Oh, Holbo. I know you’re not baiting me, but it feels like you are.
John has a problem that everyone who has to teach history of early modern has to face. The standard story explains 17th and 18th century philosophy as a debate between two epistemological factions. The rationalists Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz meet the empiricists Locke, Berkeley, and Hume in the octagon! Who will emerge victorious? KANT! Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
The virtues of the standard story are these. Having a narrative that unites the whole period and builds towards contemporary thought helps give a survey course some thematic unity, which is important given the difficulty of the readings. It’s also the standard story that almost every practicing philosopher has encountered, which makes it both very easy to teach and the conservative option. Given that the students are almost certainly going to forget about most of the particulars after the final exam, if they’re left with a vague idea that Descartes is like the Matrix and Hume is like modern science and Kant said something but damned if I was doing the reading a week before finals, there’s not too much harm done.
The vice of the standard story is that it’s false. As Holbo notes, Descartes’ philosophy, far from springing full-born from the head of Socrates, has much in common with the musty medieval theologians he criticizes. None of the rationalists shunned empirical study, and the empiricists include Berkeley (which always struck me as a stretch of the framework.) Making the whole period about warring factions in epistemology also means that certain writings of the moderns that don’t fit easily into that framework tend to get ignored.
So, Holbo’s solution: frame the class on “Everything I Am Supposed To Teach You About [Early Modern Philosopher] is Wrong”, and mix contemporary treatments of similar problems into the early modern syllabus. He asks for inexpensive reading suggestions.
My criticisms and suggestions, mostly constructive but not sparing the snark, after the jump.
EIASTTYAEMPIW is an extraordinarily bad frame for this course. Look, the students are taking an introductory survey course presumably because they don’t know anything about the moderns and they hope to learn something. (That, or it fits their schedule.) This means that they’re not coming in with a well-developed story about Descartes ascendant and Hume triumphant and Kant rampant; which means a smug frame about how what you’re supposed to teach them is either going to be over their heads or you’re going to have to teach them a bunch of false things in order to show how clever you are in rejecting that frame. Moreover, EIASTTYAEMPIW really only works (as Holbo notes) for Descartes, Locke, and Hume, because they’re the only ones with an entrenched popular academic reading. It doesn’t work for Spinoza or Leibniz, presumably because they’re not taught as often because they’re too hard (and to be frank the standard story doesn’t do them any favors to begin with) so they haven’t developed a popular analogue, and because people drawn to write dissertations and books on them tend to be exceedingly careful bastards.
I sympathize with the impulse. The rationalist/empiricist framework is mostly junk but it’s pervasive elsewhere in the discipline. The thing is, you can tip your hat to the traditional framework and then largely ignore it for the rest of the semester. That’s not a frame, though, that’s ten minutes in your introductory lecture, and two minutes here and there.
If you want to keep the standard syllabus (which it doesn’t seem that Holbo does, and I’ll get to that), I’d recommend tracing various metaphysical themes. Whether the philosopher accepts the principle of sufficient reason (implicitly or explicitly) is a good one, because it helps categorize them (Spinoza on one extreme, Kant on the other), and it also provides an avenue for criticizing their arguments.
Except that you should totally make sure they know that “cogito ergo sum” is not found anywhere in the Meditations. There is some smugness whose expression cannot be denied. Sum res cogitans, bitchez.
Drop the contemporary readings. Holbo’s plan here seems to be to mingle the moderns with contemporary treatments of similar problems. If you liked the dream argument, you’ll love the Matrix! Grue is the new induction! There is a value to this approach. (Since it relates the core arguments and concerns, or at least the Reader’s Digest version, of the early modern period to contemporary philosophy, it sidesteps a bunch of worries about why we’re reading these old dead white guys anyway. See, a bunch of live white guys are still worried about these problems! (Erm.)
This approach, however, doesn’t help Holbo undermine the traditional narrative, as anyone who is using the moderns as a jumping off point to talk about skepticism or causation probably is working from the potted version of the history of philosophy. His specific concerns aside, this approach undermines the value of the history of philosophy. First, if all Descartes is doing is presenting an argument for skepticism, it’s hard to defend the value in reading him instead of reading one of our contemporaries, who can respond to e-mail requests to clarify his position, and who probably isn’t trying to squeeze in God and certainly isn’t writing to princesses.
More to the point, the kind of concept matching Holbo is proposing strips history of one of its great virtues. Academic philosophers, due to the requirements of the academy and publishing, today tend to specialize in one subdiscipline of philosophy. Someone who focuses in metaphysics probably doesn’t know a thing about metaethics. There are benefits to specialization, but one of the drawbacks is that philosophy can look like brainteasers for adults, with philosophers concerned with finding the coolest move or trick so they can be patted on the back heartily by their colleagues and then break for wine and cheese. (The faint sound you hear is the baby Leibniz weeping.)
This generally isn’t the case with the early moderns. Descartes isn’t advancing the problem of skepticism because he got up one day in his toga and wondered if he could be sure he wasn’t being deceived; he does it to try to clear away some of the Aristotelian foundations of the academy of his time so that he can motivate his new approach to science. It wasn’t just a puzzle for him; it was a matter of practical concern so he could do physics. Spinoza’s book is called the Ethics and starts off with a discussion of metaphysics. Why? Because if people were going to understand how they should treat each other and organize themselves into political communities, they would need first to understand what people are like and what reality is like. Leibniz hoped that men instead of going to war would sit down and calculate in order to resolve their differences.
None of these men treated their philosophy in isolation from the rest of their concerns, and breaking out the problems to match them with easier-to-read contemporary treatments of those problems robs the period of its great strength. In my experience, students like seeing how all the pieces matter, and I realize there are many approaches to the history of philosophy, but I think plucking out the arguments to show that there are contemporary treatments of similar problems does a huge disservice to a history class. (And I suspect Holbo would recognize this if the course were about Plato.)
Onto some practical suggestions. (Wealth, flutes, and in general instruments.)
Read some of the women. Down in the CT comments (see what I go through for you?) someone suggests that Holbo read some of the female philosophers of the time period. Holbo’s response is typical; it’s a noble project to look at what the female writers said, but he’s not the man to do that.
He’s not alone in this kind of response. (As a side note, ancient philosophy courses can be really bad for this. There’s not enough by women to even mention the poor dears; now, onto the pre-Socratics, including these guys whose writing has been lost to history….)
Lately my thinking has come around to: why the hell not? One doesn’t have to be an expert in Descartes to read Elisabeth of Bohemia’s criticism of his arguments. Lady Mary Shepherd’s criticism of Hume’s causal theory is excellent (and easier to read than Kant.) This is not merely being PC; this is good, solid philosophy that’s usually ignored.
And, not to put too fine a point on it, he’s asking for suggestion on his blog of stuff he hasn’t read that would help him make a better history of early modern philosophy course. I presume he’s not going to limit himself in these suggestions to stuff he has already mastered; he’s going to do what anyone called on to teach a course outside of her area of research is going to do: read, distill, and fake it till ya make it. So what’s the hang-up here? It’s essentially the same kind of thing he’d be doing by picking a contemporary philosopher and using that to explain the Canonic Seven. I promise their ovaries aren’t going to get in the way.
Better still, here’s the anthology I’d recommend. Margaret Atherton compiled this anthology of female philosophers with an eye to its role in supplementing the traditional early modern syllabus, so most of the selections are letters or essays in response to specific topics or problems raised by the usual suspects.
I think this anthology would fulfill all of the requirements Holbo has: it’s rare to assign the female philosophers, so in doing so one has to punt the traditional narrative to the curb at least somewhat. It also makes the professor look clever and renegade (“the typical class doesn’t assign these philosophers, but I do!”), which I take it was part of the appeal of EIASTTYAEMPIW. The anthology is also inexpensive: $10.
Other options: Thomas Reid. Better than Kant, not in the standard narrative, clear and clever and full of common sense. Descartes’ work on the emotions instead of the Meditations. Pair Spinoza’s political thought with Locke’s. I wouldn’t try all of these at once, because a) he probably doesn’t have a ton of flexibility in the syllabus and b) no need to make a ton of work for oneself. Even one or two changes, however, could really change the feel of the course, and this can be done while working within the period.
One other suggestion: earlymoderntexts.com. This is a collection of primary texts whose language has been updated and simplified by Jonathan Bennett. One barrier to the period is the language and the style and while I would still assign primary texts (because language is important! and so is reading things in different styles!), this site is free, not dumbed down, and useful for students who otherwise couldn’t get into the material at all.
The Edge of the American West 
64 comments
November 28, 2009 at 9:44 am
TF Smith
I read this post and the link and thought about how I would approach this as a intellectual/political history course, and thought about what it would take to put the authors into perspective as men (or women) of their times…
Since this is a survey (100 level? 200?), how familiar are your students with European history of (roughly) the same period?
November 28, 2009 at 10:31 am
kid bitzer
Sum res cogitatur
you mean “cogitans”, maybe? otherwise you got two verbs in there.
in addition, ciceronian latinity prefers “byotches”.
November 28, 2009 at 10:36 am
dana
That’s what I get for typing before coffee. Cogitatur or sum res cogitans.
November 28, 2009 at 10:38 am
dana
Since this is a survey (100 level? 200?), how familiar are your students with European history of (roughly) the same period?
I have to assume generally that they haven’t had any European history, as even if a school has history requirements, there’s a good chance it won’t be a requirement concerning 17th and 18th century Europe.
November 28, 2009 at 11:15 am
TF Smith
I realize it is a philosophy course, not intellectual history, but how much do you give them on the intellectual and political foundations of the renaissance/ enlightenment/ reformation/ counter-reformation?
I’m thinking of Descartes living and working in the world of Richelieu, Maurice, the 30 Years War, etc…much less Hobbes during the ECW, and so on.
I’d expect the “since 1500” element of World History or Western Civ would give some background on the times for almost any undergrad.
November 28, 2009 at 11:30 am
dana
Personally? I like storytelling, and since usually the first class is an introductory day, I tend to put a lot of the background of the period upfront, getting more specific as needed with the introduction of the individual philosopher. I tend to talk more about ideas that would have been current (why was everyone obsessed with God? who did Descartes take to be his audience? Why was Spinoza exiled? Why is so much posthumous?) than political history (because I’m unsure of myself here beyond the broad contours.)
I find it helps ground the philosophers and their interests. I really want to avoid the impression that these are a bunch of weird people whose ideas came out of nowhere.
November 28, 2009 at 1:23 pm
andrew
Coffee’s really more of an Enlightenment thing, anyway.
November 28, 2009 at 2:26 pm
kid bitzer
enlightenment is really more of a coffee thing.
beantwortung der frage: was ist aufklärung?
kaffee trinken.
November 28, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Anderson
I first encountered this problem re: Plato, where what I called “the Received Version” imagined Plato as a guy with a Theory of Ideas, etc., Republic as a theory of politics, etc.
I don’t think you can avoid imparting the Received Version, if only because your students actually need to know it, but you ought to be able to combine those lectures with some close reading that points out that the R.V. may not be the whole truth, or even terribly true.
Also, historicize: emphasize the problems Plato, Descartes, whoever was confronting. Descartes wasn’t writing for Hume. And how much of the “history of philosophy” comes from the pen of Hegel, anyway?
November 28, 2009 at 6:40 pm
ben
Other options: Thomas Reid. Better than Kant, not in the standard narrative, clear and clever and full of common sense. Descartes’ work on the emotions instead of the Meditations. Pair Spinoza’s political thought with Locke’s.
Better than Kant? *sputter* (not that I’ve encountered any more Reid than one encounters in reading Sources of the Self).
That would actually be a really cool course—I mean the one that reads the other texts from outside the standard story—but wouldn’t really work as an intro (as you acknowledge), because everywhere else you’ll be expected to know the texts that contribute to the standard story.* At least, it wouldn’t really work as an intro course if the students are expected to continue in the discipline. Alas.
* has there ever been a standard story that the experts in the field agree is right?
November 28, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Ahistoricality
has there ever been a standard story that the experts in the field agree is right?
Of course, until they don’t. Then, out of the disparate strains of scholarship that have destroyed the grand narrative, they reconstruct a new set of categories which become the new standard, the new generation of recieved wisdom which a new generation of scholars simultaneously transmit to their students and attack in their papers until they begin attacking it to their students and complaining about it to their peers….
November 28, 2009 at 9:01 pm
dana
Better than Kant?
For the purposes of an intro course where the alternative is muddling through the Prolegomena in the last week of the semester? Yup.
because everywhere else you’ll be expected to know the texts that contribute to the standard story.*
Somewhat. The knowledge gained in one survey course is most likely both someone’s potted story of what the philosopher thinks (and so false, or at least not as nuanced as the state of current scholarship) and easily remedied should the person continue in philosophy. Most of what we do in upper level history courses is learn that everything we thought we knew was wrong.
I also don’t mean just that I’ve heard tell that tenured philosophers know, in their own words, “fuckall” about early modern, but that some fine (though of course perfectly misguided and nasty, precious) courses skip Spinoza or Malebranche, and others minimize Kant, and the students seem to be able to go onto be majors and graduate school at good programs. I wouldn’t do something completely non-standard, but I think one could make small substitutions without leaving the students lost entirely. People will figure out what non-historians mean by Cartesian and Humean through context.
November 29, 2009 at 12:38 am
andrew
The early modern intro course I took had Spinoza in the bookstore and on the first day of class they told use we wouldn’t be using it and we should return it (if we so desired). I remember looking for the Spinoza book a year or two later and not finding it among my books, so I must have returned it, but for some reason I remember intending to keep it. Anyway, there was some little bit on Malebranche and I don’t remember it at all. We ended at Hume – no Kant. I’m sorry to report that at the end of the term I decided not to major in philosophy (and began leaning towards history).
November 29, 2009 at 6:57 am
Adam Roberts
To shift the discipline: this reminds me of a colleague I once had, yonks ago, who genuinely believed that the most significant Victorian novelist was Wilkie Collins, and the best Modernist writer Wyndham Lewis. And he taught the undergrads this, with a brief run-in that said ‘conventional opinion is against me here, but …’ The result was that undergraduates came away from his teaching thinking the most significant Victorian novelist was Wilkie Collins and the best Modernist writer Wyndham Lewis. Now, this was, I suppose, the aim he had in mind, whether he owned-up to it to himself or not. But I suppose in his mind he was thinking: ‘these students will be iconoclasts in my image, aware of the default position but willing to look outside the conventional canon for greatness!’ Where the result of his thinking was not that his undergraduates thought ‘oo, aren’t we daring and clever not to think of the C19th century as the age of Dickens and Eliot and the Brontes, and not to think of Modernism as Conrad, Joyce, Eliot, Pound and H.D.!’ They just took it that Collins and Lewis were the significant names, because that’s what they had been taught.
November 29, 2009 at 10:53 am
ben
I myself know fuckall about Spinoza and Leibniz, and Spinoza was even assigned in my early modern class, taught by an eminence! In fact I remember very little about that class. And now I regret it!
November 29, 2009 at 6:46 pm
The Wrath of Oliver Khan
EIASTTYAEMPIW is an extraordinarily bad frame for this course.
I have been wanting to frame my introductory macroeconomics and microeconomics courses in exactly this way. I think it might work better there than in philosophy, not that I know the first damn thing about philosophy.
November 30, 2009 at 4:35 am
Jason B.
This post is teh awesome. Except that it’s increased the length of my “to read” list, which I didn’t really need . . .
November 30, 2009 at 8:11 am
Ahistoricality
I think it might work better there than in philosophy
I think it would: most people, even students, have some preconcieved ideas about economics, whereas most of them don’t have any background on Kant, or Spinoza.
November 30, 2009 at 11:43 am
Colin
trouble is, their preconceived ideas about economy are even wronger than EIASTTY, at least for macro.
—
I agree that the IW part is not a good idea for any sort of class.
In a lot of areas, doing scrupulous intellectual history is gonna be at odds with giving students a few touchstones and arguments, and possibly intro or survey courses should lean toward simplified narratives. For one thing, few students will have much feeling for the 17th and 18th centuries. The Descartes-Hume-Kant thing is not so much a history as a staging, and as a staging it has virtues, as noted above.
November 30, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Urk
Another outside-of-area anecdote (OOAA): since I started working on our intro American studies class (on and off) 7 years ago, it’s had a component about “The West” and it’s place in American culture. the focus is generally on taking apart, undercutting and problematizing the Western/cowboy mythos that both professors who taught the course during this time assumed students would have a broad outline for but which, with each successive semester, freshemen seemed to have less and less received knowledge of. By last spring i was reduced to starting discussions by explaining that yes, Western movies used to be really, really popular…
November 30, 2009 at 2:19 pm
kid bitzer
hard to remember how popular the western genre was. i once saw some historical figures for tv show ratings, and throughout large stretches of the ’60s, over half of the most popular shows on tv were westerns. sometimes as many as 8 out of the top 10. gunsmoke, bonanza, the virginians, the rifleman, f-troop, maverick, etc. etc.
December 1, 2009 at 4:26 am
dana
I think there’s a difference between “your pre-conceived ideas of what this course is about is wrong” and “everything I am supposed to teach you is wrong.” I can see the first working well in a lot of introductory courses (everything you know about King Arthur is wrong, everything you know about the history of science is wrong, etc, everything you know about the cowboy is wrong*) but the latter to me seems at best smug and at worst is going to make the students wonder why they’re taking a class to learn false things.
*I spit on you, knowledge account of assertion!
December 12, 2009 at 7:41 am
jholbo
dana, thanks for the post, a lot of what you say makes sense. I had already independently decided to use the early modern texts sit. But your snarkier moments are a bit … underappreciative of the equivocal uses hyperbole-as-irony, for education and entertainment. That is, you took the bait, but I hadn’t actually intended to set so fiendish a trap. But I suppose I should try to sort things out now that it has been well and truly sprung …
I am not actually proposing to teach my students, literally, that ‘everything I am supposed to teach them is wrong’. Nor, however, am I going to take the line you suggest in your last comment: ‘your pre-conceived ideas of what this course is about are wrong.’ That won’t do because students at this level don’t have substantial pre-conceived ideas about this subject. (You yourself say as much in the post.) So what’s actually in between? The point of saying ‘everything I am supposed to teach you is wrong’ (with a friendly, mock-mad scientist leer, to communicate that there is a degree of non-literality at work here) is to communicate that I have to teach someone else’s pre-conceived ideas, and there are serious problems with doing that; but there is also a point to the exercise, which is not strictly a historicist point, even though it’s a history class (says so right on the syllabus). So we will have to be a bit careful, maintaining a kind of double-vision of the subject matter. That will mean, in the first place, being fairly explicit about what sort of historical and non-historical exercise this is going to be …
As I think you see, the difficulty is emblematized by the delicate balancing between benefits of teaching students how to use adjectives like ‘Cartesian’, ‘Humean’, ‘Kantian’ – which are a certain sort of disciplinary common currency; also, a stock of templates – with the cost of burdening them with strained equations between these adjectives and the figures from whose names they derive.
As to your surmise that only sheer ovariphobia could explain my reluctance to assign the ladies (because I’m asking for new readings and all, so am obviously willing to try new things): well, there’s new and then there’s new. I am looking for a new secondary textbook, per the post, but not because I expect the picture it gives ME of Descartes, Hume, Kant … will be radically unfamiliar. (As I think the post makes clear, I’ve studied these figures before, and taught this class before.) The textbook is mostly for the students.
If, on the other hand, I were to assign a slate of new philosophers … well, that’s more pedagogically working-without-a-net. You suggest it wouldn’t be that hard just to pick this stuff up and teach it on the fly. My experience is that properly historically, contextualized teaching of such figures is in fact, not the sort of thing one can pick up solidly enough, quickly enough. (I am not saying anything against the Atherton anthology, which I haven’t read.) Just opinionating about hastily assimilated historical material, week after week, is likely to produce hit and miss results, as I make intelligent and educated (in a general way) but occasionally hilariously wrong guesses about who so-and-so really was, what was going on here, etc. I am not sure I would want to be in the audience.
It’s true that I am asking for new suggestions as well, but more contemporary readings – particularly ones suitable for beginning students – are easier to assimilate quickly. Historicism is slower work.
Also, I think you are too skeptical about the possibility of directly relating these texts to contemporary philosophy issues and problems and figures in a reasonably direct and economical manner (that is, without derailing the course from its official line). You don’t have to be all ‘hey the Matrix!’ about it, and leave it at that. (Yes, this idea is bad, but it’s yours, not mine. So YOU figure out what to do with it.) I think it is not only possible but obligatory to try to come up with something a bit more stick-to-your-ribs, in a comparison-contrast how it looked then/how it looks now way. The course’s status as a ‘standard’ course needs it, so far as I am concerned.
December 12, 2009 at 8:38 am
dana
Hey, hi!.. Some thoughts..but probably not much new.
I am not actually proposing to teach my students, literally, that ‘everything I am supposed to teach them is wrong’
I didn’t read you as taking it literally, but I did read you as taking it seriously, because you were (in your original post) trying to figure out how to turn the (totally true) observation that the standard story is mostly Hegelian-narrative-on-the-cheap into a framework for the whole course. I still think this is unlikely to be successful for anything beyond a couple of tips-of-the-hat here and there, for the reasons I’ve mentioned.
If, on the other hand, I were to assign a slate of new philosophers … well, that’s more pedagogically working-without-a-net. You suggest it wouldn’t be that hard just to pick this stuff up and teach it on the fly.
I didn’t say to discard the whole syllabus! One or two new things! Not a slate! A chip, maybe. (You were asking for new material…) And this doesn’t need to mean a lot of extra work. Not that you have to, but if you wanted to use the Atherton anthology, one of the great bits about it are the biographical introductions to each of the female philosophers. The articles were chosen to work well with the standard syllabus, mostly as criticisms of the standard M&E arguments.
So this was actually a work-minimizing strategy, as I was envisioning this with the standard sort of syllabus with the letters doing the work of setting out some of the criticisms that you probably would introduce anyway. And I had (perhaps mistakenly) you were looking for works that might be new-to-you, and not just new-to-the-students.
You don’t have to be all ‘hey the Matrix!’ about it, and leave it at that. (Yes, this idea is bad, but it’s yours, not mine. So YOU figure out what to do with it.)
My mistake! I’d assumed by the reference to Chalmers in your original post you meant his (delightful and suitable for intro students) “Matrix as Metaphysics” piece, which often gets paired with Descartes in non-history intro classes.
Also, I think you are too skeptical about the possibility of directly relating these texts to contemporary philosophy issues and problems and figures in a reasonably direct and economical manner (that is, without derailing the course from its official line).
Perhaps. I do like that approach for introductory courses, where the focus is less on the history, but I don’t think this approach is going to help with Spinoza, Leibniz, and Berkeley in the syllabus, simply because what are you going to pair with them that doesn’t take you too far afield? (Maybe pair the Theodicy with Frankfurt?) Moreover, I think this approach runs the risk of reifying the narrative you say you want to undermine, because contemporary treatments probably aren’t going to worry too much about whether what they call “Cartesian” or “Humean” or “Kantian” actually reflects the views of Descartes or Hume or Kant.
As I said in the post, I also think that there’s a cost to that approach, even conceding some of the benefits. So I suspect we end in aporia here, and which of us has the better idea of the early modern course is known only to the gods..
December 12, 2009 at 8:45 am
Jason B.
i>So I suspect we end in aporia here, and which of us has the better idea of the early modern course is known only to the gods..
But what if those gods are willfully deceiving you?
December 12, 2009 at 8:46 am
Jason B.
<
Stupid fingers.
December 12, 2009 at 9:00 am
dana
But what if those gods are willfully deceiving you?
I think it’s not a problem as long as they’re not doing so clearly and distinctly.
December 12, 2009 at 6:41 pm
jholbo
Literally. Seriously. Alright. I think you read my proposal as being a bit more serious about the ‘everything I am supposed to teach you is wrong’. The idea is more to work it as an ironic frame than as a glowering or smug refusal. That loosens the straitjacket so you can wear it more comfortably, and even accessorize a bit, for looks.
All right. Which bits of the Atherton are best and why? You say “Elisabeth of Bohemia’s criticism of his arguments. Lady Mary Shepherd’s criticism of Hume’s causal theory is excellent (and easier to read than Kant.)” But what am I looking for here? (This is a perfectly serious question, and neither bait nor any sort of trap.) Part of my problem is that the only thing I’m sure I can use is the social angle – gender roles and all that. But I don’t want to get started teaching extensively about the social-cultural backdrop of all this because, quite apart from my own specific ignorances in this area, these kids don’t even know about the Reformation. I don’t want to try to wag the whole dog of European society and culture, post-Renaissance, by the tail of gender roles, as they relate to who gets to do philosophy. I can touch on that, but I can’t go deep enough to expect it to hold me up, syllabus-wise. So what, specifically, is so good about Elisabeth of Bohemia and Mary Shepard? Just as philosophy. Again, I’m actually going to check out the Atherton, so I’m just plain asking what you think is worth looking out for. There’s a higher bar to clear here for the somewhat circular – but still considerable – reason that one reason we study Hume, Kant, etc. is to know what ‘Humean’ and ‘Kantian’ mean. These guys are Paris Hilton. Famous for being famous. So if you want to study philosophy, you have to know about them, and about what people think about them. (There are points, past this point, at which the Paris Hilton analogy breaks down, natch.) But you don’t need to read Elisabeth of Bohemia and Mary Shepard just in order to understand what the hell everyone else is talking about. So what’s so good about these two, specifically? Apart from the social history angle.
As to the Matrix. I teach philosophy and film and I get enough done in that context that I don’t need to repeat myself when I teach straight modern. I have in mind, for Modern, Chalmer’s Scientific American article on the Problem of Consciousness. Easy and hard problems, so-called, and that Frank Jackson Mary stuff, presented in only a few paragraphs. That’s what I need. Only a few paragraphs. The idea is to read that piece and say: ok, how much of this have we seen before, in Descartes to Kant? How much is new, and what is new about it?
Re: Grue. The idea , again, is to say what makes Goodman’s take similar, yet distinct. Goodman’s problem is more linguistic. So it’s a good occasion for telling the students that one thing that happened in the 20th century is that people got a lot more concerned about language. And doing a comparison and contrast between the new and old problems of induction can give us at least one clue about what the motivation might have been for the ‘linguistic turn’.
December 12, 2009 at 6:42 pm
jholbo
Spinoza and Leibniz are a bit problematic for my approach, I admit. Perhaps as a result, I have always been a bit frustrated with my own teaching of them. I tend to teach those two pretty straight intro textbook style.
December 13, 2009 at 7:23 am
Lady Neddy of Merrill
John, I’m confused by this question:
Isn’t the answer the part of the post you quoted?
You go looking for ways to be more historically and philosophically honest than the standard narrative. (I don’t like your proposed frame either, but that’s not relevant.) Then someone says, here’s useful literature that will help you do that, it’s not just token women but good philosophy that’s by women, and you say, but what’s good about it? That makes me think I’m not seeing what you’re looking for.
December 13, 2009 at 7:41 am
dana
So what, specifically, is so good about Elisabeth of Bohemia and Mary Shepard? Just as philosophy
They’re both excellent criticisms of the sort that hit on big problems you’re probably going to explain anyway when you teach the big names in philosophy. How is the mind supposed to interact with the body if it’s distinct? (Elisabeth just proposes the criticism, so it’s not a lot of extra technical work.) What assumptions does Hume make with the whole constant conjunction business, and is his view consistent? (Shepherd thinks not, and if causation is one of your Big Early Modern themes, it’s great to include her analysis.)
They’re also letters, not essays, which I personally like because it allows the students to see how much philosophy is done in revisions and explanations and in response to people saying “hey, wait a second, i haz objection”.
They’re also short, which means you don’t have to motivate doing a whole unit on Elisabeth, because you’re not doing a unit on her any more than you’d be doing a unit on Goodman.
Damaris Cudworth Lady Masham’s writings to Leibniz about pre-established harmony I remember as good, but I haven’t read them in a while, don’t remember what she said, and I don’t know whether that part of Leibniz makes it on to your syllabus. Spinoza’s a harder case if we’re trying to pair him with a woman, but if you wanted to break the traditional intro-slam just by including letters, there’s plenty to choose from.
In any case Elisabeth’s not a Great Philosopher of the period, but neither’s Chalmers. It shouldn’t require more justification to teach a critical response by a contemporary of one of the Paris Hiltons than it would to teach a present-day treatment of the same problem. (Allowing, of course, that “present familiarity with the argument” is as good a reason as any to favor the inclusion of something in the syllabus.)
Nor, I think, does it require mastering the social history of the time; at least I think, if you found the philosophy otherwise suitable, that you wouldn’t need to do more work to introduce Elisabeth than you did when you taught Montaigne. He’s a break from the Paris Hiltons, and presumably you had some kind of story to tell about why you put him in. These women represent less of a break from the canon, and surely the bar for inclusion shouldn’t be higher just because they’re female.
I’m not suggesting this turn into a course on gender studies! My thinking is that of the early modern courses with which I’m familiar, there’s usually a small degree of flexibility depending on the instructor’s comfort with the given philosophers. Some eliminate Spinoza and play down Leibniz; some include Reid; some minimize Kant, either intentionally or because the class gets behind; some put in Malebranche or some of the letters to Arnauld. I don’t see any particular reason, once we’ve accepted that variations like that are acceptable, that including a couple of letters from female writers is obviously a higher degree of difficulty.
You can say: one of Descartes’ many long-term correspondents was the princess Elisabeth; he dedicated the Principles of Philosophy to her; and in this letter, she criticizes his Meditations… You could also do a lot more if you wanted, and if you do, Atherton’s introduction is very helpful to give you a story to tell, but that would be perfectly adequate.
December 13, 2009 at 10:35 pm
jholbo
Lady Neddy wants to know how the following could fail to be sufficient for my purposes:
“One doesn’t have to be an expert in Descartes to read Elisabeth of Bohemia’s criticism of his arguments. Lady Mary Shepherd’s criticism of Hume’s causal theory is excellent (and easier to read than Kant.) This is not merely being PC; this is good, solid philosophy that’s usually ignored.”
To clarify, I was asking was something like: wherein does the excellence of Elisabeth of Bohemia’s criticisms consist? It is all well and good (indeed, very welcome) for someone on the internet to tell me something is excellent. But I still want to know a bit more before hauling off and assigning it, even potentially. For starters: what IS it?
“you wouldn’t need to do more work to introduce Elisabeth than you did when you taught Montaigne.” That’s sort of what I was afraid of. I felt that I had to do a ton of prep to feel ready to teach Montaigne. I guess I’m sort of an overpreparation control freak when I go off the standard line in history of modern. I feel that I have to have all this weight of historicist reading waiting in the wings, even if a don’t bring all that in, because I have to have a definite idea of what my positive philosophical and historicist reasons are for making this specific departure. In the Montaigne case, it was comparing and contrasting styles of philosophical skepticism (with Descartes). So, out of curiousity: in a thematic sense, what would be the benefits of these figures you mention? While I await my copy of the Atherton, can you give me a brief taste of what kinds of good stuff this correspondence contains?
“In any case Elisabeth’s not a Great Philosopher of the period, but neither’s Chalmers. It shouldn’t require more justification to teach a critical response by a contemporary of one of the Paris Hiltons than it would to teach a present-day treatment of the same problem.”
I actually feel utterly and completely the opposite. I feel that the comparison/contrast method works very well to teach kids what is distinctive about the history, while also giving them a taste of the contemporary scene. (It’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping!) ‘They thought THIS. Chalmers thinks THAT. There are similarities, but note the differences, and why there are differences, and what that says about then and now.’ Assigning a relatively obscure historical figure means clearing a higher, presumptive bar, relevance-wise. But that just means: I need a good historicist reason or a good philosophical hook.
Basically I’m saying that I have to read it before I’ll even consider assigning it. Which is sort of an obvious minimum. But I genuinely am curious. If these figures are worth assigning, there must be something unusually smart that they are saying, so I want to hear some opinions about what that is. Because I’m curious about this stuff. But maybe that exceeds the comment box scope.
December 14, 2009 at 5:59 am
NM
I’m saying that I have to read it before I’ll even consider assigning it.
This seems like a good idea.
unusually smart that they are saying
If only there were a cheap anthology available!
December 14, 2009 at 6:14 am
dana
I actually feel utterly and completely the opposite.
I suspected we might just disagree fundamentally about this. One thing that worried me about your approach is that it ends up being too much about the 20th century. Not that there aren’t benefits, but I do worry that it makes the historical figure look completely irrelevant, because it’s a short jump from “look, this topic is timeless” to “we read Hume to understand what motivated the linguistic turn in induction in the 20th century.”
Assigning a relatively obscure historical figure means clearing a higher, presumptive bar, relevance-wise.
Right, but as I’ve argued, they meet the relevance test because they’re directly responding to the arguments of one of the Paris Hiltons.
I need a good historicist reason or a good philosophical hook.
I thought I’d given you a couple, but here’s some more, with some repetitions. One, that reading other philosophers outside of the canon helps just by itself break up the Hegelian framework. It’s not thesis, antithesis, princess. Two, that reading letters helps break up the impression that philosophy is a discipline wherein one writes books with no input. Three, that it’s good to see that these Great Thinkers were not uncritically received at the time.
Four, the letters I’ve suggested do not represent great thematic departures from the canon, but enhancements of it.
While I await my copy of the Atherton, can you give me a brief taste of what kinds of good stuff this correspondence contains?
I’m not sure what more you want here, and I’m starting to feel like I’m being held to an unfairly high standard for a suggestion. I’ve given you a rough sketch. Is it that you need the arguments spelled out now before you can decide whether it’s worthwhile? I can get to that in a couple of weeks; I’m very busy with work right now. I mean, I’m not expecting you’d just take my word for it and assign these new things, any more than you would with anyone else on the Internet.
Another rough sketch: Shepherd argues that Hume’s view of causation commits him to the claim that either effects produce themselves or effects come about from nothing, because he can’t hold (she argues) that an effect was produced by something other than itself. Since there are problems with either of the first two, then something must be wrong with his definition of causation. And then she goes on to give independent reasons why his definition is wrong. She then that reason gives us grounds to suppose that causation is a necessary connection.
December 14, 2009 at 6:57 am
kid bitzer
“Basically I’m saying that I have to read it before I’ll even consider assigning it.”
weird–i thought the classic line went, “read it? hell, i haven’t even *taught* it yet!”
any idea to whom that line should first be attributed? (no points for “socrates!”)
December 14, 2009 at 7:14 am
Ahistoricality
jholbo: I’m saying that I have to read it before I’ll even consider assigning it.
NM: This seems like a good idea.
Like losing weight, reforming the electoral college, changing your exam questions, sexual prophylaxis, “do it now” efficiency techniques, reading the leading journals, turning off the tv, and avoiding fast-food restaurants.
December 14, 2009 at 7:16 am
Ahistoricality
dana: It’s not thesis, antithesis, princess.
I really have to remember that line for next semester’s Hegel/Marx lecture!
December 14, 2009 at 8:32 pm
jholbo
First things first: thesis, antithesis, princess is awesome. And, in general, assigning letters is a good thing, because they tend to be short, and it’s fun to read other people’s mail.
Moving right along.
NM: “If only there were a cheap anthology available!”
Well, not to ME, until I get hold of a copy. (Sorry to be so self-centered about it, but this IS the relevant constraint for my syllabus-design purposes.)
“I’m not sure what more you want here, and I’m starting to feel like I’m being held to an unfairly high standard for a suggestion.”
No, no, I was just making conversation. (Possibly Lady Neddy was holding you to an unfairly high standard, in that he/she was taking you to have made a very strong case for the excellence of something, by the act of declaring it excellent. A feat of fiat I doubt you can achieve, or would venture to try.)
What I’m asking for is probably beyond the scope of blog comments. Boringly, I need to know MORE. So I will get a copy of the book and read.
More interesting than my continuing failure to have read Atherton’s book, due to total lack of physical possession of said item, leading to stubborn failure to form any desire to assign any portion thereof, is this comment, by dana:
“Not that there aren’t benefits, but I do worry that it makes the historical figure look completely irrelevant, because it’s a short jump from “look, this topic is timeless” to “we read Hume to understand what motivated the linguistic turn in induction in the 20th century.””
This is a risk, I agree, but I think you’ve (I’ve) got to bite the bullet. History is always interesting, but it isn’t SO self-evidently interesting that we think every undergraduate needs to read Berkeley on tarwater, for example. Why, then, read Berkeley in idealism? Are his writings on the subject really so good that they are an unimprovable starting point for youngsters? It is not self-evident to me that it is so.
History of Modern is considered a basic, essential (or nigh essential) course. But why? For the history? For the philosophy? A bit of both? But what if they pull apart? The history, if you do it right, can often look pretty philosophically irrelevant, today. Detail heavy. Descartes maneuvering around against the Thomists, while being a bit medieval himself. Cartesian physics, with skepticism just an instrumental gambit in a complex philosophical-diplomatic-academic negotiation on behalf of Cartesian physics. Just for starters. I don’t think it’s philosophically obligatory, today, for 2nd year philosophy majors (to say nothing of other folks just looking to take one basic class, to introduce them to philosophy) to know about all that arcane inside baseball, fun as it is (to me).
The history, if you do it wrong for the sake of seeming timelessly relevant is … well, not so right.
Philosophically, then: these topics, hence these texts, are, in a sense, timeless – time, space, causality, the self, mind, perception, knowledge, science. I am not worried that any of these basic subjects is going to fall off the map of things worth philosophizing about. But I do think there is a serious lack of self-evidence to the proposition that if I want to teach someone about the philosophy of causality, I should start with stuff that’s centuries old. That pretty old, after all.
So it’s not that I doubt the value of history, or the value of philosophy. I just sort of worry that that the standard history of modern approach is like teaching someone to juggle while riding a unicycle: two different things that may go great together. But you really shouldn’t try to teach both at once. To complete beginners.
So, seriously. What’s my job? I’m a bit conflicted about it, honestly. But my approach is to highlight a number of things that HAVE stayed the same, so my conscience teaching old stuff is clean. And, basically, ONE thing that has changed. The one change I focus on, in doing my comparison/contrast is the abandonment of epistemological/foundational centrality of the 1st person point of view. This is reflected in the linguistic turn, but also in certain naturalistic approaches. The point isn’t so much to say that therefore all that old stuff is therefore wrong, because this abandonment was needed (although I do tend to that view), but to try to make clear what both sides of the debate amount to, and what their reasons are. What Descartes is doing, in proceeding in this rigorously first-personal way, is actually clearer if you present a bit of Dennett (or whomever) NOT doing that. The two views set each other off. Anyway, that’s how I do it. (If anyone cares!)
December 14, 2009 at 11:13 pm
ben
I really have to remember that line for next semester’s Hegel/Marx lecture!
“thesis, antithesis, synthesis” is not a Hegelian slogan.
In the Montaigne case, it was comparing and contrasting styles of philosophical skepticism (with Descartes)
Not the ancients?!
December 14, 2009 at 11:23 pm
ben
But why? For the history? For the philosophy? A bit of both? But what if they pull apart?
For the history … of philosophy.
I’m not sure how they can pull apart, since there’s only one thing here.
December 15, 2009 at 3:59 am
jholbo
“For the history … of philosophy.
I’m not sure how they can pull apart, since there’s only one thing here.”
But surely you admit at least that there might be different ways of approaching the subject, no?
December 15, 2009 at 6:11 am
Ahistoricality
me: I really have to remember that line for next semester’s Hegel/Marx lecture!
ben: “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” is not a Hegelian slogan.
That’s why I said “Hegel/Marx”: I don’t teach philosophy; I teach world history. I get Hegel in as background to Marx and Marxism, so I cover the basic dialectic structure of contradictions and negations, the transfer of that structure from idealist to materialist conceptions of history.
December 15, 2009 at 7:00 am
dana
It’s a bit of both, and I don’t see them in tension at all. One way to learn how to do philosophy is to see how it’s been done, and see to what problems it’s been applied, and to see how those problems are connected. One of the virtues of history of philosophy — and this goes for the ancients, too — is that the problems weren’t usually treated in isolation, and I’ve found that it makes it easier M&E to motivate, even if the students don’t share the same starting assumptions. One nice thing about keeping a course on 17th and 18th century philosophy within the period is that the students can see how these assumptions that the students might not share influence someone’s philosophy. It’s easier to spot the mote in someone else’s eye.
There’s a real risk that this students come away with the perception of this discipline as comprising a bunch of stoners who don’t know they have hands and haven’t noticed they’ve been out of pot for centuries. Unto every generation, a philosopher is born who thinks that he doesn’t have hands. But Descartes’ Method is grounded in his desire to clear out a bunch of Scholastic underbrush so he can get his physics on. That’s inside-baseball, but so what? It’s not a highly guarded secret. It’s detail-oriented, but I’m still going to focus on the Meditations (and not ask them, say, whether Descartes’ move was warranted given the flexibility of Scholastic physics, e.g.)
I think one risk of your approach, which I’ve acknowledged has its merits, is that it’s going to tie the worth of studying a period to whether there’s an interesting article published within the last thirty or forty years on the same subject. So, Descartes, Hume, and Locke should be okay. I doubt Spinoza will ever be cool, but in about five years, there will probably be an easy-to-read defense of monism that’s trickled down.
This might be a short way of saying that I don’t think problems themselves are actually timeless; techniques yes, problems no. I can teach puzzles that way, sure, but look how many things have huddled under the term “skepticism.” They’re related, and it’s interesting to see how many variations have popped up over the years, but they’re really not the same thing.
And, no, I don’t think it’s necessary to start with philosophy that’s several centuries old in order to understand the problem of causation. But if we think that Hume is worth teaching on causation, and it says Early Modern in the course title, we might find it instructive to see how people at his time could disagree with him.
December 15, 2009 at 7:18 am
NM
was taking you to have made a very strong case for the excellence of something, by the act of declaring it excellent.
I had assumed, charitably, that you weren’t actually asking for the content of the arguments in the text.
December 15, 2009 at 8:04 am
JPool
Philosophically, then: these topics, hence these texts, are, in a sense, timeless – time, space, causality, the self, mind, perception, knowledge, science.
Are you just trying to antagonize the historians on the site into commenting so that you can point out that we don’t know anything about philosophy? Look, I know almost nothing about philosophy, but surely pretending that a text written in a particular time and place was written by someone across town (in the English that it’s been translated into) is not just a fiction but a misreading. You wouldn’t have to devolve into all of the details that you describe as “inside baseball” in order to provide some minimal context for the worlds that your authors were living in, why they might have had some of the concerns that they did, and how folks responded to them at the time. Otherwise doesn’t it just become, “Lookit those weirdos! We’re so much smarter now.”
December 15, 2009 at 11:09 am
jholbo
“I had assumed, charitably, that you weren’t actually asking for the content of the arguments in the text.”
NM, what’s charitable about assuming someone who asks what is interesting about philosophical text x is not asking after the content of the arguments in text x?
Re: a lot of the rest of these comments. Let’s take a case. Let me be a bit extreme about it, for illustration purposes. Russell, in his book on Leibniz, says the job of a commentator on Leibniz is to ‘write the system that Leibniz should have written’. Now, he means a couple things by this – e.g. that Leibniz never got around to writing a magnum opus because he was too busy doing genealogies for aristocrats. But besides that, his idea is that Leibniz’ system might be, to some significant degree, true or valid. Whether it is or not is the single most interesting feature of that system. So one should present it as strongly as possible (by the commentator’s, i.e. Russell’s lights) by way of approaching to that potentially truth, validity. This may involve you in an indeterminate number of intellectual renovations (not to put too fine a point on it.) This approach is, then, in a fairly straightforward sense, less historicist than certain other approaches might be. You end up talking to Leibniz as though he’s your colleague, JPool. “But surely pretending that a text written in a particular time and place was written by someone across town (in the English that it’s been translated into) is not just a fiction but a misreading.” Quite so (although there is no need to cultivate ignorance of original languages.) But this style of misreading is respectful of the intentions of the author in a certain way (Leibniz DID want to know the truth) and has a certain clear and worthy philosophical motivation.
I think a lot of “History of Modern” teachers take the Russell approach, whether they say so in so many words or not. I think that’s fine. But it’s also problematic. For one thing, the idealizations can sort of pile up. (It’s one thing to construct the best possible Descartes, another to construct the best possible Descartes, then construct those who follow as constructing the best possible responses – in the vicinity of their actual responses – to the best possible Descartes. And then you seek the best possible counter-arguments to those best-possible responses? This is spiraling loose, isn’t it?)
This ‘writing the system he should have written’ just has a tendency to pull against the historicist impulse. Not that you can’t do both together, as you suggest. I said I was being extreme, for methodological illustration purposes. Obviously the answer is to take a bit from column A, a bit from column B and be a good, pragmatic teacher; but it still amounts to having two focus points. It’s not easy, I find. I consider it the major methodological challenge of teaching this course.
Two focus points? As ben says upthread, isn’t history of philosophy … history of philosophy. Just one thing? Well, yes, but riding a unicyle while juggling is just one thing, too: namely, riding a unicyle while juggling. But one thing that makes it hard to do this one thing is that it requires that you to focus on two things at once – especially while you are at the learning stage. So maybe there’s some sense to parsing the bits, even it is is, ultimately one thing. (Would be another way to put it.)
Does it just become: ‘lookit those weirdos! We’re so much smarter now!’ Well, it rather depends on whether they ARE weirdos, than which we are so much smarter now. It’s something to consider, and not a thought to be dismissed out of hand, but I’m not too worried it will come to that.
dana: “This might be a short way of saying that I don’t think problems themselves are actually timeless; techniques yes, problems no.” I didn’t actually mean that they are Timeless. More, timeless-ish. Yes quite. I’ll settle for close.
“I think one risk of your approach, which I’ve acknowledged has its merits, is that it’s going to tie the worth of studying a period to whether there’s an interesting article published within the last thirty or forty years on the same subject.”
Well, if no one has written well on the subject for thirty years, maybe it’s not going to be high on my list of things to teach about these figures. I think that’s an acceptable result. I do think there are some interesting things to say about Spinoza (not that you are saying no one writes interestingly about Spinoza). I’m going to talk about fatalism, which I think is a good and approachable topic.
December 15, 2009 at 11:33 am
dana
An alternative which neither of us have considered: there are practicing philosophers writing on these figures. Why not secondary sources rather than primary sources?
December 15, 2009 at 11:50 am
Ahistoricality
This ‘writing the system he should have written’ just has a tendency to pull against the historicist impulse.
Actually, if you replace “should” with “could,” you end up with a potentially more interesting (and more satisfactorily historicist) question, I think: what were the structural, social, intellectual, and methodological reasons why a philosopher stopped where they did? Were their errors and omissions accepted as reasonable by their peers, and how were the boundaries of the discussion later breached?
No, I’m not sure this is appropriate for your survey, but it might moderate the Russellian impulse to rewrite instead of contextualizing properly.
December 15, 2009 at 2:43 pm
NM
NM, what’s charitable about assuming someone who asks what is interesting about philosophical text x is not asking after the content of the arguments in text x?
Because you’re asking for syllabus suggestions on a course you’re rethinking, rather than asking if you can borrow some notes to teach from? In the CT thread, you respond to suggestions with, more or less, “interesting suggestion; I’ll take a look” and here you say “tell me what about exactly about that piece merits inclusion, in sufficient detail that ‘it’s an interesting criticism of Hume’s discussion of causation’ doesn’t count.” I’m not sure what moved the bar, but it struck me as odd to be so resistant to Dana’s candidate historical texts, given that you frame your course as a critique of the poverty and inaccuracy of the standard narrative. But, as you say, we’ve moved beyond what’s useful to discuss in a comments box.
December 15, 2009 at 8:07 pm
jholbo
yes, dana, that’s a good possibility. I have actually had trouble finding secondary sources that are 1) richly historicist enough; 2) isolable enough from some larger conversation/debate between scholars; 3) short enough; 4) readable. That’s why I prefer the option of: just plain assign a vanilla “Intro” paperback that the students can work through.
Mackie’s “Problems From Locke” is, in a titular and general organizational and thematic sense, the sort of book I’d like to find more of (probably I could if I looked harder). But I’m not sure I like Mackie’s book all that well.
Ahistoricality, I have a little lecture bit subtitled “coulda woulda shoulda”. History is about ‘did’. History of philosophy is, in practice and contrast, a lot of ‘coulda woulda shoulda’ when you set about reconstructing arguments. That’s a mixed bag, and a separate bag from ‘did’. Russell is actually all over the place ‘coulda woulda shoulda’-wise. Example: he thinks Leibniz padded his philosophy with weak but non-load-bearing proofs of God – just to stay on the good side of the powers that be. There are intellectually subtler cases as well. The limits of Leibniz’ views, due to the limits of his conception of logic. Russell is not such a bad student of just plain ‘did’ as my thumbnail methodological summary may make him sound. I think Russell’s book on Leibniz is pretty great, even though it’s outdated. And, (this is relevant to Jpool’s comment) it was the first book that made me feel that Leibniz was NOT just some weirdo who believed in monads but a guy with an oddly plausible philosophy.
NM, I was asking for recommendations for intro textbooks and thanked some people for suggesting them. In response to the Atherton suggestion I said it sounded interesting but I wasn’t the one to use it. As I have since explained – see above – this has to do with my not having read it and not having time enough to get up to speed, in a month, in a historicist vein, on new historical figures. An objection that does not apply in the new textbook case, where I already know the material and the only constraint is getting the books into the bookstore.
It struck you as “odd” that I was “so resistant to Dana’a candidate historical texts” even though she told me they were about causality etc. My resistance, such as it was, consisted of a failure to form a desire to assign these texts, unread, on the basis of rather bare information about them. It’s not as though there aren’t lots of other things in the world about causality, etc. I could assign, so it does not seem odd – to me – to want to know what features would make these texts good choices. There is, obviously, a great deal of space between dana giving me a set of notes to teach from and dana telling me enough to convince me that this would be really interesting stuff (beyond just telling me it’s interesting). Probably we have taken this as far as it goes but if you DO want to pursue the point, this would be the place to start: why did what I said strike you odd or suspiciously resistant?
December 15, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Ahistoricality
Ahistoricality, I have a little lecture bit subtitled “coulda woulda shoulda”. History is about ‘did’. History of philosophy is, in practice and contrast, a lot of ‘coulda woulda shoulda’ ….. oddly plausible philosophy.
Yeah, John, I got that part. Except that “History is about ‘did.'” bit ignores pretty much the last half century of historiography and theory. We’re not early moderns over here, you know, and the questions “why” and (as I was suggesting) “why not” come up with great frequency and often provide some shockingly interesting insights.
December 15, 2009 at 9:19 pm
jholbo
Ahistoricality: “Except that “History is about ‘did.’” bit ignores pretty much the last half century of historiography and theory.”
You really want half a century of historiography and theory in a blog comment?
Obviously we don’t need to get all ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’ on stilts purist about ‘did’. (I was just oversimplifying to make a point, on the assumption that we could assume a certain degree of historicist sophistication all around in this discussion.) But sticking with von Ranke, historicist godfather of primary sources: the odd thing about the way philosophers teach history is that they like to teach primary sources – you read Descartes, not just someone’s textbook summary of what he argued. But the interest in the subject is more … Russellian. So it’s sort of like primary source-based idealized alternative history (if that helps to clarify what I meant by ‘coulda shoulda woulda’ that is actually a bit more speculative than most historians would go in for.)
Obviously all historians have to consider hypotheticals and alternatives, but it’s a bridge further to write self-coherent, fairly extensive ‘alternative history’ – a world in which Leibniz wrote the system he should have written, etc.
December 16, 2009 at 5:45 am
Ahistoricality
I was just oversimplifying to make a point, on the assumption that we could assume a certain degree of historicist sophistication all around in this discussion.
I never assume, with philosophers.
December 16, 2009 at 5:54 am
dana
My resistance, such as it was, consisted of a failure to form a desire to assign these texts, unread, on the basis of rather bare information about them.
It should be pretty clear that no one’s expecting you to assign the texts without having read them on the basis of a blog post. I’m not. I said so! I see no reason to attribute that to Neddy. Thus it seems unfair to me to describe the suggestion of an anthology compiled by a well-known philosopher, which authors to use in the anthology, where they would fit in the syllabus, a sketch of their views, and some reasons that it’s good to use primary sources from the same time period as “rather bare information”, so I’m genuinely not sure what you have in mind as to what would count as a good reason to consider it.
Understand, I’m not expecting to convince you to use the text, let alone sight unseen; it sounds like you have a very different conception of an early modern course than I do. That’s fine! But I’m not sure what to say to prove that they’re good: you have (or will soon have) their writing samples, and Elisabeth has a letter of recommendation from Descartes…
December 16, 2009 at 8:40 am
jholbo
Well, that’s fine, dana. The ‘what would could as a good reason to consider it’ threshold was crossed at CT, so I wasn’t really wanting to go back through that. I was just sort of curious. You seem rather enthusiastic about this particular anthology texts so I was basically just responding to that enthusiasm: what’s so great about it? Beyond the fact that it’s about causality or whatever. Examples. Bits. Gems. Bright ideas. A quote you like. A fun biographical fact. A thing that’s great for getting from point A-to-B, in teaching such-and-such, or for highlighting the epistolary character of so many of the debates of the time. (Leibniz and his 1000+ correspondents!) How do, or would, YOU use this stuff?
Neddy can speak for him or herself – or not. (I don’t really think he or she is likely to believe it is a good idea to assign things you haven’t read, and aren’t personally satisfied are best for your own purposes. I was merely pointing out that his/her suspicious grumbling only made sense on this rather absurd assumption. Since, as you say, it is extremely unlikely that Neddy accepts the assumption, I was sort of hinting that maybe the suspicious grumbling was misplaced.)
Ahistoricality is right not to assume, with philosophers. But it makes the philosophers prickly and porpentine-like, not to mention passive-aggressive. Because it can be trying to have to prove you are NOT an exotic kind of idiot, preemptively, while keeping your comments brief. (It can get to be like the reverse super-secret probation Russell approach to hermeneutics, if you see what I mean.) Still, if I didn’t want to be treated as a likely vector of ahistoricist mooncalfery, I probably should have picked a different line of work …
December 16, 2009 at 8:46 am
dana
Okay. I’ll write you a post sometime after I crawl out from this pile of work.
December 16, 2009 at 9:29 am
ben
Surely no one was contending that you should assign anything merely on the basis of a couple of sentences in blogland.
December 16, 2009 at 3:13 pm
jholbo
Well, make sure you do so in the spirit of the otter, not in the spirit of the porcupine, dana: if it’s not fun, the otter won’t do it. (I truly didn’t mean to assign extra work.)
ben, I was merely noting the conditions under which Neddy’s comments would make sense. I wasn’t seriously suggesting that Neddy believes those conditions obtain.
December 16, 2009 at 3:42 pm
NM
I’m not sure I’m following your diagnosis, John. It’s true that I think it’s professionally irresponsible to assign things without reading them. Let me offer a competing explanation for suspicious grumbling. Tell me if this makes some sense.
I’ve had many conversations of this professional-courtesy sort: I ask a colleague for off-the-top-of-the-head suggestions for a gap in my syllabus; I get some suggestions; I say thanks, read the stuff, and decide what to do with it. I thought that was the sort of conversation we were having.
Instead, you seemed skeptical of the suggestions, asked for justifications, got some, asked for more– when really there’s nothing left to do but wait for the anthology, or browse online, and decide what you want to do with it.
So the suspicious grumbling was motivated by (a) your weird level of suspicion about Dana’s suggestion as opposed to others (in particular because you say you want to revise the accepted narrative but protest that you don’t want to read too much more history to do it, you’re just not up to the task of learning about these women, and so on) and (b) your reluctance to just let the matter rest with reading it yourself instead of pressing for a full accounting of the merits of the suggestion, which looks like you’re outsourcing.
Nowhere in this is the assumption that it’s ok to assign things without reading them.
December 16, 2009 at 4:47 pm
jholbo
NM, we should probably just drop it, but your level of hermeneutic suspicion just seems comic to me, so I’ve been (justifiably, I think) ribbing you a bit about it in this thread.
I make a post in which I ask “So: what are some other good secondary texts on the History of Modern Philosophy, suitable for lower level undergraduate teaching?” Something like the Cottingham and Woolhouse but not so damned expensive. And then someone suggests assigning the Atherton – which is, basically, an anthology of non-standard primary texts. That is, it has neither of the two features I was looking for. (Secondary text. About the Big Seven.) And I say it sounds interesting in principle but I’m not in the market for that sort of thing for my immediate teaching purposes. And you treat this as some dire, suspicious circumstance. I asked for A. Why wouldn’t I accept B? Because it’s not A, that’s why. (Where’s the mystery?)
Maybe the confusion is due to the fact that I was saying 1) I wanted a standard secondary text and 2) I wanted to teach the class in a non-standard way so you assumed 3) I wanted someone to give me a textbook for teaching the class in some non-standard way. But, as I think the post makes clear, I already have my bespoke non-standard scheme, so I’m not shopping for something off-the-rack in that regard.
But I am open to suggestions about bright ideas for non-standard bits that would be good. That’s why I asked dana what she thought was good about the Atherton. (I never asked for a “full accounting”. That would have been sort of weird and inappropriate, in a comment box, surely.) You regard asking dana questions about what she likes about the book as ‘outsourcing’. I guess that’s one way to think of conversation – as outsourcing (I suppose it is) – but I’ve never really thought of it that way. It just seems to me totally normal, when someone suggests that there’s some text that’s particularly good, and ripe for teaching use, to ask what it is about the text that makes her so enthusiastic about it. Normally I wouldn’t go around poking people in the ribs about why they like the stuff they do. But when someone bothers to write a whole post responding to my post, and suggesting the Atherton, I sort of assume that not much poking will be required to get them started talking about what they think is good about the Atherton. (Admittedly, we have spent our time discussing something else.)
December 16, 2009 at 5:19 pm
NM
Oh, that’s all right, John; we’re taking amusement from each other, so I think this is a fair exchange.
December 16, 2009 at 5:49 pm
jholbo
Ah, the life of the spleen!
December 24, 2009 at 12:16 am
Lewis Powell
It seems to be a background assumption of a lot of the comments in this thread (from a variety of of the commentors) that there is something non-standard about reading Elisabeth’s objection to mind-body interaction. Maybe it is just eccentricities of the classes I’ve taken, but I was under the impression that it was relatively normal to read her objection to Descartes (or at least as normal as reading Arnauld’s criticisms about the pythagorean theorem and imagining triangles).
December 24, 2009 at 12:21 am
Lewis Powell
Oh, I meant to end that with a question about whether my impression was off-base.
Lady Mary Shephard did not figure in any of the classes I took, which is unfortunate.