Hi SA, SA said: Everybody has a philosophy. Some more descriptive than others. Some more descriptive in the usage of philosophical points by those that call themselves philosophers, academic to be a little more meaningful as to whom I'm pointing out. ... So what are the philosophies of these football game watchers. What is my philosophy, yours, or anybodies? One way, as we well know, is understood in their lifestyles. Whether people realize it or not, our lifestyles are philosophies, ways of life are philosophies.
Matt: Your's was a very nice post, and I think effective. I think you are right that everybody has a way of life. My trouble is simply--I think one still gets into a little trouble, or at least you're more inviting for trouble, when you start attributing philosophies to people, as you say, "whether people realize it or not." I mean, people are still wary and very uncomfortable, and sometimes hostile, when psychologists attribute all manner of what-your-mind-is-doing-behind-your-back. People are suspicious of attributions of things experts think they have. That doesn't mean the experts aren't right, of course. There are two real reasons I say this now, as opposed to more audience-choice reasons: 1) I don't like the idea of attributing the sometimes strange views that philosophers end up holding to "normal" people and 2) it gives the appearance that philosophers hold a particular kind of special view on humanity. For both reasons, there is, however, an extent to which they are true and important to how philosophy composes itself, an extent I don't wish to deny. On (1), philosophers hold strange views because they ask strange questions about normal things. They do this because it behooves us (and over time has proven out to behoove us) to sometimes rethink the normality of our "normal" views. However, the practice of combining a critical view of society with a view towards what really underlies people's views is a dangerous thing--are we suggesting changes or are we locating what's really going on (which involves the "attribution" move)? Take the physicist: he's suggesting that what's really under the "table" is a cloud of electrons. But the physicist typically doesn't suggest that we talk about clouds of electrons. So the physicist, we say, isn't suggesting changes, but he is locating what's really going on. With the philosopher, it has never been entirely clear which they are doing, partly because--I think--they have historically been involved in doing both at different times (and they've often confused which was which). I think one thing it is good for philosophers to start doing is more explicitly differentiating between these two different jobs that they do. And until we do a better job of disseminating and understanding these two different roles (which, naturally, involves arguments that they _are_, in fact, different--since this, like many other issues, is contentious among philosophers), I warn away from ascribing underlying _philosophies_. It is one thing to ascribe underlying views, but when philosophers, who have big, elaborate theories connecting up all sorts of things, ascribe something analogous to these theories to normal people, I think that's the point they start stepping onto treacherous ground, when they start asserting bald generalizations that are often difficult to prove out in experience. (I would argue that this is the case with some of F. S. C. Northrop's work.) On (2), philosophers _do_ hold a particular kind of special view on humanity, it just isn't the kind of "special" they've often thought it was. I'm going to say less about this because the denial of the bad kind of (2) is basic to Pirsig (and elaboration of the denial often gets me in trouble for some reason). The gist is that basic to most philosophers' view of philosophy down through history was that the activity of philosophy afforded a true view of reality, as opposed to common sense or anything else, which offered something less so (unless buttressed by philosophy). This isn't so, but it has led to a very pompous, self-inflating view of philosophy by philosophers, with natural reactions of "you're full of shit" by layfolk. Like every particular person's view, philosophy has a "special" view, as in "distinct," but not as in "of extraordinary value." People still get uppity because of the reflection of the latter, but we should still affirm the former. Philosophy does still have a fairly distinct enough voice in the cultural conversation of humankind. I like "way of life" because it is a vague enough formulation, one that could involve all sorts of things without implying any particular thing. I would, on the other hand, affirm "philosophy" as a particular kind of way of life, rather than as coextensive with it. I take it to be a particular way of life that makes holding certain kinds of views (so-called "theoretical views") central to it. Other ways of life don't make holding theoretical views central to their living of life. Some people think that Socrates created this form of life, but I think only one particular interpretation of what Socrates stood for did (roughly, the one that flows through Plato to Aristotle and on). I think people can live in Socrates' spirit without holding theoretical views. I also think that many ways of life are compatible with Socrates' spirit in a way that often escapes the philosopher's notice. To help combat my own, for instance, potential blindness to ways of life I don't understand (like the one where you find meaningfulness in Sunday football), I try to avoid undue disciplinary privileging as often as possible. And one way is to avoid ascribing philosophies. When doing big cultural diagnoses like the one you, SA, were involved in, I like vague terms like "a way of life" and "a view," as opposed to "a philosophy." This, I think, helps avoid what I think might be an undue privileging in your formulation: "Everybody has a philosophy. Some more descriptive than others." Substituting "way of life" for "philosophy" might have been better because, if you are talking to a philosopher, then saying there philosophy is less descriptive is usually a sort of slap (just look at slaps at Rorty because he supposedly only has negative views, as opposed to Pirsig who holds both negative and positive). But I think some ways of life are what they are _because_ they are less descriptive, because they don't take the holding of certain "descriptions" (the kind I previously called "theoretical views") as central to the living of that way of life. Does that make sense? 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