{"id":4145,"date":"2018-10-14T12:04:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T12:04:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/10\/14\/mary-midgley-1919-2018\/"},"modified":"2018-10-14T12:04:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T12:04:06","slug":"mary-midgley-1919-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/10\/14\/mary-midgley-1919-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Midgley (1919 – 2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Guardian<\/em> reports,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mary Midgley, who has died aged 99, was an important writer on ethics, the relations of humans and animals, our tendency to misconstrue science, and the role of myth and poetry.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Telegraph<\/em> obituary, behind<\/a> a paywall, begins:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mary Midgley, who has died aged 99, was one of Britain\u2019s leading moral philosophers, though she was more effective in wielding philosophical objections to other people\u2019s beliefs than promoting a coherent philosophical viewpoint of her own.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That's a bad sentence. Do you see why? Strike 'coherent' and it is just fine.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are women in philosophy such as Midgley who are much better<\/em> than many men.  Why then female 'under-representation' in our discipline?<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are excerpts from a longer piece<\/a> which is sure to elicit the impotent rage of leftists:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Why are women 'under-represented' in philosophy?  Because women as a group<\/em> are not as good at it as men as a group<\/em>, because women as a group<\/em> are not as interested in it as men as a group<\/em>, and because the feminine nature is conciliatory and averse to what they perceive as the aggressive, combative, and hostile aspects of philosophical dialectic.  This is surely a large part, if not the whole, of the explanation, especially given the Affirmative Action advantage women have enjoyed over the past half a century.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hostility often felt by women reflects something about the nature of philosophy, namely, that its very lifeblood is dialectic and argument. Argument can be conducted civilly, often is, and of course ought to be.  But it still looks to the female nature as a sort of 'fighting,' a sublimated form  of the physical combat that men are wont to engage in, even when dialectic at its best is no such thing.  So there is something in the nature of philosophy and something about females that explains their 'under-representation.' Those are sneer quotes, by the way.  Anyone with an ounce of philosophical intelligence can see that the word I am sneering at conflates the factual and the normative.  Therefore  it shouldn't be used without sneer quotes.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Anecdote<\/em>.  I once roomed with an  analytic philosopher at a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute.  I recall a remark he made about philosophical discussion: "If you are not willing to become a bit of an asshole about it, you are not taking it seriously." The guy was obnoxious, but he was right.  In a serious discussion, things can get a little tense.  The feminine nature shies away from contention and dispute.  <\/span><\/p>\n

If you deny that, then you have no knowledge of human nature and no experience of life.  Ever wonder why women are 'over-represented' among realtors? It is because they excel men when it comes to conciliation and mediation.  I don't mean this as a snarky put-down of the distaff contingent.  I mean it as praise.  And if females do not take it as praise are they not assuming the superiority of male virtues?<\/span><\/p>\n

It is a non sequitur<\/em> to think that if the Xs are 'under-represented' among the Ys, then the Xs must have been the victims of some unjust discrimination.  Men are 'under-represented' among massage therapists, but the explanation is obvious and harmless: men like to have their naked bodies rubbed by women in dark rooms, but women feel uncomfortable having their naked bodies rubbed by men in dark rooms.   It is not as if there is some sort of sexism, 'institutional' or individual, that keeps men out of massage therapy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Blacks are 'over-represented'  in the NFL and the NBA. Is that because of some racism 'institutional' or individual, that keeps whitey out?  Of course not. Blacks are better than whites at football and basketball. Jews are just terrible.  Chess<\/em> is their athletics.  Jews dominate<\/a> in the chess world.  Is that because the goyim have been suppressed?  Is a Jewish conspiracy at work?<\/span><\/p>\n

Does my talk of blacks and Jews make me a racist and an anti-Semite ?  To a liberal-left dumb-ass, yes. For they are incapable of distinguishing between a statement whose content is race and a racist statement.  <\/span> <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Guardian reports, Mary Midgley, who has died aged 99, was an important writer on ethics, the relations of humans and animals, our tendency to misconstrue science, and the role of myth and poetry. Read it all. The Telegraph obituary, behind a paywall, begins: Mary Midgley, who has died aged 99, was one of Britain\u2019s … Continue reading “Mary Midgley (1919 – 2018)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[394,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}