Well this was a hell of a read. I especially liked post 118 where in responding to Belacqua, Polymath manages to both make a strong point against the arguments in Hart's book to Belacqua and tie in the OP question that started the thread. If you read anything in this thread read that post. 
I do have a question for Belacqua or anyone here. Is Belacqua genuine or just performing some kind of high brow trolling? I ask this because of the following exchange:
Post 112 by: Belacqua takes some shots at Polymath accusing him of not having read the book and requests he use specific examples from the text. He even tosses out this condescending insult that Polymath brushes off: “I'm not going to twist your arm any more to try to make you do a competent analysis. You should have gotten these textual analytic skills as an undergrad.”
After an exhaustive number of quotes and page numbers provided by Polymath in the following post (113) and in later posts Polymath goes on, in Post 141, to make the same request of Belacqua, for page numbers. He does so completely without the snark demonstrated by Belacqua. However Belacqua completely ignores the request.
From that interaction it looks as though Belacqua has no interest in discussing the book outside of his own understanding of what it said. So is this a troll, dishonesty or something else?
I do have a question for Belacqua or anyone here. Is Belacqua genuine or just performing some kind of high brow trolling? I ask this because of the following exchange:
Post 112 by: Belacqua takes some shots at Polymath accusing him of not having read the book and requests he use specific examples from the text. He even tosses out this condescending insult that Polymath brushes off: “I'm not going to twist your arm any more to try to make you do a competent analysis. You should have gotten these textual analytic skills as an undergrad.”
After an exhaustive number of quotes and page numbers provided by Polymath in the following post (113) and in later posts Polymath goes on, in Post 141, to make the same request of Belacqua, for page numbers. He does so completely without the snark demonstrated by Belacqua. However Belacqua completely ignores the request.
From that interaction it looks as though Belacqua has no interest in discussing the book outside of his own understanding of what it said. So is this a troll, dishonesty or something else?
"I'm thick." - Me
