“Serious philosophy is always likely to bore those with short attention-spans.”

So says Timothy Williamson, the Wykeham Chair of Logic at Oxford.

Williamson is, of course, mostly interested in the rigors of analytic philosophy (devoted to formal logic, definitions, analysis of language, and the like) … which I tend to think is as boring to read as stereo instructions. But, then, my years of blogging have rendered my attention span notoriously low, I suppose …

More on whether Williamson is right or wrong in “Is Philosophy Literature?” at The Stone blog.

submit to reddit

Comments
blog comments powered by Disqus
Notes
  1. foreignphilosophy said: That’s just elitism claiming that something patently boring and maybe unnecessary is only interesting to those smart enough to understand it. Reminds me of the essay on modern classics where unintelligibility is praised as intelligent.
  2. kohenari posted this