Half way into this piece, and all I could think of was, “And Wittgenstein was a beery swine…”
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This entry was written by Robert Koehler, posted on December 12, 2007 at 11:43 am, filed under Asides, Ministry of Barbarian Affairs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
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20 Comments
I was going to say that I don’t like when the KT turns into “amateur hour at the TESOL Quarterly,” but that picture is frightening.
What do you mean? That guy’s photo is a classic Korean-style grim portrait; he’s really fitting in here. And his writing style is also redolent of the Korea Times and Korea Herald’s ubiquitous “I Went To/Am Going To Harvard So You Should Bow Down” columns normally reserved for Korean-Americans.
I say this means progress!
*Cough* pretentious *cough, cough*
Yes! The Bruces’ Philosopher Song (aka The Philosophers’ Drinking Song) a la Monty Python:
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, [some versions have 'Schopenhauer and Hegel']
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ya
‘Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away–
Half a crate of whisky every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And René Descartes was a drunken fart.
‘I drink, therefore I am.’
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he’s pissed.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_WRFJwGsbY
It strikes me that this guy started writing and couldn’t figure out where he was going stop and what path he wasn’t going to take to not get there.
Wow, someone needs to take away Mr. Taylor’s copy of the Tractatus and give him copies of the Blue and the Brown Books, Philosophical Investigations, etc. You don’t get into grad school at Harvard proposing ideas that an author himself hs rejected on the authority of that writer’s earlier work. But maybe you can do Swarthmore or Haverford, at one of which I beleive Mr. Taylor was schooled - so you pssessors of cheap(er) sheepskins know what you can use ‘em for. Still you’ve got to give the guy props for even trying to wade through the Tractatus; even if he needs to get marked down for having failed to take in the full significance of one of its ultimate (and most famour propositions: Whereof we cannot speak, therefore we must remain silent.”
Whew! After going through the ordeal of reading his entire post, I gotta say…he seriously needs to get laid.
That’s easier said than done in Jecheon.
Here’s something interesting he wrote for a Washington paper, which is less turgid. I happened to hear that comment from Morgan Freeman on NPR, and totally disagree with Mr. Taylor on this one; still, I am happy to see someone smarter than the last few fresh college graduates trying to make a name for themselves in the Korean rags.
One question, though – why does it seem so hard to get a seasoned Korea hand writing in the Times or Herald in their little series?
And yeah, ain’t much to do in the Korean countryside.
Oh, and on the picture. Ain’t much wrong with it besides the fact that brutha needs to get a trim. But another thing they don’t have in the jibang is people who know to cut black hair, if they even had a decent pair of clippers.
Someone needs to hook him up VERY soon.
Hehe.
I think that when reading Wittgenstein’s Tractatus one should keep in mind the historical context in which it was written, just as one should do when reading Noam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures (Chomsky’s greatest achievement, in my opinion, was steering linguistics away from the established dogma). These books were published over 50 years ago. Linguistics has grown since then.
Re#9 and 10,
Although I never myself partook of them, legend in the 80s had it that there were barbershops that would provide services that went far beyond that of a regular haircut. I think that Mr. Manifesto Writer might well avail himself of them.
Indeed, either way, one can get the “hookup” one needs in the barber shop. Haircut and happy ending. Korea, Sparkling!
My head hurts….
Make up your minds! Does he need a trim or some trim?
“I gotta say…he seriously needs to get laid.
That’s easier said than done in Jecheon.”
But easily done just a stone’s throw away in Wonju…
Yes, discourse analysis isn’t done in language classrooms here. No, pronouncements by industrial designers will not cause a shift in paradigms.
Yes, English is fetishized. No, Konglish is not a “mongrel” but (within a World Englishes framework) an emergent national variety.
“Wittgenstein is the pivot of international discourse as it pertains to industrial design”? Monty Python is one response. So is Kierkegaard:
“If Hegel had written the whole of his Logic and in the Preface disclosed the fact that it was only a thought-experiment (in which however at many points he had steered clear of many things), he would have been the greatest thinker who ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic.”
This guy’s a hoot. It’s hard to believe these bizarre, sweeping and perfunctory statements (”The modern Korean is confused”, “Germany is the Cult of Goethe” and so on) were written by an American or Anglophone–with a graduate degree to boot, I assume–or even in the last 100 years. We sure brother Taru isn’t Korean?
I know that guy! He’s a good fella to drink with.
# 17,
Great quote. I first heard it like this: Kierkegaard said Hegel would have been the greatest thinker ever if he had prefaced his work with one little word. That word is “if.”
# 19, That drink would be well deserved.