Pho­to by Math­ias Schindler, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Drawn from Aris­to­tle and his Roman and Medieval inter­preters, the “clas­si­cal trivium”—a divi­sion of thought and writ­ing into Log­ic, Gram­mar, and Rhetoric—assumes at least three things: that it mat­ters how we arrive at our ideas, it mat­ters how we express them, and it mat­ters how we treat the peo­ple with whom we inter­act, even, and espe­cial­ly, those with whom we dis­agree. The word rhetoric has tak­en on the con­no­ta­tion of emp­ty, false, or flat­ter­ing speech. But it orig­i­nal­ly meant some­thing clos­er to kind­ness.

We might note that this ped­a­gogy comes from a logo­cen­tric tra­di­tion, one that priv­i­leges writ­ing over oral com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But while it ignores phys­i­cal niceties like ges­ture, pos­ture, and per­son­al space, we can still incor­po­rate its lessons into spo­ken conversation—that is, if we’re inter­est­ed in hav­ing con­struc­tive dia­logue, in being heard, find­ing agree­ment, and learn­ing some­thing new. If we want to lob shots into the abyss and hear hun­dreds of voic­es echo back, well… this requires no spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.

The sub­ject of sound rhetoric—with its sub­sets of eth­i­cal and emo­tion­al sensitivity—has been tak­en up by philoso­phers over hun­dreds of years, from medieval the­olo­gians to the staunch­ly athe­ist philoso­pher of con­scious­ness Daniel Den­nett. In his book Intu­ition Pumps and Oth­er Tools for Think­ing, Den­nett sum­ma­rizes the cen­tral rhetor­i­cal prin­ci­ple of char­i­ty, call­ing it “Rapoport’s Rules” after an elab­o­ra­tion by social psy­chol­o­gist and game the­o­rist Ana­tol Rapoport.

Like their clas­si­cal pre­de­ces­sors, these rules direct­ly tie care­ful, gen­er­ous lis­ten­ing to sound argu­men­ta­tion. We can­not say we have under­stood an argu­ment unless we’ve actu­al­ly heard its nuances, can sum­ma­rize it for oth­ers, and can grant its mer­its and con­cede it strengths. Only then, writes Den­nett, are we equipped to com­pose a “suc­cess­ful crit­i­cal com­men­tary” of another’s posi­tion. Den­nett out­lines the process in four steps:

1. Attempt to re-express your tar­get’s posi­tion so clear­ly, vivid­ly and fair­ly that your tar­get says: “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”
2. List any points of agree­ment (espe­cial­ly if they are not mat­ters of gen­er­al or wide­spread agree­ment).
3. Men­tion any­thing you have learned from your tar­get.
4. Only then are you per­mit­ted to say so much as a word of rebut­tal or crit­i­cism.

Here we have a strat­e­gy that pays div­i­dends, if under­tak­en in the right spir­it. By show­ing that we under­stand an opponent’s posi­tions “as well as they do,” writes Den­nett, and that we can par­tic­i­pate in a shared ethos by find­ing points of agree­ment, we have earned the respect of a “recep­tive audi­ence.” Alien­at­ing peo­ple will end an argu­ment before it even begins, when they turn their backs and walk away rather than sub­ject them­selves to obtuse­ness and abuse.

Addi­tion­al­ly, mak­ing every effort to under­stand an oppos­ing posi­tion will only help us bet­ter con­sid­er and present our own case, if it doesn’t suc­ceed in chang­ing our minds (though that dan­ger is always there). These are reme­dies for bet­ter social cohe­sion and less shouty polar­iza­tion, for deploy­ing “the artillery of our right­eous­ness from behind the com­fort­able shield of the key­board,” as Maria Popo­va writes at Brain Pick­ings, “which is real­ly a men­ace of react­ing rather than respond­ing.”

Yelling, or typ­ing, into the void, rather than engag­ing in sub­stan­tive, respect­ful dis­cus­sion is also a ter­ri­ble waste of our time—a dis­trac­tion from much wor­thi­er pur­suits. We can and should, argues Den­nett, Rapoport, and philoso­phers over the cen­turies, seek out posi­tions we dis­agree with. In seek­ing out and try­ing to under­stand their best pos­si­ble ver­sions, we stand to gain new knowl­edge and widen our appre­ci­a­tion.

As Den­nett puts it, “when you want to crit­i­cize a field, a genre, a dis­ci­pline, an art form… don’t waste your time and ours hoot­ing at the crap! Go after the good stuff or leave it alone.” In “going after the good stuff,” we might find that it’s bet­ter, or at least dif­fer­ent, than we thought, and that we’re wis­er for hav­ing tak­en the time to learn it, even if only to point out why we think it most­ly wrong.

via Brain Pick­ings/Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daniel Den­nett Presents Sev­en Tools For Crit­i­cal Think­ing

Oxford’s Free Course Crit­i­cal Rea­son­ing For Begin­ners Will Teach You to Think Like a Philoso­pher

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Two aca­d­e­m­ic stars and heroes of anti-author­i­tar­i­an left­ist polit­i­cal thought sit down to debate human nature—nowadays such events occur more rarely than they did in the 60s and 70s, when the coun­ter­cul­ture and anti-war move­ments made both Michel Fou­cault and Noam Chom­sky famous. Now, when two thinkers of such cal­iber sit down togeth­er, their con­ver­sa­tion is imme­di­ate­ly dis­tilled into tweet­ed com­men­tary, some­times illus­trat­ed with gifs and video clips. We get the gist and move on to the next link.

In 1971, when Fou­cault and Chom­sky joined host Fons Elders on Dutch TV, those view­ers who tuned in would have to fol­low the con­ver­sa­tion for themselves—for the most part—though it aired in a part­ly abridged ver­sion with com­men­tary from a Pro­fes­sor L.W. Nau­ta. “Chom­sky is at the height of his lin­guis­tic-sci­en­tif­ic mode,” notes New Inquiry, where “Fou­cault per­forms a geneal­o­gy of sci­en­tif­ic truth itself.”

After an intro­duc­tion in Dutch by Dr. Nau­ta, Elders wel­comes his guests onstage in Eng­lish as “tonight’s debaters,” two “moun­tain dig­gers, work­ing at the oppo­site sides of the same moun­tains, with dif­fer­ent tools, with­out know­ing even if they are work­ing in each other’s direc­tion.” It’s a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that amus­es both Chom­sky and Fou­cault, who aren’t dis­cov­er­ing each other’s dif­fer­ences so much as enact­ing them for the stu­dio audi­ence of “ear­ly-70s Dutch intel­li­gentsia.”

The two do find some com­mon ground, in Foucault’s cri­tique of the dom­i­nant his­to­ry of sci­ence, for exam­ple. Where they dif­fer, they seem to be speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages, and they are also lit­er­al­ly speak­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages. Chom­sky begins in Eng­lish, Fou­cault responds in Eng­lish with apolo­gies for his lack of flu­en­cy, then switch­es to French. Those of us who aren’t flu­ent in both lan­guages will have to rely on the trans­la­tion, as many of us do when read­ing Fou­cault as well, a sit­u­a­tion that should give us pause before we draw con­clu­sions about what we think he’s say­ing.

Still, those inclined to reject Fou­cault as a rejec­tor of sci­ence should pay clos­er atten­tion to him, even in trans­la­tion (into Eng­lish, Por­tuguese, and Japan­ese sub­ti­tles in the video above). He does not reject the notion of sci­en­tif­ic fact, but rather, as Wittgen­stein had decades ear­li­er, points out that much of what we take as con­cep­tu­al real­i­ty is no more than vague, mean­ing­less abstrac­tion, “periph­er­al” words and phras­es that do “not all have the same degree of elab­o­ra­tion” as more pre­cise sci­en­tif­ic terms.

Fuzzy ideas, for exam­ple, like “human nature… do not play an ‘orga­niz­ing’ role with­in sci­ence.” Nei­ther “instru­ments of analy­sis” nor “descrip­tive either,” they “sim­ply serve to point out some prob­lems, or rather to point out cer­tain fields in need of study.” They are sign­posts for the unknown, a “sci­en­tif­ic shop­ping list,” as Pro­fes­sor Nau­ta puts it when he breaks in to help­ful­ly explain to view­ers at home what he thinks Fou­cault means. Nauta’s inter­ven­tions are dri­er than the main action—apparently no one thought in 1971 to sen­sa­tion­al­ize the event.

Well, almost no one thought to sen­sa­tion­al­ize the event. Anar­chist host Elders “want­ed to jazz things up a bit,” writes Eugene Wolters at Crit­i­cal The­o­ry. “Aside from offer­ing Fou­cault hashish for part of his pay­ment, Elder tried repeat­ed­ly to get Fou­cault to wear a bright red wig.” Accord­ing to the James Miller in The Pas­sion of Michel Fou­cault, Elders “kept pok­ing Fou­cault under the table, point­ing to the red wig on his lap, and whis­per­ing, ‘put it on, put it on.”

Chom­sky found the exchange less than amus­ing, lat­er call­ing Fou­cault “total­ly amoral” and say­ing that he “wild­ly exag­ger­ates.” These minor spec­ta­cles aside, the Chom­sky-Fou­cault debate is less epic show­down and more two most­ly par­al­lel, only occa­sion­al­ly inter­sect­ing, dis­cours­es on “a wide range of top­ics, from sci­ence, his­to­ry, and behav­ior­ism to cre­ativ­i­ty, free­dom, and the strug­gle for jus­tice in the realm of pol­i­tics.” If some of that dis­cus­sion seems over­ly obscure at times, just imag­ine Fou­cault in a bright red wig, and lat­er enjoy­ing what he and his friends called “Chom­sky hash.”

The text of their debate has been pub­lished. Read The Chom­sky-Fou­cault Debate: On Human Nature.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Michel Foucault’s Lec­ture “The Cul­ture of the Self,” Pre­sent­ed in Eng­lish at UC Berke­ley (1983)

Michel Fou­cault Offers a Clear, Com­pelling Intro­duc­tion to His Philo­soph­i­cal Project (1966)

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Noam Chomsky’s Lin­guis­tic The­o­ry, Nar­rat­ed by The X‑Files‘ Gillian Ander­son

Noam Chom­sky Makes His First Pow­er Point Pre­sen­ta­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Used to be, a few thou­sand years ago, if you want­ed to learn phi­los­o­phy, you’d hang out in the ago­ra, the pub­lic space in ancient Greece whose name turned into verbs mean­ing both “to shop” and “to speak in pub­lic.” Pol­i­tics and meta­physics min­gled freely with com­merce. If a Socrates-like sage took a lik­ing to you, you might fol­low him around. If not, you might pay a sophist—a word mean­ing wise teacher before it became a term of abuse that Pla­to lobbed at rivals who charged for their ser­vices. Only cer­tain peo­ple had the means and leisure for these pur­suits. Nonethe­less, phi­los­o­phy was a pub­lic activ­i­ty, not one sequestered in libraries and sem­i­nar rooms.

Even though phi­los­o­phy moved indoors—to monas­ter­ies, col­leges, and the libraries of aristocrats—it did not stay cooped up for long. With the mod­ern age arrived new pub­lic squares, cen­tered around cof­fee­hous­es where all sorts of peo­ple gath­ered, rubbed elbows, formed dis­cus­sion groups. Phi­los­o­phy may not have been the pub­lic spec­ta­cle it seemed to have been in antiq­ui­ty, but neo­clas­si­cal thinkers tried to recre­ate its char­ac­ter of free and open inquiry in pub­lic spaces.

Wide­spread lit­er­a­cy and pub­lish­ing brought phi­los­o­phy to the mass­es in new ways. Philo­soph­i­cal works trick­led down in afford­able edi­tions to the intel­lec­tu­al­ly curi­ous, who might read and dis­cuss them with like-mind­ed laypeo­ple. But phi­los­o­phy also became a pro­fes­sion­al dis­ci­pline, gov­erned by asso­ci­a­tions, con­fer­ences, jour­nals, and arcane vocab­u­lar­ies. Out­side of France, philoso­phers rarely act­ed as pub­lic intel­lec­tu­als address­ing pub­lic issues. They were aca­d­e­mics whose pri­ma­ry audi­ences were oth­er aca­d­e­mics.

The cul­ture suf­fered immense­ly, one might argue, in the with­draw­al of phi­los­o­phy from pub­lic life.

The broad out­line above does not pre­tend to be a his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy, but rather a sketch of some of the ways West­ern cul­ture has engaged with phi­los­o­phy, treat­ing it as a pub­lic good and resource, or a domain of spe­cial­ists and an activ­i­ty divorced from ordi­nary life. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for us in the 21st cen­tu­ry, dreams of a dig­i­tal ago­ra have col­lapsed in the dystopi­an sur­veil­lance schemes of social media and the tox­ic sludge of com­ments sec­tions. But the inter­net has also, in a way, returned phi­los­o­phy to the pub­lic square.

Philoso­phers can once again share knowl­edge freely and open­ly, and any­one with access can stream and down­load hun­dreds of lessons, cours­es, enter­tain­ing explain­ers, inter­views, pod­casts, and more. We have fea­tured many of these resources over the years in hopes that more peo­ple will dis­cov­er the art of think­ing deeply and crit­i­cal­ly. Today, we gath­er them in a mas­ter list, below.

Learn the in-depth his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy from Peter Adamson’s acclaimed series The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy… With­out Any Gaps; lis­ten in on round­table dis­cus­sions on famous thinkers and the­o­ries with the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast, or “repave the Ago­ra with the rub­ble of the Ivory Tow­er!” with the acces­si­ble, com­pre­hen­sive phi­los­o­phy videos of Carneades. These are but a few of the many qual­i­ty resources you’ll find below. Tech­nol­o­gy may nev­er recre­ate the ear­ly atmos­phere of pub­lic philosophy—for that you’ll need to get out and min­gle. But it can deliv­er more phi­los­o­phy than any­one has ever had before, lit­er­al­ly right into the palms of our hands.

Cours­es

187 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es: In a neat, handy list, we’ve amassed a col­lec­tion of free phi­los­o­phy cours­es record­ed at great uni­ver­si­ties. Pret­ty much every facet of phi­los­o­phy gets cov­ered here.

YouTube

Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy: Learn about phi­los­o­phy with pro­fes­sors from Yale, Stan­ford, Oxford, MIT, and more. 130+ ani­mat­ed videos intro­duce peo­ple to the prac­tice of phi­los­o­phy. The videos are free, enter­tain­ing, inter­est­ing and acces­si­ble to peo­ple with no back­ground in the sub­ject.

School of Life: This col­lec­tion of 35 ani­mat­ed videos offers an intro­duc­tion to major West­ern philosophers—Wittgenstein, Fou­cault, Camus and more. The videos were made by Alain de Botton’s School of Life.

Gre­go­ry Sadler’s Phi­los­o­phy Videos: After a decade in tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic posi­tions, Gre­go­ry Sadler start­ed bring­ing phi­los­o­phy into prac­tice, mak­ing com­plex clas­sic philo­soph­i­cal ideas acces­si­ble for a wide audi­ence of pro­fes­sion­als, stu­dents, and life-long learn­ers. His YouTube chan­nel includes exten­sive lec­ture series on Kierkegaard, Sartre, Hegel and more.

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: Watch 81 video lec­tures trac­ing the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy mov­ing from Ancient Greece to mod­ern times. Arthur Holmes pre­sent­ed this influ­en­tial course at Wheaton Col­lege for decades and now it’s online for you.

Carneades: Repave the Ago­ra with the rub­ble of the Ivory Tow­er!  Put your beliefs to the test!  Learn some­thing about phi­los­o­phy!  Doubt some­thing you thought you knew before.  Find on this chan­nel 400 videos on the sub­jects of phi­los­o­phy and skep­ti­cism.

What the The­o­ry?: This col­lec­tion pro­vides short intro­duc­tions to the­o­ries and the­o­ret­i­cal approach­es in cul­tur­al stud­ies and the wider human­i­ties. Cov­ers semi­otics, phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy, post­mod­ernism, marx­ist lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, and much more.

Crash Course Phi­los­o­phy:  In 46 episodes, Hank Green will teach you phi­los­o­phy. This course is based on an intro­duc­to­ry West­ern phi­los­o­phy col­lege lev­el cur­ricu­lum. By the end of the course, you will be able to exam­ine top­ics like the self, ethics, reli­gion, lan­guage, art, death, pol­i­tics, and knowl­edge. And also craft argu­ments, apply deduc­tive and induc­tive rea­son­ing, and iden­ti­fy fal­lac­i­es.

Pod­casts:

Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life: Phi­los­o­phy, philoso­phers and philo­soph­i­cal texts. This pod­cast fea­tures an infor­mal round­table dis­cus­sion, with each episode loose­ly focused on a short read­ing that intro­duces at least one “big” philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion, con­cern, or idea. Recent episodes have focused on Niet­zsche, Sartre and Aldous Hux­ley, and fea­tured Fran­cis Fukuya­ma as a guest.

Hi-Phi-Nation: Cre­at­ed by Bar­ry Lam (Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at Vas­sar Col­lege), Hi-Phi Nation is a phi­los­o­phy pod­cast “that turns sto­ries into ideas.” Con­sid­er it “the first sound and sto­ry-dri­ven show about phi­los­o­phy, bring­ing togeth­er nar­ra­tive sto­ry­telling, inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, and sound­track­ing.”

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps: Cre­at­ed by Peter Adam­son, Pro­fes­sor of Ancient and Medieval Phi­los­o­phy at King’s Col­lege Lon­don, this pod­cast fea­tures more than 300 episodes, each about 20 min­utes long, cov­er­ing the Pre­So­crat­ics (Pythago­ras, Zeno, Par­menides, etc) and then Socrates, Pla­to, Aris­to­tle, and much more.

Phi­los­o­phy Bites: David Edmonds (Uehi­ro Cen­tre, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty) and Nigel War­bur­ton (free­lance philosopher/writer) inter­view top philoso­phers on a wide range of top­ics. Two books based on the series have been pub­lished by Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press. There are over 400 pod­casts in this col­lec­tion.

In Our Time: Phi­los­o­phy: In Our Time is a live BBC radio dis­cus­sion series explor­ing the his­to­ry of ideas, pre­sent­ed by Melvyn Bragg since Octo­ber 1998. It is one of BBC Radio 4’s most suc­cess­ful dis­cus­sion pro­grammes, acknowl­edged to have “trans­formed the land­scape for seri­ous ideas at peak lis­ten­ing time.’”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy 

Intro­duc­tion to Indi­an Phi­los­o­phy: A Free Online Course 

Philoso­phers Name the Best Phi­los­o­phy Books: From Sto­icism and Exis­ten­tial­ism, to Meta­physics & Ethics for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The­o­ry. The word alone can intim­i­date, and it can espe­cial­ly intim­i­date those of us out­side the aca­d­e­m­ic human­i­ties. The rig­or and com­plex­i­ty of sci­en­tif­ic the­o­ry is for­bid­ding enough, but cul­tur­al the­o­ry, with its thick­ets of mul­ti­va­lent mean­ing and thinkers with their cultish­ly devot­ed and ter­ri­to­r­i­al fol­low­ings, has sure­ly made many a hope­ful learn­er turn back before they’ve even stepped in. But help has arrived in this age of explain­ers, most recent­ly in the form of a Uni­ver­si­ty of Exeter PhD stu­dent and Youtu­ber named Tom Nicholas who has tak­en it upon him­self to explain such tricky sub­jects as post­mod­ernism, semi­otics, phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy, and many oth­ers besides in his series “What the The­o­ry?”

Nico­las has put his aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground into videos on every­thing from how to read jour­nal arti­cles and write essays to sub­jects like his own research and how Bojack Horse­man cri­tiques the 1990s. But it’s “What the The­o­ry?” that most direct­ly con­fronts the intel­lec­tu­al frame­works that his oth­er videos put to more implic­it use.

In it he breaks down the nature of the most abstruse-sound­ing dis­ci­plines in all the mod­ern human­i­ties as well as the ideas of the the­o­rists who devel­oped them — semi­otics and Fer­di­nand de Saus­sure, phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy and Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, cul­tur­al mate­ri­al­ism and Ray­mond Williams, as well as broad­er con­cepts like post­mod­ernism and even the mod­ernism that pre­ced­ed it — illu­mi­nat­ing them by draw­ing upon a set of less-rar­efied works, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to Dunkirk and The Lego Movie.

In more recent “What the The­o­ry?” videos, Nicholas takes on indi­vid­ual ideas as pop­u­lar­ized (at least with­in the acad­e­my) by cer­tain writ­ers, the­o­rists, and philoso­phers. He explains, for exam­ple, what Roland Barthes meant when he pro­claimed “the death of the author” in 1967, as well as what Barthes’ coun­try­man Guy Debord meant when he described human­i­ty as liv­ing in a “soci­ety of the spec­ta­cle” that same year. Watch through the entire “What the The­o­ry?” playlist so far, and there’s a chance you might come away with an inter­est in launch­ing an aca­d­e­m­ic career of your own in order to dig deep­er into these and oth­er ideas. But there’s a much greater chance that you’ll come away believ­ing that these crit­i­cal texts actu­al­ly do have insights to offer our world, the soci­eties that make up our world, and the cul­ture that dri­ves those soci­eties — bare­ly intel­li­gi­ble though many of them may still look.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Quick Intro­duc­tion to Lit­er­ary The­o­ry: Watch Ani­mat­ed Videos from the Open Uni­ver­si­ty

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Roland Barthes’s Mytholo­gies and How He Used Semi­otics to Decode Pop­u­lar Cul­ture

Yale Presents a Free Online Course on Lit­er­ary The­o­ry, Cov­er­ing Struc­tural­ism, Decon­struc­tion & More

David Fos­ter Wal­lace on What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ernism: A Video Essay

Noam Chom­sky Explains What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ern Phi­los­o­phy & French Intel­lec­tu­als, and How They End Up Sup­port­ing Oppres­sive Pow­er Struc­tures

The CIA Assess­es the Pow­er of French Post-Mod­ern Philoso­phers: Read a New­ly Declas­si­fied CIA Report from 1985

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.