On Sun, 28 Jan 1996, Babette Babich wrote:
> etc. . . .
Tom(mmmmm). . . I'm in no position to judge one way or the other about
the banality ruling the posts that come to this list, since I'm not a
philosophy professor myself, and am just flailing through these difficult
texts and problems like everybody else. In her 25 or so posts to this
list, when she hasn't been promoting herself, Babich has reiterated
one message only: namely, that this list would be so much better if only
she could write all the posts to it herself.
I'm convinced! And I regret almost as much as Babich does that we can't all
be philosophy professors. At the same time, part of what is nice about
this list is that the people involved with it aren't professionalized
career-makinging hot-shots -- a lot of us aren't academics or philosophy
department professionals and are just reading this stuff because we think
its important and beautiful and challenging. That means -- to me at
least -- that what really brings us together is our desire to speak to
each other, however incompetently.
Somebody earlier mentioned something about having learned from
some of Babich's published works. I don't doubt it, although I can't say
the same. I do regret, however, that whatever superiority of outlook,
understanding, reading, she might have concerning Heidegger's work
doesn't ever get shared here because of her self-preening snottiness and
her apparent obsession with prooving how much more "professional" she
is than the rest of us. If she knows something the
rest of us don't, I wish she'd just say it, and stop finding in what
other people say more opportunities to exercise her militant amour-propre.
So, Tom (Mmmmm!), I'm posting this to say that I've admired and enjoyed
your posts to this and the other lists we're on together, and that I hope
you won't be discouraged from wanting to speak with others about what you
know or don't know.
Yours in banality,
Michael Harrawood
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---