Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
I hadn't known until now that Steven F. Hayward of Power Line was a Stack man. (HT: J.I.O)
Don't conclude, however, that every academic is academented. I oppose the anti-intellectualism too often found among populists and conservatives just as strenuously as I oppose the pseudo-intellectualism of lunatic leftists.
Cats would never put up with any of that stuff.
CATegorically true.
It’s hard to make sense out of that DOGgone abstract.
It rained here yesterday light-to-moderate. My wife said it was raining cats and dogs. She exaggerates like Trump. Lefties confuse exaggerations with lies. They be catshit crazy.
Bill,
Here’s a quick metaphilosophical question that might interest you regarding protrepsis and paraenesis. Are these parts of philosophy? Philosophical activities? Do they fall outside the bounds of philosophy?
On one hand, ancient philosophers (e.g., Epictetus, Musonius Rufus) engaged in such exhortation as a central aspect of their philosophical activity. On the other hand, contemporary philosophers such as Timothy Williamson claim that “advice” and “moralizing sermons” are not philosophy. (Philosophical Method: A Very Short Introduction; Conclusion: the future of philosophy; p. 127; 2020)
Good question, Elliot.
Does exhortation fall outside the bounds of philosophy? I would say no, but of course it depends on what one takes philosophy to be. I have often characterized philosophy as the quest for the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. If God and the soul are at the top of the hierarchy of ultimate matters, as Augustine would no doubt agree, then the ultimate truth must be a transformative truth, a salvific truth, and cannot be merely theoretical. I reject Williamson’s conception of philosophy. (I looked for his book on Amazon but didn’t find it.)
One question I would put to Williamson & Co. is: what good is philosophy if it is merely theoretical, especially in face of the fact that philosophy proper has made no progress? I say ‘philosophy proper’ because one could reasonably claim that philosophy has made progress — it is just that when it makes progress it is called science.
I probably have a much better statement of my position in my archives. I’ll look for it.
Elliot,
Here is a better statement of my position. It is part of a long Substack entry: https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/technical-philosophy-compartmentalization?sd=pf Title: Technical Philosophy, Compartmentalization, and Worldview: In Memory of Saul Kripke (1944-2022)
My thesis: Since philosophy is a search for the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, one is not true to the spirit of philosophy in the full and normative sense of the word if one is content to theorize about minutiae that in the end have no ‘existential’ relevance where ‘existential’ is to be taken in the sense of Kierkegaard, Karl Jaspers, et. al, and their distinguished predecessors, Socrates, Augustine, Pascal, et al. One’s own existence, fate, moral responsibility, and existential meaning are surely part of the ultimate matters; so to abstract from these matters by pursuing a purely theoretical interest is, if not logically absurd, then existentially absurd. In philosophy one cannot leave oneself out and be objective in the way the sciences must leave out the subject and be objective. Philosophy must concern itself with the whole of reality, and therefore not merely with the world as it is in itself. It must also concern itself with the world as it is in itself for us, in its involvement with subjectivity. Subjectivity, however, is in every case my individual subjectivity. In this way, one’s personal Existenz comes into the picture.
Of course I am not a narrow existentialist who rejects technical philosophy.
What I am maintaining is that one ought not compartmentalize: one’s technical work ought to subserve a higher end, the articulation and defense of a comprehensive view of things. As Wilfrid Sellars says, “It is . . . the ‘eye on the whole’ which distinguishes the philosophical enterprise.” (Science, Perception, and Reality, 3) “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” (SPR 1) But I am saying more than this, and words like ‘view’ and ‘worldview’ don’t quite convey it since philosophy as I ‘view’ it ought not be purely theoretical. Somehow, one’s theory and one’s Existenz need to achieve unity.
I still haven’t made my thesis all that clear, but it is perhaps clear enough.
One argument for my thesis is that specialization gets us nowhere. It is notorious that philosophers have not convinced one another and that progress in philosophy has not occurred. And the best and brightest have been at it for going on three thousand years. That progress will occur in future is therefore the shakiest of inductions. Given that shakiness, it is existentially if not logically absurd to lose oneself in, say, the technical labyrinth of the philosophy of language, as fascinating as it is. Who on his deathbed will care whether reference is routed through sense or is direct? The following may help clarify my meaning.
Fred Sommers, The Logic of Natural Language (Oxford, 1982), p. xii:
My interest in Ryle’s ‘category mistakes’ turned me away from the study of Whitehead’s metaphysical writings (on which I had written a doctoral thesis at Columbia University) to the study of problems that could be arranged for possible solution.
The suggestion is that the problems of logic, but not those of metaphysics, can be “arranged for possible solution.” Although I sympathize with Sommers’ sentiment, he must surely have noticed that his attempt to rehabilitate pre-Fregean logical theory issues in results that are controversial, and perhaps just as controversial as the claims of metaphysicians. Or do all his colleagues in logic agree with him?
If by ‘pulling in our horns’ and confining ourselves to problems of language and logic we were able to attain sure and incontrovertible results, then there might well be justification for setting metaphysics aside and working on problems amenable to solution. But if it turns out that logical, linguistic, phenomenological, epistemological and all other such preliminary inquiries arrive at results that are also widely and vigorously contested, then the advantage of ‘pulling in our horns’ is lost and we may as well concentrate on the questions that really matter, which are most assuredly not questions of logic and language — fascinating as these may be.
Sommers’ is a rich and fascinating book. But, at the end of the day, how important is it to prove that the inference embedded in ‘Some girl is loved by every boy so every boy loves a girl’ really is capturable, pace the dogmatic partisans of modern predicate logic, by a refurbished traditional term logic? (See pp. 144-145)
As one draws one’s last breath, which is more salutary: to be worried about a silly bagatelle such as the one just mentioned, or to be contemplating God and the soul?
Bill,
Williamson provides some good advice on the benefits and risks of “common sense,” the use of thought experiments, etc. But notice the bind he sets up for himself. (Or at least seems to.) He claims that “advice” and exhortation are not philosophy. And yet his book is filled with advice. In fact, the whole point of the book is to present his view about how philosophy should be done. The book is normative. He wants to exhort readers to practice philosophy according to good analytic methods.
I was surprised to read, at the very end of the book, his claim that advice and exhortation are not philosophy.
(I suppose what he means by “advice,” etc. might exclude what he does in his book. If so, he might want to be a bit more clear.)
>> of course it depends on what one takes philosophy to be.<< Right. This is an important point. One issue to address is the difference between (a) the ancient view of philosophy as both a rational quest for the truth about ultimate matters and a way of life that aligns with this quest, and (b) the contemporary view of philosophy as merely a rational search for the truth. The ancients had a more comprehensive view of philosophy that included a way of living that aligns with the quest and room for exhortation and advice. The contemporary view retains the intellectual search but attempts to narrow that search mostly to academic journals and philosophy departments at universities while divorcing the search from a corresponding philosophical way of life. >> Does exhortation fall outside the bounds of philosophy? I would say no<< I agree. It seems absurd to hold that, say, Socrates’ exhortations in the Apology and the Enchiridion of Epictetus don’t count as philosophy.
Bill, here is a link to Williamson’s book. I think it’s on Amazon too.
https://academic.oup.com/book/28442
Bill,
Thanks for posting the link to the Substack article, which I read. I agree that one’s philosophical theorizing and one’s Existenz should achieve unity, or at least that the philosopher should aim at such unity. I also agree that your (B) is preferable to your (A). Regarding (B), when I read your description of (B), what came to mind was something like your distinction between (B1) and (B2). I was glad to see that you articulated that distinction later in the article.
I also agree that (B2) is superior to (A).
I’m inclined to hold that (B2) might be better as philosophy than (B1) in the sense that (B2) is consistent with the aims of philosophy while (B1) perhaps isn’t, although (B1) can be a legitimate enterprise that involves the application of philosophical methods.
(B1) strikes me as a matter of worldview apologetics. There is a lot of this happening today. It can be a legit activity if done properly, but I don’t think it’s philosophy if the practitioner is not willing to follow the arguments where they lead, even though some of its practitioners seem to think (B1) is philosophy.
But now another distinction comes to mind between:
B1*: Technical work that is consistent with and supports an antecedently held worldview whose source is extra-philosophical and whose source is not philosophy-as-inquiry; the practitioner would give up the antecedently held worldview if he were to discover dispositive arguments against it.
B1**: Technical work that is consistent with and supports an antecedently held worldview whose source is extra-philosophical and whose source is not philosophy-as-inquiry; the practitioner would give NOT up the antecedently held worldview if he were to discover dispositive arguments against it.
The difference between (B1*) and (B1**) concerns the motives and method of the practitioner. Is the practitioner seeking the truth and willing to follow the argument where they lead? Is the practitioner seeking to support his worldview even if the worldview turns out to be false?
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