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September 28, 2005
I've just noticed this. It is philosophy on public radio--- on the ABC's Radio National.
The Philosopher's Zone is a 'weekly look at the world of philosophy and at what philosophy has to tell us about the world.' Sounds interesting doesn't it? 'The world'? Is it our world, the world we live in? Or is it the world in abstract?
Scrolling through the archives I notice this progam on ethical relationships. Christina Colegate says that 'philosophy isn't just a bundle of dusty books on the shelf, but is actually, following Aristotle, a way of being in the world. It's actually a practice, an activity.'
I concur with that. The conversation quickly quickly turns to Aristotle, with Christina saying that:
"... one of the virtues of his work is that it isn't a dogmatic kind of set of rules about how to live; it's actually a theory that develops a notion of wisdom as practice, wisdom as the accumulation of living skills, I suppose ----I'm trying to think of a better word---of how to moderate behaviour, how to live with others, negotiating the middle line, where we can actually remain happy in our sense, happy people living a pleasurable lives, but also good lives where we're living in harmony with the people around us.
That is a fair interepretation of Aristotle, one that I'm quite happy with.
So how does our mode of being in the world become one of happy people living pleasurable lives in late modernity or postmodernity? Christina's suggestion is this:
Aristotle's idea of the ergon, of always on a journey of developing virtue, developing the good life, seeking out happiness, through reflection, through critical thinking. I think point of view is definitely important; I think wisdom is something accumulated over time, for sure, and that's why in my book I've attempted as much as I can to write from the naive point of view, a questioning point of view, to borrow Socrates' kind of practice of questioning, to try and seek the questions rather than the answers to these huge philosophical dilemmas.
Suprisingly, neither Saunders nor Colgate address Adorno's thesis of the decay of ethical life in late rmodernity, which argues that it is very difficult to live the good life: ie., a mode of being in the world of happy people living pleassurable lives.
So this understanding of populising philosophy does not engage with the difficulties we encounter in living an ethical life. It is content with populising classical texts.
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Elsewhere in your site, you mentioned Gillian Rose. I think the difficulty in philosophizing in the modern is the inability, unwillingness to stake one's position. This inertia shares the same logic that incapacitates politics.