Stanley Jungleib

Reason for leaving: mediocrity of instruction, Restrictions placed on my research, little possibility of employment in the field. If you have ever seen the Monty Python sketch about the Outback school of Philosophy, you get the idea. “Is your name not Bruce? That’s going to make things a little confusing around here,” says it all.

Having already graduated with double honors, and spent a year teaching undergraduates, having Richard Taylor turn over his Eastern Philosophy lectures to me, no one could objectively claim I did not have a good sense of what counted as Philosophy. This paper allowed me to stretch out an hermeneutical interpretation that had hatched two years earlier in a Natanson-nurtured environment

Nevertheless several professors at the University of Rochester bitterly rejected this paper—which encouraged me to quit Philosophy grad school.

Professor Pink reluctantly admitted that I got it right once; but that turned out to be only the act of quoting verbatim two paragraphs of perfunctory journal comments. Keen insight from a self-proclaimed Wittgenstein expert; such that when I pointed out he would be hard-pressed to find such a technique within Wittgenstein himself, we mutually recognized I really didn’t belong nor care to be there.

I tend to think it worked out for the best. If you require linear thought, don’t send your undergrad philosopher to UCSC c. 1975.

In retrospect, several of Rochester’s Philosophy professors were obviously stark raving mad. Verification of this claim will be deferred.