Abstract
An insightful colleague recently told me: philosophy is about problems. It’s about how problems are identified and dissected; it’s about how concepts are included and excluded when circumscribing problems; and it’s about how we uncover and re-discover forgotten problems and solutions. Shortly after this conversation, I came across a passage from Aristotle: ‘For those who wish to get clear of difficulties it is advantageous to discuss the difficulties well; for the subsequent free play of thought implies the solution of the previous difficulties, and it is not possible to untie a knot of which one does not know’ (1941, 995a28–30). Aristotle understood as well as anyone that the philosophical landscape we are traversing is well worn. Others have previously asked the same questions, and, for better or worse, they have offered answers. The ways in which issues are formulated and responses to problems are proffered do help us untie knots in our thinking. Sometimes it pays for philosophers to do a little archeology.
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Notes
- 1.
I owe this way of thinking about philosophy to my colleague John Nale, who specifically characterizes continental philosophy as ‘problem generating.’ In dissecting problems, one determines which concepts to include and exclude. My project here is to go back to the philosophical tradition and re-frame problems so that attention is re-directed to different concepts.
- 2.
Richard Rorty is the most radical quasi-analytic critic of all things Cartesian, but almost everyone writing on the topic of rationality, not just its critics, diverges from the strictly methodological, disembodied, culturally neutral version. See Audi, Nozick, and Toulmin for more mainstream examples. Then, of course, there are scores of feminists writing on the topic, including, Code 1993, Rooney 1991, 1994, Longino, Lloyd, Alcoff, Nagl-Docekal, and others.
- 3.
Feminists are some of the biggest critics of reason, but philosophers like Herta Nagl-Docekal nevertheless argue that emphasizing irrationality leaves us in ‘both a theoretical and a practical dead end. … [A] critique can only be convincing, even for women, when expressed in argumentative language’ (1999, 60).
- 4.
Another of my colleagues calls this a ‘plunder approach’ to scholarship. In taking this approach, I am interested less in scholarship for its own sake and more for what it can tell us about contemporary philosophical problems and solutions.
- 5.
Idiosyncrasy isn’t such as bad thing, as I will explain. Note that Nicholas Burbules claims there is ‘an inherent personal, idiosyncratic, and indeterminate character to what it will mean to be rational’ (1991, 249). This idea stands in need of a little qualification which I provide in the final chapter, but it decisively demonstrates how far rationality today has strayed from its modern roots.
- 6.
This is something understood by anyone who has dealt with government bureaucracy.
- 7.
In this case, a woman was experiencing blackouts for no discernible reason—until one of the doctors asked about when the blackouts started and discovered the onset coincided with the woman’s mother suddenly dying. When the doctor simply expressed human sympathy for her loss, the woman collapsed in ‘paroxysms of grief.’ In other words, a correct understanding of the medical situation required seeing beyond what is typically considered relevant in a medical context. See Toulmin 2001, 113–114.
- 8.
Code maintains that there is no such place that women can occupy in the terrain of Reason, but I search for one nonetheless.
- 9.
What will become clear in Chap. 4 is that virtue is something that shares much in common with skill, albeit a skill to be achieved in a way much different from the one advocated by the moderns.
- 10.
Throughout the arguments, I will shift back and forth between issues of race and gender. While the issues confronting race theorists and feminists are not always the same, substantial overlap does exist. I will, however, often emphasize the development of racism, especially in the work of Kant, because it truly emerges in the modern period in a form unlike previous eras. On the other hand, sexism goes back to the origins of Western philosophy, and, thus, its appearance in modern form is more of a continuation of existing attitudes.
- 11.
This passage is from the website intjforum.com.
- 12.
What Alcoff does not highlight is that there is a break with the moderns, even if it is not a radical one. To understand the extent of that break entails first understanding how Cartesianism fails.
- 13.
Descartes uses the term ‘men,’ not ‘humans,’ but I will defend my use of this term shortly.
- 14.
Here, I am obviously sweeping under the rug some seriously sexist comments, not to mention Aristotle’s attitude toward the reasoning abilities of male slaves. I will eventually address these limitations, arguing that they are no longer tenable due to the overthrow of biological essentialism. For the full argument, see Chap. 5.
- 15.
Berkeley actually owned slaves, and Locke was instrumental in laying out the Constitution of the Carolinas. For a discussion of Locke’s indiscretions in particular, see Bernasconi 2003. I will discuss, at length, Hume and Kant in subsequent chapters.
- 16.
Timothy Reiss discusses the issue of Descartes’ silence on the topic of slavery. While Reiss does find the silence worrisome, he concludes that we lack grounds for believing Descartes supported slavery. See Reiss 2005.
- 17.
Even though Descartes uses the term ‘men,’ that he avoids denigrating women and that he engages philosophically with women are prima facie evidence that he did not take the term literally. Also, Descartes seems to take the Platonic ideal of the soul as essentially distinct from the body to its logical conclusion—having a woman’s body does not appear to corrupt the soul for Descartes, at least not any more than having a male body does.
On the empiricist side of modernism, Hobbes starts with a similar notion: that men believe themselves to be equal in wisdom. In the Leviathan, he says,
For such is the nature of men that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent or more learned, yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves; for they see their own wit at hand, and other men’s at a distance. But this proveth rather that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything than that every man is contented with his share. (Hobbes 1909, 94–95)
- 18.
The racist views of Hume and Kant are the subject of the following chapter. As for Locke, Bernasconi points out that Locke not only invested in the slave trade but also personally added the word ‘power’ to The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina so that it read, ‘Every Freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and Authority over his Negro slaves’ (Bernasconi 2003, 14).
- 19.
I have already hinted at this, but I will discuss at length the philosophical recovery of pre-modern thought in the second part of this book.
- 20.
On the matter of reason’s role as the final court of appeal, the issue is more complex than I make it sound here, and I address this complexity at length, especially in Chap. 3. The point at the moment is, whatever our own doubts about reason, our approach is rarely, if ever, to look beyond it for some further intellectual authority.
- 21.
See Kant 1960, 81.
- 22.
Wittgenstein could obviously have used a little of Plato’s literary flare.
- 23.
See Frye 1983, 155–161. I will discuss the phenomenon of invisibility in the next chapter.
- 24.
An early and notable example of this sort of storytelling is Genevieve Lloyd’s Man of Reason.
- 25.
Heidegger may have been an early adopter of vociferously calling for a return to the pre-Socratics, but his encouragement for drawing philosophy back to pre-modern thinking is notable. His influence on French philosophy is as undeniable as his medievalist background, which brings with it an interest in non-modern approaches. Tom Rockmore notes, ‘Like a massive, yet rarely visible dark star, Heidegger shapes and determines the nature and course of French philosophical debate. As Michael Roth has stated, “Heidegger’s influence on French philosophy can scarcely be overestimated”’ (Rockmore 1995, xi).
Yet Heidegger is not the only medievalist important to the development of contemporary philosophy. According to Bruce Holsinger, the work of Georges Bataille, another medieval scholar, also influences the work of Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, Barthes, and Lyotard. For a more complete overview of medievalism’s influence on contemporary Heideggerian and French philosophical thought, see Holsinger (2005, 1–25).
- 26.
As I will argue in Chap. 4, Descartes radicalizes a Platonic understanding of mind. As a well-known critic of Plato, Aristotle, by extension, offers a useful framework for identifying the limitations of Cartesianism. After all, Aristotle is sensitive to precisely the same concerns in Plato that Descartes picks up on and develops.
- 27.
The full argument for the connection between representational epistemologies and moral indiscretion will come in the following chapter.
- 28.
Even Derrida speaks of the tendency to declare the ‘death of philosophy,’ although he rejects this tendency, stating, ‘I do not at all believe in what today is so easily called the death of philosophy (nor, moreover, in the simple death of whatever—the book, man, or god, especially since, as we all know, what is dead wields a very specific power)’ (1981, 6).
- 29.
- 30.
Here Rorty comes to mind, even though he might disagree depending, of course, on how we define ‘philosophy.’
- 31.
Once again Rorty, in another instantiation, comes to mind, along with one of his philosophical ‘heroes,’ Heidegger.
- 32.
I will discuss the need to reject essentialism—and how to do it—in the final chapter.
- 33.
The term ‘purposiveness’ is central to Kant’s arguments concerning race. My use here is less transcendental and much more in line with general usage. But the pun is intended.
- 34.
Says Toulmin, ‘For what we believe we are answerable as individuals; but the language in which our beliefs are articulated is public property’ (1972, 35).
- 35.
For an explanation of ‘practical starting point,’ see Hildebrand 2003.
- 36.
For more on this, see Nozick 1993, 26–35.
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Heikes, D.K. (2016). What’s the Problem?. In: Rationality, Representation, and Race. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59171-5_1
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