2004-12-17 - 3:40 a.m.
philosophy and society
it is often obvious how a particular ideology or philosophy is produced by a particular system- white supremacist capitalist imperialist patriarchy naturally uses the illusion of meritocracy to erase oppression, capitalism becomes rational through adam smith's economics, religious monarchy justifies feudalism, etc.-
metaphysics and privilege
what of metaphysics (socrates, plato, aristotle etc.)? love, truth, ethics- lofty ideas in an abstract vacuum produced by a slave state-
ultimately, this is the product of privilege- it is, of course, not true that people who suffer oppression do not have philosophy while those with the luxury of thinking all day do- it was always amazing to meet stanford students whose concerns and views of the world were so obviously the product of privileged lives-
what about the academics today? academics often see struggle only in rhetorical terms, who think that oppression can be understand through masturbatory discussion (not experience or participating in struggle), and can be resolved by winning arguments (i'm not talking about the leftist ones here)-
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language and privilege
austin used to say that when i talked about certain subjects, i'd speak very informally, but when i talked about other subjects, i'd speak very academically- sometimes i feel like the informal language side of me is disappearing-
i have great difficulty understanding why i use the language that i use-
sometimes i think it's because i just got used to it because of socialization at stanford
other times i think it varies on rigor- when i'm thinking deeply about something, i need precise terms that carry important framing assumptions-
still other times, i think it's because i can only look through certain lenses of analysis with certain terminology
but surely, on a larger level, it is a product of irrevocable training-
i'm really not sure- but i know that i can't control it- i think i could consciously control my language with effort- but in a sense, there seems to be no going back-
