The Hard Ones [week 6 +week 7]

What is up with those Germans?! They are so hard to understand.

I have to admit these weeks were the most tricky of the whole semester. Never had I read entire extracts over and over without knowing, exactly what it was about.

Tomorrow, a better recount on Pippin and Honneth's works.

Pippin

Pippin produced an analysis of Hegel's ideas of ethics as a reaction to Kant's much-famed ethical theory. Unlike Kant's foundational categorical imperative, Hegel looks at ethics contextually "indeed claiming that the human good consists in being actively related to others within certain institutions" and that the individual is linked by these external factors from which they can/are defined.

The ideas in ethical rationalism seemed very amenable. Although this reading was kind of dense and technical, I managed to understand some good notions:
- Mutual recognition
- What is considered to be a norm (crucial for me since I'm dealing with the law).
- The secularity of Reason itself

In chapter IV, everything became a lot more dense.

Caroll, Pulp Fiction and PTSD [week 8 + week 3 +week 4]

Last weekend, I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time, mainly because it is the source of a myriad and one cultural references. But also because Caroll made a point in the readings to establish that although PF was a film of aesthetic merit, it deserved to be critiqued because it was detrimental to a viewer's sense of morality because it confused, via introducing an element of revenge, the measure of gravity between committing the act of murder, from the act of rape.

in progress. 

The implication on Caroll's end seems to be that, no matter what, the depletion of one's life at the hand of another will always be worse than a deep and sexual violation of their sense of self. In my view, as we grow to understand the empirical effects of sexual assault from an ethical and philosophical analysis, it is becoming clear that there is no 'scale' of wrong-doing where which murder is 'the worst' and rape is the 'second-worst'. They are both equally egregious acts.

 It was interesting to read in week 3 about  a theory of evil which took 'evil' acts away from their quarantined pedestal and refocus on redefinitions based on the harms the acts effect. Using real psychological survey data to support a philosophical theory for evil acts really helped streamline instances of harm, with moral judgments.

I don't think this technique worked so well with Joshua Greene's attempt to discredit deontological judgment based on available data. Whereas in Formosa's analysis, he was working a harm consistent in form and effect, translating it via empirical accounts back into a theory of evil, Greene attempts to use selective studies based on a handful of similar samples to discredit one philosophy from another. I already wrote an analysis of the article earlier in the semester, but what we can learn from that largely inefficient attempt, is that scientifically derived data does not always translate into inherently cohesive philosophies.

Week 8 readings

Trying to get through the readings this week, and was struck by this paragraph in the Ranciere reading:

The aesthetic regime of art institutes the relation between the forms of identification of art and the forms of political ckommunity in such a way as to challenge and advance every opposition between autonomous art and heteronomous art, art for art's sake and art in the service of politics, museum art and street art. For aesthetic autonomy is not that autonomy of artistic 'making' celebrated by modernism. It is the autonomy of a form of sensory experience. 

Which is all well and good, but then I think of this:

 

And wonder where this fits in. 

The first recap: Week 1

Like Itchy and Scratchy, Oxford and Cambridge, the New York Yankees and the L.A. Lakers (I think), friendly rivalries pepper life with a bit of entertainment and a thrill. You're with them or against them.

Yet I never really thought that actually took place in the philosophy spectrum, or that it was taken as seriously as it seems to be. Perhaps this is due to the fact that throughout my degree and in all my oblivion, my interests were more aligned with the Continental School, with the occasional nod to what is now blatantly identified by this week's readings as the Analytical School of philosophy.

Whilst a healthy sense of competition generally tends to inspire more productivity overall, here it is counterproductive not only to conceptions of philosophy, but also in creating confusion, elitism and obtuseness - completely opposite features to what is needed for propagating the actual importance of philosophy in broader society.

 What is interesting here is that the analytical school tends to regard itself as validated by its accepted proximity to the standard scientific method. Research of and analysis of the facts culminating in an overall theory (of semantics, for example) are features which cosy up under the Science Umbrella, and receive the subsequent foundational regard to be an objective viewpoint to be taken seriously.

On the other hand, the continental school relies on its established sense of history as foundational to its credibility. Where one philosopher's influence can be traced back to the other right down to Grandfather Socrates himself, it is this the collective respect, controversy and courage amassed throughout the ages that vindicate the seriousness of philosophy and its relevance, past and present, to humanity itself. However, here the cognitive dimension remains stubbornly subjective.

Yet living in a modernity that seems to teach us 'subjective=emotive=more bad/objective=logical=more good', the continental school is regarded best only by groups that are able to look beyond these limiting dichotomies and substantively appreciate both subjective and objective based content in equal regard as content of human philosophy.

Why, then, are the schools maintaining, if not exacerbating, the dissonance between each other? The overall result seems an unnecessary specification that, were a rose to be one by any other name, could be akin to an industrialisation of philosophy itself. Something jars were we to hear a philosopher comment that he/she works as a 'continental philosophy specialist', or the 'analytical specialist' instead of just 'philosopher', yet this is the same method of specification that refines areas of knowledge into rolling industries, as academic as they may be.

An avoidance of the commodification of philosophy (commodification itself being a popular topic of analysis in contemporary philosophical works) is, if at least as a primary reason, sufficient to get us to consider diminishing the dissonance between the schools. 

 

The Very Belated Introduction

 

So it took a rather terrifying dream last weekend where I failed PHL354 because I did not submit any online content, and was called a ‘dishonourable student’ by an angry voice over the telephone conversation to persuade me to get my act together and begin this blog.
 

Man, am I glad to have woken up from that one. Though I do realise it is not too far from reality either.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t particularly enjoy on-line based assessment tasks – I’m hardly the most tech-savvy crayon in the box and find them more involved and cumbersome than real life tutorial participation. Nevertheless, it is the academic price to pay for the convenience of doing a subject externally and I told myself I'd make myself catch up by the end of the mid-sem break, continuing my streak of good studenty diligence for the second half of the Session.
 

Despite me having done every reading for the past 7 weeks, I was pained at having to use the computer for anything other than essay writing or internet banking. And though I began a practice post in week 1, at some point I lost any knowledge of how to use the iLearn blog function, so the best solution was transferring it to Blogger - a medium I have some history with.  
 

 

With all this in mind, welcome to my blog! I envisage it as a place where I can have my thinking cap on and try to wade through the varied and great ideas posited so far in this capstone unit.