Great point.
So, it occurs to me, is a Smith & Wesson Model 29 no-dash .44 Magnum.
Both of considerable utility.
Posted on 07/12/2015 3:05:42 PM PDT by Altura Ct.
A philosophy and religion professor at Syracuse University gave an interview to The New York Times Thursday in which he critiqued the notion of pure reason as simply being a “white male Euro-Christian construction.”
Prof. John Caputo was being interviewed by fellow philosophy professor George Yancy for the 13th installment of an interview series Yancy conducts with philosophers regarding racial topics.
Given its emphasis on first principles and abstract thought, it may be tempting to view academic philosophy as a turf where the race of participants matters little, but Caputo says that’s entirely untrue. In fact, race is of central importance, and it’s proven by the mundane phrases philosophers use.
“‘White’ is of the utmost relevance to philosophy, and postmodern theory helps us to see why,” Caputo says in the interview. “I was once criticized for using the expression ‘true north.’It reflected my Nordo-centrism, my critic said, and my insensitivity to people who live in the Southern Hemisphere. Of course, no such thing had ever crossed my mind, but that points to the problem. We tend to say ‘we’ and to assume who ‘we’ are, which once simply meant ‘we white male Euro-Christians.’
The end result of critiquing whiteness, Caputo suggests, is the realization that the supposed “reason” underlying philosophy is just another form of white privilege … or something of that nature.
“I think that what modern philosophers call ‘pure’ reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction,” he says. “White is not ‘neutral.’ ‘Pure’ reason is lily white, as if white is not a color or is closest to the purity of the sun, and everything else is ‘colored.’ Purification is a name for terror and deportation, and ‘white’ is a thick, dense, potent cultural signifier that is closely linked to rationalism and colonialism. What is not white is not rational. So white is philosophically relevant and needs to be philosophically critiqued — it affects what we mean by ‘reason’ — and ‘we’ white philosophers cannot ignore it.”
What does this all mean for regular people, such as the Times’ readers? Beneath all of the postmodern philosophical rhetoric, it’s not easy to tell, but much like the litany of recent academics hurrying to comment on “white privilege,” Caputo takes time to stick his finger in the eyes of the “Christian right” and, of all things, freedom — as if those two are the major arbiters behind all the woes America faces.
“The great scandal of the United States is that it has produced an anti-gospel, the extremes of appalling wealth and poverty,” he says. “But instead of playing the prophetic role of Amos denouncing the American Jeroboam, instead of working to close that gap, the policies of the right wing are exacerbating it … The popularity of such cruel ideas, their success in the ballot box, is terrifying to me. The trigger-happy practices of the police … on the streets of black America should alert everyone to how profoundly adrift American democracy has become — attacking the poor as freeloaders and criminals, a distorted and grotesque ideological exaggeration of freedom over equality. The scandal is that the Christian right has too often been complicit with a politics of greed and hatred of the other.”
Thanks for your interpretation of that gobbledygook. It seems to fit.
Great point.
So, it occurs to me, is a Smith & Wesson Model 29 no-dash .44 Magnum.
Both of considerable utility.
Whenever they measure themselves by their own standards or compare themselves among themselves, they show how foolish they are. 2 Corinthians 10:12 b NIV
Until FReepers figure out that Trump is not anywhere near a conservative, I’m not going to be around much
He isn’t a conservative He is a populist
He is a joke. His charge that the big, bad Christian right pits freedom over equality is just crazy. As he does repeatedly, he is mis-defining “equality” and acting as though it is in competition with freedom. These are parallel concepts that support each other. They do not target each other unless, like all liberals, you define equality in terms of outcomes rather than net value. The laws are applied equally. Rights are applied equally to all. That does not mean that we are born with equal talents or are given equal opportunities in life. Outcomes will vary.
When the left defines equality as an outcome based idea then, yes, it becomes a term in competition with freedom. But that is not how the founders of this nation saw it.
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>> “Until FReepers figure out that Trump is not anywhere near a conservative, I’m not going to be around much” <<
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Some have.
Many are just looking for a magic sugar daddy that will carry their load. They’re easy to fool, and it didn’t take any great genius to figure out how to fool them.
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Exactly. It’s white privilege for the professor to get pay and benefits. Tenure is a White Mans Construct.
Dostoyevsky also. In The Possessed. The progressives dreamed of stoning Shakespeare and plucking Corpsenicus’ eyes out.
Udall said, " I take away reason and accountability."
As Good As It Gets
I was raised Catholic, an altar boy back when you had to know the Latin. I don’t deny God, that is what atheists do. I am an agnostic. I search for the truth but I can’t say for sure that God exists. Big difference.
Oh, right - Rand wrote about her own experiences in the early Soviet Union. Guess what path we are on...
SMH. Preach on, Professor!
Add those two groups together and they rule the world. For a while, anyway, until they get to feeling guilty that they have it all so much better than the rest of the world and try to give it all away.
The “useful idiots” are always among the first put up against the wall. They feel betrayed and know too much.
The lefts idea of “constructs” is a construct...
It would seem suicidal to advocate anything BUT reason. To promote an attack on reason would gain enemies very quickly, unless, as in this case, opposition is countered by the use of guilt or ‘white guilt’.
They would consider me and most of us here very dangerous because we are not vulnerable, (or is the word gullible), enough to fall for that crap. In fact, for me it is looking existential.
“Academia is the last bastion of the truly demented. It’s always been the home of leftist nutcases.”
You know why the mental institutions are empty? Its because the people who would normally be inmates are teaching college.
Ok, so?
At this point I do not care if somebody dislikes some Democrat party supporting faction.
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