What To Think About in Philosophy

[jazzy_dave]

When I first studied the subject way back on the OU Arts Foundation course I was told that philosophy was concerned with Truth, Beauty and the Good. This now strikes me as absurdly unhelpful. It’s too constricting. There are very few intellectual endeavours into which the philosopher cannot productively stick her nose. All the natural and social sciences provide fertile ground for philosophy; as do the arts, literature, politics, history and current affairs. Here is a somewhat eclectic list drawn from my own somewhat eclectic recent reading: Kim Sterelny interacts fruitfully with evolutionary biology and cognitive science in his Thought in a Hostile World; Susan Hurley says some important things about the origins of violent behaviour in her paper ‘Imitation, Media Violence, and Freedom of Speech’; Martha Nussbaum draws attention to the normative function of literature in her Poetic Justice; and Jonathan Glover has written Humanity, a remarkable moral history of the twentieth century.

There are philosophers who refuse to engage with scientific research which bears on their field of interest. The outcome of such singularity of focus (or blinkered thinking) is sometimes comic, and occasionally tragic, but it’s rarely profound. There are also philosophers so overwhelmed by the power of science that they deride their own discipline. This can lead to comedy or tragedy too. It rarely leads to anything more valuable than the science which it apes.

I am often surprised what a really good philosopher can do with a topic which has not previously been seen as a suitable object of philosophical reflection. Harry Frankfurt’s essay On Bullshit is a beautiful example. One way to think of this essay is as a penetrating discussion of a topic not found in Plato, Mill or Nietzsche. But in another way, On Bullshit shows that someone of Frankfurt’s calibre can distil a philosophical tradition into a few thousand words – after all, the history of philosophy is a history of opposition to bullshit. Socrates, for example, had a keen nose for bullshit, and little patience with bullshitters: that is to say, he relentlessly exposed fools who presented themselves as knowledgeable authorities (that word again). According to one story, Socrates accepted the Delphic Oracle’s pronouncement that he was the wisest of men only after he realized that his wisdom consisted in appreciating the depth of his ignorance.