MVSCZAR

Has anyone here been affected/ expect to be affected by the Muslim ban? I expect this will complicate quite a few visits this year and I'm wondering if there are plans to accommodate those affected. Additionally, are there any foreigners who are considering NOT attending a US university because of the Trump presidency and Trump policies?

I heard back from them yesterday.

Declined Vanderbilt and Stony Brook today. Got in off the WL at Toronto and will be declining that as well. Will also be declining Villanova, assuming I get in off the WL.

Guys, remember when MySpace let you pick a song for your page? Im pretty sure that I constantly switched between super emo and Dipset. Also, did anyone here ever use sconex? Also also, it would be great to keep in touch with everyone so all fb adds are very welcomed. As I have the same profile pic, everyone who already added me knows it. Those who haven't should.

Have you considered having it as an open draft in academia.edu?

Regarding creative philosophy... We would REALLY get along. I think I've been saying this to everyone who would listen, and perhaps people I've met at the grad visits could attest to this. I heard about Hölderlin through Heidegger. Actually, I think I heard about everything through Heidegger. And being interested in Greek and German thought, Hölderlin would be a natural interest. I'm not totally in love with him, though, but I want to be. I've been meaning to read Hyperion for a few years now after a friend told me it changed his life. I'm interested to see how it goes. Very exciting.

The initial difficulty in reading Deleuze is incredibly frustrating, but it does dissipate after you start reading him as a sort of creative writer. That's to say, as dancing on the edge of the really real and pushing against the limit. I've never read A Thousand Plateaus, but I've read Nietzsche and Philosophy and What is Philosophy?. And I read some of Anti-Oedipus. It's the only book I've ever thrown out of a window, by the way, because it was so frustrating. But I suppose that goes to show that my strong opinions aren't meant to be held eternally. I'm planning on reading Hyperion this summer, too! Twins!

Got a, "We're gonna offer you a slot if you're in a position to accept our offer" type email from Fordham yesterday. I don't even want to open that can of worms, so I'm declining it outright. Nothing against Fordham, but it's crunch time and I'm really drained. I just want to devote my time to Trump memes now. Today, declining Stony Brook, even though I loved them.

I haven't read that! Thanks for the recommendation! I think, for me, in a way, reading Borges is a lot like reading Plato in that he throws you into a sense of aporia. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about what makes reading Plato fundamentally distinct from reading anything else. For me, it's the most pleasurable thing in the world but t doesn't bring me out of the world. Idk what you all think about that.

Anyone here like Borges?

Did you get an offer? I declined this morning. Fingers crossed. Everyone seemed so happy to be there.

Starting two projects which I had begun years ago but had to put off. I'm picking up reading Shakespeare's works starting with the histories and reading again Being and Time, but this time linearly. Mad continental...

I just declined DePaul and Duquesne.

Just declined Boston College. I'll be declining a few more by the day's end.

You can still do philosophy, though!! Even if going into a grad program doesn't make sense right now. Just stay in the soup!

Am I just too Catholic? because I legit cannot take the courting. It makes me want to jump into the sewer and never come out.

I've been getting some really mixed messages. Some programs are a lot more eager to have me there, others don't seem to show how eager they are. It feels kind of weird.

I also just declined GSU. I got the Kant/Post-Kantian German Philosophy Fellowship, so that will go to someone else as well. I'd love to know who it goes to, but I feel that's like keeping in touch with the baby you gave up for adoption.

I just declined Miami U for the MA. As someone else said, it actually is surprisingly draining.

The system was trying to tell the ad com not to reject you. It was just like (in robot voice), "Rejection? Does not compute. Cannot do. Beep boop."

You gotta do what's best for you, doxa. If that means waiting until April 13, then that's unfortunately what you have to do. It's also really useful to meet the other accepted students, so if it's at all possible, I would just go during the recruitment weekend or whatever. If you're on the waitlist for a place you really want to go to, wait until April 15th to accept any other offers. That seems like the only way of going about this.

It doesn't seem to me that the Chicago MAPH is a good option. The general opinion I hear is that it's a scam. Some people do defend it, though they seem to have personal reasons to do so.

It's annual. It's a remarkably large stipend, I think. At least it's my largest offer by at least 10k, although Vanderbilt hasn't finalized their offer. Idk if it includes summer funding.

It's definitely true that continental philosophy suffers from obscurantist writing, for sure. But some of the best writing also comes from the continental camp, too, so there's that. As far as the bad writing is concerned, I'll give the apologist's response which I feel only applies to select writers, though not all. There was a huge push to become more performative in one's philosophizing, so that, when reading the author, one would be introduced into a forceful dialogue, rather than a monologue. Philosophy is, after all, a dialectic. That doesn't mean it's all good, but I can see where they're coming from. I think Deleuze gets too muck flak because the wrong people have gotten hold of him. I do hope that changes soon. He's actually not that bad and is, in fact, quite sharp. And, besides how frustrating it is to read Anti-Oedipus, it's actually a pretty good book. There are some works in the late 20th century which I find super cool: Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action is the first that comes to mind. Ricoeur was writing into the 2000s, Gadamer's Truth and Method is pretty cool, but it's not that late into the 20th century. Hannah Arendt wrote some good political philosophy books as well. That's not even getting into feminism and philosophy of race and stuff. I think it's true, though. Continental philosophy really needs to start producing original works that are accessible to everyone, especially since we pretend to speak about those things which are immediately relevant to everyone. That was a project that has slowed down quite a bit, and I suspect might be linked with philosophy's retreat into academic journals. I'm into journals and all, but at some point we have to go back down into the cave with good news, but I haven't heard anyone propose anything recently.

Right now I'm at a real crossroads-- do I want to devote myself to Ancient Phil or Continental Phil for (at least) the next 5 years of my life? I might be playing it up a little in my head, but that's what I'm seeing it as at the moment. It's a real shame, because (in agreement with the poster above) I think the distinction is largely synthetic. I hope that we'll be able to overcome it when the old generation dies off.