Raymond Tallis' Annoying Choice of Book for Desert Island Discs

Raymond Tallis, (physician, philosopher, poet) is a model of good sense on the value of  science and what's wrong with pseudo-science and anti-science as for example in the podcast linked from his Times article.

He also won many hearts some time ago with his brilliantly titled Not Saussure which savaged trendy literary theory. On Radio 4's Desert Island Discs repeated today, his clarity and intelligence shone through particularly on medical issues about dying, and his choice of music included two bullseyes: Bach's Cello Suites, and Schubert's String Quintet.

But the deep mystery to me is why his choice of book for his hypothetical desert island soujourn was Heidgegger's Being and Time - one of the most obscure books of the twentieth century, which, though it obviously does contain some interesting ideas, buries them so deep in verbiage and neologisms that only the full time scholar has a chance of excavating them or making anything remotely comprehensible out of them (and for a sceptical reader like me there is the constant suspicion of being conned by deliberate obscurantism and even the philosophical equivalent of homeopathy). I suppose it is like taking a fiendishly difficult cryptic crossword on a long journey...I wish he'd opted for something by David Hume or Friedrich Nietzsche. Surely it would be better to take something by an undoubted genius such as either of these two (both whom were also superb writers) than a doorstop by someone who definitely couldn't write and probably wasn't a genius.

Comments

[Matt M]

"only the full time scholar has a chance of excavating them or making anything remotely comprehensible out of them"

Sounds like the perfect book to be stuck on a desert island with. I mean, what else are you going to do with your time? Building sandcastles is only fun for so long.

[Paulus E.]

I seriously couldn't tell from the language whether or not this post was meant tongue-in-cheek. If not, its tone seems more than a bit harsh, given that Being and Time is taken to be a powerful book by many philosophers (even analytic philosophers!). One may not like the style of its prose, but it is absurd to deny that it's well-written. You may also prefer Hume over Heidegger, but implying that the latter is dim-witted compared to the former indicates strong partisanship rather than unbiased judgment.

[Bob]

Nah, I agree with Nigel. And more. Being and Time is unmitigated, incomprehensible pap. It takes nearly a million pages to offer a second-rate pseudo-intellectual opinion that could have been written down on a post-it. The work's enduring appeal to a small minority of devoted acolytes is a monument to the longevity and the potency afforded by obscurantism and meaninglessness.