Author: Ophelia Benson

Richard Dawkins takes an exasperated look at John Cornwell’s throughgoing misrepresentation of his book. In one example, Cornwell takes part of a general discussion of consolation, which includes this passage –

We can also get consolation through discovering a new way of thinking about a situation. A philosopher points out that there is nothing special about the moment when an old man dies. The child that he once was “died’ long ago, not by suddenly ceasing to live but by growing up. Each of the seven ages of man “dies’ by slowly morphing into the next. From this point of view, the moment when the old man finally expires is no different from the slow “deaths’ throughout his life.

and says this about it (the ‘you’ is Dawkins) –

The atheist “philosopher’s” view you cite argues that when an old man dies, “The child that he once was “died’ long ago. . . From this point of view, the moment when the old man finally expires is no different from the slow ‘deaths’ throughout his life.” Tell that to a teenager dying of cancer, and his family.

The ridiculous scare quotes pissed me off as soon as I saw them, and they pissed me off even more when Dawkins elucidated:

Do you see what Cornwell is up to here? First he puts the word “philosopher” in quotation marks, which can only have been intended sarcastically. In a footnote, I attributed the argument to Derek Parfit, who happens to be an extremely distinguished philosopher, author of the book Reasons and Persons, described by another eminent philosopher, Alan Ryan, as “something close to a work of genius”. Even if Cornwell didn’t see my attribution to Parfit, his sarcastic quotation marks were uncalled-for. How did he know whether I got the argument from a real philosopher that he respects, or not? Why be sarcastic?

Why indeed? Apparently because he’s yet another defender of religion who wants to hurl random abuse rather than say anything even faintly reasonable. Right, the “philosopher” Derek Parfit; well played.

Second, Cornwell describes my “philosopher” as an atheist, although I never said he was an atheist and Parfit’s point would be just as valid whether he is or not. There never was any suggestion that the argument is an atheist argument, put by an atheist philosopher. That wasn’t why I brought it up, not at all. Once again, Cornwell is reading what he expects to see, not what is actually there. Third, as with the Linklater misreading, Cornwell seems to think that I am offering the (Parfit) argument as an atheistic alternative to religious consolation. Why else would he add the gratuitously sour sentence: “Tell that to a teenager dying of cancer . . .” Once again, I was offering the Parfit argument simply as an illustration to clarify the kind of thing that consolation can mean: the consolation we can derive from a new way of thinking about familiar facts.

Apart from all that, it’s good stuff.

But if that is irritating, the following is gratuitously offensive. Cornwell is talking about Dostoevsky’s reading of nineteenth century thinkers. He mentions Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Utopian Marxism, and “a set of ideas that you would have applauded – Social Darwinism.” Does Cornwell seriously imagine that I would applaud Social Darwinism? Nobody nowadays applauds Social Darwinism, and I have been especially outspoken in my condemnation of it (see, for example, the title essay that begins A Devil’s Chaplain).

He’s right you know – I’ve quoted that passage from ‘A Devil’s Chaplain’ and from Darwin’s letter which is the source of the phrase, more than once, in response to one misreader or another who gets Dawkins wrong on this. People are convinced that he’s a great naturalistic fallacy fan but he’s not, and he’s said that as clearly and definitely as it’s possible to say it. Natural selection sucks. And I’m not much impressed by John Cornwell, either.

Meet Tahir Aslam Gora.

Tahir Aslam Gora is a Canadian-Pakistani writer, novelist, poet, journalist, editor, translator and publisher…In 2005 Gora translated into Urdu Irshad Manji’s book, The Trouble with Islam. He is currently translating Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel. Gora writes a column for The Hamilton Spectator and is currently working on two manuscripts; one on Canadian multiculturalism, the other on Islam and the need for its transformation into “a humane theology.” In Pakistan he was a noted critic of religious intolerance. He fled to Canada in the spring of 1999 following threats to his life.

A critic of religious intolerance who received threats to his life by people keen to show what religious intolerance really is.

[M]any Muslims have for centuries excluded non-Muslims from their orbit. In addition, the traditional script of the Qur’an exhorts repulsion of ‘others’ much more than acceptance. Many Muslims are unwilling to realise that the Qur’an was written and compiled by the pioneers of Islam through different political stages. Instead, many take the book as the final verdict of God…Now, for many, the whole essence of Islam is repulsion of others.

Hence the popularity of death threats and fatwas, no doubt.

Liberal Muslims are not only silenced by literalist Muslims, but also by those non-Muslims who have developed the hollow pattern of being ‘fair’ and ‘tolerant’ to every religion. The existence of ‘political fairness’ among large circles of non-Muslim activists is actually a much bigger obstacle than extremist Muslims because those non-Muslim activists dominate the media outlets across the world and often ignore genuinely liberal Muslim voices.

Don’t they just. Well, good luck, Tahir Aslam Gora; let me know if I can do anything to help.

Funny stuff from Jo Wolff.

Why is academic writing so boring? I am impatient by nature, easily irritated, and afflicted with a short attention span. That I ended up in a job where I have to spend half the day blinking my way through artless, contorted prose is a cruel twist of fate. But the upside is that it gives me plenty of opportunity to reflect on why reading academic writing is so often a chore and so rarely a joy…As far as I know there has been little, if any, literary analysis of academic writing…But, by chance, I recently read a short piece of literary theory, and, to use one of the two metaphors academics allow themselves, the scales fell from my eyes. (If you are wondering, the other metaphor is deftly deployed in the following: “In this column I shall view academic writing through the prism of literary theory”.)

I love that last bit because it includes the academically-obligatory and nonacademically-poisonous trope that Julian always cites as what The Philosophers’ Magazine (being a magazine not a journal) doesn’t want – that ‘In this column I shall’ item. Part of my job as deputy editor is telling contributors that we want a magazine style not a journal style, and explaining what that entails (and then sometimes explaining it again when we get a journal style anyway and have to ask for revisions). And in much the same vein, in writing Why Truth Matters we had to combine a decent amount of rigor with a style appropriate for a trade book. There were times when we actually got into quite detailed discussions of that – is this too much? Is this too academicky? Is this not academicky enough? We had disagreements about what we could assume people would understand – we have different starting ideas about that: I tend to think that people don’t like being talked down to too much, don’t like explanations of things they already know, and do like to be asked to reach a little; JS thinks people don’t like being made to feel stupid, and don’t like to be asked to reach too much. We were probably both right – some people fit his version better, some fit mine. We have had plenty of comments to the effect that the book is hard work, including some saying it’s a little too much hard work, or much too much hard work. But we’ve had others saying it was a workout but that that’s enjoyable. It’s worth thinking about this in case we write another book some day – and also just because the subject is interesting. Style is interesting; the question of what is interesting and what is boring is interesting.

The secret, apparently, is that good writing captures its reader by means of creating a tension between the plot and the story. The reader is shown enough of the narrative sequence to get an impression of what is going on, and to whet their appetite for more, but much is hidden. Suspense is created, and the reader is hooked until it is resolved…A very simple and effective technique…[I]t makes perfect sense to me, and also explains why academic writing is generally so much easier to put down than it is to pick up again. At least in my subject, we teach students to go sub-zero on the tension scale: to give the game away right from the start. A detective novel written by a good philosophy student would begin: “In this novel I shall show that the butler did it.” The rest will be just filling in the details.

That did make me laugh. And now I think about it…I realize there is a certain amount (a small amount) of tension in WTM. The first chapter doesn’t give the game away – the first chapter is slightly coy – the first chapter sets things up for the last one. I didn’t know that was a literary secret at the time, but I did it that way anyway. I suppose I simply figured I had to leave something for the last chapter to say, or else why have a last chapter?

Anyway – somebody just the other day found it ‘a delight to read’ – which to someone who herself likes to be delighted by what she reads is the kind of comment that makes writing worthwhile, and the attempt to figure out the difference between boring and interesting also worthwhile.