...a dialogue with yourself under two names in the published literature.

December 16, 2023 2:15 PM

"The aim of writing under the name of this nonexistent philosopher was, in Rorty’s words, ‘intellectual empathy’, understood as the attempt to enter into the mind of another thinker, a kind of exercise. This thinker, who does not exist, nevertheless takes up a particular perspective on the world, a perspective that rests on a different set of assumptions and preoccupations from the author’s." 'Forging Philosophy' [via: Arts & Letters Daily.]
posted by clavdivs (9 comments total)

A truly delightful read. Thanks.
posted by sockrilegious at 2:38 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

(I only wish I had a sockpuppet account with which to contribute. But I see that the article has already covered the only thing I had to say, which is that there is nothing more characteristic of philosophy than to create a strawman whose arguments you destroy and a sockpuppet to praise your brilliant insights.)
posted by clawsoon at 2:55 PM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

...although now that I've read the whole article, I wish it went even deeper into the story of Zera Yacob and Italian colonialism.
posted by clawsoon at 3:55 PM on December 16, 2023

When I was a PhD student in psychology, I remember a conversation with a postdoc in which he said, the thing you really need to get tenure is an antagonist. You can publish endless papers arguing with each other about some claim and you'll look extremely productive, even if your field is basically not progressing at all. This article makes me wonder for the first time if anyone's tried playing both parts as a tenure scam. I guess "scam" isn't quite right, doing twice the work for the same pay, but it's probably not what "society" (however constituted) wants out of its scholars.
posted by eirias at 4:14 PM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

...Maybe that wouldn't be a false play in the sense that the arguments and exploration would be real, the productivity would be real, and whatever the qualities displayed of the writer(s) would be real... the written contributions would be real. The main downside would be that the author couldn't actually take a double teaching load.

...or could they?
posted by amtho at 6:04 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

The main downside would be that the author couldn't actually take a double teaching load.

Just have both personas always apply for the same positions, and then one of them is always a no-show.
posted by clawsoon at 7:21 PM on December 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

Fascinating read! But what's also interesting is that sometimes works get accepted into a canon even though everyone knows the author is fake: "Saint Paul's" Letter to the Ephesians or "Sun Tsu's" Art of War for instance.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 8:29 PM on December 16, 2023

I would enjoy the academic novel in which the scholar pursuing eirias’
friend’s tactic changes their mind about which side they really feel and has to… change what their primary self writes? Switch to being the second self to the world? Drop one of them and invent a third character?

I would even enjoy the cheesy version in which a stranger turns up personating the adversary.
posted by clew at 9:17 PM on December 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

plannedchaos would like a word...
posted by Windopaene at 9:36 PM on December 16, 2023 [1 favorite]