tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post7554549406260752228..comments2023-08-08T00:37:45.098-07:00Comments on A Philosophy Job Market Blog: I Don't Like the Odds You're GivingPseudonymous Grad Studenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00627480292942427387noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-84865467190395921052008-02-14T05:29:00.000-08:002008-02-14T05:29:00.000-08:00"No, nobody should point that out. Everybody alrea..."No, nobody should point that out. Everybody already knows that, and this is why when we use the term 'analytic philosophers' these days we're not talking about that original sense."<BR/><BR/>Gee, that seems kind of odd. The problem with the current debate seems to be precisely that no one can agree on what "analytic philosophy" is today (or "continental philosophy", for that matter) -- isn't that why there are so many people throwing barbs rather than engaging in useful debate. So maybe some precision in the use of terms would actually be helpful. And that's kind of something that philosophers pride themselves on, at least "analytic" philosophers do.<BR/><BR/>So, in summary, maybe ambiguating between analytic philosophy and analytic* philosophy is part of the problem -- huh?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-15649680894369496522008-02-13T09:04:00.000-08:002008-02-13T09:04:00.000-08:00In case anyone's wondering, the real "Pierre Hadot...In case anyone's wondering, the real "Pierre Hadot" is a French classicist who published a fairly influential collection of essays awhile back entitled "Philosophy as a Way of Life." The basic thesis is that philosophy in antiquity was conceived principally as a "spiritual practice" of which philosophical discourse was only one component. He goes on to lament the extent to which philosophy has ceased to be a "way of life" or a "spiritual practice" and instead has become dominated by the practice of abstract and highly specialized philosophical discourse which has also been "professionalized" and "institutionalized" by the universities. Nehemas (sp?) has made similar arguments here and there over the years. <BR/><BR/>Among other things, the poster known as "Pierre Hadot" seems to be preoccupied with similar concerns. However, I do not think it is the case that individual philosophers are INCAPABLE of regarding their philosophical practices as a "way of life" while still participating in the philosophical profession (vis-a-vis producing philosophical scholarship, etc). I would take issue with the idea that EVERYONE should regard philosophy in this way. In addition to being ethically problematic, such a prescription seems impossible to realize in practice.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-18420770986394477632008-02-11T14:37:00.000-08:002008-02-11T14:37:00.000-08:00"Shouldn't someone point out that there are very f..."Shouldn't someone point out that there are very few analytic philosophers (in the strict sense of the term) left in the world?"<BR/><BR/>No, nobody should point that out. Everybody already knows that, and this is why when we use the term 'analytic philosophers' these days we're not talking about that original sense.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-8784324428107807182008-02-11T13:28:00.000-08:002008-02-11T13:28:00.000-08:00Shouldn't someone point out that there are very fe...Shouldn't someone point out that there are very few analytic philosophers (in the strict sense of the term) left in the world? Contemporary Anglo-American philosophy has strong roots in the analytic tradition, and the ordinary language tradition, and the pragmatist tradition, etc. but most philosophers in this country can't really be identified with any one of those.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-52399529196619087842008-02-11T08:01:00.000-08:002008-02-11T08:01:00.000-08:00Something tells me Hadot would have no problem con...Something tells me Hadot would have no problem conceding that mathematicians are as worthless as (analytic?) philosophers. <BR/><BR/>And while it's clearly false that analytic philosophy has had absolutely NO impact in other disciplines, I think it would be equally false to say that it has had an enormous impact in other disciplines. "Marginal" is the term I would use. (This is not a pot-shot at analytic philosophy either; I don't think we should be gauging the worth of our field vis-a-vis its impact in other fields. Still, there can be no doubt that various schools of Continental thought have had an appreciably greater impact in other fields, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Again, I'm not saying this counts in it's favor or against it - it's just a fact.)<BR/><BR/>I personally think this is an interesting debate but it's growing a bit stale. It would have gone a lot better without all the contentious claims about the relative merits of analytic vs. continental philosophy. The question "why is philosophical research valuable" is an interesting and serious one that deserves attention, regardless of the KIND of research being done (i.e., analytic vs. continental). In seeking to answer said question, moreover, surely one can bracket the latter distinction and focus purely on the practice of publishing and conference-presenting. Also, one can distinguish between the value of philosophical research PER SE, and the distinct questions of whether, why, and to what extent research should be regarded as a major criterion in hiring practices. <BR/><BR/>By my lights, the lattermost questions are the ones most relevant in this context (i.e., a blog about the philosophy job market). Personally I haven't seen anyone make a case that research (whether potential or actual) SHOULD be more highly regarded than teaching ability, say, even at so-called "research institutions." I think such a case needs to be made, especially since, as Hadot pointed out, universities and colleges do not seem to be paying philosophers to do research so much as to teach undergraduates and/or train graduate students. From a Leiterrian perspective, it would seem that copious and well-regarded research is conducive to attracting students to graduate programs. Beyond that, I'm hard-pressed to see why universities would give a damn about it, since philosophical research (unlike scientific research) doesn't exactly pay the bills.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-15164563374820923582008-02-10T17:35:00.000-08:002008-02-10T17:35:00.000-08:00Here's an argument (rhetorical diatribe, whatever)...Here's an argument (rhetorical diatribe, whatever) from someone who's a lot like Pierre H.:<BR/><BR/>Here's a question: why is research (which is better termed scholarship) in mathematics so highly regarded? If you think about it, mathematics is little more than a tiny, extremely insular club of self-proclaimed intellectuals who spend most of their time playing what amounts to an ongoing game with other members of the club. "Scholarship," whether in the form of books and articles that are only read by other mathematicians (if you're lucky) or papers that are presented to other mathematicians at conferences, are like the "moves" in the game. Whether a mood is considered "good" or "bad," however, is largely determined by its popularity within the club. [Editor's note: you might think this is false. Perhaps it is; but it is no clearly *more* false than P.H.'s original comment about analytic philosophers --- esp. the M&E folk he seems most bitter about...] The best players are the ones who get everyone in the club talking about THEIR move(s) instead of making moves of their own. If they're really good, then end up becoming famous or prestigious within the club.<BR/><BR/>Here's the thing, though: the club is bankrolled by colleges and universities. To be a member of the club and play its game, you have to perform services for the club's benefactors. In many cases, excellence in the performance of such services, such as teaching, counts little towards one's prestige within the club. It seldom, if ever, counts as "move," let alone a "good move," within the dumb little game.<BR/><BR/>Famous mathematicians anymore are like champions in a provincial bowling league. No one outside of the mathematics club knows who they are or gives a fuck what they do. Even those who do give some kind of fuck generally don't understand why these guys are (allegedly) important. And in fairness, given the exclusivity and insularity of the club, which seldom makes any real contributions to the public intellectual life of society, why would anyone outside the club know or care about who is "famous" within it?<BR/><BR/>...<BR/><BR/> 9/10ths of contemporary mathematics has about as much public, political significance as a chess tournament or a spirited game of croquet. Mathematicians are a bunch of gamers. They get paid to teach, or maybe to draw in graduate students who are dumb enough to want to join the club, but beyond that the universities and the colleges, let alone the rest of the intellectual world, could give a fuck less about what they do - because what they do is basically play "Dance Dance Revolution" with lots of variables and fancy words like "inaccessible cardinals" and "Grothendieck groups." For fuck's sake.<BR/><BR/>---<BR/><BR/>I think pseudo-P.H.'s argument is clearly bad. There's *something* interesting that mathematical researchers are learning, even if I don't really understand it or understand its "significance". So, important question: why is philosophy any worse off than mathematics?<BR/><BR/>Potential answer 1: "But mathematics does stuff that helps us do better science (read=physics or computer science), and we all know *that's* important!" <BR/><BR/>Reply: yes, but only a fraction of what goes on in math departments is relevant to these more "secure" endeavors. And, arguably, a fraction of what goes on in philosophy *is* relevant to endeavors in other sciences as well: believe it or not, physics has been influenced (in a good way, many think) by what's been done by philosophers of science and physics; linguistics has been greatly influenced by philosophy of language (the majority of semanticists will announce their indebtedness to Frege, and one of the foundational papers of contemporary semantics is (gasp!) David Lewis's "Generalized Semantics"); the work of various philosophers of mind (e.g. the Churchlands and Fodor, albeit on very different ends of the spectrum) has made serious contributions to theoretical psychology and the foundations of cognitive science...<BR/><BR/>Potential answer 2: "But mathematics is getting at some true facts about the world -- real knowledge!"<BR/><BR/>Reply: And philosophy isn't? Well, maybe it's not -- but its practitioners (this one included) at least think it is, and if they aren't it'll take a whole lot more than a boldfaced announcement to establish that. Maybe it *feels* like we're not getting at real knowledge, 'cause we're still breaking our teeth on some of the nuts Plato and Aristotle tried to crack. But that's just to say philosophy is hard... I hope Pierre's argument was supposed to be based on more than the fact that philosophical answers aren't easier to come by.<BR/><BR/>Maybe there's some other principled answer that will explain the difference here. I'd like to hear it, if so. But if it turns out that Pierre has only shown me that what I do is no *more* valuable than the research (scholarship, whatever) done by, say, pure set theorists, I'm not going to feel all that indicted.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-30929666300901286992008-02-10T14:44:00.000-08:002008-02-10T14:44:00.000-08:00Society needs people to teach philosophy classes. ...Society needs people to teach philosophy classes. We let you fight it out in your games to figure out who gets to do that teaching where.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-66855168345090881702008-02-10T12:51:00.000-08:002008-02-10T12:51:00.000-08:00"Pretty unimpressive compared with someone like Sa..."Pretty unimpressive compared with someone like Sartre, say, or pretty much any philosopher who was involved with the Paris Spring. In fairness, though, a lot of analytic philosophers are political radicals and even activists, albeit on the side."<BR/><BR/>I think that one thing this thread is missing is any suggestion that the fact that people like Sartre are major public figures while politically radical analytic philosophers are on so "on the side" might have more to do with the way America is run than with Analytic philosophy itself. I think that Chomsky put it well when he wrote:<BR/><BR/>"...if you compare the United States with France -- or with most of Europe, for that matter -- I think one of the healthy things about the United States is precisely this: there's very little respect for intellectuals as such. And there shouldn't be. What's there to respect? I mean, in France if you're part of the intellectual elite and you cough, there's a front-page story in Le Monde. That's one of the reasons why French intellectual culture is so farcical -- it's like Hollywood. You're in front of the television cameras all the time, and you've got to keep doing something new so they'll keep focusing on you and not on the guy at the next table, and people don't have ideas that are that good, so they have to come up with crazy stuff, and the intellectuals get all pompous and self-important. So I remember during the Vietnam War, there'd be these big international campaigns to protest the war, and a number of times I was asked to co-sign letters with, say, Jean-Paul Sartre [French philosopher]. Well, we'd co-sign some statement, and in France it was front-page news; here, nobody even mentioned it. And the French thought that was scandalous; I thought it was terrific -- why the hell should anybody mention it? What difference does it make if two guys who happen to have some name recognition got together and signed a statement? Why should that be of any particular interest to anybody? So I think the American reaction [towards intellectuals] is much healthier in this respect." (Understanding Power: the Indispensable Chomsky, edited by P.R. Mitchell and J. Schoeffel, pp 96-97.)<BR/><BR/>I think Chomsky's own career as a public intellectual is also a pretty good example of how such criticism has been increasingly marginalized in the mainstream (and even non-mainstream) media over the last 40 years.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-91082567235355953152008-02-10T11:35:00.000-08:002008-02-10T11:35:00.000-08:00Can you say a little more about why it's 'disgusti...Can you say a little more about why it's 'disgusting' other than simply that it is? I'd share your reaction if unchoiceworthiness were supposed to be what makes those acts wrong, rather than what their wrongness consists in, since that would clearly involve a disgusting indifference to the victims, but I don't see it after that's been clarified. <BR/><BR/>I'm not trying to be an analytic nit-picker here: it's just that you've accused me and lots of other of engaging in something that 'disgusts' you. If I told an oil-executive at a cocktail party that was he does disgusts me, you'd better believe I'd have something to say about why. Similarly, I think that the claim you've made here is the sort of assertion/expression that bears a burden of proof, even in the context of an anonymous blog comment thread.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-43647767550051148082008-02-10T11:08:00.000-08:002008-02-10T11:08:00.000-08:00"The account in question, if it's anything close t..."The account in question, if it's anything close to what anyone actually believes, would say that the wrongness of the holocaust IS it's un-choiceworthiness by ideally functioning agents. But it's unchoiceworthy, and hence wrong, BECAUSE of the pain it caused, the damage it did to the dignity/humanity of the victims, etc... A little less disgusting when you actually take the time to understand it, no?"<BR/><BR/>Not actually, no. "Unchoiceworthy?"<BR/>That's even more disgusting, frankly. Really disgusting.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-75741487091293589052008-02-10T10:53:00.000-08:002008-02-10T10:53:00.000-08:00There seems to me to be an unstated conflation. Wh...There seems to me to be an unstated conflation. Why say that the problem is with Analytic Philosophy rather than with Analytic Philosophers? I take it that Bertrand Russell was an analytic philosopher if anybody was, and during his time he was extremely socially relevant. He wrote on a wide range of topics (including technical pieces like On Denoting) and at the same time others pieces that were read widely by the public. So it seems to me that there's a false contrast between analytic and continental on this issue. It is not that there is something intrinsically wrong with analytic philosophy that makes it socially irrelevant, but that there are fewer socially minded philosophers like Russell today.<BR/><BR/>This doesn't mean that there aren't any, though. One example might be Dennett's recent book about religion that has been on the NYTimes best seller's list for some time, and that's surely socially relevant.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-78531545828610880172008-02-10T10:06:00.000-08:002008-02-10T10:06:00.000-08:00Anon 9:05,Godwin's law. You lose. And anyway, who ...Anon 9:05,<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law" REL="nofollow">Godwin's law</A>. You lose. <BR/><BR/>And anyway, who gives a shit? I am an analytic philosopher because I find the problems compelling and I enjoy trying to find the answers. Why pick on us for that? Pick up a <I>People Magazine</I> if you want to know what anglo-America's giant waste of time is.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-52850465584364756432008-02-10T09:45:00.000-08:002008-02-10T09:45:00.000-08:00" "It's wrong to exterminate 6 millions Jews becau..." "It's wrong to exterminate 6 millions Jews because an fully-informed agent with optimally functioning capacities would not choose blah blah blah..." Disgusting."<BR/><BR/>Here's some analytic philosophy for you: this worry conflates the wrong-making relation with a relation of putative property identification. <BR/><BR/>The account in question, if it's anything close to what anyone actually believes, would say that the wrongness of the holocaust IS it's un-choiceworthiness by ideally functioning agents. But it's unchoiceworthy, and hence wrong, BECAUSE of the pain it caused, the damage it did to the dignity/humanity of the victims, etc... <BR/><BR/>A little less disgusting when you actually take the time to understand it, no?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-7907594046699312092008-02-10T09:37:00.000-08:002008-02-10T09:37:00.000-08:00"Indispensable? Please. If every single philosophe..."Indispensable? Please. If every single philosopher on the face of the earth dropped dead tomorrow it would scarcely usher in the apocalypse."<BR/><BR/>I didn't say it was indispensable to the survival of the human race. I said (speculated) that it was indispensable to realizing the real, intrinsic value of understanding everything there is to be understood.<BR/><BR/>"Seriously, one would assume that such an allegedly "indispensable" activity would yield far more internal consensus, or be taken more seriously outside the academy, or whatever - you know, like science."<BR/><BR/>This just doesn't follow at all: the fact that nobody outside a relatively small group gives a shit about modern dance, or opera, or french cinema, or whatever, doesn't show that these activities aren't valuable in their own right. <BR/><BR/>And as for *like science*, it might just be that science is valuable both because it builds bridges and because it sometimes yields understanding; in that case, we'd expect that we'd have two different sorts of reason to believe that science is valuable, some of which don't apply as strongly in the case of philosophy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-90455116563164534862008-02-10T09:05:00.000-08:002008-02-10T09:05:00.000-08:00"A lot of us do ethics, thank you very much! Maybe..."A lot of us do ethics, thank you very much! Maybe we're not the sexy job market hot shots, and maybe we don't 'change the world', but we sure as hell write about things that matter, and that are concerns for the good life."<BR/><BR/>Not to shit in your self-congratulatory cake, honey, but there's something really repugnant about claims like "X is good if and only if..." or "One ought to do X just in case..." or anything that talks about rationality in the same breath as, er, Auschwitz, say. Kind of hard to relegate that kind of radical evil to irrationality, which might explain why analytic moral philosophy tends to avoid the subject altogether, opting instead to talk about trolley scenarios and mistaking glasses of petrol for gin, etc. <BR/><BR/>Metaethics is yucky. It yields pretty unpalatable normative systems which talk too much about what is reasonable or rational for people to do. Morality = practical reasoning and such. I'm vomiting in my mouth. <BR/><BR/>"It's wrong to exterminate 6 millions Jews because an fully-informed agent with optimally functioning capacities would not choose blah blah blah..." Disgusting.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-86159832299700792002008-02-10T08:59:00.000-08:002008-02-10T08:59:00.000-08:00"Is it so crazy to think that understanding our co..."Is it so crazy to think that understanding our conceptual apparatus, and the world it represents, is intrinsically valuable, and that doing philosophy well is one good, and indeed indispensable way, of achieving this understanding?"<BR/><BR/>Indispensable? Please. If every single philosopher on the face of the earth dropped dead tomorrow it would scarcely usher in the apocalypse. Also, you're assuming that philosophy involves representationalism. Maybe it doesn't.<BR/><BR/>Seriously, one would assume that such an allegedly "indispensable" activity would yield far more internal consensus, or be taken more seriously outside the academy, or whatever - you know, like science. Perhaps this explains in part why so many philosophers fetishize science and logic and end up doing bad science and bad math.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-82865153937917326412008-02-10T07:40:00.000-08:002008-02-10T07:40:00.000-08:00I don't understand why we need to point to some ot...I don't understand why we need to point to some other value conduced to by doing philosophy well in order to defend the value of philosophy. Is it so crazy to think that understanding our conceptual apparatus, and the world it represents, is intrinsically valuable, and that doing philosophy well is one good, and indeed indispensable way, of achieving this understanding?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-77963216196292224802008-02-10T06:43:00.000-08:002008-02-10T06:43:00.000-08:00"if you really think that your primary goal is to ..."if you really think that your primary goal is to CHANGE THE WOLD, you are kidding yourself if you think that getting a Ph.D. in ANY kind of Philosophy is the best way to do it."<BR/><BR/>Well I might not be able to change the world, but I can change the world in me. I rejoice.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-28181864040324132402008-02-10T04:33:00.000-08:002008-02-10T04:33:00.000-08:00vap - awesome response, thank you. Philosophy is ...vap - awesome response, thank you. Philosophy is an intensely intellectual, specialized practice (or, to reclaim Hadot's language, game - ain't nothing wrong with being a game, just go ask Wittgenstein), and some parts aren't going to have immediate import for the rest of human life.<BR/><BR/>Notice, though, that I said "some parts". There may not be as much public intellectualism in the U.S. (though, to be fair, I think that's at *least* as much about a common anti-intellectual sentiment in the public as it is about what goes on in the academy), but a lot of these posts make it sound like everyone's doing M&E. A lot of us do ethics, thank you very much! Maybe we're not the sexy job market hot shots, and maybe we don't "change the world", but we sure as hell write about things that matter, and that are concerns for the good life.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-39630828151166458692008-02-09T23:28:00.000-08:002008-02-09T23:28:00.000-08:00"Philosophy's value to the larger world is teachin..."Philosophy's value to the larger world is teaching good reasoning, careful reading, and clear writing. I think many philosophers also play an important role in keeping their universities true to the goals of education. Universities run the risk of turning into pure businesses and most philosophy departments do a better job keeping this in check than other departments. This is not an insignificant point. <BR/><BR/>Philosophy is also fun. WIth a decent teacher most undergrads will get a kick out of at least some issues."<BR/><BR/>Bracketing Hadot's comments about continental philosophy for a moment, I think these comments from vap support one point he was trying to make (but that has been largely passed over):<BR/><BR/>That how we judge the value of philosophers has very little to do with the value of philosophy (assuming we this value is to be found in philosophy's relation to the outside world).<BR/><BR/>Assuming the value of philosophy is what vap says it is, then we should be saying the best philosophers are the best teachers of "good reasoning, careful reading, and good writing". We don't do this. We say the best philosophers are those who produce the best research, which is determined by internal standards that have little to do with teaching (I'm sympathetic to Hadot's description of the club, but I don't think this is essential to this claim. At any rate, we know that what the system currently says are the best philosophers are not always the best teachers, far from it).<BR/><BR/>So why don't we say the best philosophers are the best teachers?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-87985945449568516332008-02-09T21:47:00.000-08:002008-02-09T21:47:00.000-08:00"okay, i'll correct you. 2:08 does exactly the sam..."okay, i'll correct you. 2:08 does exactly the same kind of philosophy as 'pierre hadot' does, because 2:08 *is* 'pierre hadot', or rather a pretty lame sock-puppet for him. 'pierre hadot' is apparently a disaffected irishman who doesn't much like anglo-american philosophy but is stuck inside a largely analytic program somewhere in the states. he wrote one screed as "pierre hadot", filled with bad arguments and CAPITAL LETTERS, and then after that tantrum failed to impress anyone, he snuck back in with the more subdued persona of 2:08. But his style is still recognizable in 2:08. Same guy, same CAPITAL LETTERS, same lack of argument."<BR/><BR/>Possible but I'm not convinced. In any case, 2:08 didn't seem to be trying to advance any sort of argument. He was just trying to tease out claims from Hadot's rant that COULD be argued for, at least in principle. He also called attention to what I take to be worthwhile questions, regardless of who asked it: namely, why we do what we do, and why it matters.<BR/><BR/>The point that was made about philosophy profs providing students with good skills, fun, etc. seems to speak to teaching rather than research. The same is true about university service. One of Hadot's points was that teaching and service are not as highly regarded in the profession as research. I think that's a bit strong - certainly teaching and service are always valued. But in general it seems they're not as highly valued at the so-called Leiterrific departments, which if nothing else have considerable clout in setting the general tenor of the profession at large. So I guess this speaks to the value of philosophers as teachers or philosophers as members of institutions, but not to the value of doing research in philosophy.<BR/><BR/>Frankly, if the best we can up with is that philosophy is "fun" or "interesting" then we're fucked. The aretaic argument - that doing philosophy is valuable insofar as it is conducive to the cultivation of certain kinds of excellence(s) is a a bit more plausible. But the same is true, one would assume, of mentally challenging games like chess or go. So far the "gamer" analogy is holding a little water: philosophy is no different from any activity that stimulates the mind, provides opportunities for excellence, etc. What is more, it is only valuable to the people who have the desire, interest, and ability to do it. <BR/><BR/>Is there a non-perfectionist, non-aretaic way to ascribe value to scholarship in analytical philosophy? If there is, it would have to be justify the claim that "(the pursuit of) philosophical research is valuable to at least some non-philosophers." I take it that a significant portion of the Anglo-American philosophical writing produced over the course of the past 30-40 years does not qualify as important enough to be taught, so we can't necessarily claim pedagogical value for it (again, unless perhaps we're talking about graduate students in philosophy, but we don't count as non-philosophers). <BR/><BR/>I guess I'm content to regard philosophy as a kind of game. Playing the game makes me happy, hones my mental agility, makes my inner life much richer, whatever. Maybe most philosophers could claim at least THIS much. But I have to admit: I don't see in real PUBLIC value in most analytic scholarship. It's interesting and worthwhile to practicioners, but pretty much worthless to anyone else. That doesn't make it empty - it just means that its value is grounded in a personalistic rather than social axiology.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-70051217092364961242008-02-09T21:28:00.000-08:002008-02-09T21:28:00.000-08:00"I don't really think that this generalization hol..."I don't really think that this generalization holds. Justified or not, lots of people have problems with Nussbaum's work that are independent of her getting involved in any sort of political intervention, and for the most part, when philosophers do get involved (for instance Bernard Williams chairing the Royal Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship, or Michael Dummett's work on Racism and immigration) they aren't criticized (and certainly not spat upon) for doing so at all."<BR/><BR/>Not to shit in your cake, but that's all you can come up with? Pretty unimpressive compared with someone like Sartre, say, or pretty much any philosopher who was involved with the Paris Spring. In fairness, though, a lot of analytic philosophers are political radicals and even activists, albeit on the side. Mark Lance at Georgetown comes to mind - he does straight up analytic philosophy but is also an anarchist and an activist. I also know several analytic philosophy profs who were extremely active against the war in Vietnam. I guess the point is that one can do apolitic philosophy but still be very politically engaged. I mean, if you're a philosopher and you're not at least a bit pissed off about the current state of the world then you're just not paying attention, regardless of what kind of philosophy you do.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-90993873918536635772008-02-09T20:29:00.000-08:002008-02-09T20:29:00.000-08:00So if I understand Hadot and co. correctly, it is ...So if I understand Hadot and co. correctly, it is really only permissible that Aristotle wasted his time on metaphysics because he also did political philosophy, aesthetics, etc.? As if "Anglo-American" is a fucking school of philosophy. What would it mean for our departments to embrace "pluralism"? Wouldn't it just mean that we'd end up with two comparative literature departments on campus? And for the record, I love David Lewis AND Deleuze, and while it's sad that so many English speaking philosophers don't bother to read Deleuze, it's downright heartbreaking that he gets lumped in with people who proudly and angrily declare that metaphysics isn't worth doing because they don't understand what's going on.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-69412715273134463212008-02-09T18:33:00.000-08:002008-02-09T18:33:00.000-08:00Oh, you're welcome. I've had to deal with the two-...Oh, you're welcome. I've had to deal with the two-body problem myself. It's one of the parts of academia that a lot of outsiders don't understand.<BR/><BR/>I hope you manage to work things out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1944513327283802005.post-37025681410335795572008-02-09T18:10:00.000-08:002008-02-09T18:10:00.000-08:00"and I do analytic philosophy. I sense that 2:08 d..."and I do analytic philosophy. I sense that 2:08 does too, judging by his writing style (correct me if I'm wrong)"<BR/><BR/>okay, i'll correct you. 2:08 does exactly the same kind of philosophy as 'pierre hadot' does, because 2:08 *is* 'pierre hadot', or rather a pretty lame sock-puppet for him.<BR/><BR/>'pierre hadot' is apparently a disaffected irishman who doesn't much like anglo-american philosophy but is stuck inside a largely analytic program somewhere in the states. he wrote one screed as "pierre hadot", filled with bad arguments and CAPITAL LETTERS, and then after that tantrum failed to impress anyone, he snuck back in with the more subdued persona of 2:08.<BR/><BR/>But his style is still recognizable in 2:08. Same guy, same CAPITAL LETTERS, same lack of argument.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com