16 Sep 2015
Remembering His Old Professor
Frank Cioffi, Philosophy, Simon Critcheley
Simon Critcheley remembers with appreciation his old Philosophy teacher, Frank Cioffi.
Some years later, I went back into his office to ask permission to switch from one course to another. “Which courses?†he said indifferently. “I’m meant to be reading Foucault, but I want to do a course on Derrida.†“Man†he replied “that’s like going from horseshit to bullshit.†In fact, as others can confirm, the latter word was his most common term of reference and it also expresses his approach to philosophy: No BS.
Critcheley has some good observations on the hubris of Scientism, but he then proves that he is still has not learned how to recognize BS by denouncing climate-change deniers as obscurantists.
Read the whole thing.