technologocal neutrality

Why did do I find Seyyed Hossein Nasr to be alien?

In many ways, he isn’t. I was struck in particular by a comment by one of his commentators that he seems to endorse:

[A]ny plausible solution for the persisting problems caused by modern science and technology can be achieved not by better engineering or further progress but by reconsidering the entire perspective of the modern worldview regarding nature, human life, and its meaning

Now this is something like what I sincerely believed, when I was 19. It was really an important part of my deciding to go into philosophy. There were a few premises tied in my own committments. One which Nasr and his sympathetic commentators don’t share with the younger me was a committment to the moral neutrality of technology. It just seemed obvious that technology was neither inherently bad or good, it just was. Evaluating particular technologies as bad or good, and by extension the general direction of technological progress as either progressive or regressive, required reference to some other source of values. So, engineers can build tools for handicap accessibility or they can build weapons of great destructive power, but it would require the skills and insights of philosophers to figure out which ones are bad and which one are good.

Yeah, that’s part of what I’m a little embarassed about now. The easy distinction between roles really isn’t obvious, unless someone decides to take Plato’s advice and appoint philosopher kings. I would recommend against that option.

It’s also not so obvious how to divide technological progress from ordinary historical development. One could start with a distinction between the meanderings of history versus the apparently goal directed progress of technology. But this route begs the question, it begins by identifying what counts as progress, when if we knew that there wouldn’t really be a question worth asking here.

Nasr and his compatriots begin with a tradition (or traditions) of established knowledge, which incorporate significant spiritual knowledge. Anything which lessens that contact with what they consider the eternal source of Being, is bad. Western secular civilization has steadily moved away from even acknowledging the possibility of such knowledge. Thus, the general trend of technological development has been degenerative.

I can’t help but feel it truly alien, unnerving, to see the era which encompasses my own life-time as one of accelerating decline. In fact, I don’t see it that way. I welcome the destablizing influence of reading the philosophy of those who, but ultimately, it just feels alien.

Not that that’s a good way to evaluate philosophical writing, but it does help keep the interest yup while you’re working out the hard parts.

those 7 words,

by which I mean the 7 I wrote yesterday. To whit:

Why read the Library of Living Philosophers?

Not a real inspiring question, but the answer (ideas and personalities) will be useful to me. See the Library of Living Philosoophers is a series of heavy (though not necessarily dense) volumes, each dedicated to an important living philosopher (hence the name).

The most obvious reasons to read these volumes are that they provide a summary of the philosopher’s important ideas. Even if you can’t get too far into a philosopher’s arguments by looking at one of these books, you cant get a good idea of the important places to start. For readers who are already familiar with at least part of a philosopher’s work, the LLP promises to provide access to the philosopher as a complete thinker, even as an intellectual personality.

On a more difficult level, reading multiple volumes gives some important insights into how different ideas work in different contexts.

Finally, the distinction actually gets at an important, and neglected, difference in how philosophy is done. On the one hand we have philosophy as a problem oriented enterprise devoted to discovering and testing ideas. On the otherhand, there’s been a position, going back to Plato at least, that argues philosophy is not about building theories or expanding knowledge, its about forming philosophers. Plato called it preparation for death. Since not everyone receives a proper education and not everyone is capable of getting the same things out of an education when it it provided, this notion seems distasteful to modern democratic sensibilities.

Both tendencies are represented in the LLP, so watching them compete provides a reason to read the LLP. Indeed, taken as a whole, the LLP provides a ‘how-to’ volume for contemporary philosophy.

In particular, I’m finding the volume on Seyyed Hossein Nasr most fascinating. In addition to propunding an esoteric position, he’s also an observant shiite muslim and anti-modernist. From my perspective, he’s a truly alien thinker, and thus worth a serious read.

What I’m Reading 4: Library of Living Philosophers

Jaakko and I

Originally uploaded by pbroderi.

I don’t seriously expect that anyone is reading my writing journal entries. The idea behind the journal is just to record

Nonetheless, I have some responsibilities to my imagined audience. Most entries have included the abbreviation LLP which stands for Library of Living Philosophers.

The most recent volume of this prestigious series is dedicated to Jaakko Hintikka who was my dissertation advisor and mentor. (That’s us in the picture.) At his suggestion, I have been working on a review essay which compares his volume to the first in the series, which was dedicated to John Dewey.

Until today, this has been a frustrating exercise to say the least. I’ve read the entire Dewey volume. I do not recommend this exercise to anyone. If you’ve got an interest in specific issues of Dewey scholarship then selective reading might be interesting. Russell’s essay in particular, deserves to be read, albeit not very often.

According to the founder of this series, the Library of Living Philsophers has been to put interpretative questions to great philosophers before they die in hope of eliminating some of the more obvious debates over what the philosopher meant. This means that truly difficult interpretative debates can begin upon the philosopher’s demise.

Today I started working through Jaakko’s autobiographical essay. For the first time since I started can I claim to enjoy this project. Dewey’s essay was assembled by his daughter and lacks the immediacy that can be found in other volumes in this series. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I’ve known JH for over a decade and I was a witness to some of the episodes that he chronicles.

Both volumes illustrate the connection between the intellectual life of a philosopher and their philosophical projects. I don’t mean just in the simple fashion that Dewey’s rural boyhood influenced his practical theories of education, but by illustrating great minds engaged in serious issues. The LLPs volumes chronicle great philosophers wrestling with their central problems by providing both commentary on that philosopher but unpolished examples of the philosopher actually engaged in that work.
There aren’t many opportunities to really get at the fire that drives analytic philosophy. JH provides a model of what a philosopher is supposed to be or, at least, supposed to do. Sio does John Dewey. I’m working through this project at a moment when it seems very
likely that I’ll be leaving philosophy.
* This picture was an important motivator in my recent return to regular exercise.