the hitlist

Last weekend, a few hours after getting off the plane from Shanghai, I made my way to Conquest Gaming Convention, where I would staff the RPG Review Cooperative stall for two-and-a-half days. In the midst of this, however, I had previously been slotted to give a lecture at The Existentialist Society on "The Decline of French Philosophy". So for a couple of hours in the midst of the convention, I snuck backstage, and with soundproofing provided by heavy stage curtains, delivered the presentation. It was well attended, well received, and is viewable on YouTube , including the questions and answers session. A transcript is available in English and in French, albeit the latter hasn't been double-checked. The basic summary is that the French did some excellent philosophy to the phenomenologists and existentialists in the 1950s and 1960s, went downhill with the post-modernists and post-structuralists from the 1970s to the early 2000s (albeit with some good insights, especially relating to setting, and a definite improvement in artistry), but following the "science wars" of the late 90s and early 00s, there has been some new French philosophers who are a somewhat more useful.

At the end of the meeting I was asked by the convener what future talk I would like to deliver; I immediately suggested Jurgen Habermas, who died at age 96 whilst I was overseas. Habermas is a "second-generation" Frankfurt School whose major contribution to philosophy includes combining linguistic pragmatics with ordinary language philosophy, "the theory of communicative action". Habermas was a very important influence on my own political thinking since the early nineties when I first read "Legitimation Crisis", a careful study of potential areas of break-points in societies. Whilst I wasn't expecting to give this presentation for some months, I received an email from the convenor of the Society that the next allocated speaker for May was unavailable, and whether I could step in and give my talk on Habermas. I agreed and then realised (after a bit of suspicion) that I would be the first person in the history of the Existentialist Society, which has been delivering monthly lectures since Feb 1974 to be the speaker for two month's in succession. It is a significant, if accidental, honour, and hopefully I'll give credit not only to the Society, but also to the subject.