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'Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainity and agitation distinquish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones ... All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.' Marx

Writing Philosophy « Previous | |Next »
February 27, 2003

This quote shows the entrenched scientific style in academic philosophy. It is by Iris Murdoch, a women who writes novels and it shows just how far professional academc (analytic ) philosophy has lot contact with, and has repudiated, its rhetorical roots.

"Of course philosophers vary and some are more 'literary' than others, but I am tempted to say that there is an ideal philosophical style which has a special unambiguous plainness and hardness about it, an austere unselfish candid style. A philosopher must try to explain exactly what he means and avoid rhetoric and idle decoration. Of course this not need exclude wit and occassional interludes; but when the philosopher is as it were in the front line in relation to his problem I think he speaks with a certain cold clear recognizable voice."

I. Murdoch, 'Philosophy and Literature: dialogue with Iris Murdoch ' in B. Magee, (ed.), Men of Ideas, (NY, 1978, pp. 264-84).

Oh yeah? Philosophers as human beings are all mind no emotion. Only men write philosophy. There are no women philosophers? What can you say to that? That many academic philosophers go through life in a condition of delusion and denial?

Is philosophy only concerned with solving problems? Does philosophy have nothing to do with interpreting texts? Nothing to do with public debate and the conversation of civil society about public issues? Is philosophy disconnected from, and not a part of or within different traditions? Does philosophy have nothing to do with trying to live a good human life well?

Murdoch is an advocate for the hard style of the voice of a disembodied reason that is cleansed of passion. It is the voice of an academic philosophy that considers itself to be abstract, neutral and scientific---a theoretical reason; the voice of contemplation by a spectator; or the voice of mastery and control-- a form of calculating reason that seeks to seize, hold, regulate and control objects. It is the voice of the philosopher as hunter or master of the universe. It is the voice of the human being as a machine.

This is a deficient view because it is so narrow. There is a major blind spot to a form of knowing based on the experience of human suffering in difficult and tragic circumstances. This is a form of knowing that cannot be gained by the intellect alone--it is a form of practical knowing that is built around desire, responsiveness, caring, passion and imagination.

It is not the voice of vulnerable humans aware of their dependence on the luck of nature; the voice of those living in a drought waiting for the rains to come; a voice of those who have lived through a major bushfire; or the voice of those who are living downstream at the mouth of the River Murray and are dependent on the water of a salinised river that no longer flows.

Now that would be a different and more vulnerable philosophical voice. It would be one that has seen through the illusions of a complete mastery over nature, has a greater sense of human fragility and a greater openness to humans being a part of nature. It would be a more tragic voice, one that has become of being caught in a situation that is not solely of one's own making. A voice of grief, because nothing is actually being done to save the River Murray. A voice that remembers that this situation of the river and the environment has got worse over the last 30 thirty years.

It is a voice that expresses the rationality of the passions that wants to hold those in power ethically accountable for their lack of action.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:06 AM | | Comments (12)
Comments

Comments

I agree with your post but i object to your use of the analytic crystal philosopher as a hunter.

A hunter has to move (their body) in appreciation of (1) their landscape, (2) their own movement, (3) the movement of their prey and (4) a connecting vector between 2 and 3.

I suspect analytic philosopher would be incapable of doing this, it is a completely different embodiment.

Analytic philosophers would require the emplyment of beaters to hunt succesfully, ...to hunt succesfully from the terrace of the big house they have been invited to in thanks for supplying the rationale for the use of neo-classical economics as an universalizing ideology

Does this mean murdoch's next book will be in point form?

Meika,
excellent point, if we think of the hunter as a skilled indigeneous hunter with bush skills and knowledge. And we should.

How about a bit of redescription? The voice of the European conqueror and colonizer speaking in the name of an enlightening liberal reason?

You would think that the analytic philosophers would adopt a more tragic tone would you not? After all they are being treated as worthless creatures by the neo-liberals after supply the scientific rational for the policies of the calculating utilitarian economists and politicians.

Benito,
I'm not sure but I think Iris Murdoch is dead.If not, then seriously ill and so unable to write any more.

The only thing worse than the style of analytic philosophy is the content. My sig.other's father gave me a copy of Thomas Nagel's Mortal Questions as a present; he told me to read the essay "What is it like to be a bat?" Affectless logic-chopping is bad enough when applied to abstract questions of semantics, but to see it used to resusitate mind/body dualism makes you want to toss the book through the window--followed closely by its author.

Gary,

Lots of us are " being treated as worthless creatures".

Not even worth hunting I suspect, not even with beaters, unless its self-flagellation (also known as looking for work).

And yes i think I heard Iris is dead, I think I enjoyed reading Under the Net years ago, but not my sort of thing.

Thanks James.
Hi Curtis.
I disliked the content of analytic philosophy too, though for different reasons. I detested the mechanistic materialism (we are all machines)and the philosophy is a part of natural science (fundamental physics)that was shoved down my throat when a grad student.

Hi Meika,
yes I agree about unemployed on Newstart being the hunted as bad, lazy and corrupt with a dependency mentality. It is a tragic situation ---many of my friends with Phd's and academic experience etc are now unemployed, scratching a living, or outside the work economy.

The trick is to become a little more entrepreneurial and see yourself as doing very useful work---your weblog-- which the govt, in its generosity, is paying you to do.

Who else in Tasmania is writing about the experience of unemployment. You then use thsi to start commenting on Tasmanian politics, culture, economy etc-- and hey, you are providing a service that people may well find valuable. And you have become skilled to boot.

Gary

I think I actually in recovery from being entrepreneurial as in social activist with my experience in couple of co-ops and communities, I think the main issue is to be entrepreneurial for my self, but then my self advocacy rarely ventures away from the smartarse cynic...

BTW
is it really true that George Bush has said "That the trouble with the french is that they have no word for entrepreneur" ??

Perhaps the lack of cognisable information in Analytic Philosophy reflects the increasingly abbreviated society in which we now operate both as philosophers and interpreters of philosophy. Analytic philosophy may well be indicative of the pace of life, which rarely allows for deeper contemplation, but instead, demands a quick fix of question and answer, regardless of the humanistic need for qualitative experiences, which those of us who are more mature, may have come to expect as a result of our cultural mind set. ‘Yes’, I am objectively admitting that I may simply be old fashioned - as far as my cultural experiences have shaped me. But to be quite honest, I would prefer to think that this was the case over the alternative possibility that we have become so insular and self-approbatory as philosophers that we no longer recognise the essence of what it is to be able to share our analytic passions with others, but instead, inadvertently, or worse, intentionally deny interpretative access to even our published works.

Curtiss / Gary

Perhaps the lack of cognisable information in Analytic Philosophy reflects the increasingly abbreviated society in which we now operate both as philosophers and interpreters of philosophy. Analytic philosophy may well be indicative of the pace of life, which rarely allows for deeper contemplation, but instead, demands a quick fix of question and answer, regardless of the humanistic need for qualitative experiences, which those of us who are more mature, may have come to expect as a result of our cultural mind set. ‘Yes’, I am objectively admitting that I may simply be old fashioned - as far as my cultural experiences have shaped me. But to be quite honest, I would prefer to think that this was the case over the alternative possibility that we have become so insular and self-approbatory as philosophers that we no longer recognise the essence of what it is to be able to share our analytic passions with others, but instead, inadvertently, or worse, intentionally deny interpretative access to even our published works.