Philosophy Now Forum

The lead paragraph:
"Give thanks this day for some indirect blessings of liberty, including the behavior-beyond-satire of what are generously called institutions of higher education. People who are imprecisely called educators have taught, by their negative examples, what intelligence is not."
A relevant example:
"Writing in the University of California at Berkeley paper, two geographically challenged students objected to a class featuring Plato and Aristotle and other "economically privileged white males from five imperial countries (England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States)."
http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/col ... er-ed.html

Comments?

tbieter wrote:The lead paragraph:
"Give thanks this day for some indirect blessings of liberty, including the behavior-beyond-satire of what are generously called institutions of higher education. People who are imprecisely called educators have taught, by their negative examples, what intelligence is not."
A relevant example:
"Writing in the University of California at Berkeley paper, two geographically challenged students objected to a class featuring Plato and Aristotle and other "economically privileged white males from five imperial countries (England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States)."
http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/col ... er-ed.html

Comments?

Well, I would say that the article reminds me that philosophy is the first science. When you explore the world through natural science and maths you come up with nice litte truths, like e=mc2, nice and neat and not all that debatable. But in the beginning of exploring something new, like when the old greecs set out to explore the world, or when a scientist tries to make a hyphothesis, it's not that nice. You have to go about like Socrates in the dialogues, find your way around in dark rooms. And all of the subjects in the article, like feminism and politics are things which science can not give us any nice little truths about. People still tries to, even in the universities, maybe more, since nice litte answers instead of fluffy discssions are more sexy and gives better funding. People seem to like nice little truths.