Sunday, February 18, 2007
(10:08 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Knowing Best
Obviously obtaining a PhD requires a certain degree of what Walter Kaufman calls "galloping consumption," and in an interdisciplinary program such as mine, that consumption can sometimes seem especially indiscriminate. For instance, yesterday I read H. Richard Niebuhr's The Meaning of Revelation, Derrida's essay on Celan's "Meridian" speech, and part of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble. Today I hope to combine some more Butler with some Karl Rahner. It's all very exciting.In the course of this galloping consumption, however, I sometimes like to step back and ask myself what I feel like I really know, which texts I know backwards and forwards. My list is as follows:
- Derrida, The Gift of Death
- Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals (especially the first two essays)
- Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History
- Paul, "The Epistle to the Romans"
And so, the obvious question you've all been waiting for: what texts do you know best?
UPDATE: Looking back over this post, I feel as though Butler and Rahner are as different as it is possible for two authors to be. I keep trying to come up with counter-examples, but they all sound contrived and arbitrary.
