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one thing I like about how I was trained to do philosophy that I hope we keep around: a very particular notion of "disagreement".
just cause someone's saying something you wouldn't expect or say, or emphasizing something you wouldn't, or generalizing from cases you wouldn't...
just cause someone's saying something you wouldn't expect or say, or emphasizing something you wouldn't, or generalizing from cases you wouldn't...
doesn't mean you have substantively different views on the underlying philosophical claims. it takes a bit of patience and curiosity (or, apparently in a different era, intellectual bloodsport) to find out if you *really* "disagree".
(I like the "patience and curiosity" version)
(I like the "patience and curiosity" version)
what I like even more: subordinating agreement to learning.
agreeing with someone isn't even slightly necessary to learning from them and it just as often gets in the way - every time a student says "I disagree with this" to mean "I'm no longer taking this seriously" I get sad
agreeing with someone isn't even slightly necessary to learning from them and it just as often gets in the way - every time a student says "I disagree with this" to mean "I'm no longer taking this seriously" I get sad
at the end of the day I think this is just another elaboration of "arguing is overrated":
what we do in the academy as, at bottom, is poorly described or approximated as pitting one side against another. that's deeply alien to my experience of what we are doing here...
what we do in the academy as, at bottom, is poorly described or approximated as pitting one side against another. that's deeply alien to my experience of what we are doing here...
and, more importantly, the antagonistic view stands in the way of most of the things that seem actually or potentially valuable about what we do in the academy
