From: MATTHEW PAUL KUNDERT (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 05 2004 - 23:09:39 GMT
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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