Rothfeld: Present Thought
By Becca Rothfeld, Guest Columnist
Published on Tuesday, July 17, 2012
In March 2010, former College President Jim Yong Kim spoke at The Washington Post lecture series on leadership. He addressed the Dartmouth undergraduate population, counseling its constituents to abandon their starry-eyed ambitions. “It’s great to have all these great ideals,” he noted, with a tinge of condescension. “But when you go to Haiti, when you go to Africa, they don’t ask you, ‘How much do you feel for my people?’” He concluded by chastising any Dartmouth students hopelessly naive enough to maintain an affinity for the liberal arts, whom he advised to “get a skill.”
One casualty of this brutal methodology is philosophy, an entire field that Kim casually dismisses as practically useless. He describes his erstwhile interest in the discipline as the passing passion of a “smart-aleck sophomore.” Apparently, it doesn’t require what Kim would qualify as “skill” to author works like “A Critique of Pure Reason” and “A Discourse on the Method.” In Kim’s view, thinkers like Kant, Descartes and Rousseau would have done better to stop thinking and start acting.
But as one of the aspiring philosophers whose goals and dreams Kim has so thoroughly insulted, I feel compelled to ask: What good is action absent thought? Empirically, the worst policy decisions have been the product of unreflective policymakers — policymakers who failed to ask important, yet abstract, questions. It is not only appropriate but also imperative to challenge the assumption that we are justified in intervening in other countries’ affairs at all, especially before we actually do so. Shouldn’t we consider our history of imperialist motivation? And shouldn’t we question the very nature of responsibility, a responsibility that Kim presupposes without even cursorily scrutinizing it?
Descending upon Haiti or Africa without first engaging in a critical analysis of our own roles and duties as ethical actors amounts to putting a band-aid on a broken arm. A superficial assessment of the proximate problems plaguing developing nations can yield no more than myopic solutions. Conflict and poverty are symptomatic of greater social ills — social ills that no concrete initiative could hope to remedy without the assistance of theory.
Throughout the course of my philosophical studies, I have faced criticism from a host of Kim-like opponents, the most charitable of whom concede that philosophy can, at best, “teach us how to think.” The implication is that philosophy’s sole merit is its ability to prepare us for the time when we must turn our minds to more serious matters.
Such paltry defenders fail to grasp that few, if any, “more serious” matters exist. Life itself is a philosophical problem, and everything we do, think or say is the product of philosophy, whether we recognize it or not. Whenever we choose to act, we are making an ethical decision. Whenever we decide that something — a particular job or romantic partner, for example — is worth pursuing, we are making a meta-ethical evaluation. Whenever we do so much as utter the word “I,” we take a tacit stance as to the nature of personal identity, and, in doing so, commit ourselves to certain metaphysical positions.
Affluence can only take us so far: Once we have attained a certain level of material comfort, we can no longer turn to quantifiable resources and practical skills for fulfillment. Unless and until we devote ourselves to understanding who we are and what we want, we are condemned to exchange one set of poor circumstances for another. According to Kim, Haitians and Africans don’t ask, “How much have you studied of my people?” but rather, “Have you brought anything?” In response, I ask, how long will they be satisfied to ask this question, and how long will they be satisfied with its simple, and heretofore material, answer?
In a 1969 paper, influential feminist philosopher Carol Hanisch coined the famous phrase, “The personal is political.”
“Personal problems are political problems,” she wrote. Philosophers are often accused of political disengagement, but there is no rigid division between our conception of the world and our comportment in it, between private ideology and its translation into public practice. “You’re not going to make it in this world if you study philosophy,” Kim quotes his father as saying. I reply: You won’t make it in this world if you don’t.
So the D is now running hit pieces predicated on actions over two years old that have been remedied…
By Anonymous on Jul 17 | 10:02 am
Reflection requires fair critical thinking, not necessarily academic philosophy. Studying academic philosophy has to be the biggest waste of the brain: wasting time on problems irrelevant and non-existent.
The author really needs to understand that the problems she perceives exist mostly in her head, and other people might not see them.
By Anonymous on Jul 17 | 11:28 am
Anonymous A and B are akin to Kim. They haven’t thought, don’t think and plan not to, until death do they part from the earth. It is now a “hit piece” to mention that the President who left last month said that philosophy and the liberal arts were a waste of good talent? That was remedied 2 years ago when he revised and extended his remarks? Does anyone believe that at his advanced age Kim just up and changed his mind on the subject or was he forced to make a concession speech? Only studying academic philosophy that is senseless is a waste of time, not academic philosophy in general. One has to be able to use fair critical thinking to decide whether it is senseless or sensible and unless one comes up with their own philosophy, one that can be put into words and expressed logically, one would seem to have to rely on finding the one or parts of several to patch together to make a unified case. It is obvious that Comment A and B here are not interested and until they are, we can expect nothing from either of them.
By Anon on Jul 17 | 9:45 pm
If personal problems = political problems, then political problems = personal problems (commutative property). Therefore, when engineers and the like actually solve tangible political problems, by Hanisch’s and your logic they are ALSO addressing the personal, fulfillment issues that you purport philosophers address (sidenote on fulfillment: googling for “depressed scientists” gets no examples whereas “depressed philosophers” has myriad hits). And, lest the author’s rhetoric deceive any more subscribers, and as Anon B hinted at, philosophy does not have a monopoly on critical thought.
By Kris Brown on Jul 18 | 12:59 am
Yes, the article is not an indictment of the worth of science or engineering. Of course useful material innovations are good. The point is that effecting material “improvements” without questioning what material improvements are worth effecting leads to bad policy decisions. Is building a useful bridge good? Yes. But in order to assess whether the bridge is useful, something more than instrumental logic applied to concrete problems is necessary. In other words, other disciplines can answer the question of HOW to build a bridge, but not WHY, or whether a bridge is worth building. There is nothing wrong with being practically oriented. There is only something wrong with acting without first having thought about how and why you’re acting. Philosophy doesn’t have a monopoly on critical thought, but most acclaimed critical thinkers have undeniably philosophical roots. We could quibble all day about whether Foucault is a philosopher or a historian, but the fact of the matter is, he himself says that he is indebted to Heidegger (and Heidegger to Husserl, and so on). But the point of the article is more a defense of the humanities, generally. Re google searches: I’m not sure that this particular experiment withstands scientific scrutiny, but I’m not a scientist, so I guess I can’t really say.
By Rebecca Rothfeld on Jul 18 | 1:17 am
MR K IS BAD BAAAAD NEWS BEST THING TO DO IS LACE HIS ARSENIC WITH TEA…
By Anonymous on Jul 18 | 2:03 am
These comments, and the remarks by the former president, are a pretty sorry reflection of the state of higher education in general, and at Dartmouth in particular. One must wonder why these students go to Dartmouth, rather than to an Ag-Tech university? Perhaps to meet other rich people whose contacts will help them utilize their newly learned skills? There are many trade schools around, as well as great universities that teach such “practical knowledge” as engineering or animal husbandry. Why have they chosen a “liberal arts college” if they place no value on the liberal arts?
By Anonymous on Jul 18 | 3:15 am
What progress has philosophy made over 2000 years? Do we have some resolution to the major questions? Don’t you think that given philosophy is exactly in the same state that Plato left it at (possibly more confused), the whole exercise is decidedly mental masturbation and not really anything substantial?
Reflection is good. Academic philosophy is pedantic drivel, not reflection.
By Anonymous on Jul 18 | 12:45 pm
@ Becca: Whether the bridge is Worth building or not is a purely economic (read: scientific) question. It does not involve philosophy. In fact, philosophy Cannot answer it. You can argue on both sides, but any decision you make is going to be based on scientific critical thought, not philosophizing.
Just to humor you though, go ahead and tell us how philosophy informs us to whether to build that bridge. Value of human life problem? Go ahead, arrive at a convincing solution using philosophy. We’ll wait.
By Anon B on Jul 18 | 1:39 pm
@Anon B
How can you think that the way you choose to answer the question of should, of whether something is or is not worth doing, is separate from philosophy?
How can science ever decide upon the question of should? From where does it borrow it values?
What has happened in the last 2000 or so years such that natural philosophy, as a singular discipline, appears to us today as two distinct things – philosophy and science?
The concepts “good,” “true,” etc. do not explain – they need to be explained. If philosophy is the creation of concepts, and concepts like “true” and “good” are SO central to all of our life today, what part of your life do you see outside them, and how could we answer these questions, or come up with GOOD solutions, without asking philosophy what it has to say about something?
By Thomas on Jul 18 | 6:26 pm
These concepts are intuitive, and require fairly modest critical though. Philosophy DOES NOT provide the answers to them, the same way as science does not. Ethical questions have no answers. Philosophy is superfluous.
By Anon B on Jul 18 | 9:49 pm
@Anon B Philosophy is the study of understanding. If that is superfluous…so are you and everyone else who ever lived. Philosophy DOES NOT provide the answers to them because you can’t be told what is right and wrong and come to a conclusion, you have to think and observe for yourself. You haven’t, don’t want to and are unable to think for yourself. You have put yourself in the box and now say it’s all so easy, but you don’t know anything at all.
By Anony on Jul 19 | 12:38 am
@ Anony: Stupid assumptions on your part. My point was that no one needs Kant or Hegel to think for themselves.
By Anon B on Jul 19 | 10:05 am
Anon B “No one needs Kant or Hegel to think for themselves”…yes…and what do they need? Where did your thinking come from and what is it about. What have you thought about and why did you think about it? Did you accept what you were told or read and on what basis did you accept or reject it? Got a standard? Where’d ya get it? Made it up yourself? No one needs Newton or Einstein to think for themselves. Philosophy is the study of all there is, if you aren’t interested in it…no one cares.
By Anon on Jul 19 | 11:35 am
I am absolutely baffled by how shallow and vacuous some of these comments are (e.g. “what progress has philosophy made in the last 2000 years?”) Unless you’re trolling, please enroll in Phil 1 or 3 immediately.
By The Ghost of William Jewett Tucker on Jul 19 | 4:35 pm
“Philosophy is the study of all there is” – that is exactly why it is bullshit. It is a sprawling mess of mental ejaculation which sweeps itself into tight balls of pretentiousness without providing anything of value whatsoever arising from purely “philosophical” pursuit. Philosophy should have died with literature and physics arose.
By Anon B on Jul 19 | 4:58 pm
I think Anon B is Jim Kim.
By Anon E on Jul 19 | 6:10 pm
Looks like Anon B is gettin' all hot and bothered. “Bullshit” it says. “Sprawling mess” it can’t deal with. “mental ejaculation” it sexes it up. “tight balls” it describes itself. “pretentious” it drivels on. “should have died” the self-inflicted denouement. It is the great and now gone Jim Kim, back from the bank with a smelly deposit of a smegmanomous comment. Go away JK, you’re stinkin' up the joint. Yes fans, Anon B is the Dartmouth Idol, cheerleader in the flesh, Jim Kim. Give it up pal.
By Thinking is tough on Jul 20 | 12:19 am
@ Anon B What one can’t understand, one barks at. Get it?
By Bobo on Jul 20 | 12:22 am
@ Bobo: Hitchens understands religion, he barks at it. Nietzsche understood conventional philosophy, barked at it. How stupid can you get?
By Anon B on Jul 20 | 8:21 am