Second Star to the Right...
And off we go to Meta-Meta Land.
Sometimes I'm amazed by how profoundly spite motivates me. Generally, some of the first questions I ask myself when embarking on an anlytical paper are these: What have others done? What will others do? What won't others do? What can I do to be different?
At least in part, this spitefulness arose from an essay last semester. Rather than undertaking anything particularly ambitious, I had settled on an essay topic that was straightforward and easy to write. I was horrified to discover that at least two other people in the class had cranked out analyses almost carbon-copy identical to mine. Although I got a good grade, my sense of personal satisfaction plunged through the floor.
I had soldout.
As an English major, most of the problems the university requires me to consider are literary. Because literature is philosophy and philosophy literature, I generally approach literary analyses by viewing a text through different philosophical lenses. My Big Four in recent years have been Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. But because one of my professors threatened to fail me for excessive contemporaneity in a pre-contemporary literature class, I've had to dabble in platonic, aristotelian, and alchemical ideas.
How does this ideology differ from the platonic purview?
What do alchemical images contribute to this text?
Or my personal favorite, WWND: What Would Nietzsche Do?
I've caught myself asking questions like these until an idea finally "sticks" to a given text. After the initial coniunctio of a certain philosopher's theory and a literary text, the written analysis unrolls -- hopefully -- without too many snags. I don't have any official intellectual authority, so I have to rely on the abstractions of others. It works.
Most of the time.
Modern philosophy doesn't mix well with some classes. Math, for one. Any physical science class. And most social science classes. Although I'd love to write about the metaphysical rebellion inherent in electron orbital theory or the Nietzschean will to power manifest in the State of the Union Address, some subjects, at least at undergraduate levels, place buffers on free thinking. Sometimes, analysis consists of simply identifying the facts -- a process requiring subjectification in itself -- and establishing relationships.
I suppose at its most basic level, analytical thinking is just that: identifying "facts" and establishing relationships.
Blech.
That's almost as bland as New Criticism.
Sometimes I'm amazed by how profoundly spite motivates me. Generally, some of the first questions I ask myself when embarking on an anlytical paper are these: What have others done? What will others do? What won't others do? What can I do to be different?
At least in part, this spitefulness arose from an essay last semester. Rather than undertaking anything particularly ambitious, I had settled on an essay topic that was straightforward and easy to write. I was horrified to discover that at least two other people in the class had cranked out analyses almost carbon-copy identical to mine. Although I got a good grade, my sense of personal satisfaction plunged through the floor.
I had soldout.
As an English major, most of the problems the university requires me to consider are literary. Because literature is philosophy and philosophy literature, I generally approach literary analyses by viewing a text through different philosophical lenses. My Big Four in recent years have been Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche. But because one of my professors threatened to fail me for excessive contemporaneity in a pre-contemporary literature class, I've had to dabble in platonic, aristotelian, and alchemical ideas.
How does this ideology differ from the platonic purview?
What do alchemical images contribute to this text?
Or my personal favorite, WWND: What Would Nietzsche Do?
I've caught myself asking questions like these until an idea finally "sticks" to a given text. After the initial coniunctio of a certain philosopher's theory and a literary text, the written analysis unrolls -- hopefully -- without too many snags. I don't have any official intellectual authority, so I have to rely on the abstractions of others. It works.
Most of the time.
Modern philosophy doesn't mix well with some classes. Math, for one. Any physical science class. And most social science classes. Although I'd love to write about the metaphysical rebellion inherent in electron orbital theory or the Nietzschean will to power manifest in the State of the Union Address, some subjects, at least at undergraduate levels, place buffers on free thinking. Sometimes, analysis consists of simply identifying the facts -- a process requiring subjectification in itself -- and establishing relationships.
I suppose at its most basic level, analytical thinking is just that: identifying "facts" and establishing relationships.
Blech.
That's almost as bland as New Criticism.
posted by Michael Madson at 4:23 PM
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