You suggest that his core argument is one that draws on a multiple domains in which he is not an expert in, but he hides this by spreading out his core argument extremely thin, to the point of there being only a single sentence’s worth of the argument in a whole chapter. But if the argument is really spread that thin, then very few people who read the book would actually pick up on even the rough gist of the core argument, because it would get buried under everything else.
To me, this suggests that your thesis is false, and that the things that you’ve picked out as his core argument aren’t actually his core argument: or if they are, they are not the core argument that most of his critics became persuaded of and are responding to.
Phil makes three claims: (1) what the argument is; (2) that Steiner fails to bridge the steps in that argument because it goes outside his expertise; and (3) that most of the book is good argument irrelevant to the main thread. Point (2) requires him to be correct about point (1). But point (3), which is the point in Phil’s title, does not much depend on correctly identifying the argument, or even the argument existing.
It is generally more convincing to claim to have identified a buried argument and rejected it than to claim that no argument exists. But I think it is convincing for bad reasons. That the argument Phil extracted matched his interests and expertise is suggestive that his process of extracting it was biased.
Yes, if Phil is to criticize a book for fooling readers, it is important that he look at the readers and determine what they actually took away. But your suggestion that they took an argument away from a book is absurd. How often do people do that? Indeed, looking at the Amazon reviews, it looks to me that they did not.
Added: I think point 3 is the interesting point, and Phil clearly does, too, not just because he put it in the title, but also because he said so in response to a bunch of comments complaining about 2. Which makes this post an example of its own topic of a sideline distracting from the main argument.
That’s a good skepticism to have. I’ve wondered myself how he will summarize it; the last chapter doesn’t have any obvious recap. I have probably miscontrued at least part of his argument, since I’ve read only half the book. It would be more fair to have waited until I finish the book, but I don’t think I’m going to finish the book.
“Important to the argument” is not a binary predicate. I picked what seemed to me the most-important parts, the pieces he could not do without. But most things are related at least indirectly. For instance, there’s a section in-between the 2nd and 3rd points I picked where he dismisses the counter-theory that the choice of the literature canon is the result of a convergence, over centuries, by humanity on right judgement of works of literature (p. 67-69). This is well-reasoned and important in its own right, and it supports his catastrophic argument (everything changed because of modernism) by undercutting an opposing gradualist argument (and also bolsters his running theme of “most people are stupid”, which is necessary to defend from Aumann agreement). But it isn’t part of the “proof” of his thesis. On p. 87-95, he describes modernism, which is a concept used at the core of his argument, but describing it is also not part of his proof. (Curiously, he never uses the word “modernism”, and seems to think his discovery of this historical transition is entirely novel.)
There are parts I didn’t count as critical that seemed to be very important to him, such as his definition of art as “the maximalization [sic] of semantic incommensurability”. Perhaps he works these in later. I also didn’t count times when he repeats or rephrases an assertion made earlier, not to support it, but to use it as a now-proven fact to prove other things.
Curiously, he never uses the word “modernism”, and seems to think his discovery of this historical transition is entirely novel
I would guess that a literature professor does have a conception of “modernism”. Maybe for some reason he doesn’t mean what his collegues mean when they say “modernism”?
If he means something else, he ought to mention the difference. He ought to say that this was a separate transition at about the same time, or that it is modernism, but the distinctive property of modernism is different than people generally think.
One of the more bizarre things about the book is that it sounds like it was written in 1925. His definition of art would lead directly to Gertrude Stein’s “poetry”; his explication of the need to destroy the meanings of words to free the artist is a paraphrase of William Carlos Williams. He mentions Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Diderot, and Derrida, but only in passing (so far). His beliefs about language resembles TS Eliot’s; his defense of it amounts to citing 19th-century French poets and early Wittgenstein. He never mentions that his definition of art and his theory of meaning are the same ones that led to post-modern art, which he never brings up even though the entire book seems to be aimed at discrediting post-modern art. He seems to be backing up to 1925 and trying to give neo-modernist theory a second go, only with Catholic mysticism this time, without citing the neo-modernists or admitting that post-modernism happened. Neither “modernism” nor “post-modernism” appear in the index. (Nothing at all appears in the index except for the names of artists, works of art, and critics, which tells you a lot about how Steiner thinks.)
His section on [modernism] begins, “We are, I believe, at present within a transformative, metamorphic process which began, rather abruptly, in Western Europe and Russia during the 1870s,” and on p. 93 summarizes his discovery by saying, “It is my belief that this contract [that words can describe reality] is broken for the first time, in any thorough and consequent sense, in European, Central European and Russian culture and speculative consciousness during the decades from the 1870s to the 1930s. It is this break of the covenant between word and world which constitutes one of the very few genuine revolutions of spirit in Western history and which defines modernity itself” [emphasis his]. It is a textbook definition of modernism, yet he seems to be claiming it as his own discovery. Elsewhere he vomits references to prior works uncontrollably, yet in this section, while he continues citing at least one pre-1925 source per sentence, he cites no one past that date and gives no hint that anybody else has ever noticed this phenomenon.
His take on modernism is that it is the death of logocentrism. This is a common thing to say nowadays, and a concise interpretation of modernism. I don’t think he originated that idea, either. It looks from Google like it was used this way by Tillich in 1926, Bergson in 1941, Maurelos in 1964, and Derrida in the 1970s, though I’m only looking at references to their works. Wikipedia says Ludwig Klages invented the term “logocentrism” in the 1920s.
If somebody had written it in 1925, it’d be in the public domain now, and could be legally ripped off.
But that couldn’t actually be relevant, could it? I haven’t read Klages. But if Klages or Tillich aren’t being referenced, maybe their writing could be worth a comparison.
Reading further, the argument isn’t what I expected. It’s just 2 steps:
Language doesn’t correspond to reality.
Therefore, whatever meaning we find in language comes from God.
This is presented on pages 93-120. For point 1 he cites Wittgenstein, and for point 2 he cites Derrida, who wrote much later. He may be abusing Derrida, though it’s hard to say what either Derrida or Steiner means by “God”.
I think I understand how Steiner thinks now. He really means it when he says words are a game that doesn’t correspond to reality. He doesn’t argue points because he doesn’t believe his statements have a truth-value corresponding to reality. Advancing a new thesis, to him, is exactly like writing a new novel that references previous novels. You don’t have to ask whether the previous novels were true. You are just taking what they said as the next step in the game. That’s why to him, a citation counts the same as a proof, and why he never questions whether the sources he cite are correct or contradict each other. It is enough for him that someone has said it; it is now part of the game.
My interpretation is that the core argument is talked about often throughout the book, but the premises and intuitions supporting it are only mentioned occasionally. So, the audience will be aware of Steiner’s claims after having read the book, and they’ll walk away from the book with the feeling of having been impressed by his skill, even though they won’t actually be able to recite his argument. They do get the rough gist of his argument, Phil’s point is that there’s almost nothing more than gist to his argument.
Additionally, Phil may have summarized. Presumably there is some redundancy within the hundreds of pages.
My interpretation of his review is that the core argument is talked about often throughout the book, but the premises and intuitions supporting it are only mentioned occasionally. So, the audience will be aware of Steiner’s claims after having read the book, and they’ll walk away from the book with the feeling of having been impressed by his skill, even though they won’t actually be able to recite his argument. They do get the rough gist of his argument, Phil’s point is that there’s nothing more than gist to his argument.
[2] This pattern breaks down around page 90, where Steiner begins a long spiral into his central thesis.
So while the OP says that his explaination is what you objected to, what he actually seems to describe is that part of the book is about the core argument, other parts are, well, not really about the core argument.
I’m skeptical of this as the explanation.
You suggest that his core argument is one that draws on a multiple domains in which he is not an expert in, but he hides this by spreading out his core argument extremely thin, to the point of there being only a single sentence’s worth of the argument in a whole chapter. But if the argument is really spread that thin, then very few people who read the book would actually pick up on even the rough gist of the core argument, because it would get buried under everything else.
To me, this suggests that your thesis is false, and that the things that you’ve picked out as his core argument aren’t actually his core argument: or if they are, they are not the core argument that most of his critics became persuaded of and are responding to.
Phil makes three claims: (1) what the argument is; (2) that Steiner fails to bridge the steps in that argument because it goes outside his expertise; and (3) that most of the book is good argument irrelevant to the main thread. Point (2) requires him to be correct about point (1). But point (3), which is the point in Phil’s title, does not much depend on correctly identifying the argument, or even the argument existing.
It is generally more convincing to claim to have identified a buried argument and rejected it than to claim that no argument exists. But I think it is convincing for bad reasons. That the argument Phil extracted matched his interests and expertise is suggestive that his process of extracting it was biased.
Yes, if Phil is to criticize a book for fooling readers, it is important that he look at the readers and determine what they actually took away. But your suggestion that they took an argument away from a book is absurd. How often do people do that? Indeed, looking at the Amazon reviews, it looks to me that they did not.
Added: I think point 3 is the interesting point, and Phil clearly does, too, not just because he put it in the title, but also because he said so in response to a bunch of comments complaining about 2. Which makes this post an example of its own topic of a sideline distracting from the main argument.
That’s a good skepticism to have. I’ve wondered myself how he will summarize it; the last chapter doesn’t have any obvious recap. I have probably miscontrued at least part of his argument, since I’ve read only half the book. It would be more fair to have waited until I finish the book, but I don’t think I’m going to finish the book.
“Important to the argument” is not a binary predicate. I picked what seemed to me the most-important parts, the pieces he could not do without. But most things are related at least indirectly. For instance, there’s a section in-between the 2nd and 3rd points I picked where he dismisses the counter-theory that the choice of the literature canon is the result of a convergence, over centuries, by humanity on right judgement of works of literature (p. 67-69). This is well-reasoned and important in its own right, and it supports his catastrophic argument (everything changed because of modernism) by undercutting an opposing gradualist argument (and also bolsters his running theme of “most people are stupid”, which is necessary to defend from Aumann agreement). But it isn’t part of the “proof” of his thesis. On p. 87-95, he describes modernism, which is a concept used at the core of his argument, but describing it is also not part of his proof. (Curiously, he never uses the word “modernism”, and seems to think his discovery of this historical transition is entirely novel.)
There are parts I didn’t count as critical that seemed to be very important to him, such as his definition of art as “the maximalization [sic] of semantic incommensurability”. Perhaps he works these in later. I also didn’t count times when he repeats or rephrases an assertion made earlier, not to support it, but to use it as a now-proven fact to prove other things.
I would guess that a literature professor does have a conception of “modernism”. Maybe for some reason he doesn’t mean what his collegues mean when they say “modernism”?
If he means something else, he ought to mention the difference. He ought to say that this was a separate transition at about the same time, or that it is modernism, but the distinctive property of modernism is different than people generally think.
One of the more bizarre things about the book is that it sounds like it was written in 1925. His definition of art would lead directly to Gertrude Stein’s “poetry”; his explication of the need to destroy the meanings of words to free the artist is a paraphrase of William Carlos Williams. He mentions Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Diderot, and Derrida, but only in passing (so far). His beliefs about language resembles TS Eliot’s; his defense of it amounts to citing 19th-century French poets and early Wittgenstein. He never mentions that his definition of art and his theory of meaning are the same ones that led to post-modern art, which he never brings up even though the entire book seems to be aimed at discrediting post-modern art. He seems to be backing up to 1925 and trying to give neo-modernist theory a second go, only with Catholic mysticism this time, without citing the neo-modernists or admitting that post-modernism happened. Neither “modernism” nor “post-modernism” appear in the index. (Nothing at all appears in the index except for the names of artists, works of art, and critics, which tells you a lot about how Steiner thinks.)
His section on [modernism] begins, “We are, I believe, at present within a transformative, metamorphic process which began, rather abruptly, in Western Europe and Russia during the 1870s,” and on p. 93 summarizes his discovery by saying, “It is my belief that this contract [that words can describe reality] is broken for the first time, in any thorough and consequent sense, in European, Central European and Russian culture and speculative consciousness during the decades from the 1870s to the 1930s. It is this break of the covenant between word and world which constitutes one of the very few genuine revolutions of spirit in Western history and which defines modernity itself” [emphasis his]. It is a textbook definition of modernism, yet he seems to be claiming it as his own discovery. Elsewhere he vomits references to prior works uncontrollably, yet in this section, while he continues citing at least one pre-1925 source per sentence, he cites no one past that date and gives no hint that anybody else has ever noticed this phenomenon.
His take on modernism is that it is the death of logocentrism. This is a common thing to say nowadays, and a concise interpretation of modernism. I don’t think he originated that idea, either. It looks from Google like it was used this way by Tillich in 1926, Bergson in 1941, Maurelos in 1964, and Derrida in the 1970s, though I’m only looking at references to their works. Wikipedia says Ludwig Klages invented the term “logocentrism” in the 1920s.
If somebody had written it in 1925, it’d be in the public domain now, and could be legally ripped off.
But that couldn’t actually be relevant, could it? I haven’t read Klages. But if Klages or Tillich aren’t being referenced, maybe their writing could be worth a comparison.
Reading further, the argument isn’t what I expected. It’s just 2 steps:
Language doesn’t correspond to reality.
Therefore, whatever meaning we find in language comes from God.
This is presented on pages 93-120. For point 1 he cites Wittgenstein, and for point 2 he cites Derrida, who wrote much later. He may be abusing Derrida, though it’s hard to say what either Derrida or Steiner means by “God”.
I think I understand how Steiner thinks now. He really means it when he says words are a game that doesn’t correspond to reality. He doesn’t argue points because he doesn’t believe his statements have a truth-value corresponding to reality. Advancing a new thesis, to him, is exactly like writing a new novel that references previous novels. You don’t have to ask whether the previous novels were true. You are just taking what they said as the next step in the game. That’s why to him, a citation counts the same as a proof, and why he never questions whether the sources he cite are correct or contradict each other. It is enough for him that someone has said it; it is now part of the game.
My interpretation is that the core argument is talked about often throughout the book, but the premises and intuitions supporting it are only mentioned occasionally. So, the audience will be aware of Steiner’s claims after having read the book, and they’ll walk away from the book with the feeling of having been impressed by his skill, even though they won’t actually be able to recite his argument. They do get the rough gist of his argument, Phil’s point is that there’s almost nothing more than gist to his argument.
Additionally, Phil may have summarized. Presumably there is some redundancy within the hundreds of pages.
.
My interpretation of his review is that the core argument is talked about often throughout the book, but the premises and intuitions supporting it are only mentioned occasionally. So, the audience will be aware of Steiner’s claims after having read the book, and they’ll walk away from the book with the feeling of having been impressed by his skill, even though they won’t actually be able to recite his argument. They do get the rough gist of his argument, Phil’s point is that there’s nothing more than gist to his argument.
Hm. He does also add
So while the OP says that his explaination is what you objected to, what he actually seems to describe is that part of the book is about the core argument, other parts are, well, not really about the core argument.