If you know me at all, you know that Hermann Hesse is my favorite author. His last and greatest work Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) [Das Glasperlenspiel] is my favorite book. I like his stories, I identify with his characters, I like his style.
In keeping with my love of Hesse, I have always meant to read Thomas Mann's work since he was a great friend and literary interlocutor to Hesse. In fact, in Magister Ludi Hesse names one of his characters "Thomas van der Trave," which is a veiled allusion to Mann, who grew up in a town on the Trave river in Germany. Van der Trave is one of the most enlightened and noble characters in Hesse's masterpiece.
Finally, I have made time for Thomas Mann. It was almost as if he made time for me, as I saw a wonderful hard back edition of his master work, The Magic Mountain, at a used book sale on campus. I have only read the first few chapters, but already I'm struck by wonderful passages such as this:
Two days travel separated the youth--he was still too young to have thrust his roots down firmly into life--from his own world, from all that he thought of as his own duties, interests, cares and prospects; far more than he had dreamed it would when he sat in the carriage on the way to the station. Space, rolling and revolving between him and his native heath, possessed and wielded powers we generally ascribe to time. From hour to hour it worked changes in him, like to those wrought by time, yet in a way even more striking. Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached, state. Yes, it can even, in the twinkling of an eye, make something like a vagabound of the pedant and Philistine. Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly.
-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter 1939, p. 4.
Contemplating the last few sentences has yielded extreme aesthetic pleasure for me. Mann's prose is enchanting. He evokes the image of the "primitive, unattached state" in order to make palpable the grandiosity of Space and Time. Whatever it is that Hesse and Mann have in common, it is most striking in passages like this one.
6/15/10
The Oil Spill and the Man on the Moon
Everyone has heard this by now: "How is it that we can put a man on the moon but not plug a hole in the ocean?" Or some variant thereof.
I am utterly tired of hearing this. Not only is it irrelevant but it is poorly phrased. This analogy calls out for a corrective response rather than an actual answer. My counter to this question is: "That is misguided. Indeed we can put a man on the moon--but if something were to go wrong with his ship, how likely would we be that we could save him? Or would we most likely find ourselves in a situation similar to the one we are in now involving the Gulf of Mexico. What both of these feats--getting to the moon, drilling a mile underwater--have in common is that they represent typically human endeavors of being able to reach or get to some metaphorical (or literal) great height and have no idea how to get down. Our technology mirrors our teleology--to expand, to go outward, to explore ever further. It does not grow at a cautious pace, but rather in clumsy steps, some more ambitious than others, and some leading to a trip or major fall. The point is that having the technology to get to the moon does not entail that we have the technology to deal with a prolonged or abnormal situation of any kind on the moon. Likewise, we have the technology to drill for oil in the deepest water, but that does not entail that we have the technology to deal with a prolonged or abnormal situation of any kind on the seabed."
Now, whether we should regulate ourselves so that technology grows at a more cautious pace, is another question entirely.
I am utterly tired of hearing this. Not only is it irrelevant but it is poorly phrased. This analogy calls out for a corrective response rather than an actual answer. My counter to this question is: "That is misguided. Indeed we can put a man on the moon--but if something were to go wrong with his ship, how likely would we be that we could save him? Or would we most likely find ourselves in a situation similar to the one we are in now involving the Gulf of Mexico. What both of these feats--getting to the moon, drilling a mile underwater--have in common is that they represent typically human endeavors of being able to reach or get to some metaphorical (or literal) great height and have no idea how to get down. Our technology mirrors our teleology--to expand, to go outward, to explore ever further. It does not grow at a cautious pace, but rather in clumsy steps, some more ambitious than others, and some leading to a trip or major fall. The point is that having the technology to get to the moon does not entail that we have the technology to deal with a prolonged or abnormal situation of any kind on the moon. Likewise, we have the technology to drill for oil in the deepest water, but that does not entail that we have the technology to deal with a prolonged or abnormal situation of any kind on the seabed."
Now, whether we should regulate ourselves so that technology grows at a more cautious pace, is another question entirely.
A Pedagogical Issue
Much recent pedagogy operates on the assumption--the presupposition--that students (or anyone for that matter) have a 10-15 min. attention span. Accordingly, educators (or presenters of information of any kind for that matter) should tailor their lesson plans, presentations, and general mode of educating to this "established" empirical data. You might even say we educators have a duty to do as much as possible, or at least make a strong effort, to stimulate our students, to force them to engage, to "do them justice."
Another might object that this does our students (and citizens for that matter) a disservice. Our job as educators is to act as a resource of content for students--and it is up to them to take responsibility for mastering the information on their own. In fact, this laissez-faire approach may best embody an implicit duty of teaching not to coddle our students, so that they may learn to take responsibility for their own actions.
Personally, I tend to be more optimistic about students than most current pedagogy is. But perhaps my own anecdotal warrant for this optimism is as inadequate as, well, anecdote tends to be. I'd like to think that my own enthusiastic presentation of the material will be sufficient for the students, and that if it is not, its their fault and not mine. Am I a confident educator, or a naive well-wisher? Or even worse, am I actually negatively affecting students through my approach?
More generally, what's the best approach to pedagogy on the spectrum ranging from robust-progressive-liberal-educator to minimalistic-conservative-libertarian? Would love people's thoughts on this.
Another might object that this does our students (and citizens for that matter) a disservice. Our job as educators is to act as a resource of content for students--and it is up to them to take responsibility for mastering the information on their own. In fact, this laissez-faire approach may best embody an implicit duty of teaching not to coddle our students, so that they may learn to take responsibility for their own actions.
Personally, I tend to be more optimistic about students than most current pedagogy is. But perhaps my own anecdotal warrant for this optimism is as inadequate as, well, anecdote tends to be. I'd like to think that my own enthusiastic presentation of the material will be sufficient for the students, and that if it is not, its their fault and not mine. Am I a confident educator, or a naive well-wisher? Or even worse, am I actually negatively affecting students through my approach?
More generally, what's the best approach to pedagogy on the spectrum ranging from robust-progressive-liberal-educator to minimalistic-conservative-libertarian? Would love people's thoughts on this.
6/1/10
Kant's Majesty
Passages like this will always keep me coming back to Kant:
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not need to search for them and merely conjecture them as though they were veiled in obscurity or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The first begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense and extends the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into the unbounded times of their periodic motion, their beginning and their duration. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and presents me in a world which has true infinity but which can be discovered only by the understanding, and I cognize that my connection with that world (and thereby with all those visible worlds as well) is not merely contingent, as in the first case, but universal and necessary. The first view of a countless magnitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital force (one knows not how) must give back to the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which it came. The second, on the contrary, infinitely raises my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as this may be inferred from the purposive determination of my existence by this law, a determination not restricted to the conditions and boundaries of this life but reaching into the infinite.
-Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge 1996.
One might argue that the whole of philosophy is contained in this passage. Kant touches on contingency, necessity, time, space, and morality with grace and precision. Additionally, he does this with a phenomenological tone: there is something that its like to have this most unique perspective, that of the zoon logon echon (animal having reason)--our being-in-the-world as well as our being-beyond-the-world.
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not need to search for them and merely conjecture them as though they were veiled in obscurity or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The first begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense and extends the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into the unbounded times of their periodic motion, their beginning and their duration. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and presents me in a world which has true infinity but which can be discovered only by the understanding, and I cognize that my connection with that world (and thereby with all those visible worlds as well) is not merely contingent, as in the first case, but universal and necessary. The first view of a countless magnitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature, which after it has been for a short time provided with vital force (one knows not how) must give back to the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which it came. The second, on the contrary, infinitely raises my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality and even of the whole sensible world, at least so far as this may be inferred from the purposive determination of my existence by this law, a determination not restricted to the conditions and boundaries of this life but reaching into the infinite.
-Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor, Cambridge 1996.
One might argue that the whole of philosophy is contained in this passage. Kant touches on contingency, necessity, time, space, and morality with grace and precision. Additionally, he does this with a phenomenological tone: there is something that its like to have this most unique perspective, that of the zoon logon echon (animal having reason)--our being-in-the-world as well as our being-beyond-the-world.
5/5/10
the Quantified Self
A recent article in the Times opened my eyes to a growing movement- the "data-driven life." There are many dedicated "self-trackers" out there now, who are taking advantage of increasingly small, light, and affordable technology (or simply just know-how sometimes) to diligently track various aspects of their lives. Think of this as keeping a journal on steroids. Keep track of your workouts? Why not write an app that lets you chart every aspect of your progress, where a heartrate/CO2 monitor as well, and correlate the data over months at time, while comparing it to the calorie counting data you have kept- all in order to gaze in what many are considering the most accurate mirror possible.
These sorts of specialized projects--tracking one's sleep, diet, concentration, coffee intake, flaxseed-influenced cognitive performance, etc.--point to an exciting, but possibly terrifying, trend in how to approach the famous Delphic dictum- "Know thyself." For so long, self-knowledge has been conceived as a sort of primitive access one has to one's own mental life. 'Insight', 'intuition', 'reflection', 'introspection', and 'meditation' have variously described this sort of privileged access. But why not approach self-knowledge scientifically? Something about these projects strike me as very true. They show how 'technology' is not a concept whose extension is limited to human artifacts. Technological artifacts embody a way of thinking- the technological mode of thought. This way of thinking is arguably the distinctively human mode of thought, insofar as humans are unique in their technological mastery over nature. A tool based approach to ourselves may be what allows evolution to continue beyond 'human'- to what we can now only label as 'post-human'. The inadequacy of this label resides in the fact that its meaning is purely dependent on what 'human' means in the first place. But what "post-humanists" have been postulating, roughly, is that technology will enable us to overcome our material bodies, and exist in a "nous[mind]-sphere" of pure consciousness. The Cartesian dream may have in fact been the offspring of the more primal human desire to overcome the so obviously imperfect, transitory sphere of nature and dwell in the eternal, perfect realm of pure spirit. Heck, maybe it all goes back to Plato afterall. Regardless, much of phenomenology and post-WWII european thought has been focused on Descartes' error to separate mind and body, and the pathologies it has bequeathed to Western culture. The later Husserl, Heidegger, and especially Merleau-Ponty have taught us that consciousness is fundamentally embodied, and that to separate our lived-bodily awareness from a higher sphere of consciousness is a mistake. We are insofar as we are in the world, you might say. Again, to be rough, this tradition has developed a suspicion of technology, aware of its artifacts as indicating a mode of thought- a mode of thought that leads to dehumanization, most evident in the wars of the 20th century, Auschwitz as their mechanized culmination. One of the purported reasons Heidegger grew dissatisfied with the Nazi party is that he recognized their overly technological form of domination as inauthentic.
I, for one, see both of these outlooks on technology--as the promise of overcoming our feeble condition, and as the promise of coldly slaughtering our fellow man--as excess and deficiency. We must avoid the excessive optimism of the 'post-humanists' who blindly praise every advance in technology as "progress". Yet the utter skepticism and cynicism regarding technology from the opposite pole is also guilty of blind generalization. Technology is not monolithic. An honest evaluation of technology is one that recognizes various technologies. Don Ihde is a notable exception to the vicious trend in the history of the philosophy of technology. Ihde recognizes that the various sense modalities create vastly different kinds of technology--all allowing for humans to extend their knowledge of nature in vastly divergent directions. A mature view of technology recognizes self-tracking and the data driven life as valiant efforts at self-knowledge. Ones that must be tempered with constant reminders that the data is merely one aspect--one of many that makes us human.
These sorts of specialized projects--tracking one's sleep, diet, concentration, coffee intake, flaxseed-influenced cognitive performance, etc.--point to an exciting, but possibly terrifying, trend in how to approach the famous Delphic dictum- "Know thyself." For so long, self-knowledge has been conceived as a sort of primitive access one has to one's own mental life. 'Insight', 'intuition', 'reflection', 'introspection', and 'meditation' have variously described this sort of privileged access. But why not approach self-knowledge scientifically? Something about these projects strike me as very true. They show how 'technology' is not a concept whose extension is limited to human artifacts. Technological artifacts embody a way of thinking- the technological mode of thought. This way of thinking is arguably the distinctively human mode of thought, insofar as humans are unique in their technological mastery over nature. A tool based approach to ourselves may be what allows evolution to continue beyond 'human'- to what we can now only label as 'post-human'. The inadequacy of this label resides in the fact that its meaning is purely dependent on what 'human' means in the first place. But what "post-humanists" have been postulating, roughly, is that technology will enable us to overcome our material bodies, and exist in a "nous[mind]-sphere" of pure consciousness. The Cartesian dream may have in fact been the offspring of the more primal human desire to overcome the so obviously imperfect, transitory sphere of nature and dwell in the eternal, perfect realm of pure spirit. Heck, maybe it all goes back to Plato afterall. Regardless, much of phenomenology and post-WWII european thought has been focused on Descartes' error to separate mind and body, and the pathologies it has bequeathed to Western culture. The later Husserl, Heidegger, and especially Merleau-Ponty have taught us that consciousness is fundamentally embodied, and that to separate our lived-bodily awareness from a higher sphere of consciousness is a mistake. We are insofar as we are in the world, you might say. Again, to be rough, this tradition has developed a suspicion of technology, aware of its artifacts as indicating a mode of thought- a mode of thought that leads to dehumanization, most evident in the wars of the 20th century, Auschwitz as their mechanized culmination. One of the purported reasons Heidegger grew dissatisfied with the Nazi party is that he recognized their overly technological form of domination as inauthentic.
I, for one, see both of these outlooks on technology--as the promise of overcoming our feeble condition, and as the promise of coldly slaughtering our fellow man--as excess and deficiency. We must avoid the excessive optimism of the 'post-humanists' who blindly praise every advance in technology as "progress". Yet the utter skepticism and cynicism regarding technology from the opposite pole is also guilty of blind generalization. Technology is not monolithic. An honest evaluation of technology is one that recognizes various technologies. Don Ihde is a notable exception to the vicious trend in the history of the philosophy of technology. Ihde recognizes that the various sense modalities create vastly different kinds of technology--all allowing for humans to extend their knowledge of nature in vastly divergent directions. A mature view of technology recognizes self-tracking and the data driven life as valiant efforts at self-knowledge. Ones that must be tempered with constant reminders that the data is merely one aspect--one of many that makes us human.
the Virtuous Workout
Recently, many friends and acquaintances have been devoting themselves to workouts carrying names that are probably in fact designed to inspire cult like worship. There's the "P90X" devotees- of course putting "X" in the title of anything is cool- bonus points for putting it at the end, after a number, thereby demanding that one simply pronounce it "Ex." Then there's this "Spartacus Workout" that apparently is responsible for the ripped abs of Hollywood's elite Persian-stompers. "Crossfit" is your more run of the mill generic workout title- it would be much snappier as "Crossfit-X." But this post isn't about these other workouts. Its about a new workout- one superior to all the "vicious" workouts out there.
Vicious?
That's right, vicious, as in the adjectival form of 'vice'.
What does working out have to do with vice?
Let me explain. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, characterizes virtues as "states" of the soul, as opposed to feelings and capacities. Any virtue exists as a state of the soul along a certain axis, whose poles are the vices corresponding to the virtue- which is the mean. For instance, bravery is the virtue concerned with rationally dealing with fear (more specifically, facing death in battle- badass, I know). The vice of excess is rashness (one extreme), and the vice of deficiency is cowardice (the other extreme). The virtuous person's soul is stable at some point between the two extremes. In the case of bravery, its slightly closer to rashness since rash behavior resembles brave behavior more than cowardice does. Furthermore, the vicious (as in vice-ful) person need not exhibit only one of the vices. Since virtues are characterized as stabilities, vices are characterized as instabilities. Thus, a vicious person tends to oscillate between vices. A rash person rushes in to battle, imitating the truly brave, only to retreat in cowardice once he realizes the true extent of the danger.
Now, what has all this got to do with workouts?
Glad you asked. Most workouts, diet plans, and general intentions by people to "get fit" result in the sort of vicious oscillation described above. People rush in, guns blazing, on a landmark "Monday morning," only to injure themselves, burn out early, or go on periodic food binges. Even the very structure and movements of many standard dude gym sessions exhibits this sort of unhealthy back-and-forth. Jerky repetitions. Overly long breaks between short intense sets. A whole day devoted to only one muscle group, not to be worked again for a week. You can see why so many of these programs fail.
Here, I wish to propose the "virtuous workout" as the stability corresponding to these other vicious plans. Of what does the virtuous workout consist, you ask? Namely, a series of isometric and balance oriented exercises. Every movement is stabilized by one's core, every exercise and repetition integrate several muscle groups, and emphasis is placed on quickly moving through a sequence of movements with as little rest as possible. Essential to the virtuous workout are an exercise ball, a bosu ball, and a medicine ball. With practice, one can learn to jump onto a workout ball without assistance, and pass a medicine ball back and forth between partners. This sort of sequence is fun, challenging, and above all- virtuous.
Vicious?
That's right, vicious, as in the adjectival form of 'vice'.
What does working out have to do with vice?
Let me explain. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, characterizes virtues as "states" of the soul, as opposed to feelings and capacities. Any virtue exists as a state of the soul along a certain axis, whose poles are the vices corresponding to the virtue- which is the mean. For instance, bravery is the virtue concerned with rationally dealing with fear (more specifically, facing death in battle- badass, I know). The vice of excess is rashness (one extreme), and the vice of deficiency is cowardice (the other extreme). The virtuous person's soul is stable at some point between the two extremes. In the case of bravery, its slightly closer to rashness since rash behavior resembles brave behavior more than cowardice does. Furthermore, the vicious (as in vice-ful) person need not exhibit only one of the vices. Since virtues are characterized as stabilities, vices are characterized as instabilities. Thus, a vicious person tends to oscillate between vices. A rash person rushes in to battle, imitating the truly brave, only to retreat in cowardice once he realizes the true extent of the danger.
Now, what has all this got to do with workouts?
Glad you asked. Most workouts, diet plans, and general intentions by people to "get fit" result in the sort of vicious oscillation described above. People rush in, guns blazing, on a landmark "Monday morning," only to injure themselves, burn out early, or go on periodic food binges. Even the very structure and movements of many standard dude gym sessions exhibits this sort of unhealthy back-and-forth. Jerky repetitions. Overly long breaks between short intense sets. A whole day devoted to only one muscle group, not to be worked again for a week. You can see why so many of these programs fail.
Here, I wish to propose the "virtuous workout" as the stability corresponding to these other vicious plans. Of what does the virtuous workout consist, you ask? Namely, a series of isometric and balance oriented exercises. Every movement is stabilized by one's core, every exercise and repetition integrate several muscle groups, and emphasis is placed on quickly moving through a sequence of movements with as little rest as possible. Essential to the virtuous workout are an exercise ball, a bosu ball, and a medicine ball. With practice, one can learn to jump onto a workout ball without assistance, and pass a medicine ball back and forth between partners. This sort of sequence is fun, challenging, and above all- virtuous.
4/27/10
Fragments on Empathy
Recent conversations with strong individuals have prompted me to post some fragments from a paper that I started writing last year but never completed, nor refined. The original structure of the paper was meant to a. lay out the problem, b. provide a historical context, c. map the historical context onto the contemporary debate, d. show how the relevant connections provide insight. I only made it through an abbreviated laying out of the problem and a rough historical overview. Comments would be most welcome:
The Problem
The fundamental issue at hand is the need to reconcile two strongly contrasting intuitions regarding social perception. The first is that an essential property of mental states is that they are not accessible. Prima facie, the way I know about your mental state is fundamentally different from the way I perceive medium sized objects. The second is that the mental states of others, in some basic sense, are directly perceivable, and that understanding the expressive behavior of others is neither a matter of theorizing about it nor sequential processes of simulation and projection. The first intuition evokes Cartesian conceptions of the mental, while the second echoes Wittgenstein’s anti-Cartesian challenge: “Do you look within yourself, in order to recognize the fury in his face?” (Wittgenstein 1980, sect. 927).
Phenomenologists are quick to invoke Wittgenstein’s blunt common sense approach, but their discussions of social perception can result in puzzling conceptual formulations. Gallagher and Zahavi, for instance, claim “that the expressive relation between mental phenomena and behavior is stronger than that of a mere contingent causal connection, though weaker than that of identity” (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008, 185). What could this mean? How are we to conceive of such a relation? I appreciate this attempt to balance the aforementioned contrasting intuitions, but in order for phenomenological considerations to be significant, further conceptual clarification is needed.
In order to provide the necessary clarification, first we need to identify the concepts that are causing the confusion. Clearly, the concept ‘expression’ is crucial to the debate, as it provides the link between observable behavior and private mental states. But if we begin to explore this concept, we find that our ability to discern our own mental states becomes caught up in any debate about how to discern the mental states of others. As Davidson has pointed out, “If the mental states of other are known only through their behavioral…manifestation, while this is not true of our own mental states, why should we think our own mental states are anything like those of others?” (Davidson 2001, 207). Thus, if phenomenology is dedicated to studying consciousness from the first person perspective, it may appear that it has nothing to contribute to an account of social perception.
History
The problem of social perception is nothing new in philosophy. Indeed, “the problem of other minds” is at least as old as Descartes. However, the contemporary debate between phenomenology and ‘analytic’ theories of mind can be made clearer by examining a very similar debate that was ongoing around the turn of the 20th century.
The concept of ‘expressivity’ did much of the heavy lifting in early explanations of how phenomena with both ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ reality are adequately grasped. At the turn of the century, philosophers, psychologists, and historians all saw empathy (einfühlung) and understanding (Verstehen) as intimately related concepts, both of which dealt with how we are able to grasp the ‘inner’ or ‘spiritual’ reality of something based on its ‘outer’ manifestation. Theodore Lipps, saw empathy as an especially important concept for explaining how aesthetic experience is constituted as meaningful. In Lipps (1903), our ability to understand and appreciate the beauty of external objects is directly linked to our ability to recognize other subjects as having minds. Lipps drew this connection “since for him the paradigm of beauty for human is the form, movement, and expressivity of the human body itself” (Steuber 2006, 7). This led Lipps to infer the existence of an underlying sub-personal mechanism that allows for the noninferential and quasi-perceptual character of aesthetic experience (ibid). Lipps characterized this sub-personal mechanism as ‘inner imitation’, and his primary intention was to causally explain why it is that we “move our legs when we see dancing” and “…” [citation needed].
While Lipps was interested in explaining the causal genesis of empathy through the function of basic sub-personal processes, other thinkers described empathy as a higher-level cognitive process. The early theorists in the hermeneutic tradition, namely Schleiermacher and Dilthey, also linked einfühlung and Verstehen, but had aims different from Lipps’. Schleiermacher saw empathy as the ability to understand other minds by imagining ourselves in various contexts [cite Scheleiermacher 1998, p. 92]. Dilthey expanded on this description, but opted for the term ‘reexperiencing’ (Nacherleben) to capture the methodological procedure of understanding others, guided by a variety of historical sources and by our knowledge of the general political, economic, social, and psychological state of affairs relevant for an adequate grasp of a particular historical time [cite Dilthey 1981, 172, 175-176]. As Steuber points out, “It was Dilthey’s…complete ‘psychologization’ of the interpretive process that made possible the common identification of the concept of understanding and empathy that we find at the beginning of the twentieth century” (2006, 11).
Stepping back for a moment, before examining Stein/Husserl’s phenomenological critique of the then prevailing views of empathy/understanding, we can see that at the turn of the century a similar twofold distinction within the concept of empathy was already taking shape. Taking Lipps as paradigmatic, one side of this distinction developed the concept of empathy as part of a psychological-causal-genetic account of what processes must take place within an individual when social perception occurs. The other side of this distinction, as exemplified by the hermeneutic tradition inaugurated by Schleiermacher and Dilthey, conceived of empathy as a highly cognitive process involved in interpreting the meaning of the signs, marks, and artifacts created by others. Lipps was interested understanding what sub-personal processes could cause social perception. Schleiermacher and Dilthey were interested in the personal processes that could allow for understanding others from disparate places and times. Before even considering what phenomenology might add to this characterization, it is noteworthy that contemporary empathy theorists have already mapped this framework onto the contemporary TT/ST debate. Steuber (2006) sees recent neurobiology as supporting Lipps’ conception of empathy, referring to this sub-personal, underlying causal mechanism as ‘basic empathy’—which he distinguishes from ‘reenactive empathy’, which allows us to “conceive of another person’s more complex social behavior as the behavior of a rational agent who acts for a reason,” which corresponds to the more robust concept of empathy developed in the hermeneutic tradition (20-21).
Edith Stein’s 1916 doctoral dissertation under Edmund Husserl, Zum Problem der Einfühlung (On The Problem of Empathy, trans. 1989) explores empathy as a phenomenon sui generis. On Stein’s account, Lipps’ theory of ‘inner imitation’ confuses social perception, or perception of ‘foreign experience’, with self-experience, or that which is ‘primordially given’. Her basic claim is that Lipps’ theory characterizes empathy as ‘convergence’ or ‘an experience of oneness’ between observer and what is observed. One way to understand this is by highlighting the difference between a memory and a flashback. When one has a memory, one perceives an experience that is no longer present. When one has a flashback, one experiences an experience as if it were literally present. In Stein’s terms, memory (along with fantasy) is an example of non-primordial experience—the subject has an experience of an experience that is not ‘fully given’ in the way that my present experience of my direct surroundings are given to me. A flashback, on the other hand, differs from a memory precisely because this line between non-primoridal and primordial experience is blurred. Empathy, in Stein’s sense, “can only be the non-primordial experience which announces a primordial one” (Stein 1989, 13-14). The potentially traumatic effects of a flashback are possible insofar as one is having an experience which is indistinguishable from the present, fully given experience typical of everyday perception. Thus, empathy shares the structure of memory and fantasy, whereas Lipps’ characterization of ‘inner imitation’ too easily leads to a conception of empathy having the same structure as flashback.
Lipps may also be understood as having confused the concepts of empathy and sympathy. Stein is careful to note that sympathy is a primordial experience whereas empathy is not, however this does not preclude the possibility of the two experiences coinciding. For example, there is a difference between my perceiving the grief in your facial expression and my feeling that grief. My empathetic perception of your grief may lead me to attribute a mental state to you, and it may serve as the basis for my theorizing about the larger context of your grief; but at no point is it necessary to this experience that I myself feel grief. If you are my friend or loved one, and I perceive that you are grieving, I myself, as someone who cares for your well-being, may also feel grief. But this primordial feeling of grief that I now have is better characterized as sympathy, or feeling with the other, and not empathy. Thus it is common for therapists to speak of the importance being empathetic while remaining unsympathetic. The job of the therapist is to understand the mental states of the other without being affected by them.
Lipps’ talk of ‘oneness’ and ‘convergence’ are especially problematic if carried out to its logical conclusion—telepathy. For if I truly was to ‘feel your pain’, the distinction between us as separate egos would be entirely erased. If I feel your pain as you feel it, then does it even make sense to call this empathy? The phenomenon we set out to explain, under the name ‘empathy’, was the phenomena whereby I am somehow aware of your mental states. If I am experiencing your mental states qua you and not qua I, this is not empathy.
The Problem
The fundamental issue at hand is the need to reconcile two strongly contrasting intuitions regarding social perception. The first is that an essential property of mental states is that they are not accessible. Prima facie, the way I know about your mental state is fundamentally different from the way I perceive medium sized objects. The second is that the mental states of others, in some basic sense, are directly perceivable, and that understanding the expressive behavior of others is neither a matter of theorizing about it nor sequential processes of simulation and projection. The first intuition evokes Cartesian conceptions of the mental, while the second echoes Wittgenstein’s anti-Cartesian challenge: “Do you look within yourself, in order to recognize the fury in his face?” (Wittgenstein 1980, sect. 927).
Phenomenologists are quick to invoke Wittgenstein’s blunt common sense approach, but their discussions of social perception can result in puzzling conceptual formulations. Gallagher and Zahavi, for instance, claim “that the expressive relation between mental phenomena and behavior is stronger than that of a mere contingent causal connection, though weaker than that of identity” (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008, 185). What could this mean? How are we to conceive of such a relation? I appreciate this attempt to balance the aforementioned contrasting intuitions, but in order for phenomenological considerations to be significant, further conceptual clarification is needed.
In order to provide the necessary clarification, first we need to identify the concepts that are causing the confusion. Clearly, the concept ‘expression’ is crucial to the debate, as it provides the link between observable behavior and private mental states. But if we begin to explore this concept, we find that our ability to discern our own mental states becomes caught up in any debate about how to discern the mental states of others. As Davidson has pointed out, “If the mental states of other are known only through their behavioral…manifestation, while this is not true of our own mental states, why should we think our own mental states are anything like those of others?” (Davidson 2001, 207). Thus, if phenomenology is dedicated to studying consciousness from the first person perspective, it may appear that it has nothing to contribute to an account of social perception.
History
The problem of social perception is nothing new in philosophy. Indeed, “the problem of other minds” is at least as old as Descartes. However, the contemporary debate between phenomenology and ‘analytic’ theories of mind can be made clearer by examining a very similar debate that was ongoing around the turn of the 20th century.
The concept of ‘expressivity’ did much of the heavy lifting in early explanations of how phenomena with both ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ reality are adequately grasped. At the turn of the century, philosophers, psychologists, and historians all saw empathy (einfühlung) and understanding (Verstehen) as intimately related concepts, both of which dealt with how we are able to grasp the ‘inner’ or ‘spiritual’ reality of something based on its ‘outer’ manifestation. Theodore Lipps, saw empathy as an especially important concept for explaining how aesthetic experience is constituted as meaningful. In Lipps (1903), our ability to understand and appreciate the beauty of external objects is directly linked to our ability to recognize other subjects as having minds. Lipps drew this connection “since for him the paradigm of beauty for human is the form, movement, and expressivity of the human body itself” (Steuber 2006, 7). This led Lipps to infer the existence of an underlying sub-personal mechanism that allows for the noninferential and quasi-perceptual character of aesthetic experience (ibid). Lipps characterized this sub-personal mechanism as ‘inner imitation’, and his primary intention was to causally explain why it is that we “move our legs when we see dancing” and “…” [citation needed].
While Lipps was interested in explaining the causal genesis of empathy through the function of basic sub-personal processes, other thinkers described empathy as a higher-level cognitive process. The early theorists in the hermeneutic tradition, namely Schleiermacher and Dilthey, also linked einfühlung and Verstehen, but had aims different from Lipps’. Schleiermacher saw empathy as the ability to understand other minds by imagining ourselves in various contexts [cite Scheleiermacher 1998, p. 92]. Dilthey expanded on this description, but opted for the term ‘reexperiencing’ (Nacherleben) to capture the methodological procedure of understanding others, guided by a variety of historical sources and by our knowledge of the general political, economic, social, and psychological state of affairs relevant for an adequate grasp of a particular historical time [cite Dilthey 1981, 172, 175-176]. As Steuber points out, “It was Dilthey’s…complete ‘psychologization’ of the interpretive process that made possible the common identification of the concept of understanding and empathy that we find at the beginning of the twentieth century” (2006, 11).
Stepping back for a moment, before examining Stein/Husserl’s phenomenological critique of the then prevailing views of empathy/understanding, we can see that at the turn of the century a similar twofold distinction within the concept of empathy was already taking shape. Taking Lipps as paradigmatic, one side of this distinction developed the concept of empathy as part of a psychological-causal-genetic account of what processes must take place within an individual when social perception occurs. The other side of this distinction, as exemplified by the hermeneutic tradition inaugurated by Schleiermacher and Dilthey, conceived of empathy as a highly cognitive process involved in interpreting the meaning of the signs, marks, and artifacts created by others. Lipps was interested understanding what sub-personal processes could cause social perception. Schleiermacher and Dilthey were interested in the personal processes that could allow for understanding others from disparate places and times. Before even considering what phenomenology might add to this characterization, it is noteworthy that contemporary empathy theorists have already mapped this framework onto the contemporary TT/ST debate. Steuber (2006) sees recent neurobiology as supporting Lipps’ conception of empathy, referring to this sub-personal, underlying causal mechanism as ‘basic empathy’—which he distinguishes from ‘reenactive empathy’, which allows us to “conceive of another person’s more complex social behavior as the behavior of a rational agent who acts for a reason,” which corresponds to the more robust concept of empathy developed in the hermeneutic tradition (20-21).
Edith Stein’s 1916 doctoral dissertation under Edmund Husserl, Zum Problem der Einfühlung (On The Problem of Empathy, trans. 1989) explores empathy as a phenomenon sui generis. On Stein’s account, Lipps’ theory of ‘inner imitation’ confuses social perception, or perception of ‘foreign experience’, with self-experience, or that which is ‘primordially given’. Her basic claim is that Lipps’ theory characterizes empathy as ‘convergence’ or ‘an experience of oneness’ between observer and what is observed. One way to understand this is by highlighting the difference between a memory and a flashback. When one has a memory, one perceives an experience that is no longer present. When one has a flashback, one experiences an experience as if it were literally present. In Stein’s terms, memory (along with fantasy) is an example of non-primordial experience—the subject has an experience of an experience that is not ‘fully given’ in the way that my present experience of my direct surroundings are given to me. A flashback, on the other hand, differs from a memory precisely because this line between non-primoridal and primordial experience is blurred. Empathy, in Stein’s sense, “can only be the non-primordial experience which announces a primordial one” (Stein 1989, 13-14). The potentially traumatic effects of a flashback are possible insofar as one is having an experience which is indistinguishable from the present, fully given experience typical of everyday perception. Thus, empathy shares the structure of memory and fantasy, whereas Lipps’ characterization of ‘inner imitation’ too easily leads to a conception of empathy having the same structure as flashback.
Lipps may also be understood as having confused the concepts of empathy and sympathy. Stein is careful to note that sympathy is a primordial experience whereas empathy is not, however this does not preclude the possibility of the two experiences coinciding. For example, there is a difference between my perceiving the grief in your facial expression and my feeling that grief. My empathetic perception of your grief may lead me to attribute a mental state to you, and it may serve as the basis for my theorizing about the larger context of your grief; but at no point is it necessary to this experience that I myself feel grief. If you are my friend or loved one, and I perceive that you are grieving, I myself, as someone who cares for your well-being, may also feel grief. But this primordial feeling of grief that I now have is better characterized as sympathy, or feeling with the other, and not empathy. Thus it is common for therapists to speak of the importance being empathetic while remaining unsympathetic. The job of the therapist is to understand the mental states of the other without being affected by them.
Lipps’ talk of ‘oneness’ and ‘convergence’ are especially problematic if carried out to its logical conclusion—telepathy. For if I truly was to ‘feel your pain’, the distinction between us as separate egos would be entirely erased. If I feel your pain as you feel it, then does it even make sense to call this empathy? The phenomenon we set out to explain, under the name ‘empathy’, was the phenomena whereby I am somehow aware of your mental states. If I am experiencing your mental states qua you and not qua I, this is not empathy.
4/21/10
Recent Work
In this paper I will explain how the notions of necessity, a priority, and analyticity have traditionally been related in light of the classical notion of a concept. This notion has its roots in Gottlob Frege’s notion of a sense, and his division of reality into three realms. I will show that the Fregean view of how language relates to reality is difficult to maintain in light of an example put forward by Keith Donnellan. Both Donnellan and Hilary Putnam retain the Fregean view, leading to unsatisfying conclusions regarding the nature of necessity.
Frege divides reality into three distinct “realms.” The first two are relatively familiar: the outer world (public objects perceiveable by the five senses that exist independently of anyone’s thinking or perceiving) and the inner world (private ideas that are imperceptible to the five senses and depend for their existence on the subjective life of a thinker). Frege’s third realm consists of senses, which are not perceivable with the five senses, yet are public and exist independently.
A sense is a unique way that an object is presented to a thinker. On Frege’s account of language, the meaning of a term includes both its sense and its referent. A referent is what the term picks out in the world, and the sense is the unique way a referent is presented. For example, the terms ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’ refer to the same object in the world (Venus), but have different senses—i.e., they pick out the referent in unique ways. Properly understood, a term expresses a sense and refers to an object. The sense determines the object.
A thought is the sense of a sentence, constituted by the senses of its terms. A thought, in virtue of its representational character, is “something for which the question of truth can arise at all” (Frege 36). That is, thoughts are about something other than themselves—namely, the stuff and structure of the world. Thus, philosophers who take a Fregean view of language attempt to analyze the properties of thoughts in order to learn about the structure of the world.
Fregean senses “embody” or “contain” what C.I. Lewis calls criteria of application. For Lewis, the criteria of application for a term, t, is the set of sensible features that determine the appropriate application of t. These features are the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be appropriately called t. The classical notion of a concept is a mental representation of these conditions. Thus, while technically different, for this paper it will be sufficient to think of senses and concepts as uniquely characterizing sets of conditions.
For Lewis, we can reflect on the senses of terms and discover inclusion relations. For example, if we reflect on the sense of ‘square’ and the sense of ‘rectangle’, we find that the criteria of application for ‘square’ already include the criteria of application for ‘rectangle’. Thus, we come to know the necessary truth expressed by (1) “All squares are rectangles”. Necessity is a metaphysical property, characterizing features of the world and its structure. Necessary features must be the case, as opposed to contingent features, which could vary. One can know the necessity of (1) a priori as opposed to a posteriori. This is an epistemological distinction. A posteriori knowledge depends on sense experience, whereas (1) can be known simply by understanding the meanings of ‘square’ and ‘rectangle’, requiring no sense experience. Furthermore, (1) is analytic, and not synthetic. This is a semantic distinction, characterizing language and its relation to the world. Sentences that are true in virtue of the rules of language are analytic. Sentences that require something nonlinguistic to make them true are synthetic.
The concurrence of necessity, a priority, and analyticity is a feature of the Fregean view of language in which senses determine objects. If we consider Donnellan’s example, (2) “All whales are mammals”, we see that the Fregean view encounters difficulties. On this view we should see that (2) is analytic by reflecting on ‘whale’ and ‘mammal’, grasp the inclusion relations therein, and know a priori that (2) expresses a necessary truth. However, a sailor who clearly understands what ‘whale’ means, and can accurately identify whales without fail, may very well never know that all whales are mammals. The sailor’s sense of ‘whale’ is something like ‘large, oblong sea creature with a blowhole’. Clearly the sense of ‘whale’ does not include the criteria of application for ‘mammal’ if we consider the sailor a competent speaker. Now suppose that some of the creatures we have been calling whales turn out not to have mammary glands, precluding them from being called mammals. Are these creatures still whales? Does (2) still express a necessary truth?
Donnellan and Putnam both say this example confronts us with a choice about how we use language. On their Fregean view, what determines what a whale is is not distinct from what ‘whale’ means. If what we speak about is mediated by senses, then what a whale is is determined by the sense of ‘whale’. If we base our answer to the question of whether to call these new creatures whales on the sense of ‘whale’, there are metaphysical consequences; for (2) would no longer be necessary, and necessity is a metaphysical property. Thus, we are faced with the paradoxical conclusion that necessary truths can somehow change. Alternatively, we might base our answer on the nature of the creatures themselves, in which case these creatures without mammary glands are not whales.
Frege divides reality into three distinct “realms.” The first two are relatively familiar: the outer world (public objects perceiveable by the five senses that exist independently of anyone’s thinking or perceiving) and the inner world (private ideas that are imperceptible to the five senses and depend for their existence on the subjective life of a thinker). Frege’s third realm consists of senses, which are not perceivable with the five senses, yet are public and exist independently.
A sense is a unique way that an object is presented to a thinker. On Frege’s account of language, the meaning of a term includes both its sense and its referent. A referent is what the term picks out in the world, and the sense is the unique way a referent is presented. For example, the terms ‘the morning star’ and ‘the evening star’ refer to the same object in the world (Venus), but have different senses—i.e., they pick out the referent in unique ways. Properly understood, a term expresses a sense and refers to an object. The sense determines the object.
A thought is the sense of a sentence, constituted by the senses of its terms. A thought, in virtue of its representational character, is “something for which the question of truth can arise at all” (Frege 36). That is, thoughts are about something other than themselves—namely, the stuff and structure of the world. Thus, philosophers who take a Fregean view of language attempt to analyze the properties of thoughts in order to learn about the structure of the world.
Fregean senses “embody” or “contain” what C.I. Lewis calls criteria of application. For Lewis, the criteria of application for a term, t, is the set of sensible features that determine the appropriate application of t. These features are the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be appropriately called t. The classical notion of a concept is a mental representation of these conditions. Thus, while technically different, for this paper it will be sufficient to think of senses and concepts as uniquely characterizing sets of conditions.
For Lewis, we can reflect on the senses of terms and discover inclusion relations. For example, if we reflect on the sense of ‘square’ and the sense of ‘rectangle’, we find that the criteria of application for ‘square’ already include the criteria of application for ‘rectangle’. Thus, we come to know the necessary truth expressed by (1) “All squares are rectangles”. Necessity is a metaphysical property, characterizing features of the world and its structure. Necessary features must be the case, as opposed to contingent features, which could vary. One can know the necessity of (1) a priori as opposed to a posteriori. This is an epistemological distinction. A posteriori knowledge depends on sense experience, whereas (1) can be known simply by understanding the meanings of ‘square’ and ‘rectangle’, requiring no sense experience. Furthermore, (1) is analytic, and not synthetic. This is a semantic distinction, characterizing language and its relation to the world. Sentences that are true in virtue of the rules of language are analytic. Sentences that require something nonlinguistic to make them true are synthetic.
The concurrence of necessity, a priority, and analyticity is a feature of the Fregean view of language in which senses determine objects. If we consider Donnellan’s example, (2) “All whales are mammals”, we see that the Fregean view encounters difficulties. On this view we should see that (2) is analytic by reflecting on ‘whale’ and ‘mammal’, grasp the inclusion relations therein, and know a priori that (2) expresses a necessary truth. However, a sailor who clearly understands what ‘whale’ means, and can accurately identify whales without fail, may very well never know that all whales are mammals. The sailor’s sense of ‘whale’ is something like ‘large, oblong sea creature with a blowhole’. Clearly the sense of ‘whale’ does not include the criteria of application for ‘mammal’ if we consider the sailor a competent speaker. Now suppose that some of the creatures we have been calling whales turn out not to have mammary glands, precluding them from being called mammals. Are these creatures still whales? Does (2) still express a necessary truth?
Donnellan and Putnam both say this example confronts us with a choice about how we use language. On their Fregean view, what determines what a whale is is not distinct from what ‘whale’ means. If what we speak about is mediated by senses, then what a whale is is determined by the sense of ‘whale’. If we base our answer to the question of whether to call these new creatures whales on the sense of ‘whale’, there are metaphysical consequences; for (2) would no longer be necessary, and necessity is a metaphysical property. Thus, we are faced with the paradoxical conclusion that necessary truths can somehow change. Alternatively, we might base our answer on the nature of the creatures themselves, in which case these creatures without mammary glands are not whales.
4/8/10
Ad(ded) Sense
I can hardly watch TV without constantly flipping channels. I suppose I am a child of the postmodern, or some Deleuzian symptom has got the best of me. In any case, one of my favorite past times has become flipping between Fox News and MSNBC. I have come to view both as theater at this point, and just because I lean left politically doesn't mean that I don't find the way things are presented on MSNBC to be equally absurd. Take last night for instance:
Fox- Glenn Beck and Al Sharpton bearing their souls on the right to free expression, Beck trying to liken Tea Partiers to Civil Rights Movement participants (in itself laughable). However, just as I'm shedding a tear and actually feeling as though these two men are on to something: commercial for adult onset ADHD ("Are you dumb?- take these pills!" - a recurring theme we shall find).
Flip back to MSNBC: in perfect juxtaposition, MSNBC is airing an ad for the New York Times weekender subscription! ("Are you very literate, and very cultured?- buy this!")
Back to Fox- effervescent hot tub ad with old lady moaning in delight in the tub- 'nuff said.
MSNBC- "Do you like bourgeois sports?- buy this satellite TV SOCCER package!"
Haha, at this point, let's take stock. We have one view enjoying his NY Times with soccer on in the background, and another soaking in a hot tub to relieve pain while popping attention pills to be less dumb.
back to Fox- boner pills- (what else?)
MSNBC- get your masters from so-and-so
This rounds out the picture nicely. Now back to the programing:
MSNBC- the greatness of Obama’s nuclear treaty, likening it to Reagan’s (a common MSNBC tactic: "Hey conservatives, you may hate Obama, but Obama is being like Reagan, so now you say you hate Reagan- you're hypocrites! Haha, we got you!")
Flip back to Fox: Beck has a blackboard out and says “anti-capitalist ‘world-wide workers’” “radicals” “Marxist” and “communists” and “in the white house” in one sentence. (Even better is Beck's delivery. He has a way of throwing his hands up and shrugging while jutting his lower lip out into your living room. "He's so earnest!")
MSNBC- Rupert Murdoch being trashed by Rachel Maddow and a pundit from the Huffington Post.
Fox- hands free cell phone device commercial- “Jupiter Jack”
MSNBC- Boo Tea Party!
All of this went on for half an hour. And originally I turned on the TV to hear some news about Kyrzgstan and see some images of revolt. Not mentioned once. (And yes, I checked CNN, they were busy outsourcing their news coverage to Twitter- cf. Jon Stewart on this issue).
4/6/10
Philosophy in Play
Having just read the first dialogue of my professor Ermanno Bencivenga's Philosophy in Play, I thought it was worth sharing some of the best passages:
"...any action can be located in an indefinite number of contexts, of different (spatiotemporal) width, where different choices turn out to be natural. If the context of my present behavior is limited to myself and the last five minutes, an ontology of tables may be the most natural one, whereas if it's to be understood as mankind facing the world during this century, it may be just as natural to put it in terms of particles. So, instead of solving the problem, a reference to the context seals its mystery, for in order to use the expression "the context" meaningfully one must postulate the very act of choice among infinitely many alternatives that reference meant to account for" (29).
"I said that the presence of philosophers is advantageous for the community, but this doesn't mean--as one often thinks--that it's advantageous for it to have official institutions where philosophers can work...Because an institution must be something definite, with a set of rules, with well-defined "institutional" tasks, established once and for all...But here we're talking about a practice that contradicts all definitions , denies all boundaries, mocks all prohibitions. We're talking about a way of 'articulating' ideas that might frighten the very people who had the ideas in the first place...Indeed its a commonplace that philosophy is never done at the philosophy department...Which doesn't mean that the people doing philosophy shouldn't work and be paid in a department; in my opinion, however, they do philosophy precisely to the extent that they remain at the margins of the tasks for which they are paid, or even oppose them...Articulating a new philosophy is a value in itself, and if in order to convince people to do so it's necessary to use the rhetorical artifice of referring to the difficulties of the old philosophy then let there be artifice, let there be rhetoric, let those lies come forth that will earn us heaven" (43-44, my emphasis).
"...any action can be located in an indefinite number of contexts, of different (spatiotemporal) width, where different choices turn out to be natural. If the context of my present behavior is limited to myself and the last five minutes, an ontology of tables may be the most natural one, whereas if it's to be understood as mankind facing the world during this century, it may be just as natural to put it in terms of particles. So, instead of solving the problem, a reference to the context seals its mystery, for in order to use the expression "the context" meaningfully one must postulate the very act of choice among infinitely many alternatives that reference meant to account for" (29).
"I said that the presence of philosophers is advantageous for the community, but this doesn't mean--as one often thinks--that it's advantageous for it to have official institutions where philosophers can work...Because an institution must be something definite, with a set of rules, with well-defined "institutional" tasks, established once and for all...But here we're talking about a practice that contradicts all definitions , denies all boundaries, mocks all prohibitions. We're talking about a way of 'articulating' ideas that might frighten the very people who had the ideas in the first place...Indeed its a commonplace that philosophy is never done at the philosophy department...Which doesn't mean that the people doing philosophy shouldn't work and be paid in a department; in my opinion, however, they do philosophy precisely to the extent that they remain at the margins of the tasks for which they are paid, or even oppose them...Articulating a new philosophy is a value in itself, and if in order to convince people to do so it's necessary to use the rhetorical artifice of referring to the difficulties of the old philosophy then let there be artifice, let there be rhetoric, let those lies come forth that will earn us heaven" (43-44, my emphasis).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)