The course has not gone as well since I left classical philosophy and started on the modern period. I continued to relate the issues to contemporary times, but this didn't seem to have much effect. I think the main thing is the switch from a focus on ethics and the good life to epistemology and metaphysics. It just doesn't grab them in the same way. Is the external world composed of material objects having primary qualities that affect our senses with color and sound? Or is the external world composed of sensible objects that consist of patterns of ideas caused by God? My students don't care.
When we find something interesting it is hard to understand why someone else would not find it so. The temptation is to assume that the person is disinterested because they just don't understand it. Many philosophers give in to the temptation of thinking this but it seems self-serving and false to me. As a side note did you see the piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed by a philosopher bemoaning the fact that philosophy has become marginalized. The possibility that we are doing something wrong is not considered. It is assumed that people are just too lazy to make the effort to read what we write. I don't buy this explanation.
Ethics, at least ancient ethics, still engages the interest of contemporary Americans when it is well-presented. But equally well-presented discussions of modern epistemology and metaphysics do not.
At the moment I don't have an answer to the question that interests me in all of this: what kind of epistemology and metaphysics would interest people now? Any suggestions?
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I use pop culture examples in presenting topics in early modern philosophy (The Truman Show, Star Trek, etc). That seems to engage at least a portion of the students. Personally, I wrestle with epistemological and metaphysical questions only when there's an ethical angle: how does this particular question affect how I make practical decisions (in the Kantian sense)? But I also recognize the impact that taking a strict rationalist or strict empiricist position makes; what I'm not sure of is that I would have seen that connection prior to understanding the theories in their own terms. My undergrad professor for modern was James Van Cleve, and I'm tempted to say that he was particularly engaging, but honestly I don't remember how he approached the subject (although he certainly wasn't using pop culture as an entry).
And I agree with you about the Chronicle explanation: students aren't any lazier now than they ever were. On the other hand, I don't think that the marginalization of philosophy is a recent phenomena.
My attempts to use pop culture references meet with only very limited success. And I fear that the interest they kick up doesn't transfer to the philosophical problem itself. They seem to be remembering the movie, not using the movie to think about the issue.
Why do you not think that the marginalization of philosophy is a recent phenomenon? I use William James' essays on Pragmatism in my class and these essays were originally lectures delivered to the general public that attracted huge audiences. We have invited famous philosophers to our university (Dick Rorty, John Searle, David Lewis, Dan Dennett, etc.) and we never get more than half a dozen people who are not philosophy professors. That shows that something has changed dramatically in the past one hundred years.
My gut feeling is that professional philosophers for the past 75 years or so have just assumed that the existence of God and the soul is a settled issue. "Of course" they say "God and the soul don't exist." For most people this issue is an open question and a philosophy that treated it as an open question (as James did) is more interesting.
Well. I'm a bit late (lost track of the Quaker Philosopher for a time). But I think that "ontology" - on what there is or isn't - can be made fascinating. Is there a society (or was Ms Thatcher right who denied it)? Are there races (or tribes or families or cultures etc.)? One of the most important changes seems to be that we have overcome the narrow Aristotelian/Linnean method of definition by genus et differentia - we allow for concepts who have a strong center but no clear boundaries and we allow for mere similarity and don't require a definite marker. And do these tiny particles the physicists fret over really exist - even if we can't realize them directly?
And Tom Sawyer doesn't really exist, so how can we speak about him - has he a different way of "existing"? And then identity - if we take a table and replace over the time all its legs and the tabletop and at the same time change its appearance and its use - is it yet the same table? Or at what point in our project has it become something else? And if we give a deformed man a new brain and face - will it be the same man? That all are questions which also a student can see.
Good readiing
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