ThreeFour Little Words

philosopher I became a philosophy major almost by accident. I had nearly finished the political science major, and had taken a bunch of philosophy courses, so I figured I may as well do the additional major. Here's the thing, though: much political science tries to emphasize the "science" part, insisting that people who do work in the field ought not ask about what we ought to do in a given case. At the same time, a lot of philosophy became either the study of long-dead Europeans or highly analytical parsing of . . . something. Thus, neither field in which I was interested enabled its practitioners to try to find ways to ask real questions about real people's real lives. My own experience is that in order to illuminate a dispute of some kind, it is important to understand the assumptions at the heart of it--not least because it may be the case that the disputants do not share important assumptions and thus will have great difficulty reaching agreement. It may also be the case that some parties to a debate are being inconsistent, or dishonest, or disingenuous in some way, and it's important to figure that out, too. (I'd say that other debates are more purely political, in the sense that it's a fight for land or power, say, despite whatever historical justifications the parties involved bring to bear.) The thing is, I think it is profoundly important for us to ask ourselves what we ought to do--in a particular situation; with regard to the world at large; in terms of how we interact with the world. Take, for example, the statement that Oliver Stone had Michael Douglas make in "Wall Street" (though I've never seen the movie, I've obviously seen and heard the line): "Greed is good." No. No it isn't. I can tell you what the argument is in favor of greed, and I can also argue against it. That may seem trivial, but it's not. Many people have a sneaking suspicion that that statement is wrong--or right--but they aren't sure whether greed really is good or bad, or why. Different authorities say different things; many people who seem to be arguing against it do not live a lifestyle that seems in accord with a non-greedy philosophy. And just how pure do we expect people to be? I think it is the job of the garden-variety philosopher such as myself to try to illuminate those questions. I had hoped to do it in a classroom, but it seems my real venue is destined to be the barroom and the lunchroom.

Wittgenstein When I first read Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, to be precise), in graduate school, I found it completely understandable--even easy, in many ways. Now, LW is supposed to be notoriously difficult to "get," and, indeed, many people in the class seemed to be struggling mightily with it. Thus, I wondered whether there was something going on that I was missing. At one point I stumbled across a paper I'd written in college (on Rousseau or Kant, IIRC), and, in rereading it, realized that I had anticipated my reading of LW, as it were, by a decade or so. That is, LW was easy for me to understand because I had already absorbed much of what he had to say, even if I didn't have his way of saying it available to me. There isn't a really easy way to sum up LW's Investigations, but, if I had to try, I'd say that his central point is that language and practice are intertwined--what we say and what we do are intertwined, in the way that mind and body are intertwined. Can we talk about them as separate things? Well, yeah. Does it make sense to do so? Not very often, especially not outside of a philosophy class. And if you start thinking about the deep and far-reaching implications of language and practice being intertwined, well, you'll come up with the Philosophical Investigations, or an Investigations-like approach to the world.

well-read I don't particularly think of myself as well-read, so that's an interesting thing for someone to associate with me. I've read a lot, which isn't the same thing, and, in the case of some of you, I've got an extra 20 years of reading. The variety of careers I've had contributes to the variety of things I've read, too. There are substantial gaps: very little Shakespeare; no Joyce or Melville; not much Dickens (because I really didn't like what I read a million years ago); nothing in other languages. But I do love to read. I don't remember not knowing how to do it, and there's not a whole lot I like better than falling in to a good story that's well-told. I don't read much non-fiction--almost none, really--in part because I like the escape of invented worlds.

Okay, the rest of the words will have to wait. I've been working like a dog, still, yet, though good things are happening. (A lot of shit is, too, but I can only do what I can do.) Apparently some shit went down today, but my boss was too peevish about it to tell me, so I'll have to get the scoop tomorrow.