My Mission Statement
Why study philosophy?
Actually, why do I study philosophy? Why the interest? I've just found an answer to this question. I wasn't quite able to figure it out before, but I've got it now.
Context: I just finished up a meeting of our university's philosophy club. By "Philosophy Club" I mean basically three people (our school isn't too big into philosophy). The topic for this semester is Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. The nice thing about our philosophy club, despite its size, is that a former professor of this school (now retired) shows up. He's the kind of person I want to be: brilliant, inquisitive, serious and silly when needed, and, according to one student, "He understands ham sandwiches in layers deeper than any of the other philosophy professors understand anything."
So he came to talk about Nietzsche, and talk we did. We started with how I would present Nietzsche to a class. Given his decidedly non-formal style, how do you teach him to a room full of good analytical undergrads? My answer, vague as the situation left it (this professor is good at taking you off guard), was to present it as a problem: Nietzsche is someone who challenges those basic assumptions good undergrads make. What is truth? one might ask. For a philosopher, it is the goal, of course. Easy. Why is that? Nietzsche asks. He's serious. "What really is it in us that wants 'the truth?'" (BG&E 1) This, I said, is how you teach Nietzsche. Only thus can you get after what Nietzsche really wanted to do, which is to upset your frame of mind, to break a thousand years of assumptions and dogmas that are so embedded no one even knew they were there.
Again, we got to Nietzsche's perspectivism. The professor threw out the idea of perspectivism as a good tool. I agree with him, and said as much. But then he challenged me on it. "Okay, be Dick Cheney for the moment. Defend the torture of terror suspects. What would he say?" After giving a disclaimer that it was not my opinion, I made my (Cheney's) defense. He basically called my argument a cop-out on the grounds of the disclaimer. I don't really think so, but I think I know what he was getting at. Then again, I agree with what I think he was getting at, which is how difficult it is to really put the effort, the full self, into seeing a completely different perspective. This is very hard. Can you will it so much that you can make yourself believe it, if even for a moment?
For me, reading Nietzsche has been a way to do this. Nietzsche represents the first and only time I've ever been close to morally offended by a writer. The book was Beyond Good and Evil, this very same. There was a point in the last section, "What is Noble?" where I had difficulty getting myself through it. But I persevered, and I've read the book several times now. I understand Nietzsche's position better now, I believe. Had I just left it at my first reaction I never would have exposed myself to Nietzsche in a deeper light, and would have remained more ignorant for it.
This is the challenge that presents itself often when you read Nietzsche. He writes often to sound excessive, nonsensical, incoherent, and even evil. He does this intentionally. But his writing is infinitely more complex, more nuanced, and deeper than what you see at first. You have to be willing to go with Nietzsche into the depths. You have to go where few want to look, even to places no one remembers exist. You have to find problems where none were thought to be. This is how I would teach Nietzsche. I would ask about truth. Then I would ask, why truth? "why not rather untruth?" (BG&E 1)
The idea is to take the student who has perhaps read some philosophy, has heard about Nietzsche and dismissed him as a writer of aphorisms and a poet (but not a philosopher, of course), and to show that there's more to it. Far more. That Nietzsche touched on something, something that required a different mindset, a different form and tempo. He required new thinkers. "[T]hese philosophers of the future might rightly, but perhaps also wrongly, be described as attempters" (BG&E 42) If we are to understand, we must be willing to do something new, really new, that few if any are willing to do.
When I was in my second semester of college, I was in an Intro to Applied Ethics class. Though I may not take too much from the class in the future, I can say now that there was one lecture that may in one hour have set my course for the future. It was a discussion about gender identity. There was an experiment. A couple near a nursery is given a baby to hold. The baby is wearing either a pink or blue one-piece outfit. The results were always the same. If the outfit was blue, the child was lifted up and down, moved, and generally played with actively; that is, "like a boy." If it was pink, it was held close, cradled, and treated "like a girl." But then they give couples a baby with a brown outfit. The couple is confused. Different couples would do the same thing: they looked into the baby's diaper to determine its gender. When they found it out, they acted appropriately. The researchers were surprised. They designed new outfits that couldn't be torn open. The couples tried to force the outfits open to determine the baby's gender. When they couldn't, what did they do? They decided what gender they thought the baby was, and then went right into the specific activity pattern. It was as though they couldn't possibly act outside of those norms. You can't treat a baby like a boy if it's a girl. This was serious; they were tearing at those clothes to figure out the gender.
This (and related studies that were discussed) stuck with me, that day and after. From the very beginning we have these identities grilled into us. But why? What's behind them? Why is this necessary? Should we do otherwise?
This is the moment that defined my philosophical mission. As a philosopher I seek problems. Not just, "Prove to me this table exists." I seek deep, absolute problems. Why should I be proving the existence of tables? What kind of framework requires this, when the table is right before my eyes? What is already assumed in the issuing of such a challenge? My mission as a philosopher is to discover the basic conceptual structures that define human understanding. What grounds everything? Not just the world; what grounds our talk of the grounding of the world? What structures lead to the problems of grounding the world? What is the basic method of consciousness that frames my problems, and is there a way to see it as it fully is? Is there a way to get outside, to a new framework? What does it force us into? I want to get behind all biases, even the most essential ones, and drag them out into the open. I want to know if it's possible to surpass them. I'm not asking to know the truth; where I'm headed, such a concept might not even make sense. But I want to find the fetters that trap human thought, natural and created, and reveal them.
This explains my interests. I read, above all, Nietzsche and Heidegger. The reasoning behind Nietzsche has been sufficiently explained above. What of Heidegger?
For Heidegger, two thousand plus years of hidden dogma have totally cemented our metaphysics in place. No matter how had they have tried, the most brilliant minds have been unable to escape from their assumptions. It was Heidegger's goal in Being and Time to escape this by revealing a problem that no one had found problematic since Aristotle. He wanted to go somewhere no one could even comprehend due to the control of metaphysics commonly perceived. Whether he succeeded is not what I'm primarily interested in. What I'm interested in is in the implications about us. Is he right about us? What can we do? What should we do?
Recently I have picked up Derrida as well. Derrida read his Nietzsche and Heidegger thoroughly, and tried to push the envelop even further. What is his goal in Margins of Philosophy?
This is what drives my philosophical interests and influences. Going where angels fear to tread, to the background and shadow of truth itself, to reveal whatever demons may be lurking.
This is what drives me as a teacher. At the graduate school I'm going to, there are three classes typically taught by grad students: Intro to Philosophy, Critical Thinking, and Intro to Ethics. Critical Thinking is the least popular. When I discovered this I couldn't help but think, "Why?" For me it would be far and above the most fun. Together with a group of unsuspecting freshmen, ready to force them to re-think their whole way of viewing the world. I once told someone I would begin the class thus: "This is an introductory level philosophy course. Some of you may not be philosophy majors, and you may wonder why philosophy matters. I'll tell you why. It's because none of you know how to think. This is nothing personal; rather, it's a consequence of the fact that, in general, no one knows how to think. Fortunately, you need not worry; I'm a philosopher, and I'm here to help you."
This approach is quintessentially me. It reflects my ironic, multi-layered manner of speaking with those I'm most familiar with. It's how I like to instruct. It's off-putting and confusing because I do that on purpose, not just in the classroom, but in everyday speech. It's because I like to twist words, their common connotations and meanings, as well as the ideas and beliefs that are tied in with their use. I've been told my sense of humor is "hidden:" that is, one has to pay careful attention. It requires going beyond what one normally has to. This is intentional on my part, yet even not consciously so. It's just how I roll. I want people to think in ways they've never done so before. I want people to see new problems, not because I've weaved sophistries, but because I've revealed real problems where formerly none were seen. That's why I look forward to teaching Critical Thinking: I can help people to see the same things in a new light, literally differently than before. Where once a statement was, now one sees an argument, a structure, and a world of assumptions. A history is hidden behind every claim; I want to help people find it.
And that, ultimately, is what I want my contribution to the world to be. I want to make knowledge harder. Why? Because I think that, in fact, knowledge is harder, much harder, than any of us are willing to realize. I want to help others to see new ways of seeing things, and in turn for them to instruct me. I want silly surface-level biases to be erased by sensibilities that become even more intuitive than intuition itself. I want people thinking, and thinking well. That is my mission; whatever the odds, I intend to fulfill it.
Snurp
Actually, why do I study philosophy? Why the interest? I've just found an answer to this question. I wasn't quite able to figure it out before, but I've got it now.
Context: I just finished up a meeting of our university's philosophy club. By "Philosophy Club" I mean basically three people (our school isn't too big into philosophy). The topic for this semester is Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. The nice thing about our philosophy club, despite its size, is that a former professor of this school (now retired) shows up. He's the kind of person I want to be: brilliant, inquisitive, serious and silly when needed, and, according to one student, "He understands ham sandwiches in layers deeper than any of the other philosophy professors understand anything."
So he came to talk about Nietzsche, and talk we did. We started with how I would present Nietzsche to a class. Given his decidedly non-formal style, how do you teach him to a room full of good analytical undergrads? My answer, vague as the situation left it (this professor is good at taking you off guard), was to present it as a problem: Nietzsche is someone who challenges those basic assumptions good undergrads make. What is truth? one might ask. For a philosopher, it is the goal, of course. Easy. Why is that? Nietzsche asks. He's serious. "What really is it in us that wants 'the truth?'" (BG&E 1) This, I said, is how you teach Nietzsche. Only thus can you get after what Nietzsche really wanted to do, which is to upset your frame of mind, to break a thousand years of assumptions and dogmas that are so embedded no one even knew they were there.
Again, we got to Nietzsche's perspectivism. The professor threw out the idea of perspectivism as a good tool. I agree with him, and said as much. But then he challenged me on it. "Okay, be Dick Cheney for the moment. Defend the torture of terror suspects. What would he say?" After giving a disclaimer that it was not my opinion, I made my (Cheney's) defense. He basically called my argument a cop-out on the grounds of the disclaimer. I don't really think so, but I think I know what he was getting at. Then again, I agree with what I think he was getting at, which is how difficult it is to really put the effort, the full self, into seeing a completely different perspective. This is very hard. Can you will it so much that you can make yourself believe it, if even for a moment?
For me, reading Nietzsche has been a way to do this. Nietzsche represents the first and only time I've ever been close to morally offended by a writer. The book was Beyond Good and Evil, this very same. There was a point in the last section, "What is Noble?" where I had difficulty getting myself through it. But I persevered, and I've read the book several times now. I understand Nietzsche's position better now, I believe. Had I just left it at my first reaction I never would have exposed myself to Nietzsche in a deeper light, and would have remained more ignorant for it.
This is the challenge that presents itself often when you read Nietzsche. He writes often to sound excessive, nonsensical, incoherent, and even evil. He does this intentionally. But his writing is infinitely more complex, more nuanced, and deeper than what you see at first. You have to be willing to go with Nietzsche into the depths. You have to go where few want to look, even to places no one remembers exist. You have to find problems where none were thought to be. This is how I would teach Nietzsche. I would ask about truth. Then I would ask, why truth? "why not rather untruth?" (BG&E 1)
And, would you believe it, it has finally almost come to seem to us that this problem has never before been posed - that we have been the first to see it, to fix our eye on it, to hazard it?
The idea is to take the student who has perhaps read some philosophy, has heard about Nietzsche and dismissed him as a writer of aphorisms and a poet (but not a philosopher, of course), and to show that there's more to it. Far more. That Nietzsche touched on something, something that required a different mindset, a different form and tempo. He required new thinkers. "[T]hese philosophers of the future might rightly, but perhaps also wrongly, be described as attempters" (BG&E 42) If we are to understand, we must be willing to do something new, really new, that few if any are willing to do.
When I was in my second semester of college, I was in an Intro to Applied Ethics class. Though I may not take too much from the class in the future, I can say now that there was one lecture that may in one hour have set my course for the future. It was a discussion about gender identity. There was an experiment. A couple near a nursery is given a baby to hold. The baby is wearing either a pink or blue one-piece outfit. The results were always the same. If the outfit was blue, the child was lifted up and down, moved, and generally played with actively; that is, "like a boy." If it was pink, it was held close, cradled, and treated "like a girl." But then they give couples a baby with a brown outfit. The couple is confused. Different couples would do the same thing: they looked into the baby's diaper to determine its gender. When they found it out, they acted appropriately. The researchers were surprised. They designed new outfits that couldn't be torn open. The couples tried to force the outfits open to determine the baby's gender. When they couldn't, what did they do? They decided what gender they thought the baby was, and then went right into the specific activity pattern. It was as though they couldn't possibly act outside of those norms. You can't treat a baby like a boy if it's a girl. This was serious; they were tearing at those clothes to figure out the gender.
This (and related studies that were discussed) stuck with me, that day and after. From the very beginning we have these identities grilled into us. But why? What's behind them? Why is this necessary? Should we do otherwise?
This is the moment that defined my philosophical mission. As a philosopher I seek problems. Not just, "Prove to me this table exists." I seek deep, absolute problems. Why should I be proving the existence of tables? What kind of framework requires this, when the table is right before my eyes? What is already assumed in the issuing of such a challenge? My mission as a philosopher is to discover the basic conceptual structures that define human understanding. What grounds everything? Not just the world; what grounds our talk of the grounding of the world? What structures lead to the problems of grounding the world? What is the basic method of consciousness that frames my problems, and is there a way to see it as it fully is? Is there a way to get outside, to a new framework? What does it force us into? I want to get behind all biases, even the most essential ones, and drag them out into the open. I want to know if it's possible to surpass them. I'm not asking to know the truth; where I'm headed, such a concept might not even make sense. But I want to find the fetters that trap human thought, natural and created, and reveal them.
This explains my interests. I read, above all, Nietzsche and Heidegger. The reasoning behind Nietzsche has been sufficiently explained above. What of Heidegger?
Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being?' Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being. But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression 'Being?' Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question." (Being and Time, 1)
For Heidegger, two thousand plus years of hidden dogma have totally cemented our metaphysics in place. No matter how had they have tried, the most brilliant minds have been unable to escape from their assumptions. It was Heidegger's goal in Being and Time to escape this by revealing a problem that no one had found problematic since Aristotle. He wanted to go somewhere no one could even comprehend due to the control of metaphysics commonly perceived. Whether he succeeded is not what I'm primarily interested in. What I'm interested in is in the implications about us. Is he right about us? What can we do? What should we do?
Recently I have picked up Derrida as well. Derrida read his Nietzsche and Heidegger thoroughly, and tried to push the envelop even further. What is his goal in Margins of Philosophy?
[T]hese ten writings . . . interrogate philosophy beyond its meaning, treating it not only as a discourse but as a determined text inscribed in a general text, enclosed in the representation of its own margin . . . . [W]hich is doubtless to recall that beyond the philosophical text there is not a blank, virgin, empty margin, but another text, a weave of differences of forces without any present center of reference (everything - 'history,' 'politics,' 'economy,' 'sexuality,' etc. - said not to be written in books) . . . ; and also to recall that the written text of philosophy (this time in its books) overflows and cracks its meaning. (Margins of Philosophy, xxiii)
This is what drives my philosophical interests and influences. Going where angels fear to tread, to the background and shadow of truth itself, to reveal whatever demons may be lurking.
This is what drives me as a teacher. At the graduate school I'm going to, there are three classes typically taught by grad students: Intro to Philosophy, Critical Thinking, and Intro to Ethics. Critical Thinking is the least popular. When I discovered this I couldn't help but think, "Why?" For me it would be far and above the most fun. Together with a group of unsuspecting freshmen, ready to force them to re-think their whole way of viewing the world. I once told someone I would begin the class thus: "This is an introductory level philosophy course. Some of you may not be philosophy majors, and you may wonder why philosophy matters. I'll tell you why. It's because none of you know how to think. This is nothing personal; rather, it's a consequence of the fact that, in general, no one knows how to think. Fortunately, you need not worry; I'm a philosopher, and I'm here to help you."
This approach is quintessentially me. It reflects my ironic, multi-layered manner of speaking with those I'm most familiar with. It's how I like to instruct. It's off-putting and confusing because I do that on purpose, not just in the classroom, but in everyday speech. It's because I like to twist words, their common connotations and meanings, as well as the ideas and beliefs that are tied in with their use. I've been told my sense of humor is "hidden:" that is, one has to pay careful attention. It requires going beyond what one normally has to. This is intentional on my part, yet even not consciously so. It's just how I roll. I want people to think in ways they've never done so before. I want people to see new problems, not because I've weaved sophistries, but because I've revealed real problems where formerly none were seen. That's why I look forward to teaching Critical Thinking: I can help people to see the same things in a new light, literally differently than before. Where once a statement was, now one sees an argument, a structure, and a world of assumptions. A history is hidden behind every claim; I want to help people find it.
And that, ultimately, is what I want my contribution to the world to be. I want to make knowledge harder. Why? Because I think that, in fact, knowledge is harder, much harder, than any of us are willing to realize. I want to help others to see new ways of seeing things, and in turn for them to instruct me. I want silly surface-level biases to be erased by sensibilities that become even more intuitive than intuition itself. I want people thinking, and thinking well. That is my mission; whatever the odds, I intend to fulfill it.
Snurp
posted by Derek at 9:47 PM
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