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    But What about the Children?

    It is not very difficult to give undergraduates advice about where they might pursue graduate study without egregiously insulting large numbers of your professional colleagues. 

    But then how to explain the ubiquity things like this not unrepresentative post by Spiros?*

    In the context of a very nice post about an exceptional department, Professor Leiter claims: "The term 'pluralism'** has, alas, been debased to the point that everyone now knows it is usually a code word for 'crappy philosophy is welcome here'."

    That's accurate, but a little too generous! For one thing, it understates the self-congratulation with which the term is deployed, and well as the ways in which it is wielded in order to deceive those most vulnerable in our profession.

    I realize that many of our judgments of concerning philosophical work are somewhere between full-bore cognitive judgments and Kantian judgments of taste rather than judgments of things you happen to find agreeable. I mean, my distaste for a philosophical view or text is not the same as my distaste for bitter vegetables. And that's fine!


    But, again, it's just not very difficult construe one's beliefs about philosophical value as full bore cognitive while at the same time being humble about those very beliefs. But why do so many of us find this difficult?

    In general, we should as much as possible follow the following three defeasible assumptions: 

    1. If you are a professor, professors at other universities and are your colleagues, members of the same guild, 
    2. If you are a graduate student, the same holds of graduate students at other universities,
    3. People we disagree with (in or out of our department) about philosophical positions, texts, or paradigms are in general both informed and of good will. It is extraordinarily important that our behavior reflect this awareness.

    Like Jaded Philosopher (e.g. here) it seems obvious to me that lack of humility with respect to your own philosophical paradigm and figures very easily translates into intolerance and bullying.

    Moreover, I don't think that it is possible to sympathetically read the beautiful concluding chapter of Bertrand Russell's The Problems of Philosophy without agreeing with Jaded Philosopher on this. For people who haven't read the Russell, note that he takes two of the main virtues of philosophy to be that it inculcates the epistemic virtue of being radically open to new possibilities and also that it engenders a kind of humility that is in fact a general moral virtue. If you find Russell compelling then it's all the more of a drag when you see people using philosophy like male rams use their horns.

    But what about the children, whom it is our duty to save from cognitive depravity? Well, first please just consider how much egregiously horrible social policy comes out of a desire to "protect the children." With respect to anyone who might take seriously Spiros' cranky quote above, just note that if in your desire to protect new graduate students you end up by example teaching them that a big part of philosophy is mocking people whom you disagree with, then you are the problem.***

    Again, just check out Russell. The relevant discussion is on-line here.****

    [Note:

    *Who would enjoy the video to right, but would have liked this one better. Sorry man, we'll always have the final track on evillive with Glenn and Henry jointly affirming their numerical identity.

    **Full disclosure. I am happy to describe my own department as pluralist with no use of scare quotes, and I'm also happy to be here. If you want to take what I write with a grain of salt as a result, that's fine. As Rollins notes above, "I still feel alright."

    ***Who are in their twenties, but issues involving heteronomy and autonomy with respect to faculty responsibilities to graduate students is a topic for another set of posts.

    ****Any time I post on anything relating to the vituperativeness of the analytic-continental divide, I get lots of e-mails from people all over the map, some of them are quite angry. Let me say a few things: (1) I am not speaking for anyone else at Newapps; yes, we are all individuals, and (2) I'm a terrible, terrible e-mail correspondent. Please, if the above prompts you to write me, just say it here instead, as non-vituperatively as possible. If you have tenure, say it here with your own name. If you're tenure track without tenure, then use a consistent handle. If you're not tenure track, then feel free to be anonymous or use different handles. Or don't say anything. It's all copecetic. Or rather it should be.]

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    114 responses to “But What about the Children?”

    1. anonladygrad Avatar
      anonladygrad

      The other bugbear in the room that no one seems to want to talk about (with regard to ‘crappy’ philosophy departments, i.e. pluralist ones) is that they seem to disproportionately represent students who come from undergraduate schools that are not all that well known. They also represent larger majorities of women and people of color in the discipline. It strikes me that beneath all the hatred of pluralist departments is a subtle classism, and a not so subtle racism and sexism. (A La Alexander Rosenberg’s defense of philosophy as excluding ’boutique’ concerns like those of women, people of color, and indigenous peoples in 3:AM)

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    2. adeimantus Avatar
      adeimantus

      You might look closer to home if you’re genuinely worried about the lesson that “a big part of philosophy is mocking people whom you disagree with.” NewAPPS posters have explicitly endorsed mockery as an argument form. Spiros, on the other hand, isn’t mocking anyone at all.

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    3. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      Jon, There are several things about your posts along these lines that I don’t really understand that I wish you’d clarify. First, I assume that you don’t think that all ways of doing philosophy are equally good. Is that right? If it is right, do you think there is some sort of obligation to not say that one thinks certain ways of doing philosophy are deeply misguided or no good? You seem to imply that above, but that seems like such an implausible view that it’s hard to believe you’d believe it. But if that’s not so, I’m not sure what your position here is. Is it just that people are too mean or aggressive about this? As a “more flies with honey than vinegar” sort of guy myself, I have sympathy for that critique, but do think it’s a matter of taste. The “humility” bit makes me think that you might be suggesting that critics of certain ways of doing philosophy are assuming they can’t be wrong, but I don’t think that’s necessary. Strongly put criticism of ways of doing philosophy are compatible with accepting that one might be wrong, of course. If you thought a certain way of doing philosophy was quite bad, and it prevailed at a certain department, would you really refrain from telling that to an undergraduate considering doing work in that department? That would seem odd and mistaken to me, but you seem to be suggesting that it would be wrong to give this advice. Can you clarify your position here?
      I also think it obscures things more than brings light to them to cast this as part of the “analytic/continental divide”. Surely it cuts across that, insofar as we think that even is a real issue these days. (I’ll admit that it seems to me to be a quaint and unimportant issue, basically a non-issue, or at least a highly unilluminating way to frame the real debates about philosophical methodology. I can’t help but think you’re projecting too much from your own grad school experiences on issues, and that for the most part the views that turned you off there are minority ones these days.) Certainly, in the case of Leiter it seems really unhelpful to cast this in terms of analytic vs. continental philosophy. I know that you like certain approaches to philosophy that have been placed in the “goats” pile by Leiter, and that those people often see themselves as working in the “continental” tradition, but making this about the “analytic/continental divide” seems to me to really obscure the issue. (Leiter, after all, thinks lots of mainstream “analytic” philosophy isn’t any good, either.)
      Finally, I think it would be useful to address the discussion of pluralism that Leiter actually makes in his post- it does seem to me that, say, it’s much more reasonable to say that Riverside is a “pluralistic” department than, say, Oregon, one that does sometimes describe itself as “pluralistic”, despite, it seems to me, having a much more narrow range of approaches. The use of “pluralistic” by many departments does seem very odd to me, even if I’d hesitate to put my criticism in exactly the terms that Leiter does. (I have nothing in particular against Oregon, and like some of the people there very much, but it’s really a much more narrow department than Riverside or many others, despite its self-conception. This seems to me to be common.)
      On a more trivial point, perhaps, it seems odd to cast Russell as a defender of “pluralism”, since he was more than happy to separate philosophical sheep from goats, and cast the goats out (Leibniz’s published philosophy was fairy-tales that no serious person could believe, his attacks on British idealism, his treatment of Nietzsche, his attacks on the later Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy, etc.) (Even more trivially, it’s Problems of philosophy, not Principles.) I would disagree with Russell on most of these issues, but don’t think there’s anything wrong with strong criticism of different approaches that one finds mistaken. (In truth, Russell’s attacks were often pretty ignorant, making him an even odder model, I think.)

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    4. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Thanks for this comment.
      I can’t speak for other Newapps posters, but I’m pretty sure that the defenses of mockery was with respect to people abusing power and offering up sophistical defenses of those abuses, and not with respect to anyone’s philosophical positions or paradigms. This doesn’t mean that it’s unproblematic there either though!
      Humor is weird because it simultaneously makes life bearable and unbearable. We use it as a pressure valve in all sorts of ways. Victims of cruelty certainly do this, but it’s also a constitutive part of human cruelty. In very many circumstances it’s impossible for people to pass a certain threshold of cruelty without mocking their victims. Glover writes about “the cold joke” employed by the millions of people who helped perpetuate the holocaust, and Protevi has written about the employment of the same by the Columbine shooters.
      Again though, on the other side humor is part of what makes life bearable in spite of all of its cruelties. Not just mocking the powerful, but also taking aesthetic joy in noting the absurdities that are part of our condition.
      Re Spiros’ and my post, I didn’t mean to make his effective use of mockery (usually aimed at Billy Joel, or people he’s heard saying funnily stupid things) a major part of anything I wrote in reaction to his post. Though, given the penultimate sentence and the Black Flag video, it’s very clear that why it would be interpreted that way (my bad!).
      What I don’t understand is the almost pathological need of many of us to affirm our own sense of worth by dividing ourselves into us and them, and playing these little games of tribal allegiance. This too is very much a part of the human condition, but it is a part that I’ve always hoped philosophy could help to inure myself from. Before I honestly embraced “pluralism” I found myself engaging in the vice quite a bit, so I should understand it much better than I do. But all I know is that it made me more unhappy and unpleasant than I otherwise am and a much worse philosopher to boot.

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    5. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Matt,
      These are so many interesting points that I’m not going to do a good job responding. Briefly, by paragraph:
      (1) Yes, I agree with you. I don’t think all approaches to philosophy are equally good, and I’m sorry if the OP suggests otherwise. Really I think Jaded PhD got it right in the thing I linked to, “APA cmte didn’t imply that you can’t think other approaches are “worthless.” Just that you shldn’t be a jerk about it/undermine colleagues.” I think Spiros is being a jerk and undermining colleagues with his post. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but that was the issue.
      Generally though, I find that people are the most negative about divergent paradigms the less they know about those paradigms. If you don’t like Derrida fine. But before you start saying things publicly about Derrideans, please go read Samuel Wheeler’s book (there are others that would work to the same effect). I don’t think it’s possible to do that and still write in ways that presuppose that anybody that takes Derrida seriously as a philosopher must be a deluded fool or a sophist.
      If you don’t like Francois Laruelle, that’s fine. Nobody is complaining. But before you beat up on him you should read Ian James, John Mullarkey, and/or Anthony Paul Smith. Your disagreements will be rather more honeyed and less vinegary after appreciating that smart people of good will find much of use in his work.
      So what is meant by “crappy departments” above? Departments where the funding is bad? Clearly not. They are places where we “deceive” (!!!!) students about issues of philosophical value. As if we know that Heidegger is a sophist, and are part of some evil conspiracy to harm our own students. I’m not just picking at the semantics of Spiros’ wording. This kind of thing is very common both in the blogosphere and over beers at conferences or after reading groups.
      (2) Very good points about how this isn’t entirely an analytic/continental divide issue, and thank you for making me laugh with the “goats pile” reference. With respect to Spiros’ post though, “pluralism” does usually denote representation of figures, historical epochs, and approaches out of the analytic mainstream as it tends to be reflected by the people Leiter selects to fill out his forms (better Flag song might have been http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5fmNSn7cIc ). Just to forestall confusion, I’m not putting down the analytic mainstream. Most of what I teach and read is firmly in it!
      The issue with respect to the APA committee’s recommendation about the bullying use of denigrating other traditions at Colorado in all probability didn’t mainly concern continental philosophy. I don’t know. With Jaded Ph.D I find it surreal that so much of the web discussion has been against the recommendations involving this very thing. And here, the very same week is Spiros doing it with respect to continental philosophy! Yuck.
      (3) I don’t read Leiter’s blog very much. I just meant to post about Spiros, and wouldn’t have bothered with it if not for the issue with the APA Committee.
      As far as the proper use of “pluralist,” I have no intuitions and find it a little bit surreal to try to police the word. Everything is similar to everything else in some respects, and any two things are different in some respects. There is no absolute metric for unity and plurality but only metrics with respect to what you take to be important. So of course people with different views about what is important are going to disagree about what counts as more or less pluralist.
      I don’t think that’s a very big deal, though (again) I do think it’s a little bit surreal. What really hinges on policing the word? This being said, I do have a real problem with using such a semantic debate to denigrate our colleagues and their students.
      (4) I wholeheartedly agree with you that it would be extraordinarily weird to cast Russell as a champion of pluralism (check out Robert Stern’s latest book for a wonderful rehabilitation of the British Idealists!). Russell was a sui generis genius who contradicted himself all over the place and also said lots of stupid things. But he was also capable of saying some of the very wisest things humans have managed to utter. In this latter I include the material to which I linked. I mean, I think he nails it on the head there and we’d be a much better discipline if we properly internalized what he is saying about the point of doing philosophy.

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    6. AnonymousContinentalPerson Avatar
      AnonymousContinentalPerson

      I don’t really understand why so many members of the philosophical elite feel the need to constantly (and, more often than not, dickishly) berate the margins of the profession. If there ever was a serious turf war between “Continental” and “analytic” philosophy (or whatever terms you prefer)–and I don’t think there has been–the analytics won it years ago.
      And let’s be clear that this war was never decided on the merits, since the loudest and most obnoxious critics of Continental philosophy have only the crudest and most sophomoric understanding of what they are criticizing. The hegemony of analytic philosophy in the U.S. and other English-speaking domains is a political and sociological phenomenon having very little to do with honest, charitable engagement with non-analytic traditions. Does anyone seriously dispute this?
      But back to my original point: the Continental folks, along with others who have been rejected by the mainstream, have responded with the only real strategy available to them apart from disappearing off the face of the earth–i.e., they have carved out a successful network of graduate programs, organizations, journals, etc. that allow them to work together on the kind of philosophy THEY like without having to worry too much about what goes on in Leiterworld. You would think this would be enough to satisfy the ideologically anti-Continental contingent, since what they take to be “bad philosophy” (at best) has been summarily reduced to a fringe subculture within the profession with next to no power at all. But no–for some inscrutable reason Leiter and his ilk just keep piling on, abusing and bullying a harmless group of people who would be perfectly happy to just be left alone. I don’t understand this at all. What the hell do they want? For SPEP to cease to exist? For Emory and Duquesne and Memphis to shut their doors? Seriously, what exactly is their MO? It just seems like schoolyard bullying of the most detestable sort.
      The analytics have the keys to the kingdom, and they have successfully managed to keep the barbarians outside the gate (hell, they’re nowhere NEAR the gate). So what’s the problem? If you don’t like the fact that a small and deeply marginalized minority of philosophers do philosophy differently from you, just ignore them and focus on the kind of philosophy you DO like. Really, Leiter and friends just need to STFU about this stuff. It’s so goddamn stale and boring and obnoxious, and it fairly reeks of insecurity.

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    7. AnonymousContinentalPerson Avatar
      AnonymousContinentalPerson

      And by the way, why does anyone take Spiros seriously anyway? Has there ever been anything like a substantive philosophical discussion on his joke of a blog? I doubt it.

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    8. Scu Avatar
      Scu

      “The demand that we only say what can be said in the sort of prose that Bertrand Russell wrote, marvelous as that prose was, will, in fact, necessarily limit what one can talk about.” -Hilary Putnam, “A Half Century of Philosophy, Viewed from Within.”
      This is mostly a response to Matt. UCR does seem to have an interesting department. But how is that they are pluralist and Oregon is not? Am I missing something? UCR seems (based on the faculty interest webpage, nothing else) not to have faculty with research interests in feminist philosophy, American philosophy, philosophy of race, and (except with one notable exception), non-western philosophy. Now, of course Oregon has other places where their program doesn’t focus. It seems odd that one can claim that Oregon is not pluralistic.

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    9. AnonymousContinentalPerson Avatar
      AnonymousContinentalPerson

      SCU–the difference is that the philosophers at UCR do not, so far as I can tell, work within a sufficiently analytic idiom (i.e., they don’t do “SPEPpy” philosophy, to use Leiter’s parlance). Don’t forget: Leiter has no problem with people working on “Continental philosophy” (hell, he does so himself) as long as it is within a sufficiently analytic idiom. As far as he is concerned, anyone operating outside that idiom isn’t doing really philosophy, regardless of research focus.

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    10. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      Sorry, I meant “the philosophers at UCR, so far as I can tell, work within a sufficiently analytic idiom.”

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    11. Scu Avatar
      Scu

      ACP: yeah, I understand that there is something ideological in trying to claim that UCR is pluralistic, and Oregon is not. I just want to try and force that to be clear. Of course, part of this can relate to what anonladygrad said earlier. Maybe the reason that a department with feminism, philosophy of race, and non-western is not pluralistic in the eyes of others has to do with being able to wave those away as ’boutique concerns.’

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    12. adeimantus Avatar
      adeimantus

      What I don’t understand is the almost pathological need of many of us to affirm our own sense of worth by dividing ourselves into us and them, and playing these little games of tribal allegiance.
      Yes, I agree with this part. Anonymous Continental Philosopher looks like an extreme example of what you’re talking about.

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    13. Neil Avatar
      Neil

      Two people at UCR do non-western.

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    14. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      What the hell are you talking about?

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    15. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      I don’t get this.
      I don’t agree with everything ACP writes (and will respond in a bit) but I’m not getting how it’s an extreme example of the italicized part. I mean, even though I might find some of it a little bit too divisive in various ways, I just don’t see that ACP is making divisions to put other people down and feel better about her/himself, which seems to be relevant issue. Or am I missing something? ACP?

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    16. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      Jon–for the record, I am not trying to be divisive. I’m just acknowledging what I see as the facts on the ground. Despite the good-faith efforts of people, including you and other NA contributors, to engage in genuine pluralistic divide-crossing–efforts which I strongly endorse and which I have also pursued–there doesn’t seem to be much of will in the highest echelons of the philosophical establishment to follow suit. Instead there is a lot of hostility, of which Leiter is just a notorious vocal example.
      So, I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but it is. The reason that SPEP, SPEP-affiliated graduate programs and journals, etc. exist is because philosophers working outside of the generic analytic idiom have been summarily consigned to the margins of the profession and have been forced on pain of going extinct to create their own counterculture. It sucks, but that’s the way it is. And it’s not (or at least not mostly) the fault of people who work on this kind of philosophy. Anyone who is familiar with the past 40 years of the profession knows this.
      My point is that I don’t understand why Leiter and company won’t just live and let live. What they call “SPEPpy” philosophy doesn’t pose a threat to them, right? So what do they hope to gain from attacking and vilifying and just generally sh*tting all over them? It just seems like bullying.

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    17. Scu Avatar
      Scu

      Neil,
      That is good. I was just going entirely based upon faculty interest page, and there it was only one cooperating faculty doing non-western. Again, none of this is a criticism of UCR, which seems an interesting department, and the people whose work I know in the department is strong. It is just a comment that it seems odd to claim that Oregon is not pluralistic if you feel that UCR is. That seems hard to sustain.

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    18. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      Yes. There is nothing wrong with working on “Continental” figures, texts, etc. within an analytic idiom. A lot of interesting and important work of this sort has been done. The problem, obviously, is with the idea that this is the only legitimate idiom and that everything else–phenomenology, existentialism, Marxism, non-analytic feminism, poststructuralism, OOO, pragmatism, non-Western philosophy, etc.–is “crappy philosophy.” This has been Leiter’s line for as long as he has been around.

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    19. Neil Avatar
      Neil

      The other person who does non-western is Eric Schwitzgebel. Both departments look pretty wide-ranging to me.

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    20. Enzo Rossi Avatar
      Enzo Rossi

      @ACP
      From the point of view of the mainstream it makes some prudential sense to try to further diminish the influence of fringe groups in philosophy. Philosophy is a small field with limited resources. One wants more people like oneself around, so as to have a wider ‘productive’ conversation (i.e. between people working in one’s idiom). And then there are jobs for one’s PhD students to think about. Besides, if one thinks philosophy is a collective enterprise in pursuit of the truth, one doesn’t want ‘colleagues’ barking up the wrong tree and so wasting the discipline’s precious few opportunities for paid research time.
      Just to be clear: I’m not endorsing or denouncing any of the above. I’m just describing what I take to be some people’s motivations.

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    21. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      All of this would be fine if attempts to “diminish the influence of fringe groups in philosophy” involved actual philosophizing (with all that this entails, including adherence to the principle of charity) rather than needlessly hostile ad hominem invective. In my experience, the latter accounts for 9/10ths of the mainstream’s engagement with the “fringe.”

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    22. Mark Lance Avatar
      Mark Lance

      Matt: I’m not going to offer necessary and sufficient conditions for legitimate criticism, or for taking other positions seriously. I don’t think one can. I think that pushing for them is, in fact, so utterly silly as to in fact merely be a mechanism for not taking people seriously.
      I’m not saying that you were literally calling for that, but your insistence that the fact that one can legitimately claim that not all ways of doing philosophy are equally good somehow contradicts the point of Jon’s post certainly brings to mind a sadly common pattern when analytic philosophers debate serious issues. They ignore trying to understand the underlying point, offer some analysis of what it might be in terms of some universal rule in the ballpark of N&S conditions, and then criticize that.
      So anyway, let’s all agree that one can legitimately think that some ways of doing philosophy are not as good as others. I certainly think that lots of ways of doing philosophy are bad in various senses of it. But if I think that, and want to say it, I take it I should do something like read the best folks doing that sort of work, and then offer detailed reasons why I think what they are doing is a bad idea. (I have a paper saying this about Bayesian epistemology, I have written long commentaries on why I think this sort of thing about certain kinds of analytic metaphysics. I have a paper arguing such a thing visa a vis the more anti-rationalist themes in Rorty and Derrida.)
      But I don’t think anyone can honestly believe that a claim like “In the context of a very nice post about an exceptional department, Professor Leiter claims: “The term ‘pluralism’** has, alas, been debased to the point that everyone now knows it is usually a code word for ‘crappy philosophy is welcome here’.” That’s accurate, but a little too generous!” is doing anything remotely like that. Is there any point at all to reading this as a serious attempt to claim that a certain sort of philosophy is less good than some other?

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    23. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      This is essentially of a piece with what I wrote to Enzo above.
      Assuming there are good reasons (even if only prudential) for claiming that other ways of doing philosophy are “bad,” such claims need to be defended in the same way that we expect any contentious claim to be defended–with argumentation and evidence. Snarky insults and put-downs are “crappy philosophy” if anything is.

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    24. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      adeimantus @ 2: “NewAPPS posters have explicitly endorsed mockery as an argument form” is a poor reading of this post: http://www.newappsblog.com/2012/02/in-defense-of-snark-or-breaking-down-the-walls-of-the-universal-seminar-room.html

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    25. Mark Lance Avatar
      Mark Lance

      yeah, I didn’t mean to suggest it was an original point. In fact, it is literally hard for me to believe that it is a point that needs to be made at all. It seems like kind of the very most basic starting point of grownup discourse.

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    26. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      And yet, certain popular philosophy blogs continue to exist which seem completely oblivious to it. Alas.

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    27. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      ACP at 23: let me modify this line of yours: “Assuming there are good reasons for using snark on a philosophy blog such claims need to be defended in the same way that we expect any contentious claim to be defended–with argumentation and evidence.”
      I completely agree. That’s what I try to do in the post linked in 24.
      “Snarky insults and put-downs are “crappy philosophy” if anything is.”
      Yeah, but not everything that happens here at NewAPPS is “philosophy” in the universal seminar room meaning of that term.

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    28. Univentive Pseudonym Avatar
      Univentive Pseudonym

      “If you find Russell compelling then it’s all the more of a drag when you see people using philosophy like male rams use their horns.”
      Except that the usual suspects here aren’t typically using philosophy as horns, they’re using invective, smarminess, and middle-school recess tactics as a dominance strategy over philosophy as a herd. (How much does this characterize metadisciplinary debate in other disciplines, I wonder?)
      Part of your point is the philosophical discussion can be too combative, if I understand correctly, and surely that’s true for some value of ‘combative.’ But I’m not sure the two phenomena are very tightly linked. Or are they?

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    29. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      John, I believe there are important differences between (what I will call) “NewAPPS snark” (NAS) and “Leiter/Spiros snark” (LSS). As is obvious from the post you linked, NAS has been and continues to be invoked in cases where snark is the only, or at least the most, appropriate response (for example, in calling out obvious instances of sexism). LSS, in contrast, is repeatedly invoked in instances where snark is not appropriate (for example, in critically assessing non-analytic schools of philosophy). The problem is not with snark–far from it!–but with substituting snark for genuine philosophizing when the latter is appropriate.

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    30. ACP Avatar
      ACP

      I have some experience with other humanities disciplines and I have not encountered anything remotely resembling the “analytic/continental” divide as expressed in blogs like LR, PA, etc.

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    31. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      This makes sense to me. I think my background can have the tendency to blind me to some of these things so thanks tons for taking the time to explain more.

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    32. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      ACP @29: I completely agree. Not what to do with LSS? What kind of reply is appropriate? Well, that’s a begged question really, since no reply is the best reply, as life is too short, do we really want to dignify this stuff with a reply, etc.
      The last time LSS came to my attention, however, I couldn’t take the high road of no reply, and slipped into some bitter sarcasm here: http://proteviblog.typepad.com/protevi/2012/11/no-better-way.html (not really snark, I think, which at its best has a kind of playfulness that I didn’t go for in that case.)

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    33. RM Avatar
      RM

      At rock bottom, I take philosophy to trade in clarification and argumentation. By my lights, we should use uncomplicated language to explore and clarify contested concepts and to advance positions on controversial issues by way of straightforward argumentation.
      I have made some good faith efforts to engage with figures in the SPEP tradition. I’ve read Bruce Whilshire and John McCumber. I’ve attended talks given by leading SPEP members. I think some of these folks advance really interesting claims. Unfortunately, my experience has been that the supporting arguments for such claims are (usually) either absent or obscure. Moreover, I’ve never found any reason to think that obscure argumentation is anything other than a philosophical vice. I don’t think those who indulge this vice produce work that is transparently worthless, but surely it is, in one important respect, crappy.

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    34. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      I’ll say something about some other comments addressed to me when I have more time, but this needs a quick reply:
      The problem is not with snark–far from it!–but with substituting snark for genuine philosophizing when the latter is appropriate.
      The problem with addressing this to Leiter is, of course, that he’s published academic papers where he defends his negative takes on certain approaches to figures in “continental” philosophy and this sort of thing. Complaining that a blog post isn’t an academic paper is really among the lowest forms of criticism, but this is especially so when the target has, in fact, provided the criticism in academic papers! One can, of course, disagree with the assessment in those papers, but to pretend like the blog-style criticism is all that exists is just silly.
      (I have no idea who Spiros is, so don’t know if he or she has provided any substantive criticism of views he or she disagrees with. But, it seems clear from Spiros’s blog that it’s not assumed the blog is actually criticism itself.)

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    35. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      Matt, will you point us to the “academic papers” where Leiter defends the following thesis? “The term “pluralism” has, alas, been debased to the point that everyone now knows it is usually a code word for “crappy philosophy is welcome here.” “

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    36. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Oh gosh RM, where does one begin?
      Here’s a challenge, go read the essays in Crowell and Malpas’ “Transcendental Heidegger” and then report back. The argumentative standard and clarity in those essays is if anything above what you might find in a comparable work of analytic philosophy (say, a collection on John McDowell or Donald Davidson, and I don’t say this to insult analytic philosophers working on them). Or check out Lee Braver’s “A Thing of this World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism?” (or any of his other books). Braver and Crowell aren’t obscure figures at SPEP!
      Or come to SPEP in New Orleans this year and I’ll not only buy you a beer but also suggest talks that are good for people who might not have too much background with respect to German Idealism, Phenomenology, or the Parisian 68ers (the three great traditions excluded in traditional analytic philosophy). Every single time slot you will find good philosophers giving supporting arguments to texts that might strike you initially as obscure, as well as interesting conversation.

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    37. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Or read the exchange between Protevi and Leiter that he linked to earlier.
      I agree with what Lance and ACP say earlier, but I would also like to defend a stronger rule (to be clear, Lance does follow this rule; he just didn’t articulate it). O.K. Here it is:
      Even if you do know enough about an argument, text, figure, or area to responsibly critique it, you should do so in a manner that doesn’t presuppose that people who disagree with you are either deluded or not of good will.
      I’m not saying that this is true for all beliefs and all people (some moral views are simply depraved), but it’s ludicrous and damaging to routinely flout the rule with respect to your colleagues.

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    38. Jamie Avatar
      Jamie

      That’s one way of doing philosophy. There are others.

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    39. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      That’s not a plausible interpretation of what I said and you know it, John. You can look at the papers yourself if you like. They are not hard to find. (Note that I’m not saying that Leiter is right- only that this particular charge is just silly, as you surely know.)

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    40. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      I don’t know whether Protevi knows what papers you mean, but I can’t be the only one reading this exchange who doesn’t. I own Leiter’s handbook of continental philosophy and have read a decent portion of it, but as far as I’m parsing this conversation, that can’t be what you mean. Please cut and paste some stuff from his vita and it will be clear if we’re talking past one another or whether there’s a substantive disagreement concerning what constitutes abusive forms of dismissive rudeness (even if we end up disagreeing, I hope that it is clear that nothing you’ve said instantiates the stuff I posted about).

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    41. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      “The problem with addressing this to Leiter is, of course, that he’s published academic papers where he defends his negative takes on certain approaches to figures in “continental” philosophy and this sort of thing.”
      But Matt, that quote in 35 is exactly the relevant issue here, as you surely know. It’s a red herring in a discussion of Leiter’s views of pluralism in specific departments to make some grand sweeping gesture toward his papers where “he defends his negative takes on certain approaches to figures in ‘continental’ philosophy and this sort of thing.”
      So I can avoid being “silly” in your eyes, what papers do you have in mind, what are the “negative takes,” which “certain approaches” are you talking about, what do you mean by the scare quotes around “continental,” and what do you mean by “this sort of thing”? What is the “thing” and what are its sorts such that Leiter is aiming at one of them?

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    42. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      And while you’re at it, tell us how those papers are relevant to the discussion in this thread.

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    43. Matt Avatar
      Matt

      Jon and Mark,
      Thanks for your replies. I’m not sure how far I disagree, though I guess I disagree some. I’m about to go to bed and then will be traveling for a few days, so I’ll say that I do think there is an obligation for professors to tell students when they think certain approaches are very bad. (For example, one of my areas of work is political philosophy. If I had a student who asked about a Straussian department, I’d feel obliged to tell him or her that I think that work is very bad political philosophy and that it should be avoided.) I agree that people should not dismiss work they are unfamiliar with, at least in strong terms. (I think it’s probably fine to say that an approach doesn’t seem likely to be fruitful even if one only has a small familiarity with it.) But, I’m just not at all sure that that’s happening in the quoted material, and I don’ think there is even a small obligation to not criticize different approaches in strong terms if one thinks they are bad.
      Mark said, about Sprios’ statement, Is there any point at all to reading this as a serious attempt to claim that a certain sort of philosophy is less good than some other?
      Of course not, but I don’t think it in slightly suggests that this is meant as a “serious claim”. “Your one paragraph blog post didn’t meet the standards of a paper” is just a silly criticism. Maybe this means one shouldn’t write such posts, though that seems wrong to me.
      John, I put “continental” in quotes because I don’t think these distinctions are really worth very much. I think there are better and worse ways of doing philosophy, more and less important figures, and better and worse ways of studying figures, but that these distinctions don’t have anything at all to do with a supposed “analytic/continental divide”, and that the sooner that people just stop imagining that these are useful terms (“analytic”, too) the better.
      I disagree that it’s a red herring to discuss Leiter’s actual criticisms of approaches to philosophy or figures. I think those are exactly what are behind his criticisms here, and that if you want to understand if he’s justified in those or not, you’d have to look at his actual criticism. You can look at any number of his papers on Nietzsche, his early “intellectual voyeurism in legal philosophy” paper, his paper on Quine and post-modernism, etc. (It’s worth considering his criticism of Dworkin as well, and noting that it’s just as harsh as his criticism of many others, or his criticism of Jerry Cohen’s approach to Marx, etc. The idea that this sort of criticism by Leiter is just a criticism of “continental” philosophy is seriously ill-informed.)
      Anyway, that’s obvious not a fully adequate reply, but it’s all I have time for for the next few days.

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    44. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      Matt, this whole line of thought is in fact a red herring, and I regret allowing you to drag it across our path. I don’t know why you felt compelled to pursue this line, but let’s keep our focus on the OP. This discussion isn’t about Leiter’s views on “approaches” or “figures” or what have you; it’s about his ludicrous blog vendetta against SPEP.
      Anyway, this was all hashed out here, so I might as well repeat the link: http://proteviblog.typepad.com/protevi/2012/11/no-better-way.html You’ll note there, despite the opportunity, even Leiter didn’t think the papers you reference are relevant.
      So why are you claiming that these papers justify what he’s written on his blog about “SPEPies” when even he doesn’t see the relevance? Spell out the links if you think it does. And if it doesn’t, why then bring it up here if not to distract us?

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    45. John Protevi Avatar
      John Protevi

      Though what I regret most about this whole thing is my inability to follow the maxim laid out in the first paragraph of 32.

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    46. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Yeah, it’s clear we were talking past each other. I think the key claim you make is:

      The idea that this sort of criticism by Leiter is just a criticism of “continental” philosophy is seriously ill-informed.

      By “this sort of criticism” you mean the papers, but the sort the rest of us meant to be talking about were condescending blanket condemnations of whole departments and paradigms that occur on the internet, not in the published work.
      I take it that you agree with Lance and ACP about basic dialectical responsibility involved in making strong criticisms about philosophical approaches, and that’s why you take it to be relevant that Leiter meets this standard in his published work. This is perhaps worth noting on it’s own, but I just need to reiterate that nobody here meant to say anything inconsistent with that.
      The issue was the kind of things people say about “SPEP style continental philosophy” or “pluralism.” Moreover, the claims have been twofold: (1) Lance/ACP about ones basic dialectical responsibility before making such claims (work charitably with the material that is the best by your own lights), and (2) me about our professional and moral obligation to show minimal respect to people who disagree with you.
      Since these were with respect to internet fatwas, I just can’t help but see bringing up someone’s published work as a bit of a red herring. In addition to Protevi’s point, let me reiterate my main moral contention. Even if Spiros happens to have broad enough training in (for example) German Idealism, 19th Century Philosophy, Phenomenology, and the 68ers to reasonably engage in this kind of thing, it would be absolutely wrong to express his disagreement as if large groups of colleagues are ill informed and/or of bad will.
      The reason the issue has gotten a little bit muddled is because of course Spiros doesn’t have the training. Neither does Leiter with respect to many of the things he condemns.
      I have lots of friends who are better philosophers than me who have strenuous philosophical objections to my (and Graham Priest’s and Robert Stern’s) reading of the German Idealists. I have lots of friends who think that I (and Graham Harman and, for very different reasons, Christina Lafont, Steven Crowell, and Mark Okrent) are misreading Heidegger in a way that is almost disastrous philosophically. Moreover, a fair number of these people say “no thanks” to the so-called speculative turn in recent continental philosophy in part precisely because of these objections.
      This is absolutely fine! There is no condescending dismissal, just informed disagreement leavened by good will. We e-mail each other. We go to each other’s Q&As. We get beers and try to discern areas where the disagreement is productive. If there is mockery, it’s in good spirit and again leavened by a good will where we genuinely hope that one another’s projects are successful.
      If there is anything remotely analogous with (for example) Leiter and Spiros’ engagement with Derrideans or the speculative turn, I will eat my hat. I know that Leiter has read some Derrida and had some colleagues who respected Derrida (because when I used to read his blog he would sometimes say weirdly negative things about old colleagues from the University of Texas, such as Ed Allaire). But has he carefully and charitably engaged with what by his own lights would be the best people writing on Derrida when they write on Derrida (Wheeler, Rorty, Braver, etc.)? You shouldn’t do this just to be able to complain about Derrida, but rather to avoid treating people who work on Derrida as if they are knaves or fools.
      Moreover, the very thing I’m complaining about was part of the maintenance of a hostile environment by the bad actors in Colorado (see the links to Jaded Philosopher). We must stop doing this, and we need to have a public environment where people who call us out on this kind of thing (such as the APA committee) are clearly and vocally supported.
      It doesn’t matter if you’ve abrogated to yourself the ability to judge all philosophy departments (and this has nothing to do with Leiter; anyone in a teaching position has to do something like this when advising graduate students). You can do this without treating people you disagree with as if they are fools or evil. You can do this with a modicum of epistemic humility and respect for fellow members of the guild.
      Here’s one way your bringing Leiter’s scholarship does strike me as relevant. In contemporary public American culture we tend to reduce people to their worst public moments, and moreover to respond to these moments with zero grace (think of when a celebrity’s substance abuse problems allow the rest of us to reduce them to public jokes). It would be the height of perversity to respond to someone implicating that pluralists are essentially either fools or deceivers by thinking that this person was essentially a fatwa issuer.
      We’re all complicated and all of us have done things of which we are rightfully ashamed. We should have extra sympathy when somebody does it in public, especially when they are not hiding behind anonymity as Spiros does.

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    47. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      Oo this is an interesting issue.
      I think there are some connections, but not nearly as tight as my post seemed to presuppose. The first issue concerns how one should behave when forced to make broad generalizations about the field, as one has to do sometimes when mentoring students. The second concerns how one should behave when actually engaged with other people’s texts, positions, and arguments.
      I think your intuition is correct that the sets of vices with respect to the two issues are characteristically different, and all permutations are possible; it is possible to be virtuous with respect to one and not the other.
      This being said. I do think that the kind of antagonistic/Nietzschean approach that one finds in analytic philosophy at its worst often does lead to schoolyard bullying with respect to individuals and groups.
      The harms are different though. In the first case (Nietzschean antagonism as a paradigm of philosophical methodology), the problem is that a lot of time is just wasted. It’s far, far more productive to find people that you are broadly sympathetic with and work together than it is to enter your own argument into gladiatorial combat, as sometimes happens when Q&As go badly. In the second case (abrogating to oneself the responsibility of putting the sheep in one pile and goats in another), you can get something that contributes strongly to the kind of bullying climate that the APA subcommittee found students and colleagues to have been subjected to by the bad actors at Colorado. Where people can only feel good about themselves by making cliques and performing little (sometimes drunken) rituals of inhumanity to those outside of the cliques.
      I do think that if we see philosophy as more collaborative and less combative, we will be less likely to do this. But I think that’s probably the strongest connection there is.

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    48. Rob Gressis Avatar
      Rob Gressis

      Hi everyone,
      After reading the exchange between Leiter and Protevi, here’s my attempt at being charitable to Leiter’s dismissal of SPEPies.
      Leiter has read lots of files of prospective graduate students applying to Texas, and he’s read lots of files of (and perhaps has sat in on interviews with) prospective assistant professors. He has noticed that the undergraduates and graduates who graduate from at least a few SPEP departments — Stony Brook and Emory are two he named, but perhaps he has others in mind — seem to be significantly worse at philosophy, by his lights, than other applicants from non-SPEP departments. He thinks that the reason for this is not these students’ talent, but rather their education. So, he concludes that SPEP-depts are doing a real disservice to their students, and need to be denigrated, so as to make it clear to at least prospective graduate students that they should not go to these departments. His evidence, he is aware, is not dispositive — for one thing, he can’t be sure that the students who are educated by these SPEP departments are just as talented as ones who go to departments that are ranked by the Leiter Reports; for another, he probably hasn’t done an exhaustive comparison of SPEP-students to non-SPEP students — but he thinks it’s pretty good, and so he thinks he’s warranted to attack these departments, both because they’re doing their students a disservice, which is bad in itself, and because he hopes to warn students off these places. Finally, that SPEPies are bad at philosophy is evidenced by the “fact” that their students tend to be bad at philosophy themselves (this obviously presupposes some issues about the relationship between being a good/bad philosopher and being good/bad at teaching philosophy).
      Here’s the argument expressed syllogistically, if you want to attack key premises more clearly:
      1. Students from SPEP departments are significantly worse at philosophy on average than students from non-SPEP departments
      2. The best explanation for this is that the philosophers at SPEP departments are significantly worse on average at philosophy than philosophers from non-SPEP departments.
      3. Therefore, philosophers at SPEP departments are significantly worse on average at philosophers than philosophers from non-SPEP departments.
      Anyway, that’s the best I can do. I’m not saying it’s a good argument, but I suspect something like that is going on.

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    49. Rob Gressis Avatar
      Rob Gressis

      P.S.: I apologize if I came off as explaining something that everyone already knew. For what it’s worth, that wasn’t my intention!

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    50. Mark Lance Avatar
      Mark Lance

      Without getting into a discussion of 1-3 – and noting that this was a post about Spiros, not Leiter – I’d like to emphasize that you need to add
      4: Therefore the best practical course of action is to issue blanket denunciations of those departments as a whole, not merely as being less good on average as philosophers but as being charlatans and liars.
      That, after all, is what Jon is talking about – not sober assessments of the training of students. (Also, can’t resist, I give zero credence to the view that Leiter believes the students entering Stony Brook are on average as talented as those entering NYU.)

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