The Martlet

Philosophy is going the way of religion — modern society largely considers it an irrelevant relic of the past. Today’s post-secondary students seek “real” job skills, and believe philosophy offers nothing toward this end.

Many find texts on philosophy, history, or even anthropology inaccessible. Terminology like “ontology” and “phenomenology” don’t help this stigma, and even more detrimental is writing or speaking based on foundational premises that seem, at best, odd.

The fundamental right to life, liberty, etc. are not truths, but are simply terms we’ve affixed to ideas. We may thump our fists on the table about rights, but this is a ruse. Instead, we act as if people have these so-called “rights” and that is good enough.

What alienates a lot of people from philosophy is the constancy of this sort of fist thumping. A philosopher I am just starting to get into, by the name of Wittgenstein, wants us to stop this. Language is not meant for representing reality, or the truth behind mere appearances. While I do not believe that truth is a central concept in philosophy, the truth of a phrase is part-and-parcel of its usefulness. You want to ask “Does this rule or that rule work better?” not, “Is this view true, independent of my contingent desires and beliefs?”

This does not mean that truth is relative. I firmly believe that there are objective moral facts just as there are objective scientific facts. Whether they are comprehensible or can be put into language is another story.

Sure, some moral facts are more acceptable than others. For instance, slavery and genocide are objectively wrong. But does this mean there is a way to step outside of our contingent historical and cultural place and objectively speak or write about whether ending slavery equalled moral progress? No, there is not. We naturally assume we have progressed. That’s the nature of future people; they look down on past people for how stupid they were. How does all this relate to the public intellectual? A public intellectual is an intellectual who writes, not only in scholarly publications, but also in print media. Public intellectuals go on T.V. shows like Real Time with Bill Maher. They go on the radio and host debates and forums.

Cornell West and Paul Krugman are two examples of these illusive public intellectuals — so is David Suzuki (though he is guilty of placing science as a more important enterprise than literature, philosophy and history). Stan Persky is a better Canadian example, though less famous.

West is a Christian of the tradition of Kierkegaard and writes about weird philosophers no one has heard of — like Schelling. Yet, he can somehow tone it down enough to influence public life in the U.S. Krugman is a Keynesian welfare state economist. He thinks we should save when we are booming and spend when we are busting — whatever that means. While the lines are blurry between public and private intellectuals, I do know that we need more of the former kind.

As Persky wrote in regards to the job of universities: “If we want a democratic society in which people are capable of critical thought, are cultured and are citizens, then we want to dispel young people’s ignorance about history, geography, civics, science, art, literature and book-reading and, yes, we also want them to learn some things that will help them get jobs.”

He puts it a little mildly there.

If we want a working democracy, we need an informed electorate. Or else, it’s just a matter of whose propaganda is better, and that’s not democracy. And an informed electorate needs to be able to do more than just get a job — they also must be able to understand. Philosophy can help us do that.