PS, for what it’s worth, I find your writing interesting, readable, and above all applicable to my life to thanks for bothering.

And there has to be a more Christlike way of debating than a whizzing match. As a chick, I lack the necessary ontological equipment to even engage in said fights. This is especially true online when we can hide behind our words without dealing with the other face to face.

I guess my point was that we often seem more worried about being rude (or culturally non-egalitarian) than we are about being dishonest (or economically non-egalitarian). And in so doing have made AdeB look like a wannabee philosopher rather than an astute communicator of ideas.

What’s the Christian logic in being ‘nice’ to someone with whom you disagree?

Absolutely agree. But this isn’t about being nice to people, but truthful. What kicked this episode off was a bunch of ill-thought comments about someone’s work, which were in no way based in fact.

Perhaps you are right on the public intellectual term. But when I read about Socrates – the father of philosophy no less – I get the feeling that he was more ‘de Botton’ than ‘Heidegger.’ He was intimately concerned with public engagement and improving people’s lives through revealing truth. Too many philosophers and grand-thinkers appear deliberately obscurantist.

Thing is Nic, Oliver is a chef. Do we think less of his food because it’s not ‘hard’ or because he’s populist? Quite the opposite. What he has done for ‘the masses’ in terms of diet and cuisine is more remarkable than any complex nouveau thing that is much lauded by a couple of experts but leaves everyone else still hungry for more.

It’s a good point about mantles and I think discourse (like this) is part of the process. But also there are a whole set of variables that will ultimately determine someones identity. In Academia and Science “Peer review” is very important— there are King-makers out there, a community of practitioners who wield a lot of power. Personally, I like to use this both ways, sometimes adhere to it— sometimes go against.

If we’re playing Pokemon with philosophers— You can have all my DeBotton dupes, he’s not rock star enough

On de Botton, 20 years ago we’d have called him a public intellectual. But we’re ridding ourselves of these kinds of words in search of equality. So ‘philosopher’ is used because it can sound like a job description, just like ‘plumber’. It sounds less superior than ‘intellectual’. It’s not the right word, but hey, we’re all about the equal and the nice.

Ben, in terms of talking more radically than we actually are… Hasn’t everyone who ever lived been guilty of this? ‘The good I want to do (and talk about) I don’t actually do…’ In terms of believing the hype, this is very tricky, because hype is inevitably something that people project on to others, and they often have no control over how they are being perceived. This is a particular problem online. A lot of people I spoke to at Greenbelt were complaining about how Rob Bell was so up his own ass… Something I found to be patently untrue having actually met him. But the projection is so easy to make – turning our own disappointments into attacks on others.