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Lovely article. I sympathize with Leavis's anger. I recognize the image of the smug technocrat, someone whose confidence in his conceptual scheme is so great th
by b450 1mo ago
Lovely article. I sympathize with Leavis's anger. I recognize the image of the smug technocrat, someone whose confidence in his conceptual scheme is so great that its ontology, its quantifications and operationalizations, come to supplant experience itself. That's not to say I have a particularly positive feeling towards the humanities, as Leavis represents plenty of what is worst about them. He doesn't seem to actually represent wisdom or humility in the face of the open-endedness of life. He presents as a gatekeeper of an elite club privy to special truths, who lashes out nastily at a perceived threat to his clergy's social cachet.
- juancn 1mo agoI think his anger was just a wounded ego. He reduces his argument to an ad-hominem and sleight of hand mostly. His basic concepts are almost supernatural in nature and require a subjective feeling to get it and his reaction is probably more due to a threat to the power of his station.
- vixen99 1mo ago> Leavis represents plenty of what is worst about them As in 'Leavis promptly informed his audience that Snow "is as intellectually undistinguished as it is possible to be’, an ‘intellectual nullity", and ‘portentously ignorant’. This must be an example of what Wikipedia reports from one critic 'the passionate advocate degenerated into the hectoring bigot.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._R._Leavis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._R._Leavis
- pdonis 1mo agoI sympathize to an extent with Leavis's anger, but also with Snow's reaction. As you note, Leavis represents bad aspects of the humanities as much as Snow, in Leavis's view, represents bad aspects of science (or perhaps "scientism" would be a better word). Neither of them, to me, comes off looking very good after this exchange.