Author: Kleiner

Here is a NY Times article from a month or so ago on how the humanities could and should defend themselves in these tough times.  My students will know that I am always rather reluctant to make the utility arguments (study philosophy so that you can kick ass on the LSAT, or to make yourself more competitive in the job market by being a clearer thinker and writer, etc).  It is not that those claims are false (in fact, they seem true), rather I just think Aristotle was right when he defended philosophical contemplation as highest precisely because it is useless.  The humanities are worth studying because they ask the question of man, one’s life is better ‘intrinsically’ for having engaged the Great Conversation.

Aristotle, NE X.8:  ‘So if among virtuous actions political and military actions are distinguished by nobility and greatness, and these are unleisurely and aim at an end and are not desirable for their own sake, but the activity of reason, which is contemplative, seems both to be superior in serious worth and to aim at no end beyond itself …’

Two related news items of interest to students of social ethics:

1) News that under the Bush administration used waterboarding over 200 times with some 9.11 suspects.  My view: While I am far from the first in line to defend the Bush administration, I reject almost out of hand the notion that Bush was simply ‘stupid’ and Cheney simply ‘evil’.  Rather, I think they were totally utilitarian (typical of DOD folk) in their thinking.  I am inclined to believe, as Cheney suggested late yesterday, that they did get good information from the waterboarding.  If they didn’t, why keep doing it?  Why, after 199 times, would you do it a 200th time?  Would you be banking on it finally work that last time?  That seems absurd.

In other words, I am growing increasingly suspicious of Obama’s nice sounding claim that we should ‘reject as a false dilemma the choice between our values and our security’.  What if it is not a false dilemma?  What if torture (and waterboarding is clearly torture) makes us safer?  Then what will Obama do?  

2) The Supreme Court will be hearing a privacy case where a high school student was strip searched since the school believed she had pills (prescription strength ibuprofen).  The school’s attorney has argued, ‘If we are serious about having a drug free environment, then we are going to have to violate privacy on occasion’.

This is a useful admission.  Perhaps we can generalize both situations to this:

If X is sufficiently desirable, then it is morally permissible to violate important value Y.  Plug in for X either ‘security’ or ‘drug free schools’.  Plug in for Y either ‘respecting human rights by not torturing’ or ‘respecting privacy by not using invasive search procedures’.

I am no utilitarian, so in neither case will my view be driven entirely by the consequences.  I’ll sound more deontological here than I really am (I am most drawn to virtue ethics), but my vote is: that looks like a really unattractive general moral principle as it invites using others as mere means to one’s ends.  I say no torture no matter what the situation.  I think there are some moral values (like the dignity of the human person) that are absolutely inviolable. But that might be too strong, since I am not a pacifist …  So perhaps we just need to work out the  above general moral principle in order to sort out just how desirable X would have to be and also how important a value Y could be while still being suspended.  In just war theory, for instance, some theorists appeal to ‘supreme emergencies’.

Here is an article arguing that denim is a national disgrace, the uniform of the inauthentic and hypocritical.  George Will contributes to the discussion here, suggesting as a general rule that: ‘This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don’t wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.’

I don’t live up to that.  But I am proudly denim-less.  In fact, believe it or not, I have not even owned a pair of jeans since the 6th grade.

The Languages, Philosophy and Speech Communication Student Symposium is this Friday (April 17) from 3:30-5:00.  There are presentations from all areas of our department, including two philosophy sessions.  Please plan on attending!

3:30-4:30 in Old Main 326:  Mark Rasmuson “Conflict and Harmony in Plato’s Republic”; Ben Siler “On Berkeley’s Master Argument”; Jonathan Chambers “Locke and Identity”

4:45-5:45 in Old Main 326:  Daniel Tate “Heidegger and Rilke”; Jon Adams “Mormonism and Postmodernism: Parallels and Departures”; Soren Rasmussen “Heidegger and John Paul II on Technology and Labor”

We discussed Rene Girard today in the contemporary euro class.  Girard is best known in literary criticism circles, but his work should be of interest to philosophers.  We discussed, in particular, his ‘anthropology of religion’ and the scapegoating mechanism.  Here is an article that gives a nice summary of Girard’s view and then applies it to the Cross.  What is interesting for those interested in pomo philosophy is how Girard abandons the transactional ‘economy of exchange’ found in ordinary substitution theories of atonement and makes room for an an-economic understanding of the Cross that introduces a new ‘logic of the gift’.  An appropriate topic on Good Friday.