what do we tell the children?
i was thumbing through a collection of essays by the incredibly prolific Betrand Russell the other week when i came across the section on education. he mentioned that most theorists have been childless, which i thought was interesting – yet incredibly believable. while i am far from what anyone would consider a philosopher, i am a theory-junkie and i could never imagine having a kid. i’d rather use my time to read. that being said, in what seems to be a theme among many philosophers, i love thinking about education and society. while reading kant’s introduction to logic i came across a great paragraph, which is now underlined and starred. it goes:
Reason is an active principle which ought not to borrow anything from mere authority of others – nay, not even from experience, in cases where the pure use of reason is concerned. But the indolence of very many persons makes them prefer to tread in the footsteps of others rather than to exert their own understandings. Such persons can never be anything but copies of others, and if all men were of this sort the world would forever remain in one and the same place. It is, therefore, highly necessary and important not to confine the young, as is commonly done, to mere imitation. pg.68
you be the object, i’ll be the subject
immanuel kant likes definitions and from what little i’ve read of him and about him, i understand he’s big on categories as well. if you’ve ever heard of something called a categorical imperative, that’s him. basically it says that you should act only in a way that can be considered universal. but, i’m getting away from what i think is a good opportunity to explore a fundamental and pervasive idea in philosophy – that of the subject and the object.
i don’t think i would be exaggerating if i said that these two concepts show up in every philosophy text i read. subject, object. sounds easy enough, right? we hear it when we think of journalism. a reporter should be objective, not inject his feelings into a story. and if you reverse that you can assume subjective to mean that you are emotionally involved in something, that you have an opinion on it. but this doesn’t get you far enough when it comes to the likes of descartes, hegel, marx, etc. ad nauseum. and i find myself wracking my brain whenever i come across the terms and only partially confident that i know what these guys are talking about.
i recently read introduction to logic by kant. my curiousity got the better of me and felt it was a branch of philosophy that i should know. starting with one of the earliest modern philosophers made sense and when i saw this thin book on the shelves in the store, i couldn’t resist.
so let’s start from the beginning and follow a path to where we can use this relatively readable book to finally nail down these two little words that cause so many problems. kant defines Logic as ‘the mere form of thought generally,’ the ’science of the necessary laws of the understanding and the reason’ generally. since kant likes definitions he basically goes on for a few pages repeating himself and adding to what Logic is and what it isn’t. here are some highlights. he says it’s a priori which is a fancy way of saying ‘before experience.’ use that one at a bar and watch all the men flock! guaranteed to work everytime.
basically, Logic is a building block used to determine how we know what we know – a path towards knowledge. and here’s where we get into the object and the subject. according to kant there is objective knowledge and subjective knowledge – just to name two aspects of knowledge where he uses these two terms.
kant says that objective knowledge comes from sources that alone the knowledge can be drawn, and that subjective knowledge comes from a manner that is acquired by the individual – or at least this is how i am reading it. either way, let’s use this to flow into my own breakdown of the terms.
Merriam Webster says…
subject: one that is acted on
subjectivity: peculiar to a particular individual
object: something material that can be observed by the senses; something mental or physical toward which thought, feeling, or action can be directed
objectivity: expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations
according to my handy penguin dictionary of philosophy…
subject: that about which something is said
subjective: the subjective experience is introspective
object: redirected me to eminent, which says: existing ‘outside’ the mind
objective: redirected to objectivity, which says: independence of opinion
so, that being said, thinking in terms of journalism will help but honestly, when it comes to object/subject, objectivity/subjectivity in the context of philosophical works, i’m still a bit shaky… ah, philosophy!
from Descartes to Wittgenstein and back
there are few more satisfying feelings than the one i get from finishing a book, which i just did this morning.
i picked up A Short History of Modern Philosophy by Roger Scruton the other week and started reading it right away. it never even touched my bookshelf, which is more than i can say for the scores of titles i have waiting for me.
roger scruton, according to his bio, is a leading conservative philosopher, which basically means that his chapter on Marx was full of smirky scoffing. other than that, i didnt find much in the way of total bias and i have to say, i really enjoyed this one.
it’s a basic overview of modern philosophy – as the title claims – starting from Descartes (predictably) and ending with Wittgenstein, less predictably (at least for me). although it says one would think that it was an introduction, it was at times challenging – but not impossible. it was a satisfying read that boosted my philosophical vocabulary, introduced me to some new names, and hammered out some key concepts that had previously eluded me. it might be a bit daunting for a first-timer looking for an easy way to wade into the brain pool of intellectual giants but for someone with a bit of background – but really not too much – it is quite possibly what they’ve been looking for.
throughout the different sections – with names like ‘Rationalism,’ ‘Empiricism,’ ‘Kant and Idealism,’ etc. i found myself making mental – and physical – notes as to what i wanted to read next. i had a pretty decent list going until i got to the end and came across the section on phenomenology – founded by Edmund Husserl in the early 20th century. it was a surprising turn of events because up until the latter part of the 200 pages i was leaning more toward political philosophy. – i was looking forward to Althusser’s For Marx or Fromm’s Beyond the Chains of Illusion but instead, the broad realm of knowledge – of what we know, how we know it, and how we can trust that knowledge seemed much more interesting than theories of economics and The State.
one line that stood out – and possible the sole reason for the derailment of my future reading plans – was “Our attitude towards other people… is fundamentally distinct from and even opposed to the scientific attitude. We seek to understand their actions not by explaining them in terms of external causes, but ‘from within’, by an act of rational self-projection…” pg. 268 scruton goes on to say that we look for people’s reasons as to why they do things and in doing so, we attempt to view the world as the other person does. empathy is a decent way to explain this. you see someone get hurt and while you’re not feeling that pain, you can imagine the pain the other person is feeling so you can understand their tears, screams, etc.
pretty freakin cool if you ask me. so i’m going back to basics and have started Kant’s Introduction to Logic. stay tuned…
thought dump
democracy is an experiment.
history is to be played with.
philosophy is vocabulary.
nostalgia is idealism.
i see parts of myself in television’s characterization of autism.
i talk to strangers and i’m afraid that means i’m crazy.
does knowledge as an end justify the means of obtaining it?
resolutions are for the weak…
some books/writers i must read this year:
erich fromm
i never realized it but erich fromm was part of the Frankfurt School. i dont know much more about the frankfurt school other than they were smart, lefty germans who liked to analyze life. i think they were post-young hegelians, which would make them the generation after marx. walter benjamin, adorno, and habermas were part of the frankfurt school. but this revelation was after i’d heard a journalist speaking about fromm’s Escape from Freedom, his book about authoritarianism. the guy said it was relevant today as an analysis of the far-Right in the US. i was intrigued. when i saw his other books on the shelf at the store i was surprised that he was into economy theory. he has one book on marx and then another on both marx and freud. so there are about 3 fromm titles on my list this year.
karl jaspers
i just came across him while searching for erich fromm information. it turns out that fromm studied under him. i’d heard his name before but never knew what he was known for.
small is beautiful: economics as if people mattered
i always see this book my local shop. i always pick it up too and read the back cover, leaf through it. but i never buy it. it seems like a really cool, hippiesque take on economics. i bet it makes a lot of sense but could never be possible to carry out.
balibar – spinoza and politics
this is another book i pick up from time to time. i’m curious about spinoza and this is part of Verso’s Radical Thinkers series, which means it will be some marxist/post-marxist take on the life and theories of spinoza. in fact, i read – or tried to read – his short book, The Philosophy of Marx, and never knew that i could be so confused.
zizek – revolution at the gates: zizek on lenin: the 1917 writings
god, this is porn for the brain. two men who i admire and find endlessly entertaining. zizek and lenin.
jean jacques rousseau bio
i saw this outside on the table of a great bookstore by where i work. they always have a decent collection of remainder books outside. you dont have to go in and be all weird with employees. you can hang out outside with coffee and check out some smart stuff. i came across this bio the other day and thought it looked pretty good. im curious about rousseau for obvious reasons. i’d like to know his contribution to political theory.
truth and method
there are a few good philosophy series out there that i trust. one of them is from Continuum Books called Continuum Impacts, described on their site as:
… seminal works by the finest minds in contemporary thought, including Adorno, Badiou, Derrida, Heidegger and Deleuze. They are works of such power that they changed the philosophical and cultural landscape when they were first published and continue to resonate today. They represent landmark texts in the fields of philosophy, popular culture, politics and theology.
i’ve been known to buy one or two strictly because of their design, later finding that i can barely understanding what’s written inside. the font they use is big and bubbly :: inviting:: yet bold and confident. they say, ‘i’m fun and cuddly’ when in fact they are some of the hardest texts out there – which is not to say that they arent fun, just not in the way their choice of presentation would lead you to believe.
right now i’m reading Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method (written in the 1960s), which is described as:
… Gadamer’s magnum opus. Looking behind the self-consciousness of science, he discusses the tense relationship between truth and methodology. In examining the different experiences of truth, he aims to “present the hermeneutic phenomenon in its fullest extent.
Gadamer would not be expected to be well-known to amatuer philosophy buffs outside of germany -and maybe france. as an american, you have to dig a little deeper for him – but not too much. i think i saw his name mentioned by people who i’ve read but i couldnt tell you the specifics – maybe zizek, it would make sense.
at the point where i had read two prefaces and 20 pages of the first chapter, i grasped that his focus was going to be somewhere in the realm of ontology, which is basically the study of being as being and what i have taken to be the study of what we know and how we know it. Gadamer uses the term hermeneutics, which sounds a lot like ontology to me but because he uses a different term, i assume he would shake his head and think me unworthy of his book. for the record, hermeneutics is defined as the study of our methods of interpretation.
anyways, Gadamer is a name-dropper. he uses aristotle, kant, hume, and hegel - to name the bigger names – to discuss aethetics, which now 180 pages in, i can tell you has a lot to do with the study of art in all of its forms. my handy dictionary of philosophy defines it as what is immediately pleasing to our perception – visually, auditorally, or to our imagination. it’s the theory of taste and criticism in the creative and performing arts.
so far, apart from the times when i wonder if i am wasting my life on such nit-picking, i am enjoying the exploration into how we view art, how we should view art, and what art is beyond how it appears.
mathematically not-not-yours
lately ive been wondering what math has to do with life. is it in there beyond the obvious? i think ive been finding it in the little-bit-less obvious. the obvious would be something like NASA. you know that people dealing with rockets need to know math. the little-bit-less obvious would be thinking about how much you rely on time and speed in everyday life.
my sister made christmas eve dinner and her father-in-law was there. they were talking about his daughter’s fiance. i mentioned that he seemed like he was good with kids. my brother-in-laws father said he was a nice guy. and my sister said he was harmless. it hit me. math in our conversations: like a microscopic parasite.
good with kids = addition; nice = addition; harmless = subtraction.
although we were all praising the fiance, harmless felt like a negative. now, as i look at it closely, it could be categorized as an uncomfortable neutral: negation of a negative. he does not harm. not a very high standard to live up to.
so, does any of this matter? should we care if there math in our conversations? i really have no idea but it’s kind of cool.
sibling’ing
siblings are weird. they can be your best friends but at the same time, never have had anything to do with you if it werent for sharing the same parents. it’s an experiment. having more than one kid. how will they react with each other? what is normal sibling behavior? how should they feel about each other? how do they co-exist?
