dubdobdee ([info]dubdobdee) wrote,
@ 2007-11-06 13:22:00
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teach dubdobdee more lessons
ok i got good skooling here but i need MORE

i. i want a good guide-to-the-perplexed for ECONOMICS --> [info]triffidfarm is meant to be on this case but market jitters have infected him with SLUGGISMUS
ii. i want to know abt SPINOZA --> [info]byebyepride is this yr purlieu?
iii. i think someone arsked abt this recently but is there a non-wanky book on social networks?

ALSO:
what nightclass shd i take? i am thinkin DRAWING!! <--disclaimer: may not happen

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[info]jauntyalan
2007-11-06 01:38 pm UTC (link)
i have a pop-sci book that is marginally about spinoza - ISTR that k-punk rly liked it too, tho i found it fell foul of that pop-sci thing of munging two things together thematically and doing both a disservice in the process

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[info]dubdobdee
2007-11-06 01:53 pm UTC (link)
what called? (yes kp is a fan of spinoza, as was deleuze)

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[info]jauntyalan
2007-11-06 02:12 pm UTC (link)
Looking for Spinoza by Antonio Damasio.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Looking-Spinoza-Antonio-R-Damasio/dp/0099421836/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-7663829-2116719?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194358022&sr=8-1

My only problem with the book is that there was not enough of the science, and the stuff on spinoza seemed very slanted. it's not a criticism as such - the spinoza stuff was BOUND to be slanted by the content (and if i'd wanted more i science could read one of his blimmin proper textbooks couldn't i) but it felt like it might have been quite a 'whiggish' rewrite

actually now i think about it, i don't know if i would have kept it in the great turf out of stuff from a year or so ago :-(

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[info]thenipper
2007-11-06 02:13 pm UTC (link)
Re iii) have you read any Manuel Castells?

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[info]dubdobdee
2007-11-06 02:29 pm UTC (link)
nope

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[info]byebyepride
2007-11-06 02:17 pm UTC (link)
re: II I have not read much on Spinoza which isn't by Frenchies trying to make a point. I have the Damasio in the queue of things to be read; also the enormous Radical Enlightenment by Jonathan Israel, which looks more like a dubdobdee book than a jauntyalan book. kp also a fan of Radical Enlightenment I think.

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[info]dubdobdee
2007-11-06 02:42 pm UTC (link)
have you read anything by alexander nehemas?

(the weird thing is that i think kp's current jag is completely at odds w.what i TAKE to be the rad.en. project) (on the other hand i saw there was a short intro to spinoza by r.scruton -- SPINoza more like -- so maybe i'm just projecting)

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[info]byebyepride
2007-11-06 02:48 pm UTC (link)
I think I have flicked through some articles. He's supposed to be good, or so I hear. I can't figure out if kp has an actual stance or not! I used to care, but I gave up.

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[info]byebyepride
2007-11-06 02:53 pm UTC (link)
I was intrigued when Spinoza kept coming up in discussion at first, but when i realised that all romantic philosophy and literature is built on Spinoza and Leibniz, I was a) less surprised and b) less interested. KP follows the line which says that everything goes wrong with Kant, no? In which case he needs a non-Kantian because pre-Kantian metaphysics, whereas I am happy with messy old empiricist rationalism a la Hume (or what I have read of him) or something more like dialectical pragmatism if that's possible. There are some great early C20th metaphysicians in the Spinoza line - my fav is Samuel Alexander - but I assume all bergsonism and process philosophy has Spinoza behind it somewhere. I once gave a lame conference paper as a favour for a pal arguing that Hardt and Negri were Spinozist theologians and we should read S. Alexander instead as his stuff was at least funny (I wish I had put it like this!). I'm sure there's much more to it than this and I am being a dullard from a philosophical p.of.v. but what the hey!

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[info]dubdobdee
2007-11-06 03:11 pm UTC (link)
spinoza popped back into my head bcz in a thread on hayek's contrast of "social knowledge" (called "metis") with "instrumentalist" (?or bureaucratic or "high-modernist") knowledge, someone on crooked timber -- a very aggressive radical left pragmatist -- was i. mocking all the foregathered libertarians and "free" marketeers and academic rationalists, ii. suddenly said (pretty much out of nowhere), this all comes down to "spinoza vs descartes" (and he then rather untypically said he didn't know much about either)

anyway i guess i am interested in non-hayekian examinations of "metis"

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[info]dubdobdee
2007-11-06 03:27 pm UTC (link)
omg <-- the interwebs deliver! a spinozablog part-run by someone studies financial markets and "thinks them a valuable testing-bed for theories about rationality“, complete with tags for eurovision!

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[info]byebyepride
2007-11-06 04:11 pm UTC (link)
wow. they're pretty good writers. memo to self - must be more of a rationalist.

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[info]blue_russian
2007-11-06 04:11 pm UTC (link)
Discussion of Spinoza has probably frightened me away from making any suggestions on economics, but can you specify any more what you're interested in?

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[info]dubdobdee
2007-11-06 04:16 pm UTC (link)
well primarily just a good how-to-follow what's being talked about in ref.

i. discussions of enron or collapses of subprimes -- how (stock) markets work, securitisation blah blah
ii. broader sense of diff.philosophies eg smith vs marx vs keynes vs hayek vs whoever

i imagine these wd be different books

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guess which question i'm answering? ;)
[info]carsmilesteve
2007-11-06 05:20 pm UTC (link)
now is a good time to think about nightclasses to start in january. do not use the hotcourses website to search for one though, they are SH!TE and i hate them.

obv i am going to boost for the lit, but there are probably more local 'ackney ones. also GET IN WHILE YOU CAN before G Brown closes all the adult ed down!!

http://www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/findacourse/

is a pretty good place to start :)

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[info]jel_bugle
2007-11-06 05:35 pm UTC (link)
Spinoza was cool, he wasn't on anyone's side. He was kinda sickly, poor guy.

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[info]5500
2007-11-06 09:23 pm UTC (link)
this is the book on spinoza et al. i read in a 17th c. history seminar. as the title suggests, it's not exclusively about him, but rather his place in the context of the broader enlightenment.

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[info]xyzzzz__
2007-11-06 10:41 pm UTC (link)
Have you tried the man himself?

And, is Spinoza really hard to read or something? ws thinking of trying him as one of the ppl for a philosophy on bus journeys, to be done over 2-3 months sometime next year.

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[info]mooxyjoo
2007-11-07 05:34 am UTC (link)
i would really like to read a book on economics that pitches the material at an introductory level without ceding the responsibility of being critical. but i keep finding that anything that presents more basic ideas does so in the manner of a teacher to a student (in the way that the student is just urged to play along until they find out later that the foundational justification for the tools they've been given is lacking), and that anything with more of an eye toward the dialectical change in the state of economics assumes a working familiarity with the tools that are supposed to be possibly suspect.

mark, i haven't really read it but if i had time i would read steven nadler's book with cambridge, 'spinoza's "ethics": an introduction'. the other books in that same series are fresh, accessible but not patronizing; and the ones on the tractatus and the investigations are even a little bold and novel.

the ethics is pretty short, so you could make quick work of it if you're just getting a look around, not bothered to understand and verify for yourself all the propositions and the proofs given for them (they're extremely elliptical and also perhaps not always right); and the scholia which are a part of it are much more expansive and address the questions about the upshot of his thought (viz. substance monism in which the one substance is god, and all ideas and material objects are part of it, and everything that 'happens' is naturally, causally determined) like the meaning of good and evil, human happiness, what people ought to do - that the answers are someone ineffable/zen-mastery, you might guess from the fact that there is only one substance. what would be harder to get from a quick reading would be a sense for what the argument is supposed to be. (on that point, i.e. the one philosophers generally care about, spinoza's regarded as among the hardest things to read.)

but spinoza's political writings are also extremely influential, and probably easier to read; some of the people you mention reading may often have them in mind more than the ethics. basically, spinoza is a very early and thorough proponent of rational criticism of the bible, and he defends a view of political toleration that accomodates the fact that rational criticism of the bible (etc.) seems to leave the state in a poor position to give preferential treatment to one religious faith over another. (there's another good bit to it that i'm forgetting.)

i don't intend to ever waste my time reading the damasio book.

nehemas is well-respected in my circles for his work in ancient philosophy, and for his book on nietzsche and the similarly-oriented book, 'the art of living' (which argues that there is an alternative, practical tradition to the theoretically-oriented one in philosophy - there are views on socrates, nietzsche, foucault to support his argument; see also 'philosophy as a way of life' by pierre hadot for different but similar readings of ancient philosophy - hadot was a contemporary of foucault's, known for his scholarship on hellenistic philosophy). the nietzsche book i'm sure is at odds with plenty of existing books on nietzsche, on points of doctrine, let's say, but its big plus is that it comes at questions about what the argumentative or persuasive force of nietzsche's writing could be, in a way that admits of rhetorical, formal, literary, and practical dimensions playing an essential part in the force of the writing.

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Krugman and Rima
[info]koganbot
2007-11-08 08:28 pm UTC (link)
One of my brother's colleagues suggests the following. I agree about Krugman but I've already told you about him.

On the first item, there is no better analysis than Paul Krugman's columns in the NYT. Clearly written for the amateur and succinct.

On the second, he should try a book on the history of economic thought. Thirty-five years ago, I used an undergraduate text by I. W. Rima, but there must be more recent such books. However, I would caution that one should not assume that economic ideas have anything to do with conservative politics. Modern conservatism is not an ideology. Rather, it is an attitude, namely an enduring sense of grievance, and a lust for power for its own sake. Just a little editorial comment.

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Re: Krugman and Rima
[info]koganbot
2007-11-08 08:33 pm UTC (link)
This is in regard to economics, obv.

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