I like the model for how a dinner party conversation blog comment thread should go:
(a) Narration, i.e., exchange of news
(b) Ratiocination, i.e., lively discussion of the diversity in judgment at the table
(c) Jest, i.e., play of wit
This being the dinner party principles.
Sounds like Kant had nice parties, pity he's dead.
max
['It's the way, isn't it?']
Why don't we have him skinned and stuffed?
1:
a) Two-Headed Babies in Fallujah
c) IOZ
Tough call whether b or c was wittier and more fun.
And I have described Kant as the Burgher King of Philosophy since early in my reading of the 2nd Crit.
No ascetic martinet he, good beer and sausage are his categorical imperatives.
Why isn't there any of the wit of IOZ in the mainstream blogosphere? Anymore, since Billmon retired to the Koscage. I mean, really, why? IOZ bits
there is nothing on public radio so reeking of intellectually indolent self-satisfaction as the Terry Gross Radio Hour, which elevates mediocre art to rarefied genius and then subjects its creators to a crypto-Freudian machine-gunning ("So, like, you were molested by a priest in a lobster suit on a hot air balloon as a girl. Is that reflected in your new album?")
what really appealed to Allan Bloom about his perfect fantasy university was that it consisted of lush young men lying about in bed sheets, drinking wine from bowls, respitefully free of female troubles. (Quite unlike my own fantasy university, which consists of a blast crater.) Bloom's conservative adopters focus on his defense of the canon, which they've heard features several prominent People Not of Color, and ignore the seminaryish air with its soupçon of priestly ephebophilia wafting over the carrel walls.
Goodnight
The number of guests should follow Chesterfield's rule
They named a rule after a couch?
I assume he means Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield.
9: After the cigarette. Tastes great, smokes mild!
That is a terrible Wikipedia article. I regret linking to it.
I was hoping he meant the Canadian colloquialism .
I always half think that Johnson's dig about his letters was that they taught the morals of a dancing-master and the manners of a whore, rather than the other way around.
A Chesterfield is a rather old-fashioned style of topcoat, too.
Now that I've read all of it, it sounds a lot like what I'd have expected to be the generic model of Enlightenment intellectual sociability, but maybe a bit more strictly partitioned and codified. No doubt this means I don't know enough about the particularities of the various thinkers.
I don't mean to be inappropriately reductive, but are eighteenth-century Prussians commonly thought to have been history's most convivial, jovial dining companions?
Jane Austen took this sort of thing very seriously.
17.---From what I've read, Kant was supposed to have been an unusually considerate, charming dinner host and faculty mentor.
You're confusing Prussia with East Prussia.
ugh, replacing parties with chemicals with 'dinner parties' makes me especially sad to know that growing up is inevitable
fortunately, maturity isn't. it is merely communicable.
I believe that even at dinner parties chemicals are present.
Why don't we have him skinned and stuffed?
They tried this with Bentham, but I don't think he'd have been much fun at dinner, even when he was alive. Probably better company now.
Totally agree with Kant on dinner parties (esp. the 'no dinner music' bit - sorry, didn't catch that, I can't hear you over the lite jazz on our host's expensive sound system.) What's Prussian about it is that he bothered to write it down.
Strictly banned: reading or thinking about philosophy while eating alone.
20: I always used to confuse Austria and Australia. If they both had kangaroos, I don't know how I'd have ever learned the difference..
This is seriously true, though and so important. One of the things I disliked about college was that people didn't take the time to have dinner together--or, if they did, it was often very casual conversation designed to shut off one's brain completely. There was very little in the way of a lively exchange of ideas to nourish one's brain for intellectual work.
The intellectual work was all very solitary.
I'd love to recreate more consistent community. A friend of mine was trying to get a weekly dinner going. I think biweekly or monthly would be easier, since we don't all live within walking distance of each other.
How many cock jokes would there be?
What's surprising about a moralist lecturing his colleagues on their work habits?
25 was good.
The thing to watch out for at Kant's dinner parties is that he could drink you under the table.
Unless Kant would then use a Sharpie to draw a penis on your forehead, that's a minor issue.
One of the things I disliked about college was that people didn't take the time to have dinner together--or, if they did, it was often very casual conversation designed to shut off one's brain completely. There was very little in the way of a lively exchange of ideas to nourish one's brain for intellectual work.
Huh. My college experience was not like that. I had downright revelatory moments during dinner! It was awesome, I tell you what.
However, I lived in a group house of 12 people, and we tended to trail off to the dining hall in groups and sit together. Bunch of incestuous .. um. Well. Rather.
I'd love to recreate more consistent community. A friend of mine was trying to get a weekly dinner going. I think biweekly or monthly would be easier, since we don't all live within walking distance of each other.
I hear that. But we're all so busy, and we live so far apart... If I manage to see my friends once a month, that's downright frequent. It's a shame.
32: I fail. Kant was very rarely stable. Heidegger could think you under the table. And then draw a penis on your forehead.
[I]t does allow one to find the middle way between the minimum healthy amount of thinking and the maximum healthy amount of thinking.
The same goes for drinking.