Rough Theory

So the battered and bruised remnant of the Reading Group met today, ostensibly to discuss Hegel but, in practice, to discuss pretty much everything but… Somehow the conversation turned to my “project”, and to notions of “historical universals”, which was a formulation I was experimenting with some months back, in a paper the Reading Group members sneaked in to watch me present (I’ve posted the actual talk, as well as my own overview critique of this paper, previously). The Reading Group members were very polite at the time, of course, huddling in the shadows at the back of the conference room, all smiles and encouragement. It’s taken me until now to get some feedback on what they were really thinking – from L Magee, who admitted today:

You know, when you were first discussing your work, and you were talking about these “historical universals”, I thought, you know – what an insane thing to do!

LM assures me that this is meant in the most complimentary sense, as a testimony to my willingness to toss myself at a challenging problem, rather than to the fundamental ludicrousness of my intellectual project… ;-P I assured LM that this was not the first time someone had called my work insane… ;-P