THE WORLD IS A SMALL PLACE: I know the person responsible for this

WELL, THAT'S MY CARDIO FOR THE DAY:

For a moment, it looked as though I wouldn't get my TA stipend until the end of October (the infinite delights of TAing under a different part of the University). Panic.

As I was in the middle of posting, I received an email informing me that there is a paycheck waiting for me. Calm.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"The appreciation of beauty in art or nature is not only (for all its difficulties) the easiest available spiritual exercise; it is also a completely adequate entry into (and not just analogy of) the good life, since it is the checking of selfishness in the interest of seeing the real. Of course great artists are 'personalities' and have special styles; even Shakespeare occasionally, though very occasionally, reveals a personal obsession. But the greatest art is 'impersonal' because it shows us the world, our world and not another one, with a clarity which startles and delights us simply because we are not used to looking at the real world at all...

Plato says (Republic, VII, 532) that the technai have the power to lead the best part of the soul to the view of what is most excellent in reality. This well describes the role of great art as educator and revealer. Consider what we learn from contemplating the characters of Shakespeare or Tolstoy or the paintings of Velasquez or Titian. What is learnt here is something about the real quality of human nature, when it is envisaged, in the artist's just and compassionate vision, with a clarity which does not belong to the self-centered rush of ordinary life."

--Iris Murdoch, "On God and Good"

YOUR WEEKLY MICHIGAN FOOTBALL UPDATE: Winning is a lot more fun than losing, surprisingly enough. And winning is particularly sweet when it's against one of your rivals, especially when you always find a way to beat them. Because then it leads to garment-rending like this:

"Face it, we have the least capable coaching staff in Division I.

How many times did they run up the middle on first down? How many times did they lose two yards? Completely predictable.

When time was running out in the first half, what did Michigan do on third and long? Run up the middle, punt and hope?

No. Their freshman QB threw a ball deep across the middle. And got a first down.

That's how you win. By taking chances and making plays. Not by playing tight and hoping the other side will make a mistake."

...only in Big Ten football does "run left, run left, throw on 3rd and long" qualify as 'taking chances.' Which is why I love this shirt, though it was more appropriate for the Iowa-Wisconsin game that Michigan-Penn State. If there's anything better than Michigan football on black tea on a Saturday afternoon, I don't want to know what it is.

For the more aesthetically inclined, an Ode to Mike Hart in haiku form.

THE DAYS ARE JUST PACKED: If I've been a little slow to post lately, it's because the semester has finally gotten into a rhythm. The week has been spent doing research for my advisor (good, simple 10-page introductions to Thucydides; reading Iris Murdoch and Bryan Garsten's book on persuasion (which is excellent)), pursuing two new paper-length, dissertation-related projects (reading interpretations of Grotius' position on the right of rebellion; Lucan's Pharsalia as a window into alternative readings of the Prolegomena to De jure belli), preparing to teach section.

At times the work is overwhelming--and there's nothing like the futility of approaching secondary literature for a new paper*. But there will be more productive thoughts to come (the Murdoch already seems like it could drop in very well to the paper I presented at McGill, giving a deep philosophical cause to reject the language of public reason), and in the meantime, it's good, productive work, and I'm glad to be doing it.

*e.g. spending the afternoon reading a book or two that will be entirely useless to your project

LINK: Dead Flowers with some Soundcheck songs by the Smiths.

With a band like the Smiths, the final product as it appears on a record is often the sum of many parts. As a result, it's difficult to pull apart a track and get a sense of how the song is constructed. Demos and soundchecks are interesting because you can follow along with the musician and begin to get a sense of what he thinks he's doing as he plays. The track for "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" is a good example: deprived of the (really excellent) studio additions, there's only the movement of one guitar, and in that movement, somewhere, is the part of the song Johnny Marr thinks is essential.

This is part of the reason I find conference papers and articles (before they're turned into books) so interesting. The environment of book- or dissertation-writing allows you to do a good number of things not available to you otherwise--to move through a topic thoroughly, and at length; and to control the experience of your reader in ways that flatter your methodological and substantive predilictions. In a conference paper, by contrast, I think you can generally only make one point*, and the form requires you to make some judgments about what's essential and what can be put aside.



*If you're a graduate student, anyway, I think you're better off trying to say one thing well than many things (with any level of quality), but I grant this may change over time

Best. Season. Ever.

UPDATE: Let's see how the last question here holds up in another week. I'm sure the Sox will win the division, but I'm pleased that the Yankees are keeping things interesting (if for no other reason than preventing Francona from resting his players).

I haven't followed baseball for the longest time (since end of 2001/2002), and I'm a Yankees fan, so I don't generally get to voice an opinion on this, but I think this has been the best season I've been a fan so far. The narrative has generally been overwhelming dominance in the regular season, and disappointment/embarrassment in the postseason (Angels in 2002, losing to the Marlins in 2003, disappointing showings in 2005 and 2006*). A roster filled with creaky, overpaid players and bench guys you've never heard of doesn't really make things easier. But this year: Cano, Melky, Phil Hughes (give it another year or two), Joba, obviously; more than you'd expect from Shelley Duncan and Wilson Betemit, Doug Mentkiewicz rocking a three-run HR last night... even if they don't make the wild card, it's been a good year--and next year could be even better...

*What, did I forget something?

LINK: Bad art is bad art, and doesn't get redeemed by its political message.

LINK: Matthew Fluxblog has a good entry on the R.E.M. song "Camera". In the past, I've always taken it as the semi-biographical account of the death of one of Michael Stipe's friends (the woman who took the pictures for the "Radio Free Europe/Sitting Still" single); Matthew links it up to the attempt to remember the face of a girl you've just met, which long ago made in onto a list I made of "Things That Make Life Worth Living." The song is ultimately too sad to sustain that reading of it, but I'll try to hear it that way when I listen to it next.

MUSIC REALLY WAS BETTER WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER: The AV Club looks back at 1997. Man, did that ever take me back. I remember OK Computer, Dig Me Out, ...Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, Urban Hymns, Dig Your Own Hole, The Color and the Shape; I've come to appreciate the 1997 enteries by Cornershop, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Pavement, Portishead, Erykah Badu, Belle and Sebastian, and Yo La Tengo.

Any year from the mid-90s can probably give '97 a run--earlier than that and you hit the sweet spot between britpop and grunge. After that, well, boy bands, rap-metal and, ugh, Britney... Yes, things were much better back when I was a whippersnap.

QUOTE FOR THE EVENING:

SUMNER: ...and today I was sitting in my office with Diane. I looked up from my Proust, she had her nose in her Yeats, and I said to myself, "I'd be crazy to let this girl get out of my life." So right there on the spot I said "let's get married."
DIANE: What he actually said was: "Come with me, and be my love/ and we will some new pleasures prove." That's Donne.
SAM: I certainly hope so.
SUMNER: No, uh, no. John Donne, the poet.
SAM: Ah, well, that's... lovely.

-"Give Me a Ring Sometime"


This is one of those things that makes me sound unnaturally old, but I really think there's very little TV better than the first season of Cheers. I caught it in syndication my senior year--back when I used to regularly stay up late in the evening (what else was I going to do at 1:00 in the morning? sleep?), and at two episodes a night five days a week, it was over a month before they began to get repetititve and formulaic. Friends certainly never managed that.

It's also something of a time capsule--the series began 25 years ago; just barely when I was alive, and obviously not anything I remember. It's very odd to see what passes for style in the early 80s. I've said a few times that the 70s seem like a schizophrenic decade (and must have been odd to live through); this particular prism of the early 80s seems like nothing so much as slow transition.* In a way, it reminds me of Manhattan: simultaneously forward- and backward- looking, and so like nothing quite so much as itself.

*I originally wanted to go with 'hangover,' but I'll have to think more about whether that's an approrpriate analogy.

YOUR WEEKLY MICHIGAN FOOTBALL UPDATE:

It's morning in America again

My favorite line from an earlier version of the game write-up:

"Michigan handed the Fighting Irish their worst loss since beating them by the same score in 2003."

When I shared this with a friend on IM, I followed the quote up with "BWAHAHAHA"

Oh yes, and the obligatory kick when they're down

LINK: This is what I have to look forward to at McGill later this week. Except not the high--it looks to be in the mid-60°s most of the time. Still, it will be a welcome change from yet another week of 90°s, and a reminder of what I can expect here in another couple of months.

RANDOM NOTE: Like most people, I sometimes wonder if I'm in the right line of work. But there's something about teaching students who are really motivated (or answering their emails, and seeing what interesting things they are thinking about and the arguments they want to make) which answers that particular question for me.

YOUR WEEKLY MICHIGAN FOOTBALL UPDATE:

It looks like I will be avoiding Deadspin and cnnsi.com again this week (being in Montreal was going to cut into this time anyway).

Also, how much do you think Ryan Mallett wishes he'd transferred over the summer?

WELL: James asks, below:

"What's driving your political theory/political philosophy distinction? You seem to be saying that political theory is what we do (whatever that might be) and political philosophy is like an analytic philosophy of politics, something a la Rawls or perhaps even more like analytic philosophy than that. Or are you saying that political theory is historical and that political philosophy is normative?"

The answer is going to be somewhat unsatisfactory here, as any political theory/philosophy discussion is bound to be. Let me give an example of two talks I heard a few years ago, and within a month or so of each other, one by Tom Hurka and the other by Arlene Saxonhouse. Both were excellent, well-considered, and left open questions in the right places (so my claim is not that there's any distinction of value between the two). Hurka's talk had a few references to the work of well-known philosophers, but used those arguments mostly as starting points; Saxonhouse's was an extended discussion of a few key scenes from Aristophanes. It's not surprising to me, on that basis, that Hurka is in a philosophy department and Saxonhouse is in a political science department.

I choose two cases far apart, but I could name people who come closer to the dividing line (Gerry Postema's reading of Bentham, or Robert Nozick when he muses on the process of philsophy; or Michael Walzer making all those analytic distinctions in Just and Unjust Wars, or maybe John Tomasi's book on liberalism). But one thing that seems to repeat itself in these distinctions is the use of texts--some relevant classification might fall out from Hurka's not using them extensively and Saxonhouse's reading them closely.

As a textualist and someone who wants to cross that political theory-political philosophy divide (insomuch as it exists), I can't commit myself to the idea that political theory is historical and political philosophy is normative. To wrap around to the original point of my first post, I don't quite believe that 'historical' and 'normative' are types of methodology, as opposed to purposes or aims of the study of politics. But I think there is a difference between what the two are trying to accomplish.

LINKS FOR THE AFTERNOON: Since I am between this afternoon's talk and this evening's lesson plans:

*Book/movie name mash-ups on The American Scene, expanded to other categories. Nothing will top "Megadeth comes for the Archbishop," however.

*Michael Blowhard has a photo essay on the aesthetics of brick which is very interesting.

ON METHOD AND THEORY: I had lunch with a fellow theorist, where the recent Crooked Timber post on whether there are methods in political theory came up (found via Jacob Levy. For both of us, the answer to that question was 'no.' I agree in part with aaron_m:

"Obviously it does not follow that because political theory lacks methods of the character we find in empirical sciences that we also fail to demonstrate a purpose to our field. In fact the methods in empirical science do not tell us anything about their purpose either."

'Method' does not seem to me apt to describe the difference between, say, a textualist or contextualist approach. In international relations (the area of social science with which I am most familiar), 'method' is generally not a designation for the output or purpose of a piece of scholarship, but rather for the means by which that end is achieved. That is (in the ideal case), you begin with a theory about the way the international system works, ask where you would go to find evidence that it is true, and then choose a research method appropriate to finding that evidence. Thus statistics, formal theory, game theory, case-study, process-tracing, analysis of documents, etc. A different method corresponds to a different starting place for the purposes of theory-building or proving a thesis.

Textualists and contextualists, I think, both start with texts: the question is what else one might need to read in order to make claims about a text's meaning (and these others sources will almost invariably be texts themselves). The actual process of reading itself goes by without much comment--my experience of grad classes, with professors from far apart on a 'methodological' spectrum, has almost always begun with the assumption that we already know how to read.* A contextualist can be asked about a particular author he is speaking about, and give an analysis of that text.** It is less frequent (though not unheard of) for, say, a statistician to be able to give a significant level of detail about any particular case in their dataset. To me, this suggests the difference of method in political theory is not so wide as it is sometimes made out to be.

Now, the conceptual-v-applied distinction may be more on the level of methodology: Glyn Morgan delineates the content of applied political theory well. Conceptual theory begins at some level to look like formal theory in empirical political science, and applied theory begins to move into questions of policy--and to that extent, begin to look like methods. Not wanting to stir up a hornet's nest, I'll submit that conceptual-v-applied becomes more of an issue as one moves from political theory to political philosophy.***

By way of conclusion, Colin Farrelly suggests resisting the temptation to not think about methodology. The point is well-taken, but one's position of this question may be affected by his stage in academic life. Ideally, when beginning, the focus is on mastering the information necessary to begin putting out interesting work. Speaking from my position in academia, that's what I am trying to do: I think about issues of method and style, but these are secondary considerations (in part because there exists a template of scholarship I can borrow without having to reinvent the wheel). After the point of that mastery, it makes sense to focus more on honing the method of delivery, or the style in which it's done.

These are, as ever, tentative thoughts following a lunchtime conversation...



*even a strident Straussian approach would seem to boil down to 'read very carefully'

**and a good textualist should be able to say something about the political conditions or intellectual history of the author they are focusing on. I lean towards the textualist side, but if you want a background on religious controversies in early 17th-century Holland, I can talk about it to some length.

***less obliquely: texts root political theory. This is not to say that political philosophy is a useless enterprise, or that the same people may not dabble in both (my dissertation requires that to not be true), just that this makes for as good a line as any.

QUOTES FOR THE EVENING: One of my friends taught American Political Thought over the summer, and asked me if I had anything from the 20th century to recommend (the distinction between political theory and plain ol' writing about politics is hard to make after Dewey). I suggested Irving Howe's "New Styles in Leftism" (among some other things)--it's a fine example of what an analytic mind can do with the stuff of contemporary politics, the sort of thing I imagine most bloggers would not mind writing. It also, as I have mentioned to a few people, prolonged my stay on the left for a couple of years: here was a voice that could be perceptive and critical, but still find room for solidarity with broader liberal causes.

I received the book I leant back a few days ago, and decided to read the essay again (it had been a few years). A few things jumped out at me:

"Somewhere amid the current talk about 'alienation' an important reality isbeing touched upon or pointed to. There is, in our society, a profound estrangement from the sources of selfhood, the possibilities of human growth and social cohesion. But simply to proclaim this estrangement can be a way of preserving it. Alienation is not some metaphysical equivalent of the bubonic plague, which constitutes and irrevocable doom; it is the powerlessness deriving from the human failure to act. It is neither a substitute for thought, nor a dissolvant of human will, nor even a roadblock in the way of useful work. To enter into the society which in part causes this estrangement and by establishing bonds with other men to transform the society is one way of partially overcoming alienation."

The younger me read that and thought, "yes, that's a very good justification for trade unionism or participation in politics" (these are the examples Howe himself uses). What I see now is a thought about the person who holds themselves back from the world around them: they feel it unnatural to be a human being on their own precisely because it is unnatural, and it's only through the commitment to others that social and political life can bring that one overcomes perceived distance. One's position is never irrevocably set; there is much that can be done once an individual joins together with others, and for this end we have been given the family, the church, and society.

Also:

"Generational clashes are recurrent in our society, perhaps in any society. But the present rupture between the young and their elders seems especially deep. This is a social phenomenon that goes beyond our immediate subject, indeed, it cuts through the whole of society; what it signifies is the society's failure to transmit with sufficient force its values to the young, or, perhaps more accurately, that the best of the young take the proclaimed values of their elders with a seriousness which leads them to be appalled by their violation in practice.

In rejecting the older generations, however, the young sometimes betray the conditioning mark of the very American culture they are so quick to denounce: for ours is a culture that celebrates youthfulness as if it were a moral good in its own right. Like the regular Americans they wish so hard not to be, yet, through wishing, so very much are, they believe that the past is mere dust and ashes and that they can start fresh, immaculately."

In trying to assess the causes of what became known as the 'new left' and the cultural rift of the 60s, Howe returns again and again to... the failure of the older generation to properly transmit its moral values. Well. And youth disdains history and puts facile hope in progress to solve all our problems.

I don't claim all that much for the quality of my conservatism, but these seem like sentiments a conservative may at least conditionally accept. That the above passages can be written by someone clearly within the liberal tradition gives some hope for the possibilities of political discourse.

LINKS: Looking out on the ocean Saturday morning, I thought "yes, it finally is the fall." Sure, it reached the upper 80°s today; but by the standards of August, that's practically autumnal. And the changing of the seasons means, naturally enough, a change to the music I'm listening to. For the moment, I am maintaining the "90s indie guitar rock" theme of the summer, with some slight alterations (e.g. Brighten the Corners instead of Slanted and Enchanted). And this most excellent of Guided By Voices songs:



...the world can always use more Big Star songs, so I approve of anyone willing to rip them off so obviously (horribly out-of-sync music video here). And I do mean 'rip-off'--the similarities to "September Gurls" are extensive. But still, it's a great song.

And just in case you haven't seen it, Feist performing with the indie-rock all-stars.

ON THE WHOLE, I THINK IT'S A HEALTHY WAY TO COPE: Brian from mgoblog handles things the only way humanly possible: kittens!. On the plus side, he didn't kill himself--we were worried for awhile there.

Oh, yes, and they LED OFF THE SERMON TODAY TALKING ABOUT THE GAME. Seriously, people? Is there nowhere I can go and be safe?

SO: I finished the paper for this conference yesterday, and sent it off. Now that I am doing work under my own name (I don't really count seminar papers, which are either responses to someone else's prompt, or more like sketches for paper ideas)--the prospectus, this conference paper, and another later in the fall--the writing process looks to me like a constant exercise in humility. I think that's a good thing: ego will overtake you if you're not careful, so it's good to be reminded, every once in awhile, of how much farther you have left to go.

Every paper has an ambitious beginning (the pile of books I set aside for this paper was ridiculous. most of them remain in that original pile), but the goal eventually switches to become presenting something good, with a plausible claim that you think you can defend. The paper itself is just a time-slice in the history of an argument.* I accept I will think somewhat differently about Rorty and Rawls by the time I present the paper. Some progress occurs, even with the onset of humility: I feel a little more capable of making claims that are distinctly mine than I did even a year ago, and hopefully that will continue.


*I unintentionally went to Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia here

YEESH: it's gonna be a long football season.

UPDATE: What he said