afleitch
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Posts: 30,009
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« on: July 28, 2022, 07:48:37 AM » |
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I think it depends.
Despite heavy philosophising myself (at least I think) I generally don't like philosophy. As much as Judith Butler is a bit of meme, I can understand her, through my own self editing of what she says as opposed to say Jordan Peterson who just talks absolute bollocks. And people mistaking absolute bollocks for wisdom or intelligence is as bad, if not worse than 'Pez' philosophy as the latter doesn't pretend to be anything greater than it is.
But likewise people mistaking genuine complexity for absolute bollocks because they can't understand it or just want to discredit it (as is happening with Butler recently on THAT ISSUE) is just laziness and at times malice on their part.
I have a real visceral dislike of 'thought experiment' secular ethical philosophy; trolley problems or 'imagine you woke up attached to another person' etc. If you have to construct an almost impossible set of conditions in which to play, then what you're postulating is effectively worthless. All of us, no matter when or where we are tend to face variations of the same ethical and philosophical problems as the next person and otherwise complex philosophical exercises are best served by bearing that in mind.
I think what you say about 'lucidity' is true, but one persons inspirational advocate is another persons obvious fraud. So there always has to exist, for example, both Kant and Kantianism, as distinct theatres. You aren't served better by grasping Kant directly or by espousing a more accessible interpretation. Hume's treatise are relatively easy to understand now, in comparison to a lot of his contemporaries but he had to re-write them and often add unnecessary complications to them for the palette of his own audience.
As long as everyone doesn't talk across each other, I think better conversations can be had by people with different levels of engagement.
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