He's Just A Singer...

Den Beste writes,

I make as many mistakes as anyone else does; why, exactly, is this noteworthy?

I suspect that question is mostly rhetorical, as I'm sure Steven has a good notion that some of it is motivated by his status as blog-celebrity (like it or not, Steven, you're right up there with the biggies now!). And some of it is motivated by personality, hence the apparent glee with which Den Beste's interlocutor exclaims,

In a way I'm relieved: here is an area in which the omniscient Captain is woefully ignorant.

Why is it SO DAMN PLEASING to discover that a person one reads is woefully ignorant on some issue, assuming it's true (and I don't think it is)? Isn't that much more psychologically revealing than the post on Den Beste's psychology?! To me it is.

Den Beste has ably defended his posts, so I feel no need to comment on them beyond saying they amused me. I enjoy those sorts of posts, where we get to see a more personal side of Steven (but still, his engineer's mentality comes through, as he's always looking for connections, and why things are connected, and how it works). And I think after reading him carefully for a while, I've come to understand Steven's sense of humor, when he is being tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic and employing more subtle rhetorical devices. Sometimes that subtlety is lost on readers who have an agenda of their own, rather than the agenda of trying to understand a writer on his own terms (pardon my Straussian digression). It's the same thing that Orrin Judd has discovered (final paragraph) when he laments that some people have created a caricature of Fukuyama because they think a couple of paragraphs ripped out of context represent the whole of his thought on nature and natural right.

I don't agree with everything Den Beste writes, but even those posts with which I disagree stimulate me to think. I enjoy those posts, but not because I'm hoping to catch Steven in a "woefully ignorant" moment (yeah, right -- whatever). Rather, it's refreshing to have someone on the web producing so much original, provocative stuff -- FOR FREE!

(06-12-2002 Update): Den Beste's "interlocutor" chides me for not identifying him. Fair enough -- Mr. Eric Olsen is now identified. His point are fair. I only really object to his characterization of my "praise" of Francis Fukuyama, which is presumably enough for expulsion from the Group Of Bloggers Who Don't Like Fukuyama (tm). Now, I never applied for membership, and I suspect the group wouldn't have me anyway! But I digress. Suggesting Fukuyama's critics actually read him carefully and attempt to understand him as he understands himself is simply a manifestation of an approach to studying texts, and shouldn't be regarded as "praise" in itself. For the record, I've not yet read his latest, and I didn't like Fukuyama's neo-Hegelianism in The End Of History and The Last Man, although Fukuyama does take the question of human nature and natural right seriously in that text, whatever its flaws. But it's become blogsport to condemn and dismiss Fukuyama, without putting in much effort to understand him. That's troubling.

[Posted at 09:43 CST on 06/08/02] [Link]