Why is philosophy so non-existant in American life ?

There's your answer.

does this help?

thankfully I [I] know that every single thing I say is at the same level of greatness.

does this help?

point out my flaw for me I cannot see it.

As for contemporary American culture, I hate to bash Big Media, as it is so convenient a target for so many things I dislike, but it does largely uphold material achievement and ignore or deride abstract matters.

I once saw a great documentary about introducing philosophy into an inner city school in America somewhere. They loved it, grades rose, crime fell, everyone was happy. It was like 'Dangerous Minds' but for real.

Philosophy is part of the core curriculum in France, isn't it? But they're quite annoying.

There, that's my views on philosophy.

neither should you've. that is my views??

I wish I could say why philosophy is so absent in us life. :/

j lu has a point.

What is the ideal supposed to be today, in terms of "success" - Bill Gates ? Donald Trump ? George W. "I failed all my classes and kant spell Islamabad - but im still da president" Bush ? If some poor person went around preaching their own views on life for absolutely *free*, without setting up an option of a 12 month vs. 6 month subscription plan with member benefits wouldn't you think such a person is insane ? How many pseudo-gurus teach for free ? Could there even be a Socrates today? Don't we already think that those ancient peoples were "behind" us when it comes to technological advancement, and therefore we pigeonhole their philosophical questionings as also being only essential in regards to the development of western thought (in other words, developmental basics) and of no real value to actually questioning where we ourselves are contentedly stuck in this capitlistic paradigm ? I know I'm probably confusing too many different issues here and this is obscenely incoherent, but I just had bad taco bell.

I am, too, with the ironic beard admiration as it is now very necessary.

talking about a society. I don't see much of a point trying to make points about a continental society, never mind a bicontinental society.

In Greece, philosophy was made by people who owned slaves and could spend a good portion of their time philosophizing. In our time, it is largely something carried on in the academic world. I think it's hard to do professional level philosophizing unless it is your job.

Some recent American (as in U.S.) philosophers (with stars next to those that I think are still living): W.V.O. Quine, Richard Rorty*, Jerry Fodor*, Arthur Danto*, Donald Davidson*, Daniel Dennett, Ronald Dworkin*, Nelson Goodman*, Gilbert Harman, Joseph Margolis*, Thomas Nagel*, Robert Nozick*, Hilary Putnam, John Rawls, Thomas Regan*, John Searle*, Wilfrid Sellars, Alfred Tarski, Bas van Fraassen*. Sorry for the absence of females, but I made this list using an encyclopedia I have on hand and picking out philosophers that I am at least vaguely familiar with and have gotten the impression are widely discussed.

American philosophy departments are still dominated by analytic philosophy, from what I have read and heard.

When did Ginsberg fiddle with kids?

whenever he could, it seems. unless you mean w/ another kind of an instrument.

Anyhow the point is that the question is flawed. Philosophy has never been a particularly treasured thing by any society; the masses distrust philosophers, who were common targets of Greek comedy, in which they were portrayed pretty much the same way that the type "philosopher" might be portrayed in say a film like "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure."

ha that shows my level of intellect, now doesn't it ? instead of attempting to make any comments about american culture, however, everyone is ganging up on how i brought up greece, which perhaps i shouldn't have

That might have been a slight flaw in your "strategery." Heh...

Case in point: The Force in Star Wars films. A great analogy to vast collective-unconscious concepts like karma and the tao, yet most Americans just consider it an aspect to a familiar pop culture icon.

But how different is that really from ancient Lao Tse parables?

Maria, I certainly didn't mean to recommend it (and you aren't suggesting that I did) - I cited it as a reason for what is left that we call philosophy being more marginal these days. I think it's unavoidable, obviously, and unfortunate, but it doesn't stop philosophers ranging widely. But look at, say, hardcore physics, the real cutting edge stuff: they are having plenty of trouble tying together the two major developments of the last century. Quantum physics and relativity seem both to be good science (I resist using the word 'true'), but they do not fit together. This is a huge enough matter for many great minds to grapple with (and you can throw in the problems of mass, the directionality of time and loads of other things), let alone bringing in mind, morality, politics, religion and all the other things within the scope of human knowledge.

it may interest you to know that there is a review of two of perloff's recent books in the summer 2002 issue of the journal of aesthetics and art criticism: 'wittgenstein's ladder' and 'poetry on and off the page'. the reviewer doesn't seem to consider perloff a philosopher either, but aside from the reviewer's reservations, the first book sounds like philosophy to me.

as for fragmentation: yes, lots of domains once part of philosophy are now not, particularly lots of social sciences. this doesn't mean philosophy has relinquished its claims on those domains. usually what happens is that philosophers hassle the scientists (to no avail, although 'hassle' implies scientists can hear them) about foundational and conceptual problems in their disciplines. philosophers seem to be convinced that they can always do these things better (because taking into account the most up to date work in metaphysics and epistemology, because reasoning more carefully, etc.) than theorists working in the fields. I remain undecided.

this does mean, though, that philosophy itself is pretty fragmented. the 'bringing in...' problem you mention, martin, is a real problem, but not so much because there are just tidy little comparments where we do philosophy of physics, ethics, philosophy of mind, etc, occasionally seeing what's going on in the other compartments. :/

I suspect alext's thread about aesthetics is of relevance here.

scientific fields split from philosophy as technology arose that enabled the observation of relevant phenomena. prior to observation, everything is speculation. this isn't a value judgement against philosophy or speculation - we never would've developed the instrumentation if we hadn't speculated as to how.

the unknown = the answer

I don't understand all this "science vs. philosophy" banter, they are both tools that complement each other in their duty.

Bucky Fuller had a good point about human specialization and how it limits the human's strongest natural gift, which is adaptability...he was quite a philosophizer, for an American inventor/writer/engineer/etc.

And yes I know it's not "philosophizer".

http://hallbiographies.com/professionals_academics/764.shtml

I'd also say that a number of terrific critical theorists are American, like Jameson, Bloom, Butler, hooks,...

Right. Other disciplines break away from philosophy, but any discipline can become grist for philosophy's mill. So you get "philosophy of mind," but beyond that you also get, say, moral philosophers trying to tease out the implications of evolution to ethics; or you get people working on philosophy of mind borrowing from computer science to model how the mind works (though some of this could debatably be considered to fall outside of philosophy and in cognitive science or something of that sort).

I agree with most (maybe all) of what Martin said, too.

The fragmentation question is interesting, because despite philosophy's specialization and sometimes technical language, I am often impressed when I read philosophy (and I mean recent philosophy, not just the classics) by how one question will be interconnected with other questions, so that it's very easy to go around in a circle from one issue to another. I can't think of any really good examples of this, but I have run into it frequently.

You're inadvertantly making it seem as if you think I'm much stupider than you! It's probably true though. I can only say that I try hard to understand philosophy and I think those women I mentioned are as worthwhile reading as Rorty (from what I remember) and maybe even William James. They get the whole transcendentalist-fin-de-siecle James/Bradley/Hulme and on and on American tradition much better than I ever could - of course. It's true that analytical philosophy isn't very fashionable and maybe the fashionability of the aestheticians I mentioned does sort of suggest that they're overestimated. Actually I once read Susan Howe in an interview talking about a mathematical theory of singularities and it made me cringe. She admitted she didn't know what a singularity was and basically just said she thought the word was cool, so she used it all the time. I also hate puns and slashes and all that stuff. So maybe I don't really like that kind of philosophy that much myself. Derrida is a really bad writer sometimes, not to mention other female French post-structuralists. And it's not just the translation - it's the circularity of the sentence constructions, etc. Maybe I should try analytical philosophy but here are my problems with it: I suspect that it's boring because it doesn't think enough about style, which is much more than something superficial, and I also suspect that if I became an analytic convert and didn't read post-structuralist theory my academic work would be marginalised because no-one outside philosophy departments in English speaking universities reads it. I'm not saying those are good reasons to stay away, so tell me why Richard Rorty is better than the people I mentioned.

Analytic philosophy is still pretty much fashionable in American philosophy departments, from what I understand, though I don't think it has much appeal to people in the arts.

I'm not sure Richard Rorty is better than the people you've mentioned, I just see that he has done work that is considered important, or even essential, by other American philosophers. I think he says he doesn't do philosophy anymore, anyway; but regardless, some of his work is respected and used by philosophers. (Confession: the only book I've read by Rorty is Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, which is probably more "critical theory" than "philosophy," though he does make use of, for instance, the ideas of Donald Davidson.)

I think Barbara Herrnstein Smith is very interesting, and definitely not in the analytic mold. Her criticisms of some of the premsises of analytic philosophy made me think, and I don't feel I have resolved my doubts, but it's on the back burner. (I'm not actively reading ANY of these things right now.) She would call herself a critical theorist, I guess. I think she is rather cleverly writing critical theory in a style that will appeal to someone with more of a sympathy for analytic philosophy. (Actually, her writing is often circular, but in a way I enjoy.)

I'm not a student, an academic, or a writer. I have nothing to show for myself. Don't take me too seriously.

Maybe this sort of thing is easier to accept as philosophy when it is exported from Europe under that label, but not when someone from the U.S. publishes it in the U.S.?

I don't really see why one would want to call literary criticism or literary theory, philosophy, rather than letting it be its own thing.

It sometimes seems that academics studying literature have a permanent disciplinary identity crisis. They will write books about identity politics in the 1920's in the United States, but if they want to write about that, why limit themselves to viewing the subject through literature? Why not become historians or sociologists, or something of taht sort, and use whatever evidence seems most valuable, instead of taking as a starting point for whatever you want to think about the works of, say, modernist poets? If you (not you, personally, but academics in general) want to do philosophy, why limit yourself to doing it in the context of literary theory or of close reading of texts?

sorry-------------------------

this is fun to read, btw. keep it going.

All of this stuff is on the back-burner for me, however, since I have more immediate concerns to deal with. Maybe I should stay out of discussions about philosophy while I am not actively engaged in studying it? I find it hard to resist talking about it when it comes up. At the same time, I have much lower expectations from it than I did several years ago. (In particular, I was looking for some sort of explanation of how there could be objective moral judgments, but reading philosophy has left me very skeptical about moral knowledge, real moral properties, etc. The study of philosophy has lost some of its sense of personal urgency thanks to my increasingly doubting I will get the sort of answer I was looking for. Increasingly, anyway, I think I agree with Jung that "I would rather be whole than good." I still haven't really adequately confronted Kant though, even though I have some idea of the way out of his system.)

I think I should confess that I was an English major, but I very much regret not having majored in philosophy instead (though I can think of other majors that would also have been preferable to being an English major). I responded too late to my changing interests and ended up sticking with being an English major, when it was obvious that I should have switched to philosophy. Also, it may be an accident of which instructors I chose, but I was much more impressed by the intellect of my philosophy teachers (well, Joseph Margolis in particular) than in that of my English teachers.

I was an english major, too, once. I switched in time though.

I never came to philosophy looking for the things in moral philosophy that were. in fact, I came to it skeptical that there could be such things. but, strangely, over the past couple of years I've become much more interested in ethics, despite not changing my mind that objective moral judgments etc are not really possible (not the way most would like them to be). I suppose that the way in which I'm interested parallels my interest in aesthetics, though, which means that even though I don't think accounts of real moral properties etc are attainable, the PARTICULAR problems are still quite urgent and pressing and require careful thought. but I don't think that's saying much. just that that particular failure of philosophy is a theoretical one that changes very little where praxis is concerned.

(hmm yes I did just type 'praxis')

I am not completely unfamiliar with the ideas maryann brought up, but I haven't read the primary texts.

He said "praxis"!

"Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why.

On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why,
the philosophers, have not, been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories. In the 18th century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the Universe have a beginning? However in the 19th and 20th centuries, science has become too technical and methematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists.Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstien, the most famous philosopher of this century, said "The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language." What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!

However, if we do discover a complete theory [here Hawking was referring to the Unified Theory, I believe], it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the Universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God. "

So Mr. Hawking himself thinks science has become "too technical" for us "ordinary people." Finding a Unified Theory which woud be understabdable "in time" and "in broad principle" does not seem to be much of a likely solution to the particular problem, imo..

(Josh, I do know that Wittgenstein is no longer living.)

polyphonic, maybe I am perverse, but I would actually generally rather read philosophy than critical theory. I have trouble focusing at all when I read critical theory. Maybe I've just read the wrong things. All the echoes of Hegel are a little rough when I haven't read Hegel.

http://www.island-of-freedom.com/KANT.GIF

vs.

http://www.wildpigcomics.com/images/statues3/macewindu.jpg

First, you never get to relax your mind and let it wander; second, who wants to think about the meaning of life when they'll be stuck at work every usable second of it!??!?!?!?

i think the american creation myth must hinder the desire to philosophize somewhat. we are supposedly a nation of amatureish can-do types, whose hard work and lack of reflection has made us the wealthiest nation in the world. if philosophy didnt get us here, what use do we have for it now? isnt philosophy part of the european old world bollocks that we left behind?

there is only one solution to this problem, friends, and it is expatriation (oh i know nothing is perfect in europe either, but whenever i see an interview with a uk football player, i realize that he has a better vocabulary than most of the "intellectuals" i have met) ;-)

And it was a bestseller too. I'm just getting started on it..

i havent been to grad school. but thats probably apparent in my posting anyways. unless you were talking about the whole thread. ugh im so vain i probably thought your post was about me... blah.

all the same i'm rather glad people don't feel the need to flaunt their knowledge of kant at the bar, as much as i like kant. those conversations usually go nowhere as per the derrida thread which makes me want to bang my head again my keyboard.

I am not certain that I understand his 'sorceror's stone' reference.

I’m drinkin’ a soy latte, I get a double shoté
It goes right through my body and you know I’m
satisfied
I drive my mini Cooper and I’m feeling super-duper
Yo’, they tell I’m a trooper and you know I’m
satisfied
I do yoga and Pilates and the room is full of hotties
So I’m checkin’ out the bodies and you know I’m
satisfied
I’m diggin’ on the isotopes, this metaphysics s*** is
dope
And if all this can give me hope you know I’m
satisfied
I got a lawyer and a manager, an agent and a chef
Three nannies, an assistant and a driver and a jet
A trainer and a butler and a bodyguard or five
A gardener and a stylist, do you think I’m satisfied
I’d like to express my extreme point of view
I’m not a Christian and I’m not a Jew
I’m just livin’ out the American dream
And I just realized that nothin’ is what it seems

~strokes chin~