Comment by throw4847285
2 days ago
But what were they actually saying? They just used the phrase "college-educated" and several synonyms as an insult to put themself forward as just some working class Joe who has no time for rich people and their hoity toity high and mighty philosphizing.
If I was to be charitable, I guess maybe their argument was that Kant only believed in subjective universality because he was rich, but that doesn't make any sense. Both Kant and Hume grew up middle class, and ended up in academia, and had very different conclusions about what "taste" is.
It's just a knee jerk reaction to dead white men philosophers and anyone who is interested in them as a bunch of elitists. That's not an argument, that's some kind of misplaced class resentment masquerading as an argument.
that's not what they said at all though, sorry but the only one doing knee jerk reactions here seems to be you
Idk I've read a lot of Selridge's comments up and down the whole post now and it really seems like any idea of taste to them defaults to classism and then they misapply that framework here, which is realistically one of the fairest arenas.
If someone likes what you make it doesn't matter where you come from.
It doesn’t default to class, people just pretend class doesn’t apply at all.
Taste is often advanced as this subjective yet ultimately discriminating notion which refuses to be pinned down. Insistent but ineffable. This idea that you and I know what good software is due to having paid dues and they don’t, and the truth will out, is a common one!
My argument isn’t that it’s class. It’s that this framework of describing taste is PURPOSE BUILT to ignore questions like status, access, and money in favor of standing in judgment.
2 replies →
Ok, so what were they saying?
Lmao. I love Kant. He’s great. I love dead white guys. One I’ve been banging on about in this thread is Bourdieu, who wrote a whole book on taste in France, Distinction. Here Bourdieu has the matter rightly and Kant doesn’t. Sometimes that happens. When you read a lot of dead white guys you find lots of them said very wise shit and also stuff that’s harder to find the wisdom in.
Here I don’t know what the trouble is. I’m sorry for calling your phrasing the equivalent of “hafalutin” (a word Marx has used more than twice—he’s dead and white), but what do you expect having come in to cloud the waters with 2 extra syllables to little end?
I know that I'm both pretentious and inarticulate. It's a rough combo. But I resented the idea that what I was saying was inauthentic. I legitimately love Kant, even though reading him is like trying to hammer nails through my skull.
He's quite good sometimes. But we don't always need to reach for that kind of writing if we struggle. If you want something from that era which is written by a young man who is trying to set the world on fire, you should try: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preliminary_Discourse_to_the_E...
This dude, Diderot, is gonna make a new encyclopedia of the world with his friends which breaks the monopoly on printed and well-regarded learning that was held by the traditional humanities. He wanted articles about the trades, about objects and engineered things, and he was PISSED OFF that he had to fight for it.
Is this guy's idea of how to organize knowledge "right"? Probably not. Will it light your brain on fire and make you grumpy or nosy or suspicious about categories of knowledge that persist still? YEAH.