This functioned as a kind of law. Tebbutt behaved as a typical hysterical subject, in that situation. She behaved mostly in line with the law, with a bit of rebellion, an attempt to recover the lost satisfaction through having to obey all these rules. For Lacan, this idea of a lost satisfaction is a misconception. There is no full satisfaction for the subject in the absence of rules, or even a massive reduction. With too few rules, the hysterical subject becomes extremely violent.
        Oxford and Yale economists Harnoon Kaur and Noam Yuchtman observe that universities are regularly the site of protests. They put this down to the fact that universities are places where future elites are educated. Universities are not for educating ordinary people; they are for future elites. Students learn an ideology through their education, but protests arise when they rebel against this ideology as unsuitable for their long-term role.
        A Lacanian perspective emphasizes a deterioration in the structure of rules instead. The student leaves their well-structured family home, where they have been under the care of parents, to live in university, where, as every parent knows, things happen! One leaves a familiar structure, but unlike Judith Tebbutt, one is not immediately forced into another structure. Instead students are left more or less free. If they don't want to attend a lecture, perhaps they won't. Reading is up to them. Classes no longer feature the authoritative schoolteacher; instead there are discussions between equals. And they live with each other on their own terms. And of course students are left to themselves to find their romantic partners. Protests regularly arise in universities because of the lack of structure. They are a demand by the hysterical subject to fill the lack.
        In May 1968, students famously graffitied on the walls of Paris "Structures do not walk out on the streets." Lacan feared that these students would find an authoritarian master. Such a master would give students what was felt to be missing, which history supports: the rise of authoritarianism after liberalism is a repeated event. In 2018-19, students at the University of Manchester protested severely against the economics curriculum, covering the interior of the Arthur Lewis Building with their posters. Of course, the students did not want to run the place themselves. They wanted to find out: who actually runs this place? Who will suppress this protest and what rules will be enforced? The demand for someone who knows the mainstream mathematical economics, the philosophical foundations, the feminist criticisms and about alternative schools can only be regarded  as a demand for a figure like Simone de Beauvoir, whose course would be extremely strict and demanding - a demand for a severe master. But do students really care so much about economics? Surely there was a traumatic encounter with a lack of structure at the root of the protests.


Note: please do not bring a legal suit against the University of Manchester. It will probably need every penny and different people have their different perspectives on events. Probably some do have the perspective described.


References
Damon, D. 2013. Judith Tebbott: My six months held hostage by Somali pirates. BBC News. Available at:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23453120
Gauthier, D.P. 1967. Morality and Advantage. The Philosophical Review LXXVI: 460-475.
Hobbes, T. 1651. Leviathan. London: Andrew Crooke.
Kaur, H. and Yuchtman, N. 2024. Protests on Campus: The Political Economy of Universities and Social Movements. Comparative Economic Studies 66: 621-638.
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Literary Girls, by Kathleen St*ck: chapter 2, the low-high culture divide


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper is a response to Kathleen Stock's book Material Girls, by way of imitation. I attempt to write a faux chapter in her style, identifying four moments in the overcoming of the low and high culture divide in responses to the arts.


I fear that someone is expecting a further response to Kathleen Stock's 2021 book, feeling that a paper is not enough return. Below is a pastiche, followed by an appendix with some feedback.
 
This chapter is about the divide between popular culture and high culture in the arts. High culture is composed of difficult but rewarding artworks, like the Spanish novel Don Quixote. Popular culture is composed of immediately gratifying artworks, such as a soap opera or a brief funny joke with a pun in it. Everyone knows about the divide. If you're from the lower class, you are supposed to enjoy one set of arts – lowbrow they're called; if you are from the middle class, you're supposed to enjoy another set of arts – middlebrow they are called. And if you are from the high class, you are supposed to enjoy, or at least take an interest in, highbrow arts. And if you try to do anything else than what suits your station, life will be made very difficult for you, as it has been for me.
Now something we do in philosophy is start with a simplification. The idea is that points we make with that simplification can apply to more complicated situations. So let's forget about middlebrow and simply say that there's high culture and popular culture. Everyone forgets about that in-between stuff anyway. But there are attacks on this division between high and low. Some of the attacks were by earlier philosophers; not analytic philosophers today, who mostly talk only among themselves. I'm an analytic philosopher too, but I am going to try talking to you! In this chapter, I present a brief history of recent attacks on the high-low divide, in the field of responses to the arts. Remember: I'm talking about responses, such as interpretations and university courses, rather than the production of art, and with a special emphasis on literary arts. There are four big moments.   


Moment 1: Push-pin and Poetry
According to utilitarianism, the morally right action is the one that produces the greatest amount of happiness, which is understood as pleasure minus pain. Pleasure is not some obscure Aristotelian thing which needs a Greek word to refer to it; it's just sensations. Actually philosophers call this ACT UTILITARIANISM; analytic philosophers distinguish several types of utilitarianism and ACT UTILITARIANISM is one kind.  There's also RULE UTILITARIANISM and more sophisticated kinds. What if two actions available to a person both produce an equal amount of happiness in the world and all others produce less and these two cannot be jointly performed? That's a good question. Then there's an option of performing either of these two, according to ACT UTILITARIANISM.
        This moral philosophy was invented by Jeremy Bentham, who lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Now Bentham said that push-pin is as good as poetry. Push-pin was a game that people played. It was an amusement, and it supposedly produced as much pleasure as the pleasures of reading great writers like Homer and Shakespeare. I don't know much about what was involved with push-pin, but with Bentham's ACT UTILITARIANISM the divide between high culture and popular culture was undermined. A lecturer at a university would be morally wrong if they just included certain novels which are hard-going on their course, like Middlemarch by George Eliot, and didn't include some amusing popular works, which they don't hold in high regard. ("And lecturers always like to be morally right." That's Laura!)
        Another utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, famously presented a divide between higher pleasures and lower pleasures as a response to the problem of why anyone should take an interest in arts which are not immediately gratifying. The course giver should prioritize higher pleasures over lower pleasures. The solution has not convinced some.[15]


Moment 2: Literary Theory
There's a widely used textbook on literary theory. It's not that good in places, but it's useful on the history of literary theory. Literary theory exploded in the 1960s. Here's what the textbook says:
Some literary theory has indeed been excessively in-group and obscurantist, and this book represents one attempt to undo that damage and make it more widely accessible. But there is another sense in which such theory is the very reverse of elitist. What is truly elitist in literary studies is the idea that works of literature can only be appreciated by those with a particular sort of cultural breeding… Theory was a way of emancipating literary works from the stranglehold of a 'civilized sensibility', and throwing them open to a kind of analysis in which, in principle at least, anyone could participate. There are those who have 'literary values' in their bones, and those who languish in the outer darkness. One important reason for the growth of literary theory since the 1960s was the gradual breakdown of this assumption, under the impact of new kinds of students entering higher education from supposedly 'uncultivated' backgrounds.[16]
So "theory" was a replacement for an earlier way of approaching literary works. It's not fully clear from the textbook what this earlier approach was, but here are four axioms I associate with it:
1. Literature is only written by people from cultivated backgrounds.
2. To be from a cultivated background, you have to grow up in a family in which older members read works of literature, in a prestigious sense of the word, and they make children read some of these as well.
3. If you grow up in this kind of family, you end up with the ability to understand literary works by intuition. When reading a novel, you just know what's going on when the main character and his love interest are walking home and they meet her father. And you can't develop this intuition in any other way.
4. In selecting students for studying a literary course, you should only take students with this intuition, and only people from cultivated backgrounds have it.
The problem with (d) in the 1960s was that the university system was expanding massively and literature and other arts departments were taking in people from uncultivated backgrounds, so they needed "theory" because the new students lacked the intuition to understand literature. (By the way, although (d) seems really elitist, some people who hold it probably think, "I, from a cultivated background, don't have the intuition to understand your lowbrow arts.")
The simplest way of understanding the claim that literary theory overcame the elitism in (d) is like this. A literary theory is basically a formula.[17] You can apply the formula to a text to produce an interpretation, like how a science student might apply a formula to a situation. For example, a physics student works with the simple formula that all objects fall to the ground at the same speed and they answer the question "Which will land sooner if dropped at the same time, this heavy book or this light book?" by saying, "They will land at the same time." Similarly, anyone who grasps the formula can apply the literary theory. There's no need for having intuition. Literary theories can be very strange but they're a bit like a system for interpreting palms. Everyone knows palmistry systems, which tell you things like "Those marks mean you will have two children" and "This other mark means that a child will be taken from you."
        The development of literary theory actually challenges the divide between high and popular culture in two ways. (1) It allows more students who lack literary intuition to join courses, as long as they can use a theory. They're no longer confined to lowbrow entertainments. (2) A theory can be used beyond works classed as literature, in a prestigious sense. You can apply the formula to an advertisement or a trashy romance novel.


Moment 3: Analogies
Let's do a thought experiment. Imagine that I write a textbook but it omits some information which people are expecting to see there. And a critic reads it. I'm a critic, but even critics have critics. And this critic is looking for an analogy. Then one of his friends proposes: it's like chess without the king. "NO!" shouts the critic, "That's not what I am looking for." Then he begins searching for an analogy. But what if the best analogy requires delving into lowbrow culture? Because he wants the best analogy, he has to do that. He can't say, "I don't touch that stuff." (As Marilyn S________ might have said, "There is a set of analogies internal to a domain, but one can import an analogy from outside, on the condition that none of the internal analogies suffice.")
This is about a textbook, but what about literary criticism proper? Sometimes you need analogies from places you don't want to go to – literary critics probably know this, even if they haven't got an explicit set of guidelines about the matter. The famous characterization "This is an episodic novel" was probably taken from responses to lowbrow works. It was then used in response to Yukio Mishima's novel Temple of the Golden Pavilion and also Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford. She had to publish in a periodical monthly, then the material was collected together and turned into a book, so it's episodic. I don't know why his novel is episodic, but maybe something similar went on.[18]


Moment 4: The Technocratic Loophole
        There are skilled craftsmen and they're mostly very snobbish. But they don't protest against things like revealing dresses worn at movie award ceremonies. It seems they privately would, because they're so conservative. But actually they wonder why you can't see even more. Why does the dress not just fall down, like what happened to that French actress? Until that puzzle is solved, of how the dress stays up, those revealing dresses are allowed at ceremonies. Because first and foremost these people are technocrats. They want to know how that technical problem is solved. Things which would otherwise be regarded as low culture, by some snobbish group, are sometimes accepted because of a technical achievement. The discovery of that way in must have happened but, compared to the others, it's a secret moment.


Appendix
        This is not part of the pastiche, though it is not always easy to exit pastiche mode. Stock writes:
Still, it's worth noting that, despite my recent professional turn in sex and gender, I'm still mostly considered an outsider to the area. Although I have been writing and speaking on the topic in public for a couple of years now, and have authored academic papers about it, I don't work in a Gender Studies department, or in the field of queer theory, or in Trans Studies. I'm not trans myself. I'm not even a proper feminist philosopher; at least, I didn't used to think I was. (2021: 8)
I think "others" are mostly not going to see Stock like this. Some people will react by means of analogical thinking, though perhaps in a subtly different sense to before: by comparing her work to work by people they already know. For example, Stock explains Judith Butler in various places. But I know at least two others who have been members of a certain department and do that (in lectures, if not books), and all these efforts seem quite similar. "Stock is like so-and-so," someone might think. In her professional role, she is perceived as analogous to that person. (That could be a reason for ignoring her work. But perhaps the reader is like a restaurant critic, who eats the same meal at a number of restaurants and is concerned with subtle differences.[19] I worry then that they would not regard what I have provided as a very good pastiche.[20])


References
Bradley, F.H. 1876. Ethical Studies. London: Henry. S. King & Co.
Eagleton, T. 1996 (second ed.). Literary Theory. An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Edward, T.R. 2022a. One sex or two? Kathleen Stock on Thomas Laqueur. Available at:
https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWOSO
Edward, T.R. 2022b. Six plus three approaches to interpreting Judith Butler. Available at:
https://philpapers.org/rec/EDWSPT
Gaskell, E. 1907 (originally 1853, as a book). Cranford. London: J.M. Dent.
Mishima, Y. (translated by I. Morris) 1959. The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. London: Secker and Warburg.
Stock, K. 2021. Material Girls. London: Fleet.
________________


Literary Girls, by K*thleen St*ck: chapter 4, pastiche of the long dead


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper is an imitative response to Kathleen Stock's book Material Girls, another faux chapter. This effort may be fractionally closer by some measures than my previous effort. I include an appendix with my own response to the essayist targeted: Alain Robbe-Grillet.


Most people who have ever written professionally have also attempted to imitate the writings of someone else. That's a normal stage before developing one's own style. A young writer might even dress in a similar way to an admired author. We should not feel worried about this. Privately, they know that they're not that famous author. They're just immersing themselves in a fiction. It's a passing stage. But some people continue to write imitations even as they grow older. And, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. In another sense of "pass," a pastiche aims to pass as if it were by the original author, and it succeeds among some appropriate audience, or it would succeed if they knew about it. If philosophers look into what a pastiche is, they will probably start debating the definition, but that can serve as a working definition for us. In this chapter, I want to discuss some arguments that have been made against the pastiche of authors long dead. I'm going to focus on an essay by the French avant-garde novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet called "The Uses of Theory." That's not because I'm especially interested in producing secondary literature on Robbe-Grillet. I actually cannot escape the feeling that Robbe-Grillet's essay is a hoax, or not quite what it seems to be. It certainly doesn't provide a nice list of theory uses. Like post-structuralism, and some other French movements, Robbe-Grillet's writing attracts fans in the English-speaking world, but it's hard to understand what, exactly, is going on. I can just feel the eye rolls as I naively take it at face-value. But I'm going to focus on his essay because he asserts the main arguments people are likely to make against pastiche of the long dead (or POTLD, for short). As it stands, I don't think any of these arguments work.


Argument 1: impossible
        Let's begin with a quotation from Robbe-Grillet:
To praise a young writer in 1965 because he "writes" like Stendhal is doubly disingenuous. On the one hand, there would be nothing admirable about such a feat, as we have just seen; on the other, the thing itself would be quite impossible: to write like Stendhal one would first of all have to be writing in 1830. (1989: 9)
Now I don't think that in praising a young writer for writing like Stendhal, a critic is necessarily saying that the young writer has produced a work that seems as if it were by Stendhal himself – some recently discovered work left behind by Stendhal or something Stendhal would have been happy to sign as his own. That's reading a lot into the claim. But let's suppose for the sake of argument that this is what the critic is saying. Is what the critic describes actually impossible?
There are different kinds of impossibility. There's logical impossibility. That's roughly when there's an inconsistency. Some claims are inconsistent, such as "That is round and that is not round," but there's nothing obviously inconsistent about "An author today (or in 1965, around when the Robbe-Grillet essay appeared) wrote a work just like Stendhal in style." And there's no proof of inconsistency. So at the moment we can't say that it's logically impossible.
        A more demanding sense of impossibility is natural impossibility. Some actions are impossible because the laws of nature prevent them, for example levitating. You can imagine levitating and it's logically possible – there's no inconsistency about what you're imagining – but the laws of gravity prevent you from just rising off the ground by an act of will. Of course, the laws of nature could be different. There's nothing inconsistent about that. Some fantasy novels, with lots of magic in them, are consistent. (That's why the coherence theory of truth doesn't work.) But given the laws of nature that govern our universe, also it's unclear why writing a convincing imitation of Stendhal today is impossible. What prevents it? Robbe-Grillet doesn't say. Maybe someone has drawn a grid of possible Stendhal writings and they believe that unless every square of the grid is filled in, Stendhal just wouldn't have died. But why believe that? Surely possible writings in the style of Stendhal are infinite, or very large in number. Until we're given a good argument, we have to say that new Stendhal-like writing is possible.
        Some people will be frustrated with speculations about possibility from high theory and prefer an empirical approach. If you write an imitation, can it pass as a work by the author? And whom can it pass among? Can it pass among fans and can it pass among experts? If both, we should surely say, "It's possible." Surprisingly for a philosopher, I'm sympathetic to this approach.[21] But even if we look into theoretical considerations, what we know about the nature of possibility doesn't rule out producing a work as-if from Stendhal today.  We don't have a good impossibility argument against POTLD.


Argument 2: no value
Robbe-Grillet thinks that writing in the style of a long dead author would not have value today:
A writer who produces a pastiche skillful enough to contain pages Stendhal might have signed at the time would in no way have the value he would still possess today had he written those same pages under Charles X. (1989: 10) 
Well, we certainly wouldn't value the pasticheur as the creator of a style. But Robbe-Grillet's no value argument leaves a big question unanswered. A comparison with some less highbrow material is helpful here. Let's imagine that two people are watching an old horror film. One person is frightened, or they experience feelings we would normally describe as fear – there's actually a complicated debate about whether they can really fear what they don't believe exists. Another person can't stop noticing facts to do with when the film was made, such as out-of-date slang. They don't immerse themselves in the fiction, so they don't experience feelings of fright. Analogously, there are probably some readers who are like the first viewer. They're fans of Stendhal and they can just enjoy imitations today as if these works were more Stendhal. For them, there isn't a different value when they're reading. But another reader can't get certain facts out of their mind whenever they're reading – about when this imitation was made. They're more like the second viewer. Why should we prioritize this second kind of reader's experience?
Robbe-Grillet makes a comparison with other arts himself:
Moreover, no one would dream of praising a musician for having composed some Beethoven, a painter for having made a Delacroix, or an architect for having conceived a Gothic Cathedral. (1989: 10)
Again there are probably different kinds of Beethoven listeners, and some of them would enjoy a new Beethoven-like symphony. Also Robbe-Grillet seems to assume that what goes for other arts goes for literature. People have sold imitations of Leonardo da Vinci to museums, which believed they were purchasing originals, but just try writing a faux Shakespeare play today. It's harder to produce a convincing imitation of old literature than a convincing imitation of an old painting, which would naturally lead us – or some of us – to place a higher value on a successful literary effort.[22]


Argument 3: backward looking
A third argument from Robbe-Grillet is that pastiches are backward looking, when literature should be capturing reality today and also preparing people for tomorrow. He refers to writers seeking new forms for the novel and says:
Such writers know that the systematic repetition of the forms of the past is not only absurd and futile, but that it can even become harmful: by blinding us to our real situation in the world today, it keeps us, ultimately, from constructing the world and man of tomorrow. (1989: 9) 
But some future periods may have more resemblance to certain periods of the past; then pastiches of writing from that time can help prepare readers for what is coming. A lot of people are more interested in what their contemporaries are doing, so they're more likely to read these pastiches.
Also does every single author have to help with constructing the man of the future? The community of social anthropologists is quite small, so probably every single anthropologist has to do fieldwork.[23] But when we switch from anthropology to novels and think about the duties of the novel, the situation is different. There are so many novelists. The bookshops are full of novels. Is it a problem if a few novelists write backward-looking pastiches? And what if an author can't realize their personal ambitions without POTLD? Robbe-Grillet tells us about the reception of his works:
My novels have not been received, upon publication in France, with unanimous enthusiasm; that is putting it mildly. (1989: 7)
And:
In the literary magazines, I often found a more serious response. But I was not satisfied to be recognized, enjoyed, studied only by the specialists who had encouraged me from the start. I was eager to write for the "reading public," I resented being considered a "difficult author." (1989: 8)
Perhaps for Robbe-Grillet to realize his populist ambitions, he needs to open his mind to imitating the long dead instead of always and exhaustingly seeking new forms.


Argument 4: against life
        After he notes the situation with pastiche and the other arts, Robbe-Grillet tells us:
Many novelists know that the same is true of literature, that literature too is alive, and that the novel, ever since it has existed, has always been new. (1989: 10)
Human beings are alive and cats and dogs are alive, but literature is not alive, not literally anyway. Biology is the study of living things – there are specialists in studying primates, chromosomes, plant cellulose, etc. – but there's no specialist in biology whose job it is to study literature and how it grows. But literature might sufficiently resemble something alive to describe it as alive, metaphorically speaking.[24] Okay, let's grant the resemblance then. Still, in life people don't always do new things. A librarian might quit their job and then apply for the same job again, and work in the same library. Sometimes people go back to more childish ways of behaving. Life is not a straightforward movement of newness, in fact that would be quite mechanical, as if human beings were actually robots, programmed to follow the rule: be always new!
        Robbe-Grillet tells us of how he tried to increase his readership:
I therefore published, in a politico-literary newspaper with a large circulation (L'Express), a series of short articles in which I discussed several ideas that seemed to me no more than obvious: for example, that the novel forms must evolve in order to remain alive. (1989: 8)
Perhaps this is obvious, given appropriate clarifications of alive and novel form; but we have to be careful about sliding between the even more obvious thesis that some change is good for the novel as a genre and the more controversial thesis that in order to remain alive the novel must always be new in the forms it takes. Robbe-Grillet slides between different theses as if they were one and the same.
In conclusion, Robbe-Grillet's essay makes all the predictable arguments against POTLD, but as yet there's no convincing argument; and while I'm not saying that Robbe-Grillet has to engage in this practice, maybe he's damaging his chances of realizing his ambitions in life by avoiding it.


Appendix
        I shall try to exit pastiche mode, and briefly present my own response to Robbe-Grillet's essay. Some of its assertions read suspiciously as if they "came out of" an Englishman's portrait of French literature. Actually it is one particular Englishman I have in mind: critic, translator, and pasticheur Richard Aldington.[25] Aldington was a translator of the French writer Remy de Gourmont. He tells us:
Remy de Gourmont was not what is called "a great figure." His life can almost be told in a sentence: "He was born, he grew up, he read, he observed, he thought, he wrote, he observed, he thought, he wrote, and he died." He was genuinely indifferent to those gratifications of vanity known as "honors." In the capital of the vainest nation of Europe he lived the life of a philosophical hermit. (1970: 2)
Robbe-Grillet presents himself as exactly this kind of gratification-seeking writer, unable to accept the self-effacing workmanlike role Aldington admires in the "not great." Here is more Aldington:
The intellectual inheritance of a Frenchman is so large and complicated that he runs a serious risk of being overcome by it. This, I think, is why so many writers both in France and elsewhere have made a virtue of ignorance, and wish to destroy all that has been painfully garnered over centuries. (1970: 7)
Correspondingly, Robbe-Grillet insists on perpetual newness. I don't know if the following was a conscious strategy, but it would be amusing if it were: whatever this critic characterizes you as, using his "near-omniscient intuition," just be or "do" that![26]
This essay is not the best one by Robbe-Grillet which I have read, but I think Aldington is the better essayist overall. However, even if there is a slight gap, Robbe-Grillet developed solutions to problems which people might face, and his writings may well matter more to people faced with those problems. Aldington was a very versatile and talented writer, but strangely he did not put his translation talents at the service of the best French writers of the time, rather the solid and self-effacing.[27] What does one do when faced with such border patrol? Faced with this problem, Robbe-Grillet's approach gives him and others some chance of crossing the literary waters into English letters as an example of the typically Gallic: "When this you see, remember R-G!"[28] But I think Robbe-Grillet's best essay should make it across even without this boost. I find it threatening though: the best essay of Robbe-Grillet!


References
Aldington, R. (edited by Kershaw, A.) 1970. Remy de Gourmont. In Selected Critical Writings. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
Edward, T.R. 2011. Are there uncontroversial error theories? Philosophical Pathways 162. 
Grillet-Robbe, A. (translated by Howard, R.) 1989. The Use of Theory. In For a New Novel. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press.
Jarvie, I.C. 1967. On Theories of Fieldwork and the Scientific Character of Social Anthropology. Philosophy of Science 34: 223-242.
Stock, K. 2021. Material Girls. London: Fleet.
________________
Literary Girls, by K*thleen St*ck: chapter 5, realism


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. In this paper, I present a pastiche of Kathleen Stock responding to Raymond Tallis's defence of realism. It is followed by a note in which I briefly explain why I have approached this task by means of pastiche.


        Some fictions are called realistic. What is it to be realistic? Although philosophy and literature may seem very different, there are actually parallels between them. Realism in fiction is like naturalism in philosophy. Naturalism is when you don't posit any supernatural entities in your account of what there is, such as ghosts or magic or even values which have magical qualities: to perceive the good is to desire to do the good. Realism in literature is like naturalism. It's a fiction which doesn't present anything supernatural. Maybe realism doesn't present anything wildly improbable either, like lots of amazing coincidences.
        Realism has been attacked and defended. It is defended by Raymond Tallis in his book In Defence of Realism. Tallis was a professor of medicine at the University of Manchester who suddenly, zanily, started writing books against fashions in literature and European philosophy. It may seem that Tallis represents the English-speaking analytic tradition. He refers to figures like Frank Ramsey. But in philosophy sometimes it looks as if two positions fit well together, but you can have other combinations. And actually you can be a naturalist in philosophy, as most analytic philosophers are, without favouring realism in literature. There's nothing inconsistent about that. In this chapter, I want to consider some arguments that Tallis makes in defence of realism and why they don't work, as well as draw attention to some arguments he doesn't consider.


Debate 1: contemporary reality is different
        Tallis has done his homework and identifies a number of authors who say that contemporary reality is different. Here is a quotation from him summarizing his findings:
Different writers would give different answers as to what it is about twentieth-century reality that makes it no longer amenable to realistic treatment and why realism, which flourished in the nineteenth-century and was apparently able to respond adequately to its realities, should be quite unable to deal with the world that emerged a few decades later. Certain themes, however, are sounded again and again: modern reality we are told is more horrible than anything that has gone before; it is more vast and more complex; it is pre-digested, in a manner that has no historical precedent, by the organs of the mass media; human artefacts now intervene between man and nature to an extent not previously seen, so that the individual's environment is a rapidly changing man-made rather than a stable natural one.  (1988: 10)
Tallis's counter-argument to this is pretty simple. He argues that the past was not so different. For example, he draws attention to various horrible historical events.
Now maybe the past was not so pleasant, but for us in the twenty-first century these critics of realism look ahead of their time. Since Tallis wrote, the Internet has changed many people's lives. People spend so much time in virtual worlds, such as online or playing video games. It's much easier to immerse oneself in a fantasy. The realist novel seems unsuitable for capturing the experience of a person who spends all their time involved in an online role-playing game, as a wizard or elf or even a woman, when they're a man.
Even if Tallis is right that history was not so different, he would have to deal with this claim: there are periods of history which are more suited to fantasy fiction and periods which are more suited to realist fiction. Some people, lots of people even, have experienced something so horrible that it's easier to construct a myth than try to capture the reality of it all.


Debate 2: indescribable reality arguments
        Tallis takes a dialogue from Frank Ramsey and produces an adapted version, in which speaker A is demanding realism and speaker B is rejecting the demand:
A: Express reality!
B: Can't.
A: Can't express what?
B: Can't express reality.
A: Why not?
B: Because reality is… [Description of reality then follows]. (1988: 20)
Tallis calls this pragmatic self-contradiction. It's not like asserting a proposition and then asserting that this proposition isn't true – contradiction in logic. Instead B's action of describing is a counterexample to what B himself asserted. But I don't think there's necessarily any self-contradiction here, even a pragmatic kind. If a clever child tells you, "I can't describe the colour of that leaf, because look at all that complicated variation in colour, and I only have simple words like 'red' and 'yellow' " then they're describing the leaf a bit when telling you why they can't describe the colour of that leaf. But still they can't write a description that captures the exact shades and colour variation they experience. They can just give a broad outline, which doesn't really distinguish that leaf from some other slightly different leaf.
        Tallis is sort-of right. There's a paradox to solve. In a debate with a promoter of realism, someone commits themselves to saying (1) reality is indescribable; and then (2) they have to explain why; and (3) that explanation contains a description of reality. But in philosophy we don't just say that there's a fatal contradiction then. We look at whether there are ways of interpreting the person, so that there's no contradiction. When properly interpreted, there may be no contradiction.


Debate 3: literary realism versus other fields (anthropology and reliability)
        The realist literary novel promises knowledge. It seems as if it's a kind of science. And people read these works for the knowledge they give. George Eliot's novel Middlemarch has the subtitle "A study of provincial life."  But why write realism today? Hasn't anthropology rendered realist fiction obsolete? I'm an academic but if I refer to a realist fiction as a source of knowledge, I'll be posed the question: how can we trust this work, because it's a fiction? Things might be made up because they're more interesting for readers like that. What's more trustworthy is an anthropologist who does fieldwork by immersing themselves in a culture and whose job is to report what they find, without making up stuff.
        Tallis has a chapter with the title "Has the Cinema Rendered the Realistic Novel Obsolete?" but why assume the main threat is from the cinema? Why not assume it's from academic fieldwork? Instead of reading fictions about inner city Manchester, one can read fieldwork reports.


Debate 4: literary realism versus other fields again (anthropology and multiculturalism)
        Imagine I live in a busy multicultural city, like Manchester. And then I write realist fiction. But there are no coloured people in my fiction. It's all white people, and they're not even like most white people today. I'm going to be criticized for being decades behind the times, and someone who writes realistic fiction like mine but with more diversity is going to get the credit. Of course, it's not my fault. I write realist fiction based on the world I know. People tend to mix with people they care about, and people they care about are people they like, and people they like are mostly people they have lots of common ground with, and that tends to be people of the same ethnic group and social class. What would I have in common with a black person or an Asian person or a Pole, especially one from another social class? Again it would be easier for me to avoid this criticism by just doing anthropology: doing fieldwork. I could go to a school and work as a schoolteacher and write up about what it's like[29] to work in a multicultural school in inner city Manchester.
        But it's important to distinguish this debate between literary realism and anthropology, and the previous one. The previous one was about how best to achieve the value of being regarded as a reliable source. This one is about how best to achieve the value of being in line with liberal multicultural values today, not the 1870s or the 1970s. Tallis has covered some of the key debates affecting whether realism has a future, but not all of them.[30]


Note. I have already written two pastiches of Kathleen Stock (the second of which I was hoping would be more embraced) and it wasn't actually in my plans to write another, but once one starts it is hard to stop![31] My rationale on this occasion is "I think that there are points which would probably occur to some readers of Tallis and it is worth having them in the public domain. If I wrote in my own way, I would probably have responses to at least some of these points, but another probability is that there is only so much that many readers interested in the future of realism can digest at once. The style Stock has recently adopted, in her book Material Girls, provides a useful way of introducing these points without over-complicating the discussion."


References
Eliot, G. 1871-72. Middlemarch. Accessed on 3rd April 2022 from:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/145
Stock, K. 2021. Material Girls. London: Fleet.
Tallis, R. 1988. In Defence of Realism. London: Edward Arnold.
________________


 "Writing the exotic": a pastiche of Marilyn Strathern


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract: This paper presents an attempted pastiche of the writing and thinking style of the distinguished anthropologist Marilyn Strathern. The claim about the consequence of avoiding the charge of exoticism resembles the paradox of analysis.


I suppose it is a break from academic norms to produce a pastiche and present it, but if you have done a lot of research on an academic, or comparable figure, and even developed a subversive interpretation, it is a natural next step.


Anthropologists have often been accused of peddling the exotic. The criticism is familiar from the revolution of the 1920s, which made a victim of Frazer's anthropology. Critics held that Frazer selected his ethnographic details for their dramatic effect on the late nineteenth century readership (Gluckman 1965: 20). The criticism assumes the availability of some other way of selecting ethnographic details. Frazer omitted the mundane – the initiatory ritual is conveyed but not the commonplace routines of married life – but to select for it is still to engage in a construction of sorts: a different genre of drama.
The charges brought against earlier anthropologists are routinely brought against later ones. Ethnocentrism is the paradigmatic example. The revolution did not rid itself of the charge of exoticism. Functionalist anthropologists were said to represent societies as unchanging wholes, in the face of colonial and post-colonial transformations. The object of their descriptions was an Other, outside of global systems of relations and frozen in time. My own research has repeatedly been brought to tribunal, for setting up a contrast between Euro-American models of individual and society and Melanesian alternatives.
Anthropology of course undergoes change. From Frazerian anthropology to structural-functionalism to postmodern trends, we seem to have travelled an immense distance. And yet anthropology remains dogged by the charge of exoticism. Persistent criticism displaces a portrait of change. Will the mushrooming of fieldwork in Britain solve the problem? I propose to disarm the charge by means of definition. When is an anthropologist writing the exotic? When anthropological premises about social life are not shared with the subject of study. Just about any informative anthropology would therefore lay itself open to the charge of exoticism. If one avoided the charge, one would run into the other accusation of having expended much energy only to uncover what we already know – studying people just like us.


Reference
Gluckman, M. 1965. Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
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Strawson III? On writing for gratification of outsiders in philosophy


Author's name (parents' draft). Terence Rajivan Edward (now Doctor)
Dialogue on names (fictional): "Now why do you want a name?" So that my works can be identified - that is one reason. "You need a number really."
Author's name (my first draft). 0161__Rajivan
Abstract. This paper is an attempt at P.F. Strawson's style. It raises the question of whether philosophers should write for the gratification of outsiders with little knowledge of philosophy. I distinguish between readers seeking literary pleasures, even if the ideas expressed are not new, and readers seeking new ideas. I point out the advantages of being able to communicate to people in neighbouring specialisms at the same time and hopefully being able to better achieve fair evaluation, because one will be valued by a reader who is excited by one's ideas regardless of social hierarchy and fashion.  But I also point out disadvantages: obviously it makes the communication of complicated or subtle or nuanced points difficult; the uninitiated reader may not be able to distinguish a small step from what was before and an ingenious leap; and it usually does not help enhance one's long-term prospects of staying in the philosophy curriculum.
Draft version: version 2 (8th October 2025; first draft 26th September 2025, minor changes)


"Please put a poem first
As my literary efforts are cursed"


1
         This essay contains reflections on a theme which has surely been the subject of contemplation for some centuries, though no extended treatment is known to me. The theme can be approached from the direction of how doctrines about value known as utilitarianism apply to the writing of philosophy itself. The end aimed at by the version known as act or total utilitarianism is the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and it would seem to require us to produce texts oriented towards the immediate gratification of readers little acquainted with the discipline. I shall not approach the theme from this direction. It can also be approached from the direction of the interaction between philosophical traditions. We think of ourselves as members of the long British tradition of philosophy, which numbers Locke and Hume as prominent figures, and more recently Russell. This tradition belongs to a broader tradition conveniently referred to as Western philosophy, which contrasts with, amongst other traditions, Chinese and Indian philosophy. The open-minded reader belonging to a tradition naturally has some curiosity about other traditions, about for example the extent to which philosophy in continental Europe shares our own focus on questions of meaning, about what inquiries preoccupy philosophers further afield and what conclusions, if any, inquirers elsewhere have arrived at. But he who examines the works of another tradition, even if fully qualified in his own, differs significantly from the working member of that tradition. The fully-fledged member will be immersed in the intricacies of debates within that tradition, whereas what the philosopher outsider typically hopes for is a taste of what that tradition has to offer, before returning to works of his own tradition and its characteristic concerns.
Is it advisable to write for the outsider too? What advantages are there in doing so and what disadvantages? The question is surely not new, but unaware of previous extended treatment of it, I hope I can be forgiven for any repetition of what others already know. Before proceeding to identify two advantages and then in turn two disadvantages, perhaps a third, I shall make a distinction which, though idealized, seems necessary if we are to have any rational discussion of the topic.


2
         The philosophers of the Western tradition since Socrates at least have not only been thinkers, inquirers into philosophical questions, but also writers. Many of them display pleasing literary gifts; two already named, Hume and Russell, are numbered amongst the finest writers of prose in the English language. France too has its share of philosophers who are honoured as masters of le bon mot. Here we come to a distinction that is of central importance, even if idealized. We imagine our readers as interested in philosophy, and in the analytic tradition, interested in argument. But the foreign reader who turns to the works of our tradition may be principally seeking literary satisfactions. Commonplace thoughts are forgiven on the condition that the wording is pithy or elegant or has some touch by which it rises above plain speech. To comprehend such a reader, think of how you must have felt upon hearing a brief saying which captures the essence of your discourse, for instance "It's who you know, not what you know" to describe the familiar observation that a person's set of social connections determines who got the job, rather than knowing how to do the job. In contrast to this literary reader, there is the foreign reader who is ideas-oriented. It is new ideas that awaken their interest and they hope for something novel and of value to report back to their peers, even if plainly said.
        The distinction drawn involves some idealization. In reality, the ideas-oriented outsider requires communication with some literary flourish, which goes beyond what is expected in a field where most members are focused on content as opposed to form. The literary reader, meanwhile, will tire of stale ideas only. I do not myself see how one can rationally treat this topic, however, without some distinction along the lines introduced, and below I shall focus on the ideas-oriented outsider.


3
        Writing for the gratification of a foreigner to one's tradition brings with it at least two advantages, or seeming advantages. One is that by doing so there is a set of other readers to which one can thereby communicate. We are even disposed to presuppose that writing for this audience will ensure that one's texts are readable to all other audiences. Here it is one particular other audience to which I shall draw attention. This is the specialist in another field of philosophy, the systematic general philosopher who contributes to numerous fields being increasingly rare in our time. The fellow specialist is, naturally, immersed in the literature of his specialism, with precious little time left to acquaint themselves with developments beyond it. One has the advantage of being able to let them know of developments in one's own specialism, as one addresses the reader beyond the tradition both sets of specialists share. A second advantage is the promise of fairness. What is prized within a tradition may be affected by hierarchies and fashions that are irrelevant to what is actually of value in philosophy, an effect that we may describe as distortion. The perspective of the outsider promises to reduce distortion, and all men of good sense and talent who are new to a tradition, in that they lack a family history there, have taken care to ensure their ideas are available to those less initiated into the tradition. Nevertheless, writing for the uninitiated brings disadvantages, the most obvious of which is that it impairs the communication of complicated or subtle or nuanced points.


4
        A further disadvantage concerns the evolution of philosophical content. Some ideas are but small steps from what came before. Others are large leaps and to the few who make these leaps in ways that we value, we attribute the description of genius. In our own time, the genius of our field is generally agreed to be Ludwig Wittenstein. We can say this from a position of thorough acquaintance with what came before and the extent of the transformations his ideas brought about. When reading beyond our tradition, however, we have little sense of what came before and what came after and indeed are lost without a body of historical scholarship, which we ordinarily regard as distinct from the pursuit of philosophy. I shall take, as an example, the definitions provided by the German philosopher Carl Schmitt, whose philosophy currently enjoys popularity in China. The sovereign, we are told, is he who decides on the exception, while politics itself is about the friend-enemy distinction. These unfamiliar perspectives are clarified thus: the legal system of a nation, in some circumstances, ought to be suspended to better deal with a source of trouble for it, the principal source of trouble that preoccupies Schmitt being an enemy to the nation's way of life. The sovereign is that person or body of persons who is able to suspend it. I have read texts making Schmitt's thinking available to uninitiated readers such as ourselves; unfortunately these texts do not remark on the extent to which there was a prior discourse within Schmitt's German tradition about suspending the law, to which he added pithy formulations. "Should we always follow the law?" has, to my ears, the sound of a standard examination question set at any elite college.


5
        I shall end this essay with an observation which some may experience as identifying a disadvantage, and one which may prove the most troubling of the three. The word "culture" is used in two senses, one to refer to the customs and shared beliefs of a people and the other to refer to the body of finer achievements about which we believe people in the society ought to know. We include the achievements of philosophy amongst these, though the technical nature of various recent achievements reduces their availability. Many of us who work in philosophy and other departments of culture select topics which we believe to be of enduring interest and hope to make enduring contributions. For example, one philosopher chooses to work on the definition of causation, evaluating when one event can be said to cause another, while another philosopher chooses to work on what is bound to be a long-term paradox of aesthetics: concerning how we respond with emotions such as fear to fictional works although these reactions seem irrational, given that they are known fictions. In addressing the outsider, we may hope to further enhance our long-term prospects, but the evidence that it does beyond a few cases of genius is almost nothing.
        The history of philosophy includes a number of lesser figures whose writings are still readable but who have lost their place on curriculums. Closer to our own day is the case of F.H. Bradley. The Ethical Studies he wrote early in his long career can still be read with pleasure and profit today. It is not only a source of ideas; it also possesses a style which is Bradley's only remaining claim to fame in our own day. Below is a sample:
Betaking ourselves, therefore, to the uneducated man, let us find in him, if we can, what lies at the bottom of his notion of moral responsibility. What in his mind is to be morally responsible? We see in it at once the idea of a man's appearing to answer. He answers for what he has done, or (which we need not separately consider) has neglected and left undone. And the tribunal is a moral tribunal; it is the court of conscience, imagined as a judge, divine or human, external or internal. (1876: essay 1)
Bradley's writing is sure to exhilarate readers uninitiated into our specific tradition of philosophy, yet his texts are now languishing unread. I must unfortunately end with a warning: those who set philosophy curriculums are not such readers and it is they who largely determine who amongst us will continue to be read, beyond the few historians of the discipline.


References
Bradley, F. H. 1876. Ethical Studies. London: Henry. S. King & Co.
Strawson, P.F. 1919-2006. Collected writings.
Zheng, Q. 2016. Carl Schmitt, Mao Zedong and the Politics of Transition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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Williams style essay, on anarchism and character development
 
Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper considers a defence of anarchism, which appeals to the possibility of character development to reduce problems, and objects to that defence as making anarchism too demanding. 
Draft version: Version 2 (12th June 2023, "projects", reference correction).


I have not pushed myself for the exact style here – carefully checked whether this is how Bernard Williams constructs a sentence or a paragraph – but proceeded from memory as to how he writes.


"Anarchism" for some beginners in political philosophy, or political theory as it is sometimes called, is synonymous with "chaos": that gives the term's meaning, making the question of what, if anything, is wrong with anarchism a baffling one. Of course there can be such a thing as an appetite for chaos, but we can assume most clear-headed citizens don't have a strong appetite for it. For philosophers, anarchism is a position which rejects government and a legal system. It has been defended (Wolff 1970), which is unsurprising given the range of positions embraced by professional philosophers, but furthermore, something that cannot be said for all such positions, it has opponents who take it seriously, notably Nozick (1974). I shall not inquire here into whether there is some theory of meaning according to which the person who objects that anarchism in a philosophical sense entails chaos is licensed to thenceforth treat the word "anarchism" as synonymous with "chaos."
Let's imagine inhabiting an anarchist society and confronting a problem that leads one to favour the introduction of a legal system, arguing along these lines, if not quite with this explicitness:
If this undesirable behaviour is occurring, then an enforced legal system is required to bring it to an end.
This undesirable behaviour is occurring.
Therefore:
An enforced legal system is required to bring it to an end.
The undesirable behaviour could of course be various things, such as robbery or sexual harassment or even especially loud noisemaking in a nocturnal hour. The ordinary opponent of anarchism envisages an anarchist society in which they have grounds to make this argument. But it is rarely or never registered that the anarchist has a response, which is to dispute its first premise, in favour of character development. Instead of the introduction of a legal system, processes of character development can cause dispositions, virtuous one, which bring an end to the undesirable behaviour. 
        But the ordinary opponent may well be dissatisfied with this defence. One reason is that they are sceptical about the ability to change a person's character, at least after early years, the exact boundaries of which we can pass over here. That could be because character is regarded as something fixed – he is what he is; "scepticism" may not be the ideal word for someone who views a man thus – or because changes in character are not typically brought about by intentional actions aimed at that end. Perhaps wars change characters, but one does not go to war to change the characters of, say, Nazi or neo-Nazi youth. A generalization apparently based on evidence is that characters are not available for intentional transformation from one set of dispositions to an intended other set.
        A quite different reason for dissatisfaction is that one finds there is some value in limiting one's parenting projects to one's own children, even if one can potentially bring up other children. "I would discourage my child from taking up that aim but if that other child wishes to take up that aim, it is available for them to do so, within a system of rules." No enforced system and the pursuit of some aims is likely to cause serious problems for others, to spill over metaphorically speaking, and one must get involved in changing the child's aims, who is not one's own, or there is a considerable risk of that in order for anarchism to be tolerable. The value a person might find in an enforced legal system that enables them to limit their parenting projects could be the value of a less demanding set of requirements on them, whether conceived as requirements of morality or pragmatic rationality, or that the system enables them to realize the somewhat suburban virtue of minding one's own business. The overly demanding objection, familiar from discussions of utilitarianism (e.g. Hills 2010), would seem to apply to an anarchist system which reduces undesirable behaviour by means of character development.


References
Hills, A. 2010. Utilitarianism, Contractualism and Demandingness. The Philosophical Quarterly 60 (239): 225-242.
Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Wolff, R.P. 1970. In Defense of Anarchism. New York: Harper Row.
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On the romantic appeal of anarchism (B*rn*rd W*lli*ms) 


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. This paper responds to Thomas Nagel on the romantic appeal of anarchism, by drawing attention to a very different kind of romantic anarchist. I have written it in the style of Bernard Williams, or I have tried to, unable to resist the opportunity. 
Draft version: Version 1 (9th July 2023)


        We might do well to begin by registering some senses of the word "romantic" which will not be relevant, or at least directly relevant, to our inquiry. The topic does not of course exclusively concern whether love relationships would somehow be improved if an anarchist philosophy were to be implemented, according to which governments are simply illegitimate and to be dismantled. And we are not directly concerned with the historical movement in the arts which numbers Blake and Shelley as participants, however its values have contributed to the sense or senses with which we are operating. The early nineteenth century taste for the sublime is in the background.
        Thomas Nagel, in a wide ranging review, identifies murder, torture, political imprisonment, censorship, overthrow of the governments of other countries, tapping the phones, reading the mail, and oppressively regulating sexual behaviour as amongst the evils pursued by actual governments. He writes of how "This helps to account for the romantic appeal of anarchism." (1975: 139) The anarchist of romantic disposition, thinks Nagel, hopes for an end to these evils but insensibly promotes life without government as the solution, overlooking the reality of that solution.
        I shall draw attention to another romantic anarchist, in the sense of investing an extreme with virtues it is unlikely to have – someone who thinks that we can go all the way in a certain direction and thereby fulfil our political desires and whom we had best not forget. They reflect upon examples such as a village in which failure to participate in certain collective activities, a festival or clean-up operation say, leads to being shunned. There is no legal requirement to participate, but one feels compelled to participate by informal incentives, like that provided by this reaction. Another example is a firm in which incompetent or merely elderly employees are rarely fired, rather life is subtly made unbearable for them, until they depart. Given such examples, this kind of anarchist wonders why we cannot go all the way: remove the legal system completely and maintain order by other means.
        If the proposal is at all workable, it is likely to nonetheless prove immensely oppressive. Never the direct "That was wrong and this is the price you must pay for this wrongness" and "Now the punishment is over and let life resume," rather one moves in, or the person judged guilty of some norm violation moves in, an environment of unwanted behaviour calling out for interpretation: was the problem this and if I cease doing this, will that put an end to it?


Reference
Nagel, T. 1975. Libertarianism Without Foundations. Yale Law Journal 85 (1): 136-149.
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An imitation of Bernard Williams' style, on system-building philosophers


Author: Terence Rajivan Edward
Abstract. I have tried to imitate Bernard Williams' writing style. The thought expressed in the sentence beginning with "Political decision-making is" is simply his (or famously his) and my own view is not quite this. 
Draft version: Version 2 (24th July 2023, title "system-building")


        With occasional exceptions, the history of philosophy has privileged system-building philosophers, who characteristically begin with a principle or a collection of foundational principles from which they work out implications. Such philosophers dominate guides to the history of the discipline, and just about anyone who describes themselves as a philosopher will feel a pressure to follow their example, notably after being confronted with the question "What is your philosophy then?" I want to urge that this paradigm for what it is to be a philosopher is problematic. For one thing the nature of a particular subject matter may not suit this kind of treatment, the result being horrendous simplifications. Political decision-making is, I think (1995), unsuited to systematic treatment along the lines presented, though Kantians and utilitarians have persistently tried.
        Furthermore, if we think of philosophy not from the point of view of a history of the discipline fifty or five hundred years hence but as something realized in our current departments and in a research community, it is evident that every member's being a system-builder is likely to bring problems. Within a research community, no member takes up the Socratic role of evaluating these systems. Is the best system to be decided then by a mere popularity contest among non-specialists? Within a department, there is a reasonable probability that some other kind of philosopher is needed for the system-builders, each having their own jargon and preoccupied with the development of their system, to even understand each other. In suitable conditions, the value to a department of a philosopher able to play the role of channelling information could be above that of yet another system-building philosopher.


Reference
Williams, B. 1995. What does intuitionism imply? In Making sense of humanity and other philosophical papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.




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[1] Also I have the impression that parts of a nearby university would have preferred Carrie Jenkins to the philosophers they have to deal with instead and, furthermore, a Carrie Jenkins directed onto a topic such as this – a remote controlled version even!
[2] Tallis contests the use of Saussure as a source for it (1995: 58).
[3] I recall reading that Bronislaw Malinowski was presented with the whole The Golden Bough like this, in his homeland. But I don't think it is a very good representation of the British literary tradition, because it seems very untypical, though I really like the opening.
[4] Well, the opposition seems to have trouble with a homely family-friendly style.
[5] I actually heard words like these from someone in economics, by the way.
[6] This is a concern I have about Bourdieu. If you are interacting in this sophisticated uncodifiable way, sooner or later you may well hire someone without much social skills to help you understand what is going on – to ask the questions you have.
[7] [The novel in question is Milan Kundera's Life is Elsewhere (1986: 23). I suppose the situation described can obtain if a poorer family is paid to provide services for a wealthier family and the child from the poor family gets to go to the same prestigious school if they provide protection. Early on his father tells him, "Forget about your own poems – you protect this boy."]
[8] [I read "Elmdon isn't really a village at all, it's just a commuting centre" (Oxford 1981: 209) and what I was initially hoping to do was a portrait of the reverse complaint – "This isn't really a commuting centre at all, it's a village" – but somehow it was easier to do this.]
[9] [Perhaps there are whole families who strangely get in, like the Darwin family.]
[10] [I have examined a case in more detail before. In that case, inequality in social connections seems to play a minor role at best in explaining a weakness, but in other cases the role may well be larger. See Edward 2022. The material also overlaps with yesterday's paper, but not the day before's. However, it strangely disappeared.]
[11] One can either agree with the interpretation which focuses on truth and say that this metaphor should be dispensed with in these cases, or reject the interpretation for these cases.
[12] Xinli Wang and Ling Xu have clarified a presuppositional approach to conceptual schemes and argued against a focus on each scheme's being true, but by subtly shifting the focus to how users of a conceptual scheme attribute truth and falsity to claims by users of another scheme: that they do not attribute these properties at all, or their scheme does not. No such proposal is made in the Raz pastiche above. 
[13] [By the way, there is a saying, "There is no 'I' in team," and I am aware of a related educational joke, I believe by Aaron Fullerton, which goes like this: "We can teach kids there is no 'I' in team, but it's way more important to teach them that there's no 'a' in definitely." Probably all the cradle "talk" let me to conceive a reply: definatally!]
[14] [Perhaps Davidson's requirement is more subtly that you must have good reason to think the language translatable, despite your failures.]
[15] See Bradley essay 3, 1876.
[16] Eagleton 1996: viii.
[17] In a way the four axioms are a literary theory, but they're not a literary theory in the sense which the textbook writer has in mind.
[18] Or maybe monks just have episodic lives.
[19] On reflection, the differences are not that subtle. I think there are six main methods of interpretation. One is assimilating Butler to an actual philosopher or a stock character, e.g. "She is just a Hegelian." See Edward 2022b. 
[20] By the way, the history presented contains major omissions and "episodic" was used well before Mishima's novel.
[21] [One can define what it is to achieve an author's style, in a way that loosely resembles the Turing test. Do relevant people regard this as a work by the author? If so, then the style has been achieved.]
[22] Some musical genres value sampling as well, and if you value sampling, can you be against POTLD?
[23] [See Jarvie 1967 for a discussion of the issue.]
[24] [I doubt that, from Robbe-Grillet's point of view, this is a metaphor. I suppose processing that doubt can lead to unorthodox theories of metaphor and botanical descriptions of literature.]
[25] From my standpoint, the French like, or admire, Anglophone writers quite similar to pasticheurs: Simone de Beauvoir likes Horace Walpole, Nathalie Sarraute likes Ivy Compton-Burnett, etc. My paper "Are there uncontroversial error theories?" is a pastiche, by the way.
[26] I also find Robbe-Grillet's choice of Stendhal as an example amusing, because I think quite a lot of young aspiring writers who read Stendhal would probably start writing like that. "They're not really young then!" 
[27] It seems to me that de Gourmont is slightly better than Aldington describes him, but the translations I am more familiar with are by someone else.
[28] "Why not just act in line with Aldington's preferences?" I think this is an interesting experiment, whether intentional or not, though I am not attracted to anything comparable.
[29] [Note the concept of what it's like has another function in philosophy, which is to formulate an aim of anthropological fieldwork (according to one conception). For example, a researcher from long ago would tell you how they could not engage in abstract thought when living the life of a native.]
[30] [Realism was the official literary approach in authoritarian socialist states and a question I have is whether some authors reject realism as part of mocking authoritarianism – "We're free to do this."]
[31] Perhaps this is a personal thing. I took a paper by Stock, which she put online and then removed, to be a pastiche of one of my writings, and perhaps she has no inclination to write another!