Tuesday, August 14, 2012

FYI …

… The Top 10 Most Difficult Books. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Regarding one these, Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, I remember when I was a copy editor looking up a passage in the German edition and making my way through it. I then looked up and said to someone, "My God, I actually know what he's saying."What I had realized was that in many cases Heidegger had simply devised his own personal terminology for otherwise standard concepts. In this case, it was contingency.

1 comment:

  1. In my experience (three university degrees and a lifetime of study), it is common for social-science academics, philosophers, and those out to impress, to invent new terminology for simple and indeed obvious concepts. This enables them to build a reputation among the young, naive, and fellow conspirators. The practice is almost universal among management theorists and in the fields of Eng Lit and creative writing. Visit any university with an Eng Lit department, walk among the shelves of books on that subject, and you will find nothing but.

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