07j Van Cleave Review
07j Van Cleave Review
No resolution available here will please everyone. But, even worse, since
both A and C—a majority—prefer (3) to (2) it seems that the preferable
ranking should be (3)>(2). But by exactly the same token regarding A and B
we have (2)>(1). And again by the same token regarding C and A, we have
(1)>(3). (161)
You will pardon your students if they scratch their heads over the last two
sentences. Clearly, they should have read, “. . . regarding B and C we have . . .”
and then, “. . . regarding A and B we have . . .” Condorcet’s paradox raises
an important point about the limitations of democratic process, and Rescher
explains it beautifully, except for this blatant error.
One more example:
Zeno’s paradox thus affords a far-reaching methodological lesson, namely,
that situations of approaching inconsistency can elicit a philosophical de-
liberation and that driving distinction affords an effective and substantive
means of coping with the problem of consistency and restoration that be-
comes unavoidable here. (26)
Frankly, I don’t know what that means.
Carping about copyediting seems small-minded, but I do so because
otherwise this is a beautiful little book. I know no other like it. You and your
students can dip in anywhere and follow the connections from one anecdote to
another. Students who find themselves interested in one of Rescher’s puzzles
or illustrations can follow his suggestions for further reading at the end of
each chapter. And there it is even possible that students who openly proclaim
the uselessness of philosophy will find their curiosity piqued.
I hope there’s a second, and better edited, edition soon.
Philip Smith, College of Christian Studies, Box 6042, George Fox University, 414 N.
Meridian Street, Newberg OR 97132; [email protected]
into ten chapters, nine of which consider various polarizing issues that exist
within society (political disagreement, the nature and limits of science, the
nature of religion and of its relationship with science, the nature capitalism
and its relationship with work and education, the nature of art, and the moral
permissibility of abortion) and the last of which articulates the metaphilosophy
that has animated Gutting’s discussion of the first-order issues in the first
nine chapters. As Gutting notes in the introduction, the book itself derives
from a number of shorter pieces he has written for the New York Times’s
philosophy blog, The Stone.
Philosophy has not been without its detractors, many of which, in re-
cent years, have been scientists of some repute (Hawking, deGrasse Tyson,
Krauss, Harris, etc.). A common, if often implicit, assumption of many of
these criticisms is that the goal of philosophy is to produce definitive, agreed-
upon answers to perennial philosophical questions (e.g., questions about
the soul, free will, justice, morality, etc.). One way of explaining Gutting’s
metaphilosophy is by contrasting it with this assumption. Indeed, if the goal
of philosophy really were to secure such definitive answer, we should agree
with the detractors that philosophy hasn’t much to show for itself. But this
would be to hold philosophy to the wrong standard, according to Gutting. It
is one of Gutting’s central contentions that for any set of beliefs some subset
of them are axiomatic and cannot (and need not) be supported by rational
argument. He calls these unsupported axioms “convictions” (16). Since people
can plausibly start with different convictions, the positions that can be ratio-
nally defended will be plural, not singular. That doesn’t mean that anything
goes—far from it. Rather, it means that the aspiration of philosophy isn’t to
find the One Right Answer, but to articulate the different possible positions
which rest on different sets of convictions (“pictures”) (18). Gutting calls
this articulation of one’s convictions “intellectual maintenance” and claims
that it consists of two parts: responding to objections to our convictions and
clarifying what our convictions entail and what other convictions they’re
consistent/inconsistent with (258). In a pluralistic society in which there are
many different sets of convictions, intellectual maintenance is important be-
cause it is a means by which we maintain our identity (267). One might wish
that Gutting’s line of reasoning were a bit clearer on this point, but as I see
it the basic idea is that one’s deeply held beliefs and values (convictions) are
central to one’s identity, thus being able to maintain these beliefs and values
is crucial for maintaining our identities. But philosophical thinking is the
means by which we maintain these beliefs—i.e., articulate their consistency
and defend them against attack.
If the goal of philosophy is the articulation of the relationship between
ideas rather than determining which ideas are true, then those who criticize
philosophy for failing to attain the latter are attacking a straw man. But ac-
cording to Gutting, philosophy “is more than a series of disparate interven-
tions to help with isolated intellectual problems” (259). There is a framework
392 Teaching Philosophy 39:3, September 2016
ment (conviction?) on his part. True happiness requires fulfilling work as well
as leisure time, but capitalism can threaten both. To neutralize this threat we
must set up institutions that function as a check on the tendency of capital-
ism to push in the direction of a world in which we act to fulfill desires that
we have acquired under the influence of advertising—a “WALL-E” world.
Hence the need for education. Gutting puts forward a view of the function
of education, and of college in particular, that would be interesting for un-
dergraduates to discuss. Very roughly, he claims that there are two kinds of
education: the instrumental, job training sort that supports capitalism (which
he thinks should be the domain of primary and secondary education) and col-
lege education, which is not instrumentally tied to job training and skills, but
to the promotion of “intellectual culture: a world of ideas dedicated to what
we can know scientifically, understand humanistically, or express artistically”
(172). The point of college education is to be exposed to this intellectual
culture, which the good professor does by “helping students have certain
experiences: intellectual, emotional, aesthetic, and even moral experiences
of reading, discussing, and writing about classic works,” the point of which
is to “make students aware of new possibilities for intellectual and aesthetic
fulfillment” (184). The aesthetic value of thinking can act as a counterweight
to the aesthetic value of consumption—a balance that is needed in order for
people to achieve freedom and happiness in a capitalistic society (185). Thus,
a college education, unlike primary/secondary education, tempers, rather
than supports, capitalism. This bifurcated view of the education system is
interesting, but it is hard to imagine how it could be just and equitable un-
less a college education were as accessible as primary/secondary education.
Matthew Van Cleave, Lansing Community College, 411 N. Grand Avenue, Lansing MI
48933; [email protected]
ANDY WIBLE
McDonald’s instructs us how to be good parents, Saturn cars persuade us to see
ourselves as members of a caring support group, and Warby Parker induces us
to feel like humanitarians just for buying a pair of glasses: Phil Hopkins’s Mass
Moralizing: Marketing and Moral Storytelling is a unique analysis of the perva-
siveness of this kind of moralizing discourse in contemporary mass marketing.
Hopkins worries that marketers today co-opt prevailing values to manipulate
susceptible populations into actually attributing those values to their products.
We may feel virtuous for choosing certain cleverly advertised products, but we
© Teaching Philosophy, 2016. All rights reserved. 0145-5788 pp. 394–397
DOI: 10.5840/teachphil201639374