Abstract
Once upon a time, it was thought that philosophy was indispensable for the good life. That meant it did not need to justify its continued existence. But this time belongs to the past. Hence it is important to ask, if philosophy is to survive or at least to continue in a meaningful way, whether it still has anything worthwhile to say in an age of globalization. This theme, which is constitutive of Western philosophy, is compounded by the events of 9/11, which, as I write are clearly still with us. This essay will urge two points. On the one hand, I think that we need to take steps to recover philosophy. This is a perennial problem, which does not depend on 9/11, since philosophy is always in the position of needing to justify its social utility. This is not provoked by any specific recent event, but is so to speak always on the agenda, always something philosophers need to wonder about. On the other hand, I think we need to take steps now to begin to recover political philosophy, which, in the wake of 9/11, and for specific reasons, is in danger of becoming simply irrelevant.
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- 1.
See Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York, NY: The Dial Press, 1947).
- 2.
Jaspers’ relation to Heidegger is complex. Suffice it to say that he was consulted after the war by the Denazification Committee, which denied Heidegger the right to teach, and that in his correspondence he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Heidegger to acknowledge his mistakes. See Martin Heidegger/Karl Jaspers, Briefwechsel 1920–1963, eds. Hans Saner and Walter Biemel (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1990).
- 3.
See John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1960).
- 4.
See Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. with introduction by David Carr (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 12.
- 5.
See G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 13.
- 6.
See Li Zehou, The Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics, trans. Gong Lizeng (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1994).
- 7.
See Karl-Heinz Pohl, “An Intercultural Perspective on Chinese Aesthetics,” in Frontiers of Transculturality in Contemporary Aesthetics. Proceedings Volume of the Intercontinental Conference, University of Bologna, Italy, October 2000, eds. Grazia Marchianò and Raffaele Milani (Torino: Trauben, 2001), pp. 139–140.
- 8.
“Je vous dois la vérité en peinture, et je vous la dirai.” Lettre of Paul Cezanne to Emile Bernard, dated 25 October 1905, cited in Jacques Derrida, La Vérite en peinture (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), p. 6.
- 9.
See Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2007).
- 10.
See Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. xi. [Henceforth cited as PTT]
- 11.
See for example, Gerald Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).
- 12.
See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 60.
- 13.
Martha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005), p. 1.
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Rockmore, T. (2012). On Recovering Philosophy: Philosophical Dialogue and Political Philosophy After 9/11. In: Wautischer, H., Olson, A., Walters, G. (eds) Philosophical Faith and the Future of Humanity. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2223-1_26
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2223-1_26
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