Unfair Criticism

Criticism of Benacerraf’s Criticism of Modern Eleatics

I analyze here Benacerraf’s criticism of Thomson arguments on the impossibility of ω-supertasks. Although Benacerraf’s criticism is well founded, his analysis of Thomson’s lamp is incomplete. In fact, it is possible to consider a new line of argument, which Benacerraf only incidentally considered, based on the functioning laws of the lamp. This argument leads to a contradictory result that comp...

Unfair permutations

We study unfair permutations, which are generated by letting [Formula: see text] players draw numbers and assuming that player [Formula: see text] draws [Formula: see text] times from the unit interval and records her largest value. This model is natural in the context of partitions: the score of the [Formula: see text]th player corresponds to the multiplicity of the summand [Formula: see text]...

The Art of Criticism? Criticism as Art!

Burkeian Criticism

In conclusion, we should like to add two admonitions. First, criticism is an art, not the raw tables or summaries of scholarship. The scholarship is a necessary prerequisite, and the formal reports, the compilations of the learned monograph, are essential to criticism. We have too much of unimaginative word counting, the pedestrian assemblage of arguments, the methodical and generalized comment...

Literary Criticism

Most of the literary theorists and critics of classical antiquity who are still studied today – Plato, Aristotle, ‘Longinus’, and a few others – are Greeks. The Romans, who by reputation came late to literature and lacked a theoretical cast of mind, are not generally accorded a prominent place in the development of this discourse. Indeed, few surviving Roman texts address as their main topic th...