[lit-ideas] Re: Why Philosophy. (Was: On Nip Thievery)
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2008 13:55:38 +0900
On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 5:33 AM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Philosophy does not flourish on lit-ideas, as it once did on Phil-Lit. Try
> having a philosophical discussion (a discussion about some philosophical
> problem), and before long, someone will intercede with the discussion
> breaker that Aristotle was full of beans and has nothing to say to the
> 'modern' mind; or that Aristotle thought (as did Frege, later, with a
> vengeance) that it was possible for certain concepts to have sharp
> boundaries, and that recent sociology (or Wittgenstein, or Eleanor Rosch)
> have all shown how silly this is.
>
> Any attempt (this has been my experience) to examine an issue carefully and
> in detail is soon met with hoots and jeers, barrages of overripe tomatoes,
> and charges of super-hyper-masturbatory-latte-drinking intellectualism. So,
> I scarcely bother any longer—for my own peace of mind I scarcely bother.
> Once, for example, it was possible to discuss specific passages from the
> Tractatus, with law professors at Northwestern, Eric Dean, and others; Hume
> (and sometimes Popper) with Donal; Kant with Walter and Phil; contemporary
> British philosophy with JL (and so on, I want to say, in order to disguise
> my failing memory).
> As far as I can see we have lost the ability and the collegial politeness
> to tolerate such discussions.
>
I read these paragraphs, and I feel a great sadness, tinged with not a
little guilt, since I have from time to time been the source of one of those
discussion breakers. My own struggles with philosophy brought me to
anthropology, the sociology of knowledge, the history of science and other
disciplines in which, having decided in advance that ideas have no
particular merit in and of themselves, the problem is to understand why,
then, do people cling to them, argue for and against them, even fight wars
over them. The arc of my understanding has, however, led me back to
philosophy, to closer examination of the ideas themselves and the arguments
advanced for and against them. For the great sin of those fields that
attracted my attention after what was, after all, only a cursory,
undergraduate introduction to philosophy, is to attempt to explain away, not
the great ideas themselves, but mere abbreviations, if not distortions, of
them. The anthropologist in me insists that before I do that I should listen
more carefully to what philosophers have to say, if I am ever in regard to
philosophy, to achieve the goal spelled out by Clifford Geertz in his essay
on "The Concept of Culture and the Concept of Man." I refer to that point,
in the opening paragraph, where, chiding Levi-Strauss, he suggests that our
aim is not to substitute simple models for complex realities but to build
complex models that illuminate those realities while retaining the clarity
that simple models appear to offer. Now I chide myself for blundering in
with challenges instead of reserving judgment and listening more carefully.
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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