Philosophy: books and discussion

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by v1k1ng1001

Philosophy is dead in the sense that it has failed to critically engage the way in which professionalization has lead to a kind of banal attitude toward thought and reflection. Most philosophers I know aren't worried about contributing to human wisdom but they are very much worried about how their academic production will impress tenured article producers so that they, in turn, can achieve tenure and promotion.

Thoreau had it right when he said, "There Are Nowadays Professors of Philosophy, but not Philosophers."

In fact, witness the irony for yourself:

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journ.../19.3hadot.pdf

I think many (but not all) who engage in philosophy professionally, especially since Wittgenstein, have shied away from the big questions, including what constitutes the good life, and how do we find meaning in our existence. Too many modern philosophers strike me as people who would be more at home teaching language skills.

[TimMason]

I suspect that this is a little unfair. First of all, there are technical questions that philosophers have to look at, and that are not such as can be very usefully discussed using the language of the ordinary educated reader. The fact that you or I do not understand this stuff doesn't mean that it isn't philosophy, or that it's not necessary to the overall project.

Secondly, I can think of a number of philosophers who do speak to the issues of the day. In France they range from the TV stars like Bernard Henri-Lévy (everybody hates him, but he still sells a lot of books) through to the more austere figures such as Alain Badiou who, though much of his stuff is heavy going, sometimes descends into the political arena with a readable text, as he did recently after the election of Sarkozy to the presidence.

In the UK, philosophers like Julian Baggini, Sarah Bakewell, or Slavoj Zizek make regular appearances in the newspapers - Bakewell's recent series on Montaigne was very well received.

In the USA a number of philosophers direct their work to questions of the day. Rawls' work still leads to comment and argument. Dennett talks forcefully about religion and biology. One could write a fairly long list.

So it may well be true that there are large numbers of academic place-servers hiding out in our universities. The same could be said for a number of disciplines - including the scientific ones (only a very small number of the papers actually published are cited by other scientists). But I don't think we can really claim that there's a dearth of philosophers willing to bring their wisdom to us.

On the other hand, we may be a little more sceptical about that wisdom than used to be the case. Today, people challenge the scientists, the philosophers, the doctors - everyone in our democratic age is equal to the experts after spending five minutes with Wikipedia. Or Glenn Beck. More people have been educated to a higher degree than ever before, and more people have the critical skills needed to argue right back at the academic. When a philosopher writes for the comment section in the Guardian blog, he or she is likely to be roundly criticized by a bunch of nobodies. Some of them don't like it very much.

[v1k1ng1001]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I think many (but not all) who engage in philosophy professionally, especially since Wittgenstein, have shied away from the big questions, including what constitutes the good life, and how do we find meaning in our existence. Too many modern philosophers strike me as people who would be more at home teaching language skills.

Yeah, I blame the Brits and Americans for what Rorty called the linguistic turn of the 20th century. The original idea in empiricism was that if we could figure out how our ideas correspond to reality, then we'd figure out how to distinguish knowledge from mere opinion. Of course that didn't work out so the anglo-american tradition has been reliving that failure now through the notions of proposition and reference. Seriousl analytic philosophy is now merely the conceptual handmaiden of the natural sciences.

Nevertheless, as an ahistorical practice mutilated by self-imposed division of labor, it can recycle the same basic arguments over and over again every generation which, in turn, ensures that everyone can get tenure and promotion!

The way out of all this is to go back to Ralph Waldo Emerson's critique of the self image of the philosopher and work your way forward but, since Emerson is no longer counted as a philosopher, we will have to pin our hopes on his grumpy students, Nietzsche and Dewey.

[v1k1ng1001]

Originally Posted by TimMason

I suspect that this is a little unfair. First of all, there are technical questions that philosophers have to look at, and that are not such as can be very usefully discussed using the language of the ordinary educated reader. The fact that you or I do not understand this stuff doesn't mean that it isn't philosophy, or that it's not necessary to the overall project.

Well during my MA and PhD studies I was lucky enough to study the history of philosophy as well as the three major contemporary traditions: analytic, continental and pragmatism. I currently work out of the latter tradition and I can tell you from personal experience that the situation is pretty bleak in terms of there being any serious meta-philosophical criticism of the discipline.

Originally Posted by TimMason

Secondly, I can think of a number of philosophers who do speak to the issues of the day. In France they range from the TV stars like Bernard Henri-Lévy (everybody hates him, but he still sells a lot of books) through to the more austere figures such as Alain Badiou who, though much of his stuff is heavy going, sometimes descends into the political arena with a readable text, as he did recently after the election of Sarkozy to the presidence.

I like Badiou!

Originally Posted by TimMason

In the USA a number of philosophers direct their work to questions of the day. Rawls' work still leads to comment and argument. Dennett talks forcefully about religion and biology. One could write a fairly long list.

I've read and even taught Rawls. I will give him credit for setting aside his Kantian aspirations and making the pragmatic turn late in his career (Political Liberalism), albeit grudgingly. But the pragmatic scope of his work is limited. Political Liberalism is, on his own account, only useful in situations where 1. there is a constitutional crisis or 2. a new nation needs principles to form a constitution. Even then, the tools he provides are pretty thin. Rawls just seems to repeat the form of inquiry that many political theorists have subscribed to since Hobbs: derive a principle of natural right. This form of inquiry was pragmatically significant while new nations were being born and while old nations were in the throws of revolution, but today that pattern of inquiry is largely obsolete. The best you can say for Rawls is that his work has facilitated interesting discussions in its application within legal realism, as with Dworkin. Like his colleague Hilary Putnam, if Rawls hadn't been at Harvard or somesuch, no one would care what he had to say.

Originally Posted by TimMason

On the other hand, we may be a little more sceptical about that wisdom than used to be the case. Today, people challenge the scientists, the philosophers, the doctors - everyone in our democratic age is equal to the experts after spending five minutes with Wikipedia. Or Glenn Beck. More people have been educated to a higher degree than ever before, and more people have the critical skills needed to argue right back at the academic. When a philosopher writes for the comment section in the Guardian blog, he or she is likely to be roundly criticized by a bunch of nobodies. Some of them don't like it very much.

I'm all for this. At its worst, it still shows that some people care. At its best, we find people out there really willing to educate themselves and others. At least there is still the hope we get to the point where more people read Badiou than listen to Glenn Beck. At the end of the day this stuff does belong in the hands of the people rather than in the hands of the academic.

[TimMason]

Emerson is no longer counted as a philosopher

Isn't it the case that many people who would have been 'counted as' philosophers no longer are? Vast parts of what used to be philosophy have been 'hived off', in a vast exercise in intellectual delocalisation. The whole of science used to be the philosopher's domain. Psychology and Sociology used to be the philosopher's domain. In France, to a large extent, they still are: most of our prominent sociologists of the last decades of the last century were trained philosophers - Bourdieu is a prominent example. (In France, Freud is seen as a philosopher, and he is taught in the lycées in philosophy classes, along with Kant, Plato, or Marx. I'll leave it up to you what to think of that list).

I recall Stanislaw Andrewski arguing that the sociologist was - or should be - a social philosopher. Today, someone like Richard Sennett is as much an old-timey philosopher as he is a scientist. In anthropology, Michael Taussig is a philosopher in the continental style. Among historians, E.P. Thompson was a philosopher, as is someone, from another angle, like Daniel Lord Smail.

So it may be that philosophy is still kicking away - but not, by your account, in the halls of university philosophy departments.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by v1k1ng1001

I've read and even taught Rawls. I will give him credit for setting aside his Kantian aspirations and making the pragmatic turn late in his career (Political Liberalism), albeit grudgingly. But the pragmatic scope of his work is limited. Political Liberalism is, on his own account, only useful in situations where 1. there is a constitutional crisis or 2. a new nation needs principles to form a constitution. Even then, the tools he provides are pretty thin. Rawls just seems to repeat the form of inquiry that many political theorists have subscribed to since Hobbs: derive a principle of natural right. This form of inquiry was pragmatically significant while new nations were being born and while old nations were in the throws of revolution, but today that pattern of inquiry is largely obsolete. The best you can say for Rawls is that his work has facilitated interesting discussions in its application within legal realism, as with Dworkin. Like his colleague Hilary Putnam, if Rawls hadn't been at Harvard or somesuch, no one would care what he had to say.

I don't know anything about Rawl. I agree that the idea of a natural right is not relevant in our times. However, I object to the suggestion (but maybe I misunderstood your meaning?) that we don't need to do any political thinking, in the sense of thinking about how our political system works or should work. We may not be overthrowing kings or beheading anyone (and I hope we'll keep it that way), but I think democracy is in a very dangerous crisis and needs to be reinvented. Is being reinvented, whether we like it or not.

In 2002 in France, many people didn't bother to go to the voting booth. Supporters of the right extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen did. As a result, the second round of the election was between two right-wing candidates, one of them being Le Pen. Everyone was shocked. For two weeks people (the same people who hadn't bothered to vote) demonstrated in the streets to show how opposed to Le Pen they were, and how much they didn't want him as a president.

A few weeks later, there was another election. Granted, it was a minor one. Nevertheless, you'd think these people would have learned their lesson. You'd be wrong. They still didn't bother to vote.

The current democratic system, built in centuries when political and economic knowledge was mostly restricted to an elite, when communication was slow and information took a long time to reach the leaders and even longer to reach the rest of the population, is not working in our world. Many people feel they know better or as well as our presidents or PMs how to run the country. It's an exageration, but it is true that they are much better educated and informed than they used to be. And now they get almost the same information the president or PM does, and just as fast.

I am very attached to democracy in principle, and to representative democracy since it's basically the only one we have so far, but it's increasingly obvious that it's no longer working, at least in the form we have inherited from the 18th-19th centuries.

We need to start doing some thinking. Call it philosophical or political, I don't care. But we need to start thinking before we wake up one morning and find the change has happened anyway - well, that's usually how it works anyway, so maybe we can just relax and watch - I don't know.

But anyway, I do think political changes must and will happen. I just hope it happens in a way I can still recognize as democracy. And I hope nobody gets beheaded along the way.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

The current democratic system, built in centuries when political and economic knowledge was mostly restricted to an elite, when communication was slow and information took a long time to reach the leaders and even longer to reach the rest of the population, is not working in our world. Many people feel they know better or as well as our presidents or PMs how to run the country. It's an exageration, but it is true that they are much better educated and informed than they used to be. And now they get almost the same information the president or PM does, and just as fast.

All these words, and still I forgot one important thing I wanted to say: democracy is not working, because people are no longer willing to delegate power for several years. They want a piece of the action, now, not every five years. Please insert that in the long-winded rant above

[Sparrow]

I think there should be a little political quiz on every ballot (say 5 questions from a pool of 1000) - if you don't get 4 right your vote doesn't count.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I think there should be a little political quiz on every ballot (say 5 questions from a pool of 1000) - if you don't get 4 right your vote doesn't count.

I'd vote for that!

[WT Sharpe]

People like Julian Baggini and the late John Rawls are among those who fall under the "but not all" clause in my post concerning the linguistic turn in philosophy, and are doing what I consider important, namely engaging with the important issues of the day and bringing the results of their efforts to a larger audience. People can disagree with what Rawls wrote, but at least he is attempting to bring the important ethical issues of the day to the forefront, and his "veil of ignorance" approach to a just society has been quite influential. John Dewey, also, is vastly underrated in my opinion for his contributions to pragmatism and the practical solutions he set forth that still reverberate across to the 21st century. Still, the linguists and epistemologists seem to dominate many of the discussions, but perhaps the tide is turning.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

I think there should be a little political quiz on every ballot (say 5 questions from a pool of 1000) - if you don't get 4 right your vote doesn't count.

I recall a college class I took in political science is which I was astounded to discover how many of the students didn't know the differences between socialism and capitalism. Sometimes I think that educationally the U.S. is a third world superpower.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I recall a college class I took in political science is which I was astounded to discover how many of the students didn't know the differences between socialism and capitalism. Sometimes I think that educationally the U.S. is a third world superpower.

Sorry but:

[recluse]

That's because most college students are there on sports or "affirmative action" scholarships, and most tenured college professors are not qualified to teach due to radical idealism or mental illness.

[TimMason]

This reminds me of Borges' classification of animals :

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.

Communism and Capitalism fall in the last category.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by TimMason

This reminds me of Borges' classification of animals :

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
12. others,
13. those that have just broken a flower vase,
14. those that from a long way off look like flies.

Communism and Capitalism fall in the last category.

Those traits which distinguish the two appear to us to be huge, but I wonder if an extra-terrestrial sociologist could find a nickle's worth of difference?