“Trumpery” is a great term. It has a hint of something like effrontery or mockery (because of the sound of the word), a kind of affected importance.
Harman holds trumpery responsible for some of the terrible pickles we've gotten ourselves into and I think he is definitely on to something. His example:
“Contrary to the gullible masses of readers who all think Heidegger is straightforwardly anti-technology, it’s not really that simple.” This is trumpery: a deceptive, misleading trump card based on false sophistication.Or this from phenomenology:
Correlationism does this as its essential gesture: “The naive are trapped by the pseudo-problem of ‘real’ and ‘ideal’ or ‘outer’ and ‘inner’, when in fact we are already outside ourselves in our very inwardness.”
What about claims that something is "teleological" or "essentialist"? Are those trumpery as well? As if to say "You shouldn't listen to X because X's philosophy is teleological and/or essentialist, and mine is not."
ReplyDeleteIt frustrates me because I often can't figure out why X's philosophy is teleological or essentialist, and whoever is making the claim doesn't explain it very well.