Acknowledgments to The Human Condition

Over at my aule-browser blog I have added a note on philosophy text markup for the web.

While that blog will track more canonical texts in philosophy, here I will attend to the 1958 Arendt "The Human Condition" and the debt of Arendt to Heidegger and its high cost.

The first Arendt item added to phil.aule-browser.com/arendt.htm concerns the Acknowledgments, which occur just before the absent bibliography and the woefully inadequate index (rectified only in 1998 after many, many reimpressions by U. Chicago.)

They are worth reading for anyone interested in the politics of intellectual funding in the USA of the 1950's and the lack of quality peer feedback to the funding bodies.

Of particualr concern to me:
   Rockefeller Foundation
   Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
   Charles R. Walgreen Foundation
  
And with regard to support outside Chicago and New York - what a travesty: The Christian Gauss Seminar in Criticism of Princeton University bears no relation to the Gauss of Göttingen, Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss.

See: philosopher Sophie Germain

Comment: A non-professor detailing bullsh*t  in recent philosophy (20th Century+) must take pains to let the texts speak for themselves as much as possible - in the case of the web that means ensuring that no accusation can be founded that a quotation is taken out of context or illustrates the reporter's lack of erudition in philosophy of the period or any period referenced or alluded to in the text.

In the past, the "little people" with means could be mere readers: electronic text should mean that intelligent educated readers have access in locus to comment and critique and not be left to fend with inadequate bibliographies, notes, references and indices.  Perhaps this could be seen as a product of the Reformation.  I see it more as a parallel to more accessible long-distance travel -- with a likely return home.  The first step is to move beyond the Baedekker's and the Fodor's and wikipedias as guides to slightly foreign, somewhat remote, philosophy texts.