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Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Culturally Sophisticated Self-Fashioning
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been waiting for Brian Leiter’s response to Alexandra Heifetz’s recent n+1 article.
Leiter’s response is measured and largely free of invective. Here’s what I think is the key paragraph ("graf"):
“Continental" for these folks does not mean “Continental philosophy,” as Ms. Heifetz’s spectacularly ignorant remarks well illustrate: she obviously hasn’t a clue about the thinkers, ideas, and arguments that constitute the glorious traditions of post-Kantian philosophy in Germany and France over the last two hundred years. “Continental,” rather, is more of a non-cognitive term, expressing something like the following: “yeah for left-wing opining about culture and politics, that’s philosophy.” As readers know, I’m a big fan of left-wing opining, but it ain’t philosophy, Continental or otherwise. This juvenile usage of “Continental” is widespread, I fear, among those who are philosophically illiterate but fashion themselves culturally sophisticated.
I don’t recall much in the way of discussion about these differing definitions of “continental” and “analytic” inquiry here, particularly as applied to questions of literary theory, and I thought it would be good to solicit some opinions from the readership.
Comments
I see that Jonathan has been practising the troll-by-post maneuver. (Can it really be called the “self-troll” on a group blog?)
A favorite wikipedia moment: the link labelled Leiter explains the thinking behind his “no bullshit” blogging style. Now that’s encyclopedism.
Leiter’s piece coheres well with Scott’s idea that left-wing opining and poststructuralism are not the same thing.
I’m pleasantly surprised to learn that Leiter has studied Badiou’s thought in detail already—by his own account, he seems to focus more on historical figures. Or is this one of those situations where he hopes that his accusations of ignorance against Heifetz will inoculate readers against suspicion that he himself is ignorant in at least one of the same areas? ("If I was ignorant of Badiou, how could I tell that she was?")
I don’t know if that’s Scott’s idea so much as it is the undisputed--perhaps better said undisputable--truth of the matter.
Jonathan, you must live in a bubble--and not read half the comments here--if you believe that. Do you talk to other scholars? Have you attended any job talks? It’s disingenuous to aver that the obvious position is the one most widely held. You know full-well it isn’t.
I talk them pretty one day.
Are you implying a coterie of esoterics? Is that a Straussian tone I hear in your remarks, eh?
Another thing: Leiter writes
But enough with silliness about philosophy, it’s now time for Ms. Heifetz to misstate facts about the profession:<blockquote>
In universities with hard-core analytic cliques, like NYU or Princeton, continental philosophers end up outside of the philosophy department and find a home in comp lit, women’s, or African-American studies.
This will come as news to the tenured members of the NYU and Princeton departments whose work is centrally concerned with Continental philosophy, like Beatrice Longuenesse, John Richardson, and Alexander Nehamas. When I pointed out this factual error--that is what it is, a factual error--to the alleged editor of this journal (a grad student in American Studies at Yale, where fact-checking apparently isn’t required), he declined to correct it. </blockquote>
The three philosophers he names are, as a cursory glance at their publications will reveal, continental philosophers. Only of them is at Princeton, but it does seem that Heifetz’s claim is not wholly true. There could be an implied “mostly,” or, less persuasively, there could be an implicit claim that the aforementioned philosophers aren’t “continental” at all; but I’d agree that something in the sentence should be altered.
Yes, a fine demonstration of how the self-troll of a group blog is not the troll of the self. But I’d wager that Jonathan is not going to get 300+ comments, as happened the last time that people argued (among other topics) about when Continental philosophy started and what distinguishes it from analytic history of philosophy.
I’m surprised that Jonathan didn’t also toss in the “random morons” link from Leiter’s screed. That ought to be good for a few rounds, eh? Leiter really shouldn’t be so abusive to people who don’t have tenure.
Rich, thanks for reminding me how I’ve missed Chun the Unavoidable.
I do agree that analytic philosophy has now absorbed everything of value from the other schools. It’s somewhat similar to how “alternative rock” became “rock as such” in the early nineties, then turned its attention in the late nineties to absorbing what was best in rap music (Limp Bizkit, etc.).
I would position Leiter as a Fred Durst-like figure.
OK, I’m going to have to emerge from my blog retreat of the last few weeks to weigh in on this one. (I’ve been off working on a project which I’ve now finished (knock on wood.) So I can get back to the important stuff - arguing with people in comment boxes about this sort of stuff.) I must say: the n+1 piece is very high-handed and snarky, and the inaccuracies Leiter points out are real. So I don’t see that Leiter deserves to be tut-tutted at on account of his Durst-like manners. How was he supposed to respond to a piece like that?
One thing that’s interesting about the piece - the Heifetz - is that the line is drawn very explicitly in terms of competition between philosophy departments and English departments. “My professor and I met recently when she came to New York. She expressed disappointment about losing students and colleagues to English and comparative literature. I’m sad, she said. That is to say, I’m happy for them—sad for us.”
I don’t think Heifetz really realizes how much she is treating the following as analytic truths (if I may say so): ‘Analytic philosophy’ is the philosophy that tends to get done in Anglo-American philosophy departments. ‘Continental philosophy’ is what is generally done more in English departments, and other humanities departments (and theology departments, etc.) Of course it’s important to mark facts about institutional cultures. But that’s not ALL you want to talk about, and I think Heifetz is largely on the wrong side, Leiter on the right side, here. What you miss is the possibility of people studying the sorts of things that interest people in English departments - Nietzsche, Hegel, Husserl - but aren’t really philosophizing about these figures in the style of, say, Badiou.
Since I’m teaching Recent Continental Philosophy this semester, and I’m going to have them read Badiou’s recent New Left Review piece - which is highly relevant to all this - I should start writing up my lecture notes as posts.
http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2580
Only of them is at Princeton, but it does seem that Heifetz’s claim is not wholly true.
I believe that Longuenesse is at NYU.
"the n+1 piece is very high-handed and snarky, and the inaccuracies Leiter points out are real. So I don’t see that Leiter deserves to be tut-tutted at on account of his Durst-like manners. How was he supposed to respond to a piece like that?”
Civility is vastly overrated, but bullying is worse. As a tenured prof Leiter really should go easier with personal criticisms of grad students. And n+1 seems to me to have a good deal of the style of a magazine collecting pieces from a group blog (issue 4: a blog event about “whither literature”, plus scattered essays about whatever people thought was interesting that year), so of course they’re going to be high-handed, snarky, inaccurate, and attracted to hit pieces about influential people. Part of blogging is that if you get popular enough, people write hit pieces about you and everything that you stand for, but you are still responsible for what you write in return.
I did think that it was funny that many of the things that Leiter wrote had come up in the Thread To End All Threads—for instance, whether someone in an analytic department could do continental philosophy, based on whether they worked on people like Nietzsche. But there were commenters doing the Monty Python “you’re oppressing me” bit in that thread far worse than Heifetz, with far less reason, and it wasn’t necessary to go off on them. (Actually, one of them was the same person as one of the people that Leiter went off on, so there really is a direct comparison.)
I can’t remember if I was one of the comical whiners on the mysterious thread alluded to by Rich, but doing some continental philosophy (an enormous category including everyone in Europe not descended from Frege)in the analytical style would not meet my criticisms.
In fact, as a pragmatist of sorts I work more like an analytic than like a continental. (P.S. There are reasons why Nietzsche, of the continentals, is so popular among analytics; he has a strong positivist-analytic streak and is really an outlier.)
The analytical style is the problem for me, and I’m not especially involved in continental philosophy. I have frequently seen analytic pieces on Chinese philosophy, for example, which begin by paraphrasing the Chinese philosopher into analytic propositions, and then jettison the Chinese text and translation and go to work on the paraphrase. The results range from “interesting but deficient” to “a total waste of time”.
To discuss Chinese philosophy well, before paraphrasing it you’d have to look at it in context and ask yourself first “What are these guys trying to do? And is it philosophical at all? And do they do a good job of it?” After that you’d have to make adjustments for the literary, non-propositional method of presentation, as you do with Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (and Plato, too, really, though he’s so established that people forget that).
This is one of the most important critiques of analytic philosophy, and is even an inbternal problem. For example, Descartes is part of the analytic canon, or at least I would hope so, but when I reread the Discourse on Method recently I found it to be far different from the canned Descartes referenced with the word “Cartesian”.
John, of course ‘Cartesian’ gets bandied about as shorthand for a bunch of things that are rather loosely related to what Descartes actually wrote. He was practically a medieval philosopher. (It would be absolutely shocking if, by some stroke of sheer luck - what else could it be? - ‘Cartesian’ still referred to the same things that Descartes thought.) I have a neighbor, just down the hall - truly a hard-core analytic philosopher - who is presently writing a paper about how Descartes wasn’t even a dualist, by the standards of the discussion of dualism in philosophy of mind today, even though Descartes is always invoked as the paradigm dualist. How do people react to that? Well, first of all, they aren’t the least bit shocked to hear they may have been working with a potted Descartes. They had always assumed as much. (Analytic philosophers are not totally naive about the fact that there is a thing called ‘history’, even if they personally don’t specialize in studying it.) In general, I think you ought to consider that, in your attacks on analytic philosophy, you are committing the sin you are complaining about: namely, attacking a potted target, rather than familiarizing yourself with the complexity of, and motivation for, what is going on. WHY is it that Descartes tends to be potted in a certain way? Is there anything useful about that? Where did that pot come from? (The guy on the other side of me, by the by, is a freshly minted Ph.D. from Berkeley. Does analytic philosophy and Chinese philosophy. Reads it all in the original, of course. It takes all kinds.)
I realize that you have potentially legitimate concerns about what goes on in philosophy departments. And maybe this is really a comment box problem. Just not enough space. But your attacks seem too blunt to be helpful.
What struck me about Descartes is how much of an experimentalist he was. He really gave a lot of practical advice about training and supervising lab assistants, publication, peer review, and science as a social discipline rather than individual geniuses. The metaphysics and epiatomology were about 10% of it.
I think that what I say is true about most departments and valid for what happens when someone takes a few undergrad courses or when someone decides to go to grad school. As with economics, it’s always possible to point to individual exceptions to any specific criticism. The things I’ve read on Leiter and in Crooked Timber lead me to believe that I am mostly right, and that the stuff (topics, approaches) I’m interested in is tolerated in a very marginalized way.
My criticisms are useless because the battle is lost.
...and most present-day philosophers under about 45 don’t know that it ever took place. ("Continental vs analytic” was already a dog and pont show when I was an undergrad in 1964-7.)
I hate to agree with Leiter, but the Haifetz piece is not very high quality. I realize that tons of words have been wasted on this topic, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the difference between analytic and continental basically concerns the status of religion. Analytic philosophy just doesn’t take the topic seriously. So that Rawls or Nussbaum are also liberal opiners, but they are at home in analytic departments, and do not bother with religion. And Straussians, not liberal opiners, are not welcome in analytic departments because they do take religion seriously. It’s not an accident that the founders of analytic philosophy were socialist atheists, like Russell or Carnap. Or Leiter. That’s why it was so easy to dispense with the history of philosophy when you never have to bother with god again. (Please don’t point out, if anyone responds, the analytic philosophy of religion. The very idea would have made AJ Ayer retch, with good reason).
I supect there are many aspects of current “analytic” philosophy that would make AJ retch. (So much the worse for him, I say.) To ignore such aspects would lead to a characterization of analytic philosophy that’s a half-century or so out of date. But many (not all) who write critically about “analytic” philosophy seem to have just such an out-of-date picture of their target in mind, anyway.
For example, me,—though I’m really only 15-20 years out of date. The direction of progress then didn’t look good, though, and a quick run through the journals in my local college library made me suspect that I wasn’t missing anything. On the other hand, if you’re out of a field, your potshots won’t be very specific to the latest trends, and you’re irrelevant for that reason. But on the other hand, would it be really worth it to bone up on something in order to explain more persuasively why you think it’s a waste of time?
. . . would it be really worth it to bone up on something in order to explain more persuasively why you think it’s a waste of time?
It’s a question many of us have, though each of us is likely to have a different list of somethings we’ve given up on.
I’m a bit late to this party, though I do want to reply to the odd comments of Rich Pulchasky (whom I do not know). Mr. Pulchasky writes: “As a tenured prof Leiter really should go easier with personal criticisms of grad students.” First, I have no reason to think Ms. Heifetz is a grad student, though she may well be; all I can gather is that she is interning for N+1. Second, whether she is a grad student or a high school student or a tenured professor is irrelevant: what she wrote was false and misleading on multiple levels, and she deserved to be called on it. Third, her smear job was not prefaced with a disclaimer to the effect, “I’m a mere student, so don’t hold me to any professional or ethical standards for what I write.” If you want to write trash for a magazine that reaches the reading public, then you can’t expect to get a free pass. Fourth, there were no “personal” criticisms of Ms. Heifetz, unless you believe that criticizing someone’s intelligence, knowledge and honesty based on what they write is a “personal” criticism. That strikes me as an abuse of the language, which effectively turns all criticism into personal criticism. A genuinely “personal” criticism would be an attack on her person unrelated to what she has written (e.g., saying she is ugly or attacking her family).
It’s a question many of us have, though each of us is likely to have a different list of somethings we’ve given up on.
A compelling one, too, when combined with the question (asked as one is looking at one’s library) “am I going to live long enough to read all of these?”
Leiter is pretty touchy for such an imperious guy.
In reply to Brian Leiter’s comments: first, I also don’t know whether Heifetz is a grad student, but the same would hold if she were an undergraduate. Second and third, I never wrote that people should not be called on false or misleading information, or not be held to professional or ethical standards. Fourth, the blog entry includes mentions of her personal brains-to-bile ratio, “20-something know-nothing”, and “the lazy Ms. Heifetz--who obviously isn’t interested in any facts”. Clearly, you don’t really know whether Heifetz is generally more vicious than smart, a know-nothing, lazy, or uninterested in facts, you only know that she wrote this particular bad article. It’s quite possible to point out the inaccuracies and falsehoods in the article, and even call it a smear job, without the general comments against someone who doesn’t have the job protection or status that you do and who may be going into the same academic field.
I mostly agree with the actual content of what you wrote, if that matters. I’ve seen the same arguments elsewhere. Making the response mostly about Heifetz as an individual may perhaps have a deterrent effect, but in my opinion it makes the reply less generally useful.
Mr. Puchalsky: it is certainly possible to have written the reply many different ways. You have now, however, shifted gears from your moralistic posture that it was somehow improper to pillory this stupid woman for her insulting smear job, to the suggestion that it was imprudent in terms of rhetorical effect. Perhaps you are right on the latter point, though I very much doubt it.
I take it, though, that you now concede there were no personal criticisms: all the comments I made about Ms. Heifetz that you quote were amply supported by evidence from what she wrote. I do not know what evidential principle would support saying that *perhaps* she isn’t as stupid and ignorant as the written evidence would suggest. Perhaps she isn’t. But on the evidence of the work she has chosen to publish, my judgments are well-supported. Insofar as you agree with the substance of my points, then the talk about the tone is sheer distraction.
The charm offensive has begun:
Insofar as you agree with the substance of my points, then the talk about the tone is sheer distraction.
Damn, I’m glad this guy’s a liberal like me! I’m sorry I called him imperious.
(Where’s Kotsko? This would be a good time for him to taunt me.)
The evidential principle rests on the shakiness of a generalization to someone’s inherent stupidity from a sample of one essay. And I don’t concede that there were no personal criticisms; I still think that the type of attack that would be appropriate against a Bush administration flunky or even a media professional is inappropriate against someone who is effectively a student.
Within the paradigm within which Leiter insists we work, it seems that we could have some fun talking about him/her. So statements about Leiter should a.) be true in substance and b.) not be “personal” according to his limited definition. But c.) tone is irrelevant, so those of us who love Leiter could say things one way, and those of us who don’t could say things a different way, and we’d all still be friends.
Example A (love): “Leiter really reamed that stupid female-person beautifully.”
Example B (less love): “Leiter was probably right on the facts about this female-person, but I’d feel uneasy being in the same room with him.”
Am I the only one who finds this hilarious? I’m sorry, Mr. Leiter, but your respectable dismantling of Ms. Heifetz notwithstanding, Rich has a point. It may seem like your point, since you made it in the post John linked to, but it’s Rich’s point as well. I think what’s been lost in the channels here is that Rich addressed your rhetoric, questioned its effectiveness in this particular situation. Her academic standing aside, you treated Ms. Heifitz too naively, interpreting all she said in the weakest possible form and attacking those emaciated positions. (And before you ask, “Yes, I don’t think we oughta resort to their dirty tricks, as that would make us as intellectually reprehensible as them.")
I hate to sound like a suck-up—which I’m not, as I’m a contributor, armed with The Sword of Damo ... —but I think John’s parsing of Ms. Heifetz’s misunderstanding a far more intellectual take-down of her misguided piece. You scored more points, certainly; but John attempted to puzzle her argument together. He granted it substance before demolishing it. The context is important, I think, and you didn’t provide it. Rich complained that you abused someone you should’ve refuted, and I can’t help but agree. (Like Rich and John, I think you’re on the side of angels here ... but I think Rich is right. Turning it down from eleven to, say, nine would make your point less percusive, yes, but more effective.)
I’m surprised that such an eminent personage has the time, not simply to vociferously attack someone who criticized him on a blog, but to defend himself—in the comments to a blog post—from the charge that he may have gone a little bit overboard in doing so. Such petulance from such a kingmaker!
I guess it is summertime, though.
I must warn all of you: do NOT say that Leiter is ugly, or attack his family—at least in the context of this debate.
If his family deserves to be attacked for other reasons, don’t link your attacks to this particular thread. (And likewise if it turns out that Leiter is, in fact, ugly.)
At the risk of getting caught in the crossfire: there is a general question about blog style, namely, whether it’s advisable to be as ‘no holds barred’ as Brian. This is an etiquette question, not an evidence question. I think we can all agree that there is something to be said for not calling someone ‘stupid’, even if you think you have good evidence that they have been. We can also all agree that sometimes you have to call ‘em like you see ‘em, otherwise things won’t improve. What makes the difference is largely a function of whether you think it is important to carry on a conversation/personal relationship with person whose stupidity you contemplate alleging.
In Heifetz’ case, I think it’s pretty clear why some dumb stuff got said, and the reason isn’t insufficient smarts on Heifetz’ part. There are a lot of ‘urban myths’ about Anglo-American philosophy - tales from the Carnapian Crypt-type stuff. They are circulated by prominent academics, like Badiou, so they have a certain authoritative credibility. (This is the point of my Badiou follow-up to this post.)
Here’s another example I came upon just the other day, from Charles Altieri, “Rhetoric and Poetics: How to Use the Inevitable Return of the Repressed”,
“Notice then how timely this discipline [rhetoric] becomes. Its emphases on indeterminate situations and audience-specific communications enable it to absorb poststructural motifs without having to submit to the critical skepticism typically built into most poststructural work. And rhetoric seems entirely compatible with the contemporary emphasis on historicity that makes the ahistorical reliance on conceptual analysis pursued by most Anglo-American philosophy seem increasingly irrelevant.” (p. 475)
I think this is pretty darn awful. Again, the mistake is to treat Anglo-American philosophy not only as a monolith, but as a logical positivist monolith. (The only way to understand ‘conceptual analysis’ so that this statement makes any sense whatsoever in such a way that the rest of Altieri’s statement makes no sense whatseover. Altieri’s view could not survive acquaintance even with an elementary introduction to the history of the subject he is discussing.)
Altieri should be embarrassed to have been so glibly dismissive, even though it is just a passing remark. Likewise, Badiou should be embarrassed. Likewise Heifetz should be embarrassed to have written a wrong-headed n+1 squib.
Anyway, I don’t think that Altieri and Badiou are dumb, so I wouldn’t call Heifetz dumb for having picked certain opinions out of the air in this company. But the fact that these things get said is a problem. The way to correct it is to try to spread the word that, even if everyone you know has heard terrible tales of Anglo-American terror - and also that story about the woman who tried to dry her cat in the microwave - it doesn’t mean it’s TRUE. In fact, it’s an urban myth. (The cat in the microwave is an urban myth, isn’t it?) We should work toward a world in which cat-in-the-microwave grade hearsay about analytic philosophy no longer has a place in the essays of English professors or French philosophers.
(It isn’t like Anglo-American philosophers typically know about what goes on English departments, or in French philosophy departments, but I think they are less likely to say wildly ignorant things in passing, if only through sheer lack of interest. Obviously, if and when they do say ignorant things, they should be corrected.)
Also, I’m serious about this not being a symptom of personal dumbness, even if ‘cat in the microwave’ sounds pretty darn dumb. The truth is: everyone only studies a little area, but has opinions about a wide area. If you ever get into a situation in which a critical mass of inaccurate hearsay takes hold, concerning an area that certain people aren’t actually working on, it may just hang on stubbornly for a while.
Is it ok for English profs and French philosophers not to know about contemporary Anglo-American philosophy? I think it’s probably ok up to a point. A lot of what Anglo-American philosophers do would seem picky and technical and implausible and inapplicable. I think in a lot of cases appearances wouldn’t be deceiving. Still, I think it would be better if folks like Altieri thought: ‘you know, what I write has significant philosophical aspects. Yet I honestly don’t know what they think about this stuff these days in philosophy departments. I’ve heard some negative stuff but I’ve never really checked. That’s sort of a weird way for things to be.’ To be elaborately fair about it, just last night I was reading the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on ‘Truth’ and I noticed that there is nothing in it about Heidegger, which is pretty notable, given that some people think Heidegger is THE philosopher of the 20th Century (see my Badiou post again.) And he has a pretty distinctive view of truth. (Even if you think it is a horrible view, it is both distinctive and prominent.) On the other hand, it would be damn useful for post-Heideggerians to read that ‘truth’ entry anyway, because then they wouldn’t give such over-simple characterizations of what the opposition says.
I could have said that more briefly, couldn’t I? Heifetz has a sort of excuse - she fell under the influence of an unreliable authority figure, Badiou. Badiou himself has no real excuse, that I can see. (But he’s still sort of interesting, when he’s not spreading urban legends.)
John, analytic philosophy has to do a better sales job. I spend a lot of time looking for new books on topics I’m interested in, including philosophy, and they seldom end up being books by professional philosophers. And when they do, they’re seldom by analytic philosophers. Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” is a rare exception—I didn’t agree with it, but it is the kind of book I’m looking for. (A recent random trawl of a dozen philosophical journals supported my conviction that few professional philosophers care whether I read their works.
Part of the problem is that a lot of philosophers are enough invested in professional-specialist aspirations that they don’t feel good about writing non-technically for a general audience, and often enough don’t do it well. I think that part of this is defensiveness—scientists in the sciences thought of as “hard” are often quite happy to write for an educated general audience.
Granting the right of scholars and scientists to be as technical as they wish, and granting the power of specialized methods—if specialization succeeds, at some point there should be a “cash value” intellectual accomplishment which can be reported in ordinary language outside the system. For example, with relativity it is nuclear weapons. What is the payoff for analytic philosophy? I’ve been asking this question for a year, and people tell me that analytic philosophers contribute to AI, cognitive psychology, and linguistics but (as Matt Ygelsias has said) these philosophers then tend to get absorbed by the non-philosophical discipline they’re working in.
My philosophical interests are social, historical, and “normative”, and this is where analytic philosophy seems weakest.
I could match you word for word, believe me, but I’ll leave with a few short themes. One is the question: is there any philosophical outside to analytic philosophy? And if so, is it just “continental philosophy”? Because the people I like most (Michel Meyer and Stephen Toulmin, for example, or the process philosophers if any survive) don’t fiit into either box. A lot of the animus against AP comes from people who think that AP has succeeded in getting a hiring stranglehold which has killed off possible competing schools—Toulmin, for example, started out in AP, but he wandered off the reservation and hasn’t worked in philosophy departments for 20 years or so. He’s quite explicit about his exclusion. (AP philosophers sometimes deny that the term AP has any meaning, which I take to mean that since there is no contrastive kind of philosophy, the differences within what used to be called AP are the only significant philosophical differences.
Second, Leiter’s rhetorical style is that of someone whose position is impregnable and who does not need to persuade anyone. To me, this is a function of the institutional domination, and I think that there’s a lot of truth in stupid ignorant Heifetz’s accusation that Leiter has played a big role in the AP grand strategy for institutional domination. (Philosophical-type people not in AP do not get a warm feeling when they read the philosophy-department rankings and hiring reports published by CEO Leiter).
Third, when I do find something which seems to develop the general philosophical significance of some area of study, usually it is not something written by a philosopher. Francisco Varela, Antonio Damasion, Stuart Kaufman, Stephen Jay Gould, Ilya Prigogine, J.H. Hexter, Benoit Mandelbrot, Mary Douglas, Marshall Sahlins—these are primary producers in non-philosophical fields who do a great job in presenting the more general, philosophical significance of what they do.
I agree with you, John, that analytic philosophy hasn’t done a good enough sales job. This is because it does tend to get itself locked in little specialist boxes, gnawing miniature problems which may be scholastic twiddles. That is its cardinal vice. (The cardinal vice of continental philosophy is a certain susceptibility to cults of personality. When it goes bad, that is HOW it goes bad.)
I’ll try to write more later.
Once AP despecializes and learns to write for a general educated audience, will it still be AP? Despecialization would lead to synthetic, constructive, or abductive thinking, not analytic thinking. Writing for a general non-specialist audience is rhetorical, not scientific.
Generalist writing is always a mixed discourse, whereas scientized analytic philosophy wants a pure discourse. For example, Velleman makes a sharp distinction between primary ethics and analytic secondary ethics or meta-ethics. There’s always been an assumption that theorized meta-ethics will have a power over ordinary-language primary ethics, the way scientific physics has mastery over common-sense physics. At least, without that assumption, why have meta-ethics?
But as far as I see, meta-ethics has little impact on primary ethics (and possibly a bad effect, with its tendency toward endless unresolvable quibbles about hypotheticals and unresolvable hard cases in lifeboat ethics). So as far as I can tell, the autonomy of meta-ethics is not justifiable, and ethicists aren’t really specialist experts, and the discussion of ethics should continue as a concrete, primary, mixed discourse.
Scott,
You wrote that Rich was questioning Leiter’s rhetorical effectiveness. I took Rich’s initial point to be more along the lines of a moral qualm. Leiter’s argument is absolutely right, but his position as a tenured professor of at least enough influence to have a badly down article written about him means that what for him was a flick of a fly-swatter may for the receiver be more like a sledgehammer, in terms of effects on career. This is because the receiver is very likely not a tenured or tenure track academic, given the quality of the piece and the editing of the journal, which Leiter also, and rightly, gripes on. Rich, have I got you wrong here?
Best regards,
Nate
That’s pretty much right, Nate. Scott is also right in that I do also have a rhetorical concern which I brought up more evidently in my reply to Leiter’s comment.
Like others, I have come a little late to this party, having just read both the original Heifetz piece and Leiter’s response. He’s far too defensive considering the weaknesses of the original article, in my opinion.
If anything about this episode makes my blood boil, it’s that column inches are devoted to tripe like this while plenty of decent articles go unread. Note to Ms. Heifetz: it would be better to take more interest in Simon Critchley’s ‘Continental Philosophy: a very short introduction’ than his leather trousers.
As far as the continental/analytic question goes, there isn’t that much between them as long as we have a reasonably broad sense of each. I think Leiter is completely right to suggest that continental philosophy can attract those ‘right-on’ graduate students who are more interested in normative political opinions than justifying them philosophically. My suspicion, however, is that this might be more common in the US where ‘continental’ philosophy seems to be a more marginal or secondary pursuit. The postgrads I know (I’m a Phd student) who are most interested in hipster leftist politics are normally found in the government, sociology or discourse analysis departments. I haven’t met anyone doing continental philosophy who was particularly disparaging of the analytic tradition (if we can call it that).