March 11, 1998
Dear Norman,
I enjoyed reading your "Blood Sport" paper, and I'm glad you
called attention to it. I don't think that I find the phenomenon quite
as common as you seem to, but it certainly isn't rare, and it's
certainly disturbing regardless of how rare or common it is. I like to
think that we might be able to improve the situation by training our
students (and ourselves) to think of philosophical criticism as aimed at
convincing the very advocates of the positions criticized (rather than
merely convincing the audience of observers of the debate). This
promotes the sort of rhetorical empathy that I have appreciated in good
teachers, whom I try to emulate in this regard.
Yours,
Jonathan
University of Haifa
Haifa 31905
Israel
email: jonathan@research.haifa.ac.il
|