Is Philosophy Combative?
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2023
- Dr. Ellie Anderson and Dr. David Peña-Guzmán, Philosophy professors and co-hosts of Overthink podcast, discuss the disciplinary norms of philosophy: is philosophy combative? Can you ever fully remove ego from intellectual debate? From Socrates to the epistolary tradition, David and Ellie reflect on the merits and downsides of how philosophy has been done and how it is practiced today.
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As an introverted and rather slow and meticulous thinker, philosophy for me couldn't be further from combative. I enjoy reading and learning new ways to see myself and the surrounding universe. I seek peace of mind, wisdom, truth, and most importantly, building an empathetic and humanitarian world. I therefore couldn't be bothered with petty arguments or any of the boring academic noise fetishized by the cult of intellect in our elitist university culture. I love healthy, honest, and productive dialogue, but when speaking with people who get off to the sound of their own voice and argue for the sake of winning a quick dopamine release, I feel as though I couldn't be further away from philosophy. The very fact that philosophy undergraduate students have a tendency to pursue lawyer careers perfectly enshrines the problem. Do we care about self-discovery and building a better human society for all, or about smartness and career advancement?
I cannot stress enough how overjoyed I am to read this comment and know that there is someone out there who feels exactly as I do on this. Most philosophy students couldn’t be further from being philosophers. Philosophy should be practical, and should be the basis of any rationalising species’ society. Speaking as someone stuck in university, as there is nowhere else for me to get by with my skill set (society has conditioned me to be academic), I have seen the true face of academia and it is exactly how you describe it. It is indeed a cult of intellect, where many individuals indulge their niche passions in the same hedonistic way as drug addicts, studying the thoughts of others with no intention but to assimilate them into their own writing, and with no interest whatsoever in the common good of humanity.
Many others see their degree as but a means to an end, playing into the bureaucratic, elitist game with the hopes that they might be able to use some extra letters after their name to get a job that will pay them well. These types, although ultimately escaping this factory which churns out unoriginal, imitative, pretentious thought and literature ad nauseam, typically end up no better than the academics they found so irksome, as they too go on to indulge their own desires which are instead fiscal and materialistic in nature.
Both of these types are alike in their craving for attention, as the academic just wants others to listen to or read them and marvel at their genius, while the money-craver just wants others to see how rich and successful they become. A simple proof of this is that, if others didn’t exist, neither would have any use of their amazing skills, for they would attract no attention but their own.
Beyond these two loathsome types, there are some who study because it’s all they can do, and the educational system has conditioned them so that they are bloody good at learning, applying and repeating information. Some of these poor souls actually enjoy this process enough to make it their entire raison d’être, contributing nothing to the zeitgeist and society as a whole, but rather living just as individualistically as the money, drug and sex addicts of the world. And then there are those like me. We are a minority of students who play the game, as much as we may loathe it, in the hope that with these stupid ‘qualifications’ we might one day gain enough influence to contribute somewhat to a much needed shift in our species’ thinking towards what you describe: collective self-discovery and application of our knowledge towards the genuine betterment of mankind. Technology, industry and money are not the end, they are simply tools, preferred indifferents, but the powers that be are bent on convincing EVERYONE that they are everything, maintaining the status quo and ensuring that our species’ ethos never changes.
Philosophy should serve to empower those who deserve its merits, equipping them with the tools to defy the status quo, not to give in to the will of oligarchs.
Exactly that kind of experience finally led me to abandon my career as an academic philosopher because I was not satisfied with discussions which were a kind of saying obvious things with a unnecessary complicated language way too often. I began to interest myself into philosophic themes because I wanted to explore questions of life more deeply than most of my fellow people would consider to think of. In the beginning it was an interesting ride but after some years it became rather boring to me. After leaving university I fell into a kind of crisis until I found a deeper meaning in experiences and texts which explore these mystical awakenings and since then I rediscover the deeper meanings of philosophers like Plato, Nietzsche, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and many others which offer deeper insights into the nature of reality than it was understood at the university, as far as I had experienced this in the classes I was attending there. Now I am thinking of offering new courses which try to spread the deeper knowledge which is mostly hidden in our culture.
Philosophy is indeed a combative thing. Just the other day I dislocated my neighbor's jaw while defending Spinoza.
I had this experience in my MFA. I had very few peers who were supportive of my work. So critiques felt so unnecessarily mean spirited. It's a critique but I never felt that I had to put down my peers when I wasn't that keen on their work. I felt just asking questions from a place of desiring to know to help them more to refine their intentions than pointing out everything I subjectively perceived as a flaw. It got so bad that I didn't even show my work for my final critique.
So I definitely felt what you said when you said it can kill creativity and discourage any form of output, whether conventional or not.
I'm working to become a professor and I think this is such an important thing to talk about in pedagogy. How do we help students get to the heart of things and help them help each other in constructive ways in critique to question their own work in a way that is supportive and enjoying of what is already accomplished?
The issue I see is that fast thinking in advantaged over slow thinking, and this results in polarisation of the debate space, when it ideally should be nuanced and contain spaces of "we don't know" that get eroded with aggressive debate.
Love this conversation so much, not least because it illustrates how to disagree constructively and without aggressiveness. I particularly like David's account of his experiences debating in a second language. It's an experience I recognize, as I was still developing fluency in English when I got into grad school, and I found myself in a cohort of highly articulate and debate-loving native speakers. On the one hand, that atmosphere led me to believe that that's how one did things in academia; on the other, it made me feel inadequate because I couldn't do them at that level. One gets judged in such contexts not by the ideas that remain inarticulate in one's mind, but by what actually gets out in words, and the non-native speaker is always aware of the gap between the two, and of the fact that nobody else sees it. Thanks for talking about all this!
I would love to see philosophers with opposing ideas documented in a body of work - argue for the other's position in a debate for fun. I've never witnessed anybody doing this, but i think it would be an interesting experiment, possibly revealing deeper misunderstandings of the other's work (and maybe their own).
Honestly I am at a point where I have no desire to debate or push any ideas of my own. I just like reading the history of philosophy and writing papers, and feel very peeved when I am in a space where people are combative.
wow I'm so glad you guys brought this topic up because it's something that has been bothering me for a few years now! i am extremely nonconfrontational and heated debate is just not my style of learning, and I've always felt that there is a sort of weird inherent masculinity behind the way that philosophy is conducted. even though that style is legitimate in some ways... I think both of you outlined in words for me very eloquently what some of the reasons might be for this nagging feeling I've been having. i've been binge watching this channel for the past week or so and i love your guys' discussions and appreciate you making philosophy accessible and casual for non academics like me☺️
Thank you for your kind words, so glad this was helpful for you!
Beautifully shown the beauty of philosophical arguments. I LOVED the near jagular cuts you guys had.
On the matter of debate, I feel like there's been a big shift with the introduction of a 'global academia' and especially instantaneous digital communication from good-faith debates among peer-scholars to arguing for the sake of dismissing an idea outright. When you're in a classroom with people (or even in enlightenment era correspondences like Leibniz/Clarke where there was a profound agreement on the pursuit of 'truth' in fact, rather than an argument over truth as such) you're inherently dedicated to finding a common ground because its socially and intellectually useful and desirable... when you have faceless academics debating through the medium of published journals on which their reputation (and salary, to some extent) is staked, it seems almost inevitable that you're going to get grandstanding and pejorative argumentation.
The 'classroom' style of true, good-faith debate among peers, I think, leads to a genuinely better understanding of your own position even if its only being challenged and not agreed to, whereas the latter 'public-professional' style of argument is meant to establish thought leadership and similar forms of reputation without nearly the same benefits in knowledge of either position.
:10 literally scratching head after the proposition that philosophy is a discipline in which "you have to defend your premises with conclusions."
Delightful podcast, thanks Elie and David, greetings from Mexico
I love this - More of David please.
Would you guys do a part 2 of sorts that centres around discussing if philosophy (however you guys wish to define it) is weaponised? Thank you!
The talk about debate gave me flashbacks to arguing deontology vs. utilitarianism in LD rounds before I'd ever read Kant or Bentham/Mill 😅
I hadn’t heard of Steinbock before, and the question of surprising oneself has been very interesting to me recently, so I’ll definitely be investigating his recent work. 👀 Thanks!
Congs from Greece, thanks for the subtitles, waiting for a podcast on Herakleitos the father of dialectic.
Re: the gender dimension
I attended a multi-day philosophy conference (open to the public, I’m just a philosophy hobbiest) and the men who gave lectures were fairly difficult to follow, many technical words used, and not many questions after the lecture ended. I had just finished taking a linguistics course and fit the generalization of men’s speech being more defensive/combative. I then attended a lecture given by a woman (only woman’s lecture that day) and was curious if it would fit the generalization of women’s speech being more facilitative. By far it was more understandable than other lectures I attended and generated a lot more questions after the lecture ended. Just one day at one philosophy conference, but fit what was said in this video.
I can relate to philosophy being combative. I was taking some philosophy classes for a minor and I was surprised at how direct people were in class if your ideas had any flaws. With the right people though, where you have that trust like you said in your improv group, it can make discussions go smooth while being kind but direct.
Also - at around the 30 min mark, the sound quality started to make a crackling noise!
Thanks for the video! A question came into mind as I was watching. In relation to the context of what’s currently trending, what do you think of engaging in a philosophical dialogue with AI? Would it offer more or less the same “surprise” as dialoguing with real people or oneself would? I imagine that doing so is similar to when someone plays against a computer in chess, where it would allow for that person to practice before playing against someone real, although I also wonder whether one could actually “practice” for a real-life philosophical dialogue (perhaps at the expense of the “surprise”).
As far as I know, the ancient Greek Athenians used to asserted that "Contrast is the Essence of Vision!" (We see by virtue of the interplay of shadow and light - or distance and closeness, up, down etc) Anecdotally, when two individuals began disputing in the Greek Agora, someone or other would draw a circle in the dirt at their feet there in the marketplace. This designated "The Agon," the place of contest. Then, the disputants, the "Pro-agonist" and the "Anti-agonist" would present their alternating visions of the matter at issue. The point of this exchange was not to determine a 'winner' of the argument - and a loser, but that it was the attendants watching the 'contest' who would witness "a living truth emerge in that conflict of opposites." On a good day, anyway... You hinted at this when you suggested that Socrates was attempting to "Midwife" a larger truth when he probed the assumptions of "The Sophists" whom he often engaged in the town square of Athens. I heard you explore the notion of the 'agon,' but you were referencing it within our contemporary cultural context. Perhaps, it would be worthwhile to 'resurrect' the ancient Greek cultural conception or understanding of the underlying purpose of "Rhetorical Dialectic" - and why it was prized by the Athenian Greeks as a collective. What do you think, Ellie?
It's really interesting how you discuss philosophizing methods and whether they're combative or not. At the same time, both of you manage to show how it should work in practice in this video. Haha!
Ok talking about combat. It’s NOT antagonistic in its purest and TOUGHEST ( mentally ) aspects . I’m talking about argument and retort or whatever the prof specifically said. But yea. Great point glad y’all made this video . On-point.
Tact .. well, yea.
Correction, I thought he said antagonistic , he said agonist. They are synonymous anyways.
In my informal discussions and debates with People online I have found that People are not always wanting to know the truth of an issue ( We all know this ).
If People always admitted to the truth of an issue or a weakness in their argument or position, they could lose their career and / or relationships with family and friends.
I especially find that this is the case with Christian Apologists and Christian Philosophers. You can show the weaknesses or flaws in the Ontological Argument for the existence of God or the Moral Argument for the existence of God etc… and yet Christian Apologists or Christian Philosophers will continue to go on believing the arguments. They are not going to admit that the arguments are flawed because they could lose their whole Career.
It is not easy to collaborate with another Person when the other Person is not wanting to get to the heart of an issue nor admit to the truth.
It is the responsibility of the person putting forward the argument to make sure their arguments are not flawed. Alternatively they could admit their arguments are flawed but nevertheless retain their faith. It's possible.
Talk about combative: there is an anecdote about Sidney Morganbesser interjection to the assertion by a philosopher in a public lecture that curiously, while here is a double negative in English, there is no such things as double positive - to which Sidney shouted from the audience "Yeah Yeah" to hoots of laughter. While I did not witness this event, I did take a class with him devoted entirely to the various meanings of the word 'good.' It's not philosophy that combative; it's people. Philosophy has to constantly cast doubt on itself and test itself. Moreover, sine there is can be no end to philosophy until there is an end to people (or other sentient beings) new thinking will always arise to replace the old.
Haha it’s so painfully obvious when someone else points it out. Seeking clarification on stances/beliefs has always been for better understanding of someone’s pov, for me. But I’ll eventually get met with annoyance and sometimes defensiveness even anger. It feels like some folks will avoid anything beyond small talk.
I already live a solitary lifestyle and here I am trying to fill my toolbox with more tools that might drive me deeper into solitude 😂
...the word Guß derives from gießen - which men did in ancient Greece as you know: casting metals, but plz could you do a video on Fromm´s " The Anatomy of the Human Destructiveness"...
been doing a close reading of the republic with my cousin and a lot of our observations on the concept of 'pleonexia' is coming to mind listening to this conversation
Thank you, philosophers for an excellent discussion. How about a discussion on " Does the discipline of philosophy consist of glorified opinion rather than objective truth?". I would like to see you discuss that.
Being glib there?
Judging by German media and also what one sees on this platform in German -- interviews, panel discussions etc., I actually see more female philosophers than males, nowadays. I don't get the impression that German women have an issue with debate! (I've just checked, and in 2019, the female ratio amongst philosophy students was 46.4%, trending upwards. In mathematics and the natural sciences, it was 49.2%.)
Prideful behaviour is a form of insecurity and just silly, but false modesty is a dangerous trap as well. I don't mean simply pretending, but rather the sort of false consciousness that can arise from consistently over-estimating others over a long period of time. This can go on for decades and effectively damage your life.
Philosophy is not necessarily combative, but it is sufficient to create conflict. Necessarily combative philosophy has an antagonistic function to a certain 'other'. Sufficiency for cobativeness in philosophy is due to its constructive nature which will create arguments against it eventually.
As a John vervaeke youtube junkie, I'd love to see his gloves come off here to defend Socrates
@21:00 he dropped the ball to roleplay with her as Socrates 🤓
Philosophy's contribution to the adversarial process; in good faith and the interest of justice.
If you live in an oppressive, alienating, exploitative society, is it possible not to be combative, agonistic, also antagonistic and even polemical, even when you engage in philosophical argument?
I mean, somebody literally got shot during an argument over Kant, so...
No. Not for me. I like to listen, think, discuss.
Had never heard the term "dialogical", and have always thought that was "discursive". Keyboard research hasn't clarified it for me, so far.
I think it's wrong to interpret Socrates as being egoistic in thinking he is better than others. And even though the dialogues end in aporia, this is left for the reader to continue. The dialogues don't end in aporia to demonstrate people know nothing, but instead to critically edify the readers as students and interlocutors. It's also not true that one must propose a clear and positive alternative to that which is criticized.
When would you make videos on Lao Tzu or other Taoist sages?
One of my closest professors, Alan Kim, told me that 99% of philosophy are questions. I'd add that 99% of philosophy professorship is pants. And shirts. And frames. And bookcase backdrops.
And big chairs. And hand gestures
If it's leather pants and glasses, count me in...
In my philosophy courses the room was always filled with this tense silence. I realized we all carried insecurities of feeling, not stupid, but deceived by our thoughts. Being wrong in math or any other class is not the same as being wrong in philosophy, because what is at stake there is our reality. You make a stupid comment in physics, it is a bit embarrassing but that is it; you hang out in the open the rational fabrics of your world-view, of your reality, people will get defensive and combative because they don't want to be living a lie. Without a truth, they feel like their underwear has been stolen from the clothes line. Of course, true philosophers, as lovers of wisdom, do not equate themselves to a truth, they don't mind being naked and ridiculed in front of the committee of underwear, and therefore they are not combative in critiquing and exploring any matter.
I claim that a combative discussion is just a war of ideologies, whereas a philosophical discussion, namely a dialogue, is always friendly, joyful, and uninhibited.
Thank you very much for your material. You are awesome explainers!
...yeah, chewing the phat w/ homeboys Tokin Koke or ganja, ...sum freestyle, hip hop is born,. ..while drinking brew,. My scoop.,
"friendly dissagreement"
If you read Plato and you're not reading it dialogically in all the ways that the co-hosts praise, then I don't think you're reading Plato correctly
No, you're thinking of economics.
or they're thinking about the history of philosophy, which is an intense debate between philosophers, with fractions and huge rivalleries
@@foljs5858 Fair enough. I was probably remembering an Unlearning Economics video where he talked about presentations being interrupted with questions.
I have a confession to make. I love wisdom, but I am not a philosopher. This is how I practice wisdom. Remember a famous saying. For instance, "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal." For wisdom to get from this saying, being that wisdom is how to live and what to do, think of it as a scavanger hunt. Now interpreting each main word in your own manner, try this. For "All," find Shakespeare's play, As You Like It, and read Jacqes' "All the world's a stage..." speech. Next, for "men," go outside and walk around until you see a man. For "mortal," find the book Mort de Arthur and put it on the table. For "Socrates," put the book, The Apology, on top of Mort de Arthur on the table. Next, for "man," go outside until you see a man (again). For, "Socrates" (again), take off the table, The Apology, and put it on the chair. And, for "mortal" (again), take Mort de Arthur (by Sir Thomas Mallory), and read it.
Though you can do this in your own way, the words of sayings, any sayings, will, if the sayings are good enough, will give you direction which you might not have taken up, and that can be called wisdom as well. Try it, I believe you will be surprised at how interesting this scavanger hunt of wisdom is! Good luck! And thank you for all of your gifts of philosophical wisdom too!
David is definitely more combative than Ellie. One is a philosopher, the other a debater.
There's the famous letter from Barry Smith, Quine et all to Cambridge 1992 complaining about awarding Derrida an honorary degree since Derrida is such a jerk. Also in SEC the dispute between Derrida and Searle, in which Searle is pretty much uncomprehending what the argument is about. And then Cavell's "What Did Derrida Want from Austin?" about the dispute, overturning Derrida's reading of Austin as a simply bad reading, but conceding that Searle was out of it from the start.
I feel sad for the loss of the agonistics who brought us the categories of a knowledge and all that flowed from that. but hey, we're making so much progress on pronouns!
Fake, not one punch thrown!
Careful. Challenging a student might be construed as a micro-aggression.
I do not think this is a concern whatsoever.
Depends on their identity
That's Exactly what I was thinking!!!
I shut it off after a 2 minutes 40 secs when all I basically heard was- Philosophy should be discussed in your safe space when you're surrounded with coloring books and people that will never ever challenge you to defend your opinions EVER!!! People if you love Philosophy as I do, don't let the wokesters destroy this discipline too.
Not my impression. The advantages and pitfalls of the combative approach to philosophy are discussed, but neither is endorsed as the be all and end all of the discipline.
you just hear what you want to hear lmao
Thank you for a fascinating discussion. Being an intermittent participator of philosophical teachings I had to find the definition of many words used in your discourse. It is the seeking of knowledge and the structure of ethics that draws me to philosophy.🌱
No need for competion bottom line (same as science) is. "It is stranger than we can think". JBS. Haladane. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane