Feeling Combative

Yesterday was slightly odd for me. For some unknown reason, I was feeling incredibly confrontational. It started Monday night, as I was reading for Ideas about History. The thing was that the guy writing one of the books had completely misunderstood Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrance, and then basically used his misunderstanding to argue against it. Those of you who know me know that you do not fuck with the Nietzsche around me. He may be considered the anti-christ, but he's also my intellectual bread and butter. Needless to say, it put me in a foul mood the next morning in class as we discussed the issue. I think some of the people in the class were a little shocked that I would defend Nietzsche's position. The truth is that, while I don't believe that he is entirely right, his position is internally consistent and logical. To try and argue that it isn't is fallacy of the highest order. Then, the author tried to argue that Nietzsche's view of history should be rejected because it renders human actions absurd and meaningless. It's a fallacy of the highest order, that's what the argument is! All the guy is doing is saying that he doesn't like the results. The truth is, the universe doesn't care whether you like the way things are. Hell, even God doesn't really care if you like the way things are. It's all just a brute fact of life that you have to live with. I hate to sound insensitive (okay, maybe not), but the truth is that feelings really don't count for shit in the world of philosophy. If you don't like something, too bad. Grow up and deal with it. There are reasons to object to a position that are better than "It makes me feel bad."

Meanwhile, LS-250 saw us getting our groups for the final project. I don't know how it's going to turn out, to be perfectly honest. I don't really know any of the people in my group, and I feel like something of a wild card as to how it could all turn out. It could go really well or really horrid. I have a feeling I will be one of the voices of dissent within the group.

In other news, Harry G. Frankfurt (of Frankfurt Example fame) was in the New York Times on Monday. Apparently, he has recently published an article that he wrote a while back entitled On Bullshit. The article intrigued me, so I went and showed it to Keith. He had actually looked over Frankfurt's essay back when it was floating around academia. I thought that was really cool. I'll have to find the essay and buy it sometime. It may take a while, though, considering that academic books don't usually show up in most bookstores. At any rate, Keith and I had a good conversation about all manner of things from Lord of the Rings to the Simpsons to the future of the department. It turns out that we have officially hired Rebekah Rice as our new philosophy prof, so Keith's current run in Modern is sort of a farewell tour for that class. Rebekah is a cool individual, and seems like a really good fit for our school. Too bad I won't be able to take any courses from her. Damned graduation. Oh well.