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Re: Re: RE: Re: Philosophical Problems at home: Explaining "what the hell you're

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Hello,

I don't know how well this will go down (seeing as Deleuze's relation to the analytic tradition is tentative at best), but I've always enjoyed his response to this very problem in "Nietzsche and Philosophy"

"When someone asks "what's the use of philosophy?" the reply must be aggressive, since the question tries to be ironic and caustic. Philosophy does not serve the State or the Church, who have other concerns. It serves no established power. The use of philosophy is to sadden. A philosophy that saddens no one, that annoys no one, is not a philosophy. It is useful for harming stupidity, for turning stupidity into something shameful. {he seems to be paraphrasing Nietzsche here, i'll check the footnotes after the rest of the qoute}
Is there any discipline apart from philosophy that sets out to criticise all mystifications, whatever their source and aim, to expose all fictions without which reactive forces would not prevail? Exposing as a mystification the mixture of baseness and stupidity that creates the astonishing complicity of both victims and perpertrators...creating free men, that is to say men who do not confuse the aims of culture with the benefit of the State, morality or religion" pg 106

Yep, that is paraphrased, Nietzsches take (in 'The Gay Science') reads,,

Ancient philosophers gave a sermon against stupidity. "Let us not decide here whtehr this sermon against stupidity had better reasons on its side than did the sermon against selfishness: what is certain is that it deprived stupidity of its good conscience; these philosophers harmed stupidity"
(as sourced from Deleuzes end notes).


Seems pretty straight forward to me, "Philosophy harms stupidity, stupid!"
Perhaps we could have it up  printed on t-shirts.


From: "Matt A" <notheodicy@gmail.com>
To: BUPS-DIS@bups.org
Subject: Re: Re: RE: Re: Philosophical Problems at home: Explaining "what the hell you're doing" to your skeptical sibling/mother/father/cat...
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 12:33:24 +0100

To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org


Andrew- I'm afraid we're not in agreement at all.  You say that there
are two uses of the word 'philosophy', one of which pointing to a more
rigorous, truer and more useful version of the other.  The first is
the academic discipline, the second the natural ability it arises out
of;  what the first usage examples is philosophy done well, while the
second shows philosophy done badly.  This all seems commonsensical,
but there are only normative reasons why pub philosophy should be
rigorous and (especially) analytical.

-Matt

On 8/22/06, Andrew Bacon <andrew.bacon@lmh.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

I suspect, like many subjects, philosophy is something which anyone can do. That
is not to say that some won't be better at it than others. But the sense in
which anyone can do philosophy without specialist knowledge is much like the way
anyone can do mathematics without specialist knowledge. All the knowledge we
need is available to us. The axioms of Peano Arithmetic are self evident and
obvious (e.g. every number, n, has a unique successor: n+1). But this doesn't
mean that everyone can see that Fermats Last Theorem was true, it took 200 years
of research to prove that. Similarly in philosophy, although we all have access
to the same notions philosophers have been debating for years, it certainly
helps to have read what's gone before - what you would call 'specialist
knowledge'. And for this reason the pub philosopher will fall short where the
academic philosopher won't. Also bear in mind it is not only knowledge, it takes
a while for people to get into the habit of thinking and writing clearly and
rigorously - this was probably the steepest learning curve for me.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to say that the countless English students who
discuss philosophy in the pub aren't doing philosophy. I've often enjoy talking
about physics or computers even though I have no training in these subjects. But
I wouldn't claim that the content of these discussions accurately represent what
these subjects are like.

I agree that you can take up philosophy as a casual hobby - dinner party
conversation and so on - but this will be unlikely to represent 'analytic
philosophy - the academic subject' if there is such a thing. So in response to:

"and to say that philosophy is practised in a specialised manner is probably
true of your university experience of it (aside from the discussions in the
pub), but doesn't have to apply elsewhere."

I would distinguish between the uses of the word 'philosophy'. One usage refers
to a serious area of research studied throughout many anglo-american
universities, the other is term used 'elsewhere'. So suspect, with this
clarification in place we are actually in agreement.

Andrew



> To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org
>
>
> Andrew - I really don't like your weaker claim. You don't say
> anything about what not shying away from the 'airy fairy' conception
> means, but you do say that philosophy isn't done like that, and that
> not shying away is in some regard to do with tolerance. Philosophy is
> not a specialism; anyone can do it without specialist knowledge (of
> the problem of diachronic identity for example), and to say that
> philosophy is practised in a specialised manner is probably true of
> your university experience of it (aside from the discussions in the
> pub), but doesn't have to apply elsewhere. That we should be tolerant
> of the 'airy fairy' conception certainly isn't what I meant: to
> reiterate, I think that the conception of philosophy as 'airy fairy'
> by the hard-nosed public is probably right. It is right because
> philosophy is an activity we do rather than a group of scientific
> specialisms that we can join as if we were to join a club (called
> 'philosophy'), and this activity requires non-tautologous use of our
> ideas. I agree with Keith that philosophy is in fact questioning -
> but this requires an ability to stand outside of our present beliefs,
> and must involve the possibility that we are wrong. Thus, the
> hard-nosed public who call philosophy 'airy fairy' already are as they
> say, denying, precisely, philosophy. They are only wrong in the sense
> that they think philosophy is some specialism or academic study, and
> it is unfortunate that you use this to convince them that it is not
> 'airy fairy'.
>
> - Matt
>
> On 8/22/06, Keith Thomas-Wurth <aikeith@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> > To reply to this message or start a new topic please email: BUPS-DIS@bups.org
> >
> >
--
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900




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