Fish????
glthompson
glthompson at home.com
Mon Jun 12 19:41:17 CDT 2000
Terrence, I have to confess that I'm puzzled--"Fish" seems to be
standing in for some larger Presence here, some bete noir, but I don't
really understand what.
OK, so Fish and two or three dozen others are posturing on their small
stages. How is that to a threat to the Republic? IMHO, the sort of
drivel going on during any broadcast day, not to mention Matt Drudge,
far outpaces poor Stanley and all the output of Duke or Routledge.
Terrance wrote:
> . . . His brand of
> "Reader Response" has been a disaster and his recent
> writings attempt to demonstrate that there is no such thing
> as "the good" and equally no rational foundation on which we
> may stand in order to formulate ethical behavior of any
> kind: cognitive ethics of the sort that "idiot" and
> "childish" Plato (building on that "misogynist" "proponent
> of slavery" Socrates) or the "discriminating" Kant (building
> on that "dead white greek" "pigeonholer" Aristotle)
> formulated are as empty as morality founded on some
> conception of a divine being. All are self-delusional.
Are the quotes above from Fish? If so, from where? If not, from whom?
I'm not the sort to get into this sort of thing on-list, and people may
already be getting bored with this Wolfe strand, but this summary of
Fish is a caricature. My Fish's a bit old, but from what I recall, his
argument (one of them) is that values, and judgments about rationality,
are constructed from _inside_ of contexts, and that there's no way to
get _outside_ of these to come up with some allegedly objective
perspective. I don't think that Fish is necessarily the only or best
theorist or writer to venture this idea. (Personally, I see that insight
as key to much of Pynchon's work, and a lot of what makes him
postmodern, but that's a topic requiring more development.) It _is_
possible to be rational and ethical without absolutism. And the Nazis
weren't evil because they were relativists.
Perhaps universities aren't what they should be? Sure--but it's not the
tenured radicals who're the main problem--it's the rapid, nearly
complete conversion of education to a corporate model. Hume and Kant
wouldn't find employment not because they don't do jargon (hah!), but
because they'd have eight students a semester and would be asked to
teach ethics for lawyers or some such more practical course. We may live
in a golden age for some things, but philosophy's not one of them. How
does Wolfe's misrepresentation of professors help to correct that
situation?
As I asked before, whose interests does he serve?
GT
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