February 5, 2003
Dear Professor Swartz,
Thank you for this refreshing and lucid observation about the
nature of the discipline. I stumbled into your piece while
Google-ing around the web for anything that might work into an
article I'm assembling on the relevance of Thrasymachus to
contemporary philosophy. I've been gnawing on this problem since
I was a graduate student at Toronto in the early 80's. Stranger
still, what originally set me to thinking about this entire issue
was 1) a really terrible time I'd had after witnessing this kind
of (to me) startlingly bad behaviour at an APA meeting, and 2)
complaining about it to, of all people, Bob Imlay. Bob then
told me the story about the moron who dissed him at the paper you
describe.
– so your article was doubly fun to find. :^)
I learned a hell of a lot from Bob about the importance of being
human while conducting philosophy in public – and inside
the Academy.
So, I'd like to add a brief reply to the content of your piece:
the very first time I witnessed one of these rascals get up and
attempt to eviscerate a grad student delivering their first paper
– displaying the size and vacuity of their ego and, in
general, behaving in the manner you've described and which anyone
who attends national conferences has witnessed – the very
first thing I thought was "hasn't this idiot read any
»Plato«?"
You'd think a little exposure to Euthyphro or Thrasymachus alone
would've tempered their self-satisfied certainties. You'd think.
A pleasure, sir.
Yours,
Mark C.E. Peterson, Ph.D.
Department of Philosophy
UW Colleges – Washington County
400 University Drive
West Bend, WI 53095
(office) 262.335.5200 // (fax) 262.335.5251
mpeterso@uwc.edu
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