My friend Bill Vallicella kindly offers his congratulations on the birth of my daughter, and I offer my congratulations to him on the seventh anniversary of the Maverick Philosopher blog. As I’ve said before, I have long regarded Bill as something like the Platonic Form of a philosophy blogger. His blog contains just the right mix of serious posts and light ones, polemical political pieces and coolly intellectual ones, long posts and short posts, original pieces and links to the work of others, along with the occasional cooking tip or link to YouTube. Plus he is a terrific aphorist and a solid technical philosopher. If any of you readers find my own blog worthy of your time, you might give Bill some of the credit, since he has been my model. Chalk the defects up to yours truly.
Congrats Bill!
ReplyDeleteI've been lurking at your blog for many years now.
One of the first philosophy blogs I started reading regularly.
Dr. Vallicella is awesome. Congrats.
ReplyDelete$5 we don't see Illion on here saying "Congrats" to Bill.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I'm a Bill fan.
"As I’ve said before, I have long regarded Bill as something like the Platonic Form of a philosophy blogger."
ReplyDeleteI don't know Dr. Vallicella personally, but reading his blog daily for over a year now has led me to regard him as something like the Platonic form of a philosopher (which may not, as I think about it, be very different from what you were saying)!
Sort of off topic:
ReplyDeleteI noticed Dr. Vallicella discussing philosophy of language on his blog, and it got me wondering:
To a theist, particularly a Thomist, is it important to be well-versed in philosophy of language? It's obviously popular in Anglo-American analytical circles, but is it a subject worth studying? If so, what is the relevance of it to, say, theistic philosophical systems, everyday life, etc.?
Hopefully one of the more philosophically knowledgeable blokes around here can answer this for me. As of right now, being the rube that I am, I cannot shake the impression that philosophy of language is just a lot of time-wasting fluff.
Anon:
ReplyDeleteYes, I should say that philosophy of language is very important for a theist indeed. Plus, it's just fascinating! What possible reason would the theist or Thomist have for thinking otherwise?
It relates to everyday life in that it distracts us from the pettiness thereof and guides us to a contemplation of philosophical truth.