Merely interesting?

[Middle Man]

Volumes to consider in a few distilled words:

“[The death of objectivity] relieves me of the obligation to be right; [it] demands only that I be interesting.” - Stanley Fish

[EZ Bagger]

Very...interesting.

Edited September 4, 2008 by EZ Bagger

[AikiDale]

That just feels wrong....

[Flexmoney]

Thanks. You gave me something to research today...an opportunity to learn.

Here is one thing I found in response to the above:

Charles Murray of the conservative Hoover Institution [1] (http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/digest/013/murray.html) calls that "a silly thing for a grown man to say and a criminal thing for a teacher to say."[2] (http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/digest/013/murray.html) However, Fish's complicated relationship with deconstructionism makes it unclear whether to accept the statement as an argument for or against the practice. More likely, it's a description of a doctrine's consequences, of which his statement is a compelling example

[badchad]

I’m not familiar with Stanley Fish but that sounds like sarcasm to me, not to be taken at face value. It sounds like the kind of thing Voltaire or Nietzsche would say.

[wide45]

"Very interesting, but stupid."

Edited September 4, 2008 by wide45

[mdstihl]

Could be related to journalism.

[wide45]

Investigative journalism is all but dead.

"News" isn't about information, it's putting butts in seats.

The original quote is true, and that is not a good thing.

[AikiDale]

It is a great quotation Middleman. I do not know Fish or his work so can not say much about him. This line is either a condemnation of the contemporary lack of interest in objectivity or an acknowledgment of it. I suspect Fish is an anarchist with a keen sense of the absurd, which means I am not alone, or he is a gamer, making a living annoying academics the world over from within the ivy tower.

[Middle Man]

I think Fish started out annoying academics and then later media-types got annoyed. It certainly does not represent a heart warming sentiment, but it certainly is striking. It was a lynchpin of sorts for me, hitching together some other ideas I've been kicking around and putting on paper.