From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Fri Feb 06 2004 - 18:11:48 GMT
Hi Matt
Well if you are determined to stand your ground
there's not a lot I can do. But my concern was less
with asking what makes a good person than a fully
rounded one with a concern for self-knowledge
and knowledge of their species, culture and world.
I think a life unexamined is a lesser life, and that most
people are put off by terrible schooling in childhood,
where the curiosity in them is destroyed and they are
led to believe that they are incapable of understanding
the higher levels of knowledge, or even discover that they
exist. A Britney fan may discover the pleasures of Mozart
some day, but a Mozart fan is somewhat unlikely to convert
to the musical pleasures of Britney. To appreciate Mozart
is to reach a higher level of musical sophitication than to
appreciate Britney. I say this with a musical taste that ranges
from the Clash to Led Zeppelin to Mozart to Wagner. Despite
the enthusiam for the first two I can see them fading from the cultural
consciousness whilst the latter two remain.
regards
David Morey
----- Original Message -----
From: "MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT" <mpkundert@students.wisc.edu>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2004 11:09 PM
Subject: Re: MD Do we all need philosophy?
> David,
>
> I'm not sure we are communicating well.
>
> David said:
> I disagree with this overall, although pluralism is great, freedom is
great, let's support them, but we also have a perfect right to value certain
things above others, and we are going to judge people by what they value.
>
> Matt:
> Why the "but"? I never said we don't have "a perfect right to value
certain things above others." I just think the reasons people give for
looking down their noses at nonphilosophers haven't been very good.
>
> David said:
> What is so wrong with trying to understand the cosmos as a whole?
>
> Matt:
> Absolutely nothing. If you do it nonmetaphysically, if you simply try to,
in Sellars' phrase, see how things, in the broadest sense of the term, hang
together, in the broadest sense of term, then there's no problem...as I have
said--over and over again.
>
> David said:
> This seems a very wonderful human aspiration, rejection of dualism and
essentialism does not lead to this extra conclusion post-modernism suggests.
You make a strange figure standing at the sidelines crying 'pointless' let's
wait and see what human genius can come up with post-essentialism and
post-dualism.
>
> Matt:
> Arguing over whose vision of how things hang together in the broadest
senses of the terms, i.e. doing metaphysics, yes, is pointless. But
philosophy is not. As I have said. I certainly don't find it pointless in
my life. As I have said. What I do find pointless, besides metaphysical
and epistemological enterprises, is saying that people who don't do
philosophy, in whatever relevant sense of the word, aren't fully fledged
human beings, which is essentially what I see people here suggesting. I
take a person's moral beliefs to be a lot more important in determining
whether or not we should count them as a "mature person."
>
> David said:
> I am not asking do we need philosophy to be happy, I've left that up to
the reader, but interesting what you choose. I would say we need it to
understand ourselves, our culture, our science, etc and therefore to save us
from making this planet unable to sustain human life and/or to finding
better, less violent ways of living together.
>
> Matt:
> There are two relevant senses of the term "philosophy" that I used in my
last post: 1) the Plato-Kant-etc. canon and 2) seeing how things hang
together. In the first sense, not everybody needs philosophy to understand
themselves, only some people (people like myself). But, in this first
sense, we would need it to fully understand (i.e. know its history and its
subtleties) our Western culture and our Western science because philosophy,
in the past, has played such an important and vocal role in their respective
evolutions. However, I don't think we need to have a full, complex grasp of
the Western philosophical canon to fully understand our culture and science,
just a general understanding that can be provided by the professionals who
make it their business to have a full, complex understanding of the Western
philosophical canon (roughly, those people found in University departments
titled "Philosophy").
>
> My further claim, that apparently is creating a fair amount of opposition,
is that not every single person in the whole world needs to have a full
understanding of their culture, let alone our Western one, to be a morally
up-standing individual. As such, do disagree that we need philosophy, in
the first sense, to "to save us from making this planet unable to sustain
human life and/or to finding better, less violent ways of living together."
I would settle for political proposals and an expansion of our sympathies.
>
> But what about my second sense, philosophy as seeing how things hang
together? Do we need that? As I said before, in this broad, bland sense,
its hard to see how many people escape engaging in this activity at least
once in a while. But even if they did, if these same unread, beer-guzzling,
football-betting peers were nice people who didn't pollute and voted
regularly, and were happy with only drinking beer and watching football, I
don't see why they would need to engage in philosophy.
>
> David said:
> Now I accept your anti-elitism, but I ask, is the low-expectations
approach to the Britney--lovers not a form of inverse snobbery?
>
> Matt:
> I'm not sure what you mean, but I will say this: I'm not recommending that
we get rid of solidarity groups in which the evaluation, "Brittany Spears
rots," is taken as true. I just think on a lot of this stuff, its a matter
of inconsequential taste, and so really getting worked up about Brittany and
her music and how its a sign of the disintegration of society (such as a
thesis proposed by Allen Bloom a number of years back) is really a load of
balloney. Saying I have low-expectations of pop music lovers isn't quite
right. I don't have _any_ expectations of people's musical taste. It is
completely inconsequential in the broad scheme of things. I don't care what
they like. And its the same thing with philosophy. I don't have low
expectations of people, which is how people keep reading me. I don't have
_any_ expectations of people in areas that I see as a matter of
inconsequential taste.
>
> David said:
> Now does any of this bite, any feelings that your good post-modern
pluralism has gone too far and turned into bad relativism?
>
> Matt:
> None of its really bitten because for every speculation and anecdotal
piece of evidence you can supply on the connection between philosophy and
being a good person, I can offer countering speculations and anecdotes.
>
> Whether you or I is correct in our speculations, like the question of the
futility of metaphysics, only time will tell. Establishing a connection by
saying that the best critical thinking we've done to date has been in
philosophy, therefore we must continue philosophy, is like saying that our
most morally praiseworthy acts have been performed by Christians, therefore
we must continue being Christian. I'm not refuting the past, I'm suggesting
that things might be different, and better, in the future. In fact, if most
of our best critical thinking _has_ been done in philosophy, than I think
that a good prima facie reason for thinking that things might be better if,
in the future, our best critical thinking were done instead in sociology and
politics.
>
> Matt
>
>
>
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