June 16, 2003
Dear Dr. Swartz,
As an undergraduate, I took an introductory course in Western
Philosophy and became obsessed with an introductory Formal Logic
course. I considered philosophy for a career then, even while
being totally in love with poetry. It was exactly this combative
spirit you wrote about, among my peers but not my professors,
that turned me away from Philosophy as anything but an avocation.
I see now that the situation is more common than I thought,
people being people and all. My peers all seemed to enjoy their
verbal fights, as I'd enjoy striking out a good friend when he's
at bat on the opposing team. Their thrust and parry was fine
among the tight circle, but I knew that students who weren't in
the group found it very off-putting. However, I had the luxury of
being nominally disinterested in their conversations. I was not
planning a career as a philosopher or attorney; I did not
bankroll my arguments from the same wallet as I funded my
personal identity. I tried to use ideas, and to not let them
use me. In more intimate spheres of discussion, my peers' style
seems fine, exciting even, but when the audience contains a
preponderance of strangers, perhaps a different purpose is at
hand. Purpose and Audience is a dynamic system.
But, having now seen a different side to scholarship than is
commonly shown to undergraduates, I fear that this attitude you
wrote of isn't exclusive to Philosophy. In English departments, I
have seen the attitude you've written about here, but more of its
opposite, the near absence of criticism in order to spare
feelings. I think the latter is more common in the non-philosophy
humanities, but no less harmful. Regardless of academic
discipline, I think both of these attitudes are prone to exist
whenever people identify themselves through their objects of
study.
The problem also seems to crop up most when goals conflict, are
not understood, or when personal goals among "combatants"
supersede more universal goals. It happens when we forget that
we're all on the same team, or at least should be in spirit. In
the disciplines with a scientific core, this might be a less
common cause for this kind of antagonism, but in the others,
since the goals aren't as clearly understood, clearly shared, or
as easy to operationalize, it seems more common. In an absence of
shared academic standards or goals, the individual is more likely
to fall back on personal goals. Scholars involved in "regressive
discourse," my term for the extreme form of this behavior, are so
busy defending their feelings and positions, that they seek no
common ground, seek no new premises – they forget about synthesis
and embody antithesis (Hegel didn't account, as far as I know,
for what two antitheses produce). Belief systems, not mutable
hypotheses, become the issues at stake. Biologically speaking,
when a person feels threatened, the resulting thought process
begins in the lower, less volitional, structures of the brain and
not in the neo-cortex. I've also noticed this conflation of
belief and idea becoming all too common in America, how we, in
the main, elect belief systems, not thinkers, to govern the
Nation. I'll stop after I say that disagreement is a given, but
its nature often sets the limit to how productive it can be.
Thank you for your provocative essay.
Sincerely,
Scott L. Woodham
scott_woodham@mac.com
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