Ha. I ask my students each semester why they read, and plenty of them say (as I once did) that reading literature gives one a broader experience of the world and makes one more tolerant, helpful, and gracious. I then ask them if they think their English profs are the most tolerant, helpful, and gracious people in the world. "Shouldn't they be? They've read more great literature than anyone else. If you want proof that literature doesn't make you a better person, just look at an English professor." They stare grimly at me for the rest of the hour.
That's the start of your buildup to teaching them about jouissance, isn't it, AWB? I know how this movie goes.
Isn't that story like five years old or more?
I'll show you jouissance. Actually, I've gotten myself in a bit of trouble with that one. Beautiful undergraduate women like to stand a little too close to a person while explaining in great detail their personal erotic narratives of reading... Gah.
AWB:
please email me when you get a chance
wilsontuck2001@yahoo.com
What evidence that could be supplied by a study would be sufficient evidence of the ethical character of any population?
I'll show you jouissance.
Mm-hmm! That's how these things start. By the third reel, you'll have gotten the class enmeshed in a sultry world of forgotten pleasures and the body as text. You've read Shamela together and it's not like taking a trolley ride together where you can get off at different stops.
I've covered this topic. There's no intrinsic relationship at all between ethical knowledge and skill at dealing with particular ethical situations as they arise, nor between ethical knowledge and personal ethical behavior. These are three different, contingently related fields. If ethicists are in fact significantly less ethical than others, this fact is of no philosophical interest, though folk ethicists may find it interesting for their ignorant purposes.
One of my library science professors told us that the most commonly stolen books from public libraries were the Bible and the manual for the civil service exam to be a police officer.
9: I recently had a conversation about how to deal with teaching really erotic materials in the classroom, and I proposed that the only way to do it justice is to talk about one's personal erotic relationship with the text---that is, not directly asking the students about what we can all agree is hot about it, but what I find hot about it, and some of them offer what they find hot about it. So it's not about my erotic relationship with them; it's about our erotic relationships with the text.
This worked fine, until a few weeks ago when I was reading aloud from an S&M-y scene of a female teacher and a male student and I blushed really horribly and wanted to die.
Study 2 found that classic (pre-1900) ethics books were more than twice as likely to be missing as other classic philosophy books.
Because they've all been shipped to off-site storage somewhere and lost for good.
11: Different I might buy, but contingently related?
I'll show you jouissance.
Please post a link to the video as soon as it's up.
6: That is awesome. It's ambiguous which side of the story you were on, though.
17: The teacher's. My own failed prof-seduction techniques were far less sexy.
Yes, it's a purely empirical fact whether, any given professional ethical philosopher is scumbag, a saint, or somewhere in between. That other stuff is not part of the training. It may be that the field as a whole statistically tends one way or another -- toward unethical behavior, as it seems -- but that is a purely contingent sociological fact.
15: No, except for purposes of populist ironizing. The tale of the moral or religious philosopher seeking to move from his principles to practice is pretty uniformly tragic: e.g., Plato, Boethius, More, Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Heidegger.
Can you at least misspell or googleproof his name, John?
OK. Though I'd love to annoy Mr. V. personally.
I'm more than willing to believe that ethics profs are less ethical than the rest of society, and I'm certain that if this is true, it is a huge failing for the discipline.
An obvious target to blame is the shift to theoretical ethics and away from the humanistic study of virtue, a move that began in the enlightenment, and reached its peak during positivism. A philosopher like Charles Stevenson took it as a virtue of their theories that they had no applicability or importance. Fuck that.
20: None of those were real professional philosophers. They were all folk ethicists. Professional ethics began with Sidgewick.
I agree with John that those are folk ethicists, but you've got to trace the origins of professional ethics back further. Kant was a professional ethicist (and a pretty decent guy, if tightly wound.)
19
"Yes, it's a purely empirical fact whether, any given professional ethical philosopher is scumbag, a saint, or somewhere in between. That other stuff is not part of the training. It may be that the field as a whole statistically tends one way or another -- toward unethical behavior, as it seems -- but that is a purely contingent sociological fact."
It may not be intentionally part of the training but if in practice the training provides people with more ways to rationalize bad behavior the relationship could be cause and effect.
. . . reading literature gives one a broader experience of the world and makes one more tolerant, helpful, and gracious. I then ask them if they think their English profs are the most tolerant, helpful, and gracious people in the world.
Great story.
I would have been one of the students looking at you with a feeling of cognitive dissonance.
I've had to revise my sense of the relationship between learning and life repeatedly over the past 10 years.
Though, It is possible that for any one person that reading makes them more tolerant, helpful, . . . without it necessarily being true that the people who read the most are the more tolerant, etc. There may be a issue of self selection.
I agree with John that those are folk ethicists
Heh, I'm pretty sure John was parodying.
Recent reports say that, contrary to popular belief, Kant actually had a sex life.
I'm willing to bet that prestigious ethicists are more likely to be unethical than the rest of the population, on the grounds that success in any highly competitive field, academic or otherwise, tends to go to people who are narrowly focussed and ruthless.
But I bet professional ethicists are no less ethical than congressmen or pro athletes.
Who is this "John" person?
If Boethius had maintained his professionalism, he would not have been beaten to death with sticks, and he could have continued to churn out folk ethics for decades longer.
I haven't read Velle/man since grad school, so I couldn't tell if John was being himself, or a different crazy person.
The Rock's gonna lay down the People's Ethic.
This thread is what would happen if Tom Stoppard turned Jumpers into a blog.
Also, library science? Is that quantum bibliodynamics or biographology?
If you want proof that literature doesn't make you a better person, just look at an English professor.
I appreciate any and all attacks on English professors, but the case here is overdetermined.
he would not have been beaten to death with sticks
I thought his head was crushed in a kind of improvised vice, actually.
Improvised vices are the worst. I prefer a studied intoxication, for instance.
Google is 145-5 for "beaten to death" vs. "head crushed".
2: But how bad would those professors be without the literature?
Should students be surprised that many of those people who arranged their lives around reading massive amounts of great literature to become more tolerant, helpful, and gracious... needed that much of a boost in those departments?
That's awesome. John is now completely self-trolling. He can come with the exact line of argument that he'll find most annoying. He's about to transcend the Internet entirely. Any second now, he'll have turned into the Star Child from the end of 2001.
Yes, David Velle/merson represents a major step forward in blog commenting technique.
A field which many had thought to be exhausted.
Congratulations!
How do you know that the ethics professors aren't simply the only ones advanced enough to figure out that it's ethical to steal books from the library?
37: Also, library science? Is that quantum bibliodynamics or biographology?
No, it's librarianship as practiced by men.