The Only Thing Worse Than Being Talked About

ByEditor

Ted Honderich and Colin McGinn, two well-known academic philosophers*, are engaged in a meaningless public feud, bringing further “glory” to a profession that has become largely irrelevant, thanks in part to the kind of philosophy pursued by the likes of Ted Honderich and Colin McGinn.  Stuart Jeffries reports in the Guardian that Honderich wrote a book on consciousness which apparently claims that consciousness is just the “external world.”  Whatever he took that to mean, McGinn, in a review published in the venerable Philosophical Review, wrote things like: “This book runs the full gamut from the mediocre to the ludicrous to the merely bad.” And:  ”It is painful to read, poorly thought out, and uninformed. It is also radically inconsistent.” And used words like: sly, woefully uninformed, preposterous, easily refuted, unsophisticated, uncomprehending, banal, pointless, excruciating.

Don’t hold back, Colin…what do you really think? 

Well anyway, for some reason, Honderich cares what McGinn thinks and is ticked off about it.  The two of them have gone back and forth about it in various venues.  Honderich might even want to sue Philosophical Review (!) (and Socrates rolls over…).

Jeffries wonders:

What will happen now? Will Honderich and McGinn kiss and make up? It seems unlikely. Not only is McGinn unrepentant about his review, but Honderich is demanding compensation from the Philosophical Review. “They should not have published it,” he says. “It makes them look ridiculous.” And then he adds something that, just possibly, is mollifying: “In a way, I’m glad it’s been published. My book is now getting the attention it deserves. The mighty little McGinn has done me a service.” 

So at least Honderich hits on a nugget of Wilde wisdom:  The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. 

*Note:  “well-known academic philosophers” means that they are well-known by other academic philosophers, but not in general; “well-known” means possessed of names recognizable to other academic philosophers, but not that their work is known or studied by any broad portion of academic philosophers; “academic philosophers” means, most of the time, academics in a department of “philosophy” but not philosophers.

Author

  • Eric Weislogel, Ph.D., is the Vice President for Academic Affairs of the Metanexus Institute, headquartered in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA. In addition, he serves as the Director of the Metanexus Global Network Initiative, with hundreds of projects in more than 40 countries. He is also Senior Contributing Editor of the Global Spiral, the online journal of the Metanexus Institute. From 2006-2008, he served as the Executive Director of Metanexus.

    Prior to joining Metanexus, Dr. Weislogel was assistant professor of philosophy at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania and also taught at the Pennsylvania State University. Currently, he teaches philosophy at the Delaware County Community College. He has published a number of philosophical essays and reviews in such journals as Philosophy Today, Transdisciplinarity in Science and Religion, Idealistic Studies, Philosophy in Review, Science and Theology News, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Additionally, his articles have appeared in the online journals Metapsychology and the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, as well as in the Global Spiral.

    Dr. Weislogel is a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he was awarded the Diplme d'Honneur by the Centre International de Recherches et tudes Transdisciplinaires (CIRET) in 2007. He is an active member in a number of scholarly societies, including the American Philosophical Association (for which he currently serves on the Committee for International Cooperation), the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the American Academy of Religion, among others.

    Dr. Weislogel's main philosophical interest may be described as philosophical anthropologythe exploration of the interplay of religion, science, ethics, and metaphysics in the 21st century and what it means for our understanding of the human person. He describes himself as a postmodern peripatetic, an Aristotelian at heart, trained in 19th- and 20th-century continental philosophy, and who especially loves teaching the works of Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, in parallel to Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Marion, Butler, Levinas, and Zizek.. He is a vocal advocate for adopting transdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching.

    He and his wife, Kellie Given, have two children: Lucas, a graduate of St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA, who teaches high school physics and is a graduate student at the University of Virginia; and Elisa, a graduate of La Salle University and presently in her final year as a student at the Villanova University School of Law.

    In his spare time, Dr. Weislogel can be found pursuing his passion for book collecting, reading, listening to music and going to concerts, trying to figure out whats happening on Lost, rooting for the World-Champion Phillies and the Steelers (and the Eagles), baking bread, or enjoying a walk with his wife. He is still trying to have a meaningful conversation with their two cats, Bagheera (Bags) and KitKat, but so far without success.

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