From time to time, people who I think must be intelligent and civilised behave in such unreasonable ways I think I must be missing something. This is one example.
In order to conceal the identity of the person, all I will say is that s/he (henceforth X) is well-known and respected in certain fields of ethics. X holds a senior post.
X had been in touch about his/her new book, which is not unusual. I always explain that we are always happy to hear about new books, but authors’ requests do not affect our decisions about whether to review or otherwise feature them. In this case, I was keen to have a related article. However, X was only prepared to offer an extract, and I’m not keen on having too many such pieces, and that although I’d take a piece based on the book, I would like more than an extract. X was unwilling for various understandable reasons to write such a piece. Our exchange then reached an impasse and faded away.
Recently, X got back in touch. Here is the full, verbatim copy of our exchange. What I find extraordinary about this is that X seems to think that it is I who would look bad if our correspondence became public. In fact, not only am I happy to make it public, I feel compelled to hide X’s identity because I’m sure that X would look bad, not me.
So how can it be that two apparently intelligent people can have such different ideas about what constitutes reasonable behaviour? And what does this say about the power of a lifetime of ethical reasoning to help people behave ethically? I find it quite depressing. And please do tell me if I’m the party in the wrong here. (Update: Please do NOT speculate as to X’s identity. I won’t reveal it unless X does and speculation could be potentially libellous.)
X wrote:
I know our exchanges about an article reached a dead end. But is there any chance that TPM might publish a review of my —– book? It did receive a review copy yonks ago. I do find TPM fascinating and so one always hopes that one is going to be noticed by the things that one notices. X
I replied:
Thanks X, but I’m afraid we missed the boat. We did indeed notice your book and wanted to cover it in some way, but you couldn’t provide what we were after. It is now too late to review the book - we like to review as close to publication as possible - and it is also a policy never to allow appeals by authors to have their books reviewed to influence our decisions in any way - you will appreciate the importance of editorial independence.
I hope we will be able to publish something by you in the not so distant future.
Best wishes
Julian
X wrote:
Pretty pissy, I think. I shall delete TPM from my favourites and tell others how arbitrary you are.
It is my policy to badmouth all publications that behave in a capricious way. My turn will come. You will appreciate the power of consumer reaction I’m sure.
Best wishesX
I replied:
X,
I hope when you calm down you realise how unreasonable this reaction is. It is in no way arbitrary or capricious to want to have articles which are not just extracts from books or to want to review books close to publication. It is an insult to your intelligence to believe that you can’t see this.
Julian
X wrote:
It is better that I do not reply to your email than send the reply your email deserves. X
I did not reply.
It is much more difficult to reason properly under the influence of rejection, humiliation, heavy disappointment, anger, etc. That requires training. There is a whole world here that the almost all academic philosophy (and most of secular modernity) doesn’t interest itself in; indeed it seems to purposely view ethics in such a way as to avoid any such considerations.
I think you have a flawed assumption Julian… Just because someone has had a long education, and are respected in their field of study, even if it is ethics, it doesn’t mean that they are a personable person, or polite.
Sure he was rude, but I’m not sure if there was anything immoral about what he chose to do.
LOL!
Bonkers. But, you know, this stuff isn’t surprising. Remember we did a philosophers behaving badly forum (Issue 14?).
And there was the whole thing with a certain libertarian professor at Boston airport.
And Martin Cohen.
And a complaint about a newspaper review (another professor), a bit of blackmail, etc.
And the whole Royal Institute of Philosophy thing (I really should go public about that whole incident).
People are crap.
My two cents: I think X should be ashamed of his or herself. You gave your reasons, and I think they were good ones. X should have attacked your reasoning if they wanted to take issue, not your publication.
There is a huge difference between what people think and what they write: if this had been a face-to-face conversation, it would have gone a lot better, I’m sure. It is possible to suppose that your correspondent thought and felt a wide manner of things which might be consistent with his/her emails.
My guess: you asked for a full article to accompany the review which they were unable to write in the time allowed; you then refused to even review the book at the time it came out; after months of waiting, he/she asked when it might be reviewed; you replied that they missed the boat because of being unable to write a full article, inferring that in the future they should jump when you demand it.
If you know X to be a reasonable person then you have to assume that they are indeed acting reasonably based on their own beliefs and feelings. Given the state of your correspondence, the only question is whether the situation is retrievable.
Tony, your guess is wrong! (And I strongly discourage ANY speculation about details of the incident I have not described.) We don’t generally review a book and carry a related article in the same issue, so, hoping for an article, we didn’t commission a review. Then the article never materialised, for reasons I explained. (It should also be remembered that we are quarterly and only review about 24 books a year, so not to be reviewed is hardly a rebuke.)
I agree with people who say I should not be surprised, for all the reasons given, but each new such incident still provokes an irrational shock.
Julian, I wasn’t trying to guess the facts but the other person’s *possible* interpretation of them in a way that made ’sense’ of their response.
Reminds me a little of de Botton’s reply to a bad review. (’I will hate you until I die’.)
Not trying to defend this person, just trying to understand him or her, but when you invest a lot in a book you can go loopy when it gets treatment you think it doesn’t deserve. Both de Botton and this person hit back where they think they were hurt: in sales, in career. De Botton hoped the reviewer would make bad career moves, and this person wants to have an effect on your sales. Both perceived an attack and probably thought, at the time, they were hitting right back in just the same way.
You expect this sort of thing from a Nietzsche scholar, but an ethicist? Weird.
No it’s not all sweetness and light. We’ve all lost the run of ourselves from time to time so shock and horror must really be tempered by a wry revisiting of of scenes of our own hissy pissy fits and carpet gnawing which have exceed the strict demands of the script. The suggestion of the head of a department has the import of a fiat in his own little kingdom but the editor in his castle has lifted the drawbridge and dropped the portcullis. He sniggers within. What can the poor author do but launch a plague corpse over the wall - I will hate you till I die, I will badmouth your publication, I will instruct my dog to be bold in your sandbox. Oooo!
What would you expect such rudeness from a Nietzsche scholar?
Nietzsche himself is said to have been a gentleman, and throughout his work, he recommends courtesy, although not compassion. In any case, people tend to be thoughtless, in both senses of the word. The essential goodness of human nature is over-rated.
Ethics concerns what *ought* to be the case. Many of the comments here point to what *is* the case. I don’t have to tell you all which one ethics deals in. People *do* indeed get mad, pissy; people do overreact at times. I certainly have, and I am almost always embarrassed when I have/do. Ought I have acted pissy, when I have? No. In retrospect, I usually always see how I could have handled the situation more maturely, more productively. Ought X have acted the way X did? No. Noting that people *do* act this way, and even understanding why X acted this way, does not excuse the behavior of X. Not that any of the comments here have explicitly reached that conclusion (yet)…I’m just sayin’…
Alright, X is clearly the one being “pissy”–but airing your stupid melodrama on a public blog isn’t exactly classy, either, Julian.
And don’t be all like, “I was merely reproducing our exchange in this forum as a intellectual exercise in blah blah blah and the fact that I hid the author’s identity should be more than sufficient to blah blah blah.” You let a real-life flame war bleed onto your blog, and you know it. The right thing to do when you get into an exchange like that is ignore X, not post it on your blog under the guise of posing some weak-sauce intellectual question about ethics.
There’s a simple maxim to follow in these situations: don’t feed the trolls…
David Morris has said what I was reluctant to so to do. To air a personal grievance dressed up as an exercise in ethics has the appearance to me of being a clumsy way of retaliating against the person who has given offence. There are many unpleasant paranoid, and vindictive people we meet in life and the best way to deal with them is is to remain one’s normal pleasant self and not allow them to see they have disturbed you, even if in fact they have done. Once you raise to their bait then know they have got through to you. The attempt at anonymity is also somewhat crude. I cannot think who the person described as “well-known and respected in certain fields of ethics. X holds a senior post” could be although, I could take a guess at the sex. However I imagine there are several who hold similar positions in the world of ethics who could, from what has been said, make an identification. This assumes of course that ethics has not been used to cover up the actual field of expertise. The worst scenario here is that a person who may have real mental issues is being held up to ridicule.
I know philosophy has its nose in on almost everything but this is surely pretty much fringe material at best.
AMOS
Nietzsche was more against pity but not compassion.
Khal: Nietzsche uses the word
“mitleid”, which is literally “compassion,” although Kaufmann translates it as “pity”.
I generally read Nietzsche in Spanish, where the word is translated as “compasión”, that is, “compassion”. I don’t know much German, so if you know more German, please correct me.
OK, so David and Don have told me off pretty sternly. I can see your point and do agree that, in general, such things are best ignored.
But first of all, I don’t think it is just a “weak-sauce intellectual question”. I think it is very important to point out the limits of ethical study for ethical living.
Second, remember this person has vowed to badmouth me and tpm to everyone. This is in part a pre-emptive defence. I make no apologies for making sure the facts are on the public record, in as unconfrontational a way as possible. If taking the moral high ground by keeping silent allows this person to behave badly with impunity, then the high ground is not that moral after all.
They told you off, but they didn’t really make arguments - a lot of hand waving, frankly.
The other interesting issue here has to do with the relative anonymity of online interaction.
It’s (quite) hard to believe that the exchange you had with this person would have had the same form had it been a face to face communication.
The other point worth making is that the fact you’ve preserved the anonymity of the ethicist is absolutely morally relevant here.
AMOS: My english is not good and I recently finished reading Nietzsche’s work in english, so that could explain my confusion between “compassion” and “pity” .
Khal
Khal: There’s an interesting discussion about the differences between pity, compassion and solidarity in Hannah Arendt’s book
“On Revolution”, pp. 88-90.
If you can get a copy, look at it.
Julian,
My question is are you coming away feeling unsure of your actions in this episode, to wit the title of your post, “Is It Just Me?”
I should think X’s last-but-one communication would make it easy for you to walk away from the whole episode feeling conscience-free in the way you handled the whole thing.
Were you a bit too pleased with your having the opportunity of refusing X after he sloughed you off?
Julian,
It isn’t just you. I used to say so myself on most occasions when I had to deal with some academic philosophers. One mistake I certainly used to make was to assume that if someone is trained in logico-philosophical thinking, puts forward strong ethical arguments in writing, and defends all the ‘right causes’, it follows that he/she maintains the same high standards in everyday life. Not so, especially when it comes to professional decisions which are backed up more by excuses of the academic political variety than by sound judgment.