Bertrand Russell once remarked that Wittgenstein had the temperament of an artist, "intuitive and moody", comparing him to Beethoven (Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, by Ray Monk, pp. 43, 45, 57). I think we could use a few more artists. Here's one way to lose them (as reported here):
IN 1966 A YOUNG Harvard graduate by the name of Terrence Malick won a Rhodes Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he planned to continue his philosophical studies. Under the supervision of the philosopher Stanley Cavell, Malick had just completed an impressive undergraduate thesis, “The Concept of Horizon in Husserl and Heidegger,” which would serve as the foundation for the academic work he hoped to continue on the other side of the Atlantic. It was not meant to be.
The story goes that Malick arrived at Oxford with the intention of writing a dissertation about the concept of world in the works of Søren Kierkegaard, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger, only to be told by none other than Gilbert Ryle — perhaps the most famous representative of what was once called “ordinary language philosophy” — that he should consider settling on a more properly “philosophical” topic.
At least we gained a great filmmaker--but perhaps we could have had a great philosopher. Food for thought.
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