This bit of froth I actually found amusing. It is wryly written, it is about New Orleans and alcohol — oops the latter two are of course at one — and most of all, it is true. I think that were I a student at any of the terrific universities in New Orleans, I wouldn’t have made it out alive.
Here is a very warm review of Paul and my Companion.
A Companion to Michael Oakeshott by Paul Franco and Leslie Marsh (eds). Pennsylvania PA: Penn State Press, 2012. 346pp., £52.95, ISBN 978 0 271 05407 0
The publication of this Companion by Penn State Press is proof of the increasing recognition of Oakeshott’s philosophical work in recent years. The fact that another such work has been issued simultaneously by Cambridge University Press (1) underscores this British thinker’s importance to the intellectual world. Yet were these two products to be taken as mere rivals, rather than complementary pieces of scholarship, Paul Franco and Leslie Marsh’s volume need not fear the comparison.
In their volume, Franco and Marsh assemble fifteen articles by leading experts in the field to cast a kaleidoscopic view on the ‘life and letters’ of Michael Oakeshott. Perhaps one should more precisely say that the Companion wishes to inform readers about Oakeshott’s multifarious philosophical achievements as well as his eccentric (and much less meritorious) love life, or so the focus of the unlikely biographical note at the beginning of the book (by Robert Grant) suggests. The articles that follow the introduction by the editors and the biographical note are organised in two parts. The first part deals with Oakeshott’s reflections on the practice of philosophy, morality and historical knowledge, as well as religious and aesthetic kinds of experience. The second part discusses his work on political philosophy and the history of political thought. Thus, the wide range of Oakeshott’s oeuvre is covered and, what is more, the quality of contributions is generally high.
Inevitably, not all interests can be wholly accommodated when assembling a collection on a prolific philosopher. For instance, readers will not find a succinct conspectus of Oakeshott’s political philosophy and the limits of his ideas, or its reception in the academic world. Also Oakeshott’s stance on economic policy is not addressed in great depth. (Leslie Marsh’s outstanding article on Oakeshott and F. A. Hayek primarily inquires into issues of cognitive science and the philosophy of mind.) Finally, though this is probably a virtue rather than a vice, the editors refrain from attempting to reconcile the partly diverging interpretations of the individual authors (p. 12). However, there is no doubt that the articles manage to acquaint the reader with Oakeshott’s philosophical achievements without being uncritical, and take the existing literature in several respects one step further. A Companion to Michael Oakeshott can therefore legitimately claim to serve as an authoritative guide to Oakeshott’s thought. It will be of great value to advanced scholars as well as students unfamiliar with his ideas.
Note 1
The Cambridge Companion to Oakeshott, ed. Efraim Podoksik.
Martin Beckstein (University of Zurich)
Frederick Turner — “Quality, quantity, granularity, and thresholds of emergence”
Stefano Moroni — “Two different theories of two distinct spontaneous phenomena: orders of actions and evolution of institutions in Hayek”
Chor-yung Cheung — “Hayek on Nomocracy and Teleocracy: a critical assessment”
Lauren K. Hall — “Guiding the invisible hand: spontaneous orders and the problem of character”
Joseph Isaac Lifshitz — “Spontaneous order theory in a Heideggerian context”
This from ABC (Australia) from a few years back — audio and transcript — featuring two chaps who made it over to London for MOA 2001. The fresh Oakeshott images below by Brian John Spencer.
He dramatically whipped from his pelvis the sheet, flapping it open. Among the yellow stains the word FORWARD was printed in high block letters in red crayon. Below this Crusade for Moorish Dignity was written in an intricate blue script.
“Sheet? What sheet!” Ignatius replied. “I am holding before you the proudest of banners, an identification of our purpose, a visualization of all that we seek.” The workers studied the stains more intensely. “If you wish to simply run into the office like cattle, you will have participated in nothing more than a riot. This banner alone gives form and credence to the agitation. There is a certain geometry involved in these things, a certain ritual which musty be observed. Here, you two ladies standing there, take this between you and wave it thus with honor and pride, hands held high, et cetera.”
The two women who Ignatius indicated ambled slowly to the cutting table, gingerly took the banner with their thumbs and index fingers, and held it between them as if it were a leper’s shroud (p. 119).
Jennifer Lackey assumes the editorship of EPISTEME. Here is an interview with Jennifer. Here also is the programme for the recent 10th anniversary conference.
Now this is my idea of being a social activist and in the long term I’d imagine a whole lot more authentic and thus more effective.
Here’s a paper by David Weinbaum that invokes stigmergy, my first mention of stigmergy and the global brain this year.
What an incredible career, what an incredible life. Check out the clip below of the 14 y.o. Jimmy talking about becoming a biological researcher when he grows up.
Check out mixed media artist Gina Phillips’ Fats Domino Series
The piece that inspired the Fats Domino Series is called Not Fats. This piece started as a commission commemorating the nine people from New Orleans who have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I did nine fabric portraits of all the inductees and incorporated them all into a banner. I scrapped the first version of Fats, because I felt I hadn’t gotten his likeness quite right…so I made another, and the second one is the one that made it on the banner.
Late last year, I started experimenting with incorporating resin into some of my pieces. I still had the rejected Fats hanging around in my studio, so I used him as a guinea pig for the resin. I created a little dam out of plastic around the fabric portrait and proceeded to pour a lot of resin on top. At first it seemed it was working great, then after the resin started to set up, the fabric began to float to the top of the resin and rise above the surface…which I didn’t want. I wanted the fabric to be completely embedded in the resin. So I frantically started sticking pins into the fabric to keep it down. I intended to pull out the pins before the resin set up, but I missed my window of opportunity and the pins were a permanent addition.
Well, the pins were one of those “happy mistakes” that artists talk about. This mistake inspired me to make a whole new series about Fats Domino.
The addition of the pins gave the piece a whole new meaning. The pins are mostly stuck in Fats’ face and it made him seem afflicted and vulnerable. I started thinking about what happened to him after Katrina…how he had to be rescued from his house, like so many of my neighbors here in the Lower Ninth Ward. Many people thought he had died in the storm. Like so many others, he hasn’t moved back to his neighborhood since the storm. So, I titled that first piece Not Fats…because we hoped the best for him and couldn’t believe his misfortune and we were relieved to hear he was still alive.
After that first piece, I started depicting Fats in many different situations in which he transcends time and space. He’s taken on a semi-mythical/heroic stature. He fishes with the Natives. He floats above the Industrial Canal. He’s captain of his own ship. He walks through the Battle of New Orleans, unscathed. In Facing Leaner Times Ahead, Fats Nourishes Himself With A Bowl Of Yakamein, he is galvanized by a concoction that is particular to his home place.
We saw ourselves in Fats when he had to be rescued from his house after Katrina. We felt sorry for him and ourselves to have been put in such a vulnerable position in life, and for many it’s been a very bitter experience. So I wanted to restore Fats’ power. In this new body of work, Fats transcends adversity and becomes a Lower Ninth Ward hero.
