Какая жиза (не про исключительный ум, а про сложности с визуализацией)

Найдены истоки пропозициональной аберрации аналитической философии

Забавная история за книгой Рассела о Лейбнице:

The book came about by accident. Russell was spending the academic year 1898–9 in Cambridge. At the time he was a Fellow of Trinity College, but his Fellowship involved no duties. The regular lecturer on the philosophy of Leibniz at the time was John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart, who had been one of Russell’s teachers. McTaggart had a romantic interest in a young lady, later to become his wife, who had returned to New Zealand after a stay in England; he requested leave to visit her there and plead his case, which Trinity granted. Still the Leibniz lectures had to be given, so Russell was asked to deliver them. No doubt the authorities took into account in making their request the fact that Leibniz too had logic as one of his central interests. Russell took his new responsibility very seriously indeed; he wrote the lectures out and read them to his audience; <...> Writing out what he had to say not only produced better lectures; the resulting manuscript could also be submitted for publication, an important consideration for a young man in a hurry to make his mark as a writer.

In my student days I thought I was going to be a sculptor, and I addressed myself more energetically to blocks of wood and stone than to either philosophy or science. It occurred to me while working on this book that I have never abandoned the methods I developed in the studio, but simply changed media. Unlike the draftsman, who must get each line just right with the first stroke of the pen, the sculptor has the luxury of nibbling and grinding away until the lines and surfaces look just right. First you rough out the block, standing back and squinting now and then to make sure you are closing in on the dimly seen final product. Only after the piece is bulked out in the right proportions do you return to each crude, rough surface and invest great labor in getting the fine details just so.

Some philosophers are very unsympathetic to this method when they encounter it in philosophy. They have no patience with roughed-in solutions and want to see nothing but hard, clean edges from the outset. I aspire to the same finished product that they do, but question their strategy. It is just too hard getting off on the right foot in philosophy, and nowhere are the risks of their strategy more evident than in the philosophical literature on free will, which is littered with brilliant but useless fragments
(Dennett, Elbow Row, 3)

Локк кокетничает:

Я прямо говорю всем своим читателям, за исключением полудюжины, что эта книга первоначально не предназначалась для них и что, следовательно, им не нужно заботиться о том, чтобы попасть в эту полудюжину. Но если кто-либо все таки найдет нужным рассердиться на и осыпать книгу бранью, он может сделать это без опасения, ибо у меня найдется лучший способ провести время, чем участвовать в такого рода разговоре

Локк ЖЕСТКО о Мартине Хайдеггере:

А знание, конечно, гораздо более двинулось бы вперед в мире, если бы старания даровитых и трудолюбивых людей не загромождалось ученым, но легкомысленным употреблением неуклюжих, манерных или непонятных выражений, введенных в науку и сделавшихся искусством настолько, что философия, которая есть не что иное, как истинное познание вещей, стала считаться непригодной или неспособной вращаться в благовоспитанном обществе и принимать участие в приличном разговоре. Пустые и бессмысленные формы выражения и злоупотребление языком так долго сходили за таинства науки и трудные или неуместные слова, мало или вообще ничего не значящие, за давностью употребления имеют ошибочно столько права считаться глубокой ученостью или вершиной мышления, что нелегко будет убедить говорящих эти слова или слушающих их, что они только прикрывают невежество и являются помехой истинному знанию. Вторжение в святилище тщеславия и невежества сослужит, я погаю, некоторую службу человеческому разуму.

I do not know why it is so, but something makes it difficult for most and impossible for many philosophers and students of the history of philosophy to be impartial about Kant and his teachings. A philosopher who excites so much feeling pro and con is subject to philosophical dispute in which veneration is met with abuse, arguments ad hominem are replied to with arguments ad verecundiam, and more heat than light is generated. I can think of only two other philosophers—Aristotle and Hegel—who have been the object of so much blind vilification and so much blind devotion as Kant.

It has always been so. In his own lifetime the polemics from his opponents reached a degree of acerbity more characteristic of
theological debate than of philosophical. His disciples bitterly disputed among themselves the claim to be the "official" spokesman for Kant, and disciples who fell away from orthodoxy were treated with contumely by the others and by the master himself. A hundred years later the violence of controversy between the various schools of Neokantianism in Germany had not abated and, of course, neither had the heat of debate between professional anti-Kantians and professed Kantians
<...>
I must not pretend to stand impartially above the battle; I must confess that I was powerfully drawn to Kant even as a child long before I had any comprehension of his philosophy. Fifty years later I am still unable to explain why, but it is a fact that you should keep in mind while you listen to my examination of Lovejoy's critique of Kant.

Though I do not know the details of Lovejoy's intellectual biography as a young man, an animus against Kant shows in all his early writings about him. I knew Lovejoy only when he was an old man, when he was silent about Kant; he had not even included in his bibliography attached to his autobiographical essay in Contemporary American Philosophy his articles on Kant. When I knew him, his erudition, acuteness, and judiciousness were so comprehensive that there seemed to be no room left for human failings of partiality and prejudice; he did not even hold it against me that I was a "Kantian." I cannot guess why his feelings had been so bitter against Kant; I can only point out some of the evidence that they were.
(Lewis White Beck, Lovejoy as a Critic of Kant)