In this 80th episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread and our 14th “breadcrumb” episode, Eric Thomas Weber and Anthony Cashio invite Dr. Erin Tarver back on the show to talk with us about a great listener voicemail that we received from Julia from New Hampshire. We call this breadcrumb episode “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Sports Fandom.”

Erin was our guest in episode 31 of the show, titled “Sports Fan I Am.” She is the author of The I in Team: Sports Fandom and the Reproduction of Identity. In that episode, she raised the following question for our listeners near the end of the episode: “Should colleges and universities even be in the business of organizing ‘minor league’ sports teams?” In her voicemail, Julia responded that although she is a sports fan and was an athlete in college, her feminism raises concerns for her about the adversarial quality of sports competitions, among other concerns. Erin offers us a rich response.

Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

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Notes

1. On Hegel’s outlook on identity and its relevance to recognition, see Mattias Iser, “Recognition,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2013. 
2. Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex.
3. Victoria Davion.
4. Varda Burstyn, The Rites of Men: Manhood, Politics, and the Culture of Sport (University of Toronto Press, 1999).

Transcript

Printable transcript in Adobe PDF.

Transcribed by Chelsea D. of Rev.com, January 12, 2019.

For those interested, here’s how to cite this transcript or episode for academic or professional purposes (for pagination, see the printable, Adobe PDF version of this transcript here):

Weber, Eric Thomas, Anthony Cashio, and Erin Tarver, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Sports Fandom,” Philosophy Bakes Bread, Episode 80, Transcribed by Chelsea D. of Rev.com, WRFL Lexington 88.1 FM, Lexington, KY, October 29, 2018.

Radio announcer: This podcast is brought to you by WRFL, Radio Free Lexington. Find us online at wrfl.fm. Catch us on your FM radio while you’re in Central Kentucky at 88.1 FM all the way to the left. Thank you for listening, and please be sure to subscribe.

Weber: Welcome everyone to a special short edition of Philosophy Bakes Bread, which we call a Bread Crumb.

Cashio: Crumble crumble… Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of SOPHIA, the Society of Philosophers in America. In our Bread Crumb episodes, we include snippets from past episodes or more substantive responses to your feedback that we received on Twitter on Philosophy BB, and Facebook at Philosophy Bakes Bread, or by email at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com.

Weber: And also, we get feedback from people on our voicemail at 859-257-1849. You can leave us a voicemail message there, and we may respond to it like we will today. So today we’ve got a fun Bread Crumb episode for you titled The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Sports Fandom. We have Doctor Erin Tarver who was our guest on episode 31, called Sports Fan I Am.

Cashio: Welcome back Erin.

Tarver: Hi. Thanks for having me again.

Weber: Thanks for coming.

Cashio: Those of you who listened to that episode may remember that Erin is the author of the book, The I in Team: Sports Fandom and the Reproduction of Identity, which came out last year with the University of Chicago Press. For more information about Erin, head over to philosophybakesbread.com and listen to episode 31. So again, thank you for joining us.

Tarver: Yeah. Thank you.

Weber: So we’re so glad to have you with us again Erin. As you know, we received a great listener voicemail in response to your episode. From Julia from New Hampshire. What we thought we’d do in this short bread crumb episode is to invite you to remind everyone in short what your episode was about, to tell us again what that question was that you asked at the end of the episode, and then we’ll play Julia’s message, and ask you what you think about it. Does that sound good?

Tarver: Absolutely.

Weber: Excellent.

Tarver: So the last time we were talking about, basically, the topic of my book, which is a philosophical analysis of sports fandom. So briefly what I’m interested in, in my book is trying to understand why it is that people care so much about sports when those people very often, are not playing the sports themselves. They have very little in common, if anything, with the people on the teams that they follow. But nevertheless, they are deeply invested in practices of sports fandom.

And what I try to argue in my book, is that sports fandom is a means of individuals today understanding ourselves, of telling ourselves who and what we are as an “I” that is part of a particular “we”. So sports fandom is one of the primary means that we understand ourselves in relation to human communities around us and as beings who are in fact gendered and racialized in all sorts of ways.

So, my suggestion, ultimately is that sports fandom, well number one, is quite a bit more complicated than it originally appears. So what I suggest though is that sports fandom is not entirely innocuous. In fact, that sports fandom is one of the primary locations, in this country at least, where norms around gender and race are often reinforced, and they are reinforced in ways that are damaging and hierarchizing. So they reinforce social hierarchies.

Now the interesting part of it though, is that I end the book and the episode in fact, on a bit of a more optimistic note by looking specifically at women’s sports fandom. And by that I mean both women fans of men’s mainstream sports and also fans of women’s sports. And I look at some examples of this, and suggest that instances of women’s sports fandoms showed that perhaps there is something valuable to the possibilities of sports fandom after all, and that we might use it to subvert rather than reinforce these social hierarchies.

Weber: Right. Very nice. Very nice.

Cashio: Can you-

Weber: Go ahead.

Cashio: I was going to say can you repeat the … Do you remember what your question was you had that you were able to share with everyone?

Tarver: Right. So in your You Tell Me segment, the question I asked was, “Should colleges and universities be in the business of essentially underwriting minor league sports teams in the United States?” Which is effectively what we have with the NCAA.

Cashio: Right. That’s a really good question, especially this time of year with college football and all the other sports fans starting back up, right at the beginning of the school year. Well thank you for that really beautifully succinct and I thought enlightening summary. So we have a message from Julia, from New Hampshire. She called and left a sort of response to your episode as a whole, and in part to your question as well. So shall we play Julia’s message?

Weber: Let’s do it.

Tarver: Absolutely.

Weber: Here it is. Here’s the message from Julia Nye from New Hampshire.

Julia Nye: Hi Eric and Anthony, this is Julia from New Hampshire. I am calling in response to the question posed by Erin Tarver regarding sports in college. I played sports in college, and enjoyed, and still do enjoy being a sports fan. As a feminist though, I’ve always struggled with the reality that society is pumping a lot of money in to watching grown men play sports. I was surprised that Doctor Tarver concluded that there was some good to be found in sports fandom. I appreciated her efforts to hold on to the possibility, that it could be good, but you never addressed the problems that sports create.

Among other things, they perpetuate the need to have an “other” to be against. And they perpetuate the patriarchal values of competitions, and the zero sum notions of living. That some of us deserve to be the best. For an example of what life would look like without sports, I would point to a story I heard about a school in Texas who abandoned sports. Either by choice or by budget. And surprise, students interest in academics and community went way up.

So, also I would be interested in hearing someone talk about the value, or lack thereof of sports competition to creating a good life. While I recognize physical activity in group or alone is beneficial, should it be done where there is a winner or a loser? Thanks for all you do, and I love the show. Bye.

Weber: Well let me start by saying thank you so much for such an awesome message, Julia.

Cashio: Yeah thanks, Julia, that was fantastic.

Weber: So those were some rich thoughts.

Tarver: Yeah. So, I absolutely love this question so I’m really grateful to Julia for asking it. When I first started writing about sports, this is something that I struggled with. Because I’m a feminist, and very often, when we think about competition and defeating our opponents, and we even use this language of beating our opponents, which seems violent and destructive in ways that bring to mind war and this sort of thing. So I understand that concern. So I worried as a feminist, should I be interested in competition, period? Shouldn’t I be more hopeful about things that are collaborative rather than competitive?

And I struggled with this because not only am I sports fan, but if I’m being honest, I’m pretty competitive as a person about sports and also in other areas of my life. So I suppose the caricature, if I can put it that way, the caricature of feminists who sit around in a sort of kumbaya circle was something that I struggled to get myself excited about. Despite a decent amount of effort in that direction.

So, I want to deal with this particular question about competition and athletic competition specifically. So I want to make three basic points. One, is sort of quasi-Hegelian and a little bit-

Weber: Uh oh, what’s that?

Tarver: I know.

Cashio: That’s quasi-Hegelian…

Tarver: Yeah, quasi. More honestly, interested in the feminist philosophy versus Simone de Beauvoir’s appropriation of Hegel. And so that part is going to be a little abstract but it’s going to quickly move into some more concrete stuff.

Weber: You’re going to make it plain for us, I’m sure. I’m not worried.

Tarver: So, one sort of abstract point, one more concrete point that I’m going to talk about, specifically the philosophy of sport. And then my third point is going to be more explicitly feminist. So that’s where I’m going.

Weber: Okay.

Cashio: Excellent, hit us up.

Tarver: Okay. So first of all, I would say to the point about, we could call othering, basically the setting up of an us-them dichotomy. So, I think that Julia is concerned that one of the negative things that can come from the emphasis on sports and sports fandom is the idea that it sets up this sort of “us versus them” sort of antagonism way of looking at the world.

So to that point, I would say, I am broadly speaking in agreement with this point that the German Philosopher Hegel makes when he says basically, that we as human beings become self conscious, that is we understand ourselves as an I, only in relation to other people.

So, this position is taken up by lots of philosophers who followed him, including, as I mentioned, the French feminist, Simone de Beauvoir. But basically, what we’re saying here is that I don’t get to know myself in the full sense, as an individual without differentiating myself from that which is not me.

Cashio: Right.

Weber: Right.

Tarver: So, there’s no sense to an “I” or even a “we”, without a “you” or without a “them”. So it turns out, even though Hegel is ridiculously abstract and difficult to read, that this is basically borne out by empirical studies of developmental psychology. So as children grow, a major part of their becoming self-conscious, developing self-consciousness, is differentiating themselves. Both from their surroundings, from their parents, from others around them.

So basically, what I would say to the general point about us and them, I think that we always develop more complex and robust understandings of selfhood by becoming conscious of other forms of belonging and exclusion. So, what I mean by that is that there is this real sense in which what we could call othering, or the setup of the “us and them” is at the heart of what it is to be a human consciousness.

Tarver: Now some people I think, will hear this and think, “Wait. Wait, wait, wait I thought we were like … We’re against exclusion, right? We should do something to change this. We should be interested in including and not excluding.”

Weber: Yeah.

Tarver: That’s what feminists are up to right? We’re trying to be cultivating inclusive communities not exclusive ones.

Cashio: Right. Back to our, kumbaya circle, is that what you called it?

Tarver: Right. Yeah. But I think that this is actually a mistake. I think that in addition to ignoring some basic facts about human consciousness, I would say that this view of things tends to erroneously reduce all forms of differentiation into what we could call like “invidious discrimination”, or to that which is harmful or degrading. So the mere fact that I say, “I’m me and you are not me.” That in itself is not necessarily denigrating of that other, right?

Tarver: So, to try to explain this a little bit more robustly, I guess, I want to think about the way the feminist Simone de Beauvoir talks about this when she discusses Hegel. So basically, what Beauvoir ends up arguing in her book is that human self-consciousness isn’t satisfied, doesn’t become all it can be, essentially, by just any form of self-other distinction.

Weber: Which book are we talking about?

Tarver: The Second Sex.

Weber: The Second Sex. Thank you.

Tarver: Yes. Simone Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. So, but what’s to say that human beings aren’t fulfilled when we have any old form of self-other distinction. So what we need, ultimately is not just an “other” that’s outside of ourselves, but recognition from that other. And here she’s partly following Hegel. In other words, what I need to experience myself as fully human is that there is someone out there who sees me as such. Who recognizes me as a full human being with my own desires and projects and possibilities and actions on the world that are outside of their control, right?

So, we need this recognition from others, and also they need it from us. So we become dependent on one another in a kind of reciprocal relationship, even if it at times looks like that’s antagonistic.

Weber: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right.

Tarver: So Beauvoir in The Second Sex, what she ends up arguing, or one of the primary ways that Beauvoir argues against the subordination of women under patriarchy, is to say that what patriarchy does is it constantly diminishes women to the status of an object. So the title of the book is “The Second Sex”, what she means by it is to say that women, by being described as this secondary sex in relation to men, means that we will always be other, without that reciprocal relationship. So it diminishes women’s capacity to understand ourselves as full selves, and at the same time, Beauvoir wants to argue, this is harmful to men too. Because what it results in is this situation where men, in their relationships with women, don’t get that full human self-consciousness that they could have … that both of us could have, right? Insofar as women are being set up as unworthy givers of that recognition that we all crave.

Cashio: They deprive themselves of possible relationship.

Tarver: Exactly.

Cashio: It’s… in a sense, that’s good.

Tarver: So basically, human beings need an other, but we need an other that’s worthy of being recognized by. And so, if I can go from there, this is what brings me to competition in fact.

Cashio: Okay I was going to ask. Alright.

Tarver: I know, I know. So philosophers of sport have tons of stuff to say about what makes a competition good, right? But I think actually the most important thing, when we’re talking about quality competition, is actually derived from this Hegelian or Beauvoirian point, if I can put it that way. So competition is only desirable when we think our competitor is worth defeating.

Cashio: Aha.

Tarver: So typical adults don’t get excited when they beat their six year old in a foot race, right?

Weber: That exactly the … the example that came to mind for me.

Tarver: Yeah. So we respect our competitors by giving them our all. By finding them worthy of our efforts. So even though there’s this antagonistic relationship, insofar as we recognize that person as worthy of competing against, there’s a more collaborative and reciprocal relation than might initially appear. This, by the way I think, is why fans would say competition between top 10 teams and FCS teams … so like …

Weber: What does that stand for?

Tarver: Football Championship Series, I believe. So, the former D2. If we wanted to say it this way. So, like top 10 D1, division one teams. And when they play against these teams that are significantly less well-funded, and don’t have the kinds of caliber athletes that they have access to in these top 10 teams. When Alabama, the University of Alabama plays …

Cashio: Louisville, this was last Thursday, wasn’t it?

Tarver: I know, I was going to mention Louisville, but honestly people from Louisville get upset about that so …

Weber: I imagine.

Cashio: I’ve got a college here so …

Weber: Yore talking first to listeners from Kentucky.

Tarver: Yeah. So anyway, the reason that competition between top ten teams and these teams that they populate to fill their schedule with easy wins, fans often think that these source of victories ring hollow. And this is the reason. Because we want competition to be competition between people who are worthy competitors.

Cashio: And is this one of the reasons … I know we were just mentioning football, the championship game is so exciting, because they’re both supposedly worthy competitors. The best.

Tarver: Exactly. Exactly. I think one of the things that always drove me crazy as a sports fan is when I would hear other fans chant about our competitors. “Overrated!” And I was like, “No, no we should think that they are very highly rated, and in fact we have just defeated this very highly and rightly highly rated team. This means that our victory over them is more meaningful. Is worthwhile.” Right? So I think most sports fans when they’re being objective about it, they would say that the best games to watch are the ones between evenly matched teams. This is why at all levels of sport, we make distinctions between classes of competitors. This is why you don’t have older kids playing against younger kids and things like that. Because the competition would not be worthwhile.

Cashio: Right.

Tarver: So, the other thing I like to say about this goes back to the nature of game playing itself. So, this famous philosopher of play, Bernard Suits says that when we are playing a game, this is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. So whenever you play a game, you choose less efficient means of doing something in favor of being able to follow the rules of a particular game, right?

So, we agree to collectively abide by a given set of rules restricting our behavior. So when we play soccer for example, we agree that nobody is going to use their hands, and this is what it is to play the game of soccer, even though, of curse, it would be more efficient if we just picked up the ball and carried it down the field.

Weber: Right.

Tarver: So, basically what I would say-

Weber: Very important.

Tarver: Is games … games so even games with zero-sum outcomes, right? Where somebody’s going to win, and somebody’s going to lose. Games are fundamentally, and I would say foundationally cooperative enterprises. So this is why cheating is such a violation in the eyes of sports fans. This, also by the way is what I would say differentiates the competition of sport from something genuinely antagonistic like war. So at the end of the day, one of my main responses to the question … so like a feminist philosopher, Victoria Davion, she raises in this essay called, “Do good feminists compete?” I want to say, yes, absolutely. But the reason for this is, I think we need to rethink this dichotomy between competition and cooperation.

Now that doesn’t mean that all competitions are equal in their value, and some, of course, are deeply unhealthy. I would have real concerns about the way that contemporary sporting culture has tended to subordinate cooperation and rule following to a sort of “win at all costs”, or that contemporary sport culture sometimes gets involved in the denigration of our opponents. But this, I would say, is not an indictment of competition as such.

Additionally, I guess I want to say, along with many other philosophers of sport, I would add that not only do I not think that competition is intrinsically evil or bad, but that rather, I think it actually can be positively virtuous insofar as it tends to extend the possibility of human capacity. So, it’s when we compete against someone else that we’re able to reach new heights, right? That we’re able to do more than we thought we were capable of before. And we actually see this with athletes. So, with runners and this sort of thing, people who run by themselves all the time, they find that regularly when you run in a race you run faster than you would be able to if you were running on your own. Something about the human psyche, that when we get involved with one another, we tend to push ourselves.

Cashio: We push ourselves. That’s true.

Weber: Right.

Cashio: That’s my experience at least.

Tarver: So that’s why I would want to say that competition can actually be a good thing.

Weber: All right Erin, you said you had a third point for us, tell us what that is.

Tarver: Okay so the third point is the explicitly feminist one. So I want to resist a little bit the idea that the ideals of competition are necessarily masculine. So sometimes we talk about this in terms of … or Julia talked about this in terms of patriarchal values, right? So we’re going to do this athletic competition that there’s this sort of zero sum winners and losers and that sort of thing. So I say a lot more about this in the last chapter of my book, but I’ll just sort of give you my argument and outline here.

So, there’s a feminist thinker named Varda Burstyn who wrote this book called The Rites of Men. So R-I-T-E-S, rites of men, in which she basically argues that sports are ritual celebrations of masculinity. So when we go to a stadium and everybody is caught up in this, we’re involved in this sort of religious celebration of masculinity.

Weber: So just to clarify for our listeners, unlike rights that are like in the Bill of Rights, my freedom of speech, or rights like human rights, we’re talking about rites in the sense of performing rites, like a ceremony…

Tarver: Exactly. Like a religious ritual.

Weber: Perfect, thank you.

Tarver: So according to Burstyn, we should be concerned about sports because it involves this ritual celebration of masculinity. Now of course, one question you have to ask in response to this is going to be something like, “Well what do we think is going on in women’s athletics if that’s the case?” And the way that Burstyn and some other feminists have tried to deal with this point, is to make this argument essentially that these activities of athletic competition are fundamentally masculinist, regardless of who’s playing the game. So like for Burstyn, the increasing popularity of women’s basketball, this is not something to celebrate, but rather this is an instance of women being forced to adopt masculine values, or finally taking up masculine values whole hog. So instead of just men being the people who perform masculine values, the women do too and this is how we celebrate them.

So generally, I would like to reject this view, because ultimately, I think that it is question begging. That it assumes too much about what is masculine and what is feminine in the first place. And I think for this reason, I think it concedes way too much to anti-feminists in way that can actually be harmful to women or to other folks who are gender non-conforming. So what I would say is this, why should we think that athleticism, that competition, are gendered masculine? Why maintain that view in the face of actual women, actual feminist human beings who are engaged in athletic competition? So if we do that, we have two basic options for how we support that view, right?

Weber: Good question.

Tarver: We can say that there are these essences of masculinity and femininity which are universal and unchanging, so regardless of who does this thing it’s always masculine. I think that’s obviously false, given what social science has taught us in the way we observe shifts in gender roles over the past several hundred years. I would also say that it’s a view that has in fact, been actively harmful to women, insofar as it’s been sort of used by anti-feminists to justify forcing women to play particular roles, right? In the family, or in the workplace or otherwise.

Cashio: Right. Women are not supposed to be athletic and do these things, so your place is in the home. It’s playing into that. I Gotcha.

Tarver: Right. So, I think the practical implications of that view, that there are certain things that are masculine and certain things that are feminine, should make us super wary about accepting that view. I would not say itself is evidence against the view, of course. But it is a warning that we definitely should proceed with caution and apply pretty strict scrutiny to the evidence in favor of it. Which as I suggested, is probably not very good, the evidence.

So, that would be one way of dealing with this idea, the other, alternatively, we can sort of treat the masculine gendering of competitiveness as just empirically true in general terms. Meaning that based on observations of men and women, men tend to be more interested in competition than women do. And that’s fine actually, I think to a point. But what I would say is that nothing on its own follows from that point. Particularly as we start to see these trends shifting. Like it is just the case that, yeah okay maybe more men tend to be into competition than women do. But that doesn’t mean that this thing is masculine, as such.

I would say, more to the point, if we want to move from this general claim, general empirical claim, that women tend to do X and men tend to do Y, if we want to move from there to the point that X is feminine and Y is masculine, then we just won’t be able to account for women who do Y and men who do X without assuming the first thing, back to the first option that we said. That these things are gendered in particular ways, regardless of who does them.

I would say a much more feminist response, in my view, is the response that honors the possibility that we could change gender in ways that make it less oppressive. I would want to say that let’s celebrate the possibility that we can remake femininity to include competitiveness and strength. That we can remake masculinity to include cooperation and nurturing. That we can do things to ensure that in our academic institutions, we are giving voice and space and resources to a variety of ways of living and working together and not just the ones that we have typically understood as good, just because men do them.

Cashio: Very well put. I really like that. You know, I have a close friend of mine here, she’s the coach of the women’s lacrosse team, the UVYs and I guess they won the division championship, it was a big deal. Yeah she’s …

Tarver: Congratulations.

Cashio: She would be very upset to hear that women playing sports was not feminist. She’s very feminist. Yeah and it was … yeah so, pass this along. This is going to …

Weber: Well listen, thank you so much Erin, that was fantastic.

Cashio: That was super enlightening. Just all that from that … It was a great message from Julia too.

Tarver: It was a great message. Thanks for letting me respond to it. Thanks Julia for calling in.

Cashio: Yeah indeed, thanks Julia.

Weber: Thank you Julia. Indeed, that was really fun. We really appreciate your thoughts on all this.

Cashio: Well I hope everyone has enjoyed our Bread Crumb this time around.

Weber: Crumble crumble… Thank you. Remember everyone that you can call and leave a short recorded message with a question or a comment that we may be able to play on the show at 859-257-1849. That’s 859-257-1849. And you can also reach us on Twitter, Facebook, or email. All that information is available at philosophybakesbread.com

Cashio: And thank you for joining us again, Erin. Thanks again. That was a wonderful conversation.

Tarver: Thank you.

Cashio: This has been Anthony Cashio, Eric Weber and Dr. Erin Tarver with Philosophy Bakes Bread. Food for thought about life and leadership.

The Lexington SOPHIA Chapter is meeting on Tuesday, November 13th at 6pm at the Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library to talk about “The Ethics of Dentistry,” which was the subject of Episode 2 of Philosophy Bakes Bread with Dr. Bill Myers. Listen if you wish and can, but we will have an “Ethics of Dentistry” SOPHIA One-Sheet document ready for the event, which people can read at the meeting to be up to speed and on the same page. At the same time, for those of you with little time and a little more curiosity about what this is about, chapter members and leaders Derek Daskalakes and Erik Jarvis put together this little video to tell you about the event, only 1m23s:

What: Lexington SOPHIA Chapter Meeting on “The Ethics of Dentistry”

When: Tues, November 13 at 6pm

Where: Northside Branch of the Lexington Public Library

Join us! Here’s more info about the event, posted on our MeetUp.com page for the meeting. You can also join/follow our MeetUp.com group here, as well as on Facebook & on Twitter. And if you’re interested in becoming a member of the national Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA) organization, you join here.

Transcript

Introductions (EJ: Erik Jarvis; DD: Derek Daskalakes)

EJ:  We are members of the Lexington chapter of the Society of Philosophers in America

DD: We want to invite you Tuesday Nov 13 at 6pm to Northside branch of the Lexington public library, where we will be talking about the ethics of dentistry?

EJ: Why Dentistry?

DD: Well Erik, we’re not just talking about dentistry. We’re talking about the fact that some professionals take advantage of us. Some don’t, but in Dentistry, they’re committed to not commenting on each other’s work.

EJ: If professionals won’t comment on another’s work, how can an individual protect themselves when someone has done you wrong?

DD: We’re going to ask all sorts of questions concerning work and obligations. Questions like…

EJ: What is the difference between a job, like waiting tables and a profession, like being a doctor or lawyer?

DD: if you get an opinion from your dentist, mechanic, or lawyer, should you trust it?

EJ: should professionals be held to a higher standard?

DD: What are the ethics that guide your work?

EJ: We want to know how you would answer these questions and other important queries. Join us at our next meeting on Tuesday November 13th at 6pm at the Northside branch of the Lexington Public Library where we will be talking about the Ethics of Dentistry.

We are releasing this 69th episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast a little early, as there are a few spots left to join a philosophical canoe trip that Eric Thomas Weber and Anthony Cashio will be holding with Alejandro Strong of Apeiron Expeditions. We’ll be talking about John Lachs’s 1998 book, In Love with Life, so we invited John back on the show to talk about his book, and to give people a preview of what we’ll be talking about. John has written two new chapters for an extended edition of the book, which we ask him about in this episode. To learn more about the trip planned for July 29^th through August 1^st, visit the Trip Catalog on Apeiron Expeditions’ web site.

Dr. Lachs was our guest in Episode 5 of the show, back in February of 2017, when we asked him about his more recent book, Stoic Pragmatism. is the author of numerous books, and is Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA), of which Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production. In addition to talking with John about his book, we first ask him about SOPHIA and the history of the philosophical profession, which motivated the founding of the organization.

Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

(1 hr 6 mins)

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Notes

1. About the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA), including its history.
2. Apeiron Expeditions and the Philosophy Bakes Bread trip on a river in Maine, July 29th – August 1^st.
3. Andrew David Irvine, “Principia Mathematica,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2015, on Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, Principia Mathematica: Volume One.
4. Geoff Sayre-McCord, “Metaethics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2012.
5. John Lachs, In Love with Life (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1998).

You Tell Me!

For our future “You Tell Me!” segments, John posed the following question in this episode:

“Do you find it difficult to engage in an activity for its own sake?”

Let us know what you think! Via Twitter, Facebook, Email, or by commenting here below.

Transcript    

Printable transcript in Adobe PDF.

Transcribed by Maggie W. of Rev.com, June 21, 2018.

For those interested, here’s how to cite this transcript or episode for academic or professional purposes (for pagination, see the printable, Adobe PDF version):

Weber, Eric Thomas, Anthony Cashio, and John Lachs, “Loving Life,” Philosophy Bakes Bread, Episode 69, Transcribed by Maggie W. of Rev.com, WRFL Lexington 88.1 FM, Lexington, KY, May 7, 2018.

Radio announcer: This podcast is brought to you by WRFL, Radio Free Lexington. Find us online at wrfl.fm. Catch us on your FM radio while you’re in Central Kentucky at 88.1 FM all the way to the left. Thank you for listening, and please be sure to subscribe.

Weber:  Hey, everybody. I am very pleased to be here to play for you a new episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread. It’s been a while, I know. If you haven’t caught the show in a while, the issue is that my wife and I have a new baby boy, and he came a little early. It’s been a lot of work. He’s doing well, thank you. Mama’s doing well.

Weber:  I’m very pleased to say that I’ve got an episode for you today, Episode #69, with Dr. John Lachs, who’s been on the show before on Episode 5. He’s back with us today in this episode to talk about his book, In Love with Life, which by no coincidence is the text that Anthony and I are going to be talking about on a canoe trip we’re organizing with Alejandro Strong of Apeiron Expeditions down a river in Maine at the end of July, beginning of August. It’s going to be awesome. If you want to learn more about that, head to apeironexpeditions.com and click on Trip Catalog. That’s apeironexpeditions.com.

Weber:  Thanks, everybody, for listening to Philosophy Bakes Bread, Episode #69 with Dr. John Lachs, and the episode is titled Loving Life. I hope you enjoy.

Cashio:  Hello, everyone, and welcome to Philosophy Bakes Bread, food for thought about life and leadership.

Weber:  Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America, aka SOPHIA. I’m Dr. Eric Thomas Weber.

Cashio:  And I’m Dr. Anthony Cashio. A famous phrase says that philosophy bakes no bread, that it’s not practical. Can you believe that? We in SOPHIA and on this show aim to correct that misperception.

Weber:  Philosophy Bakes Bread airs on WRFL Lexington, 88.1 FM, and is distributed as a podcast next. Listeners can find us online at philosophybakesbread.com, and we hope you’ll reach out to us on Twitter @PhilosophyBB, on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread, or by email at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com.

Cashio:  Last but not least, you can leave us a short, recorded message with a question or a comment or even bountiful praise if you feel so inclined. It makes Eric’s day, I can tell you guys that.

Weber:  I just love it.

Cashio:  It does. Loves it. We’ll be able to play it on the show, and you can reach us at 859-257-1849. That’s 859-257-1849. On today’s show we’re very excited to talk once again with Dr. John Lachs of Vanderbilt University. Welcome back to the show, John. We’re really glad you could join us.

Lachs:  It’s a pleasure. It’s a pleasure.

Weber:  Wonderful.

Cashio:  Yeah. Thanks for joining us. John was last on the show in Episode 5 way back in February 2017 when we talked about Stoic Pragmatism, also a great episode. Before he published that book, the book being Stoic Pragmatism, though, he wrote and published a great and short book titled In Love with Life. He has written a few new chapters for an updated version of the book, and we’re going to talk today with John about that earlier and soon to be extended book in this episode we’re calling Loving Life.

Weber:  That’s right. In the late 1990s and early 2000s I had the great honor to take a number of courses with John at Vanderbilt, and he was the most genuinely happy person I’d ever seen. He taught about things that I found most compelling and fascinating, which is how we came to know each other. When I graduated from college, furthermore, I longed to be thinking more about the philosophy that I studied with John, so I went and got my hands on each of his many books. The one that had the most profound impact on my life was this short and beautiful book, In Love with Life.

Weber:  As you may have heard, Anthony and I will be talking about the book with a small group of canoers, a group that our listeners can still join if you’re interested, this late July and early August on a beautiful river trip in Maine. To learn more about that, head over to apeironexpeditions.com. That’s A-P-E-I-R-O-N, apeironexpeditions.com, and click on Trip Catalog to learn more.

Cashio:  It’s going to be a fantastic trip, a whole lot of fun. We’re going to canoe around Maine, and we’re going to talk about this book, In Love with Life. To give people a taste of that topic and to tell about what to expect in the new extended version of In Love with Life, we thought we’d invite John on to talk about the book. Now, as you, John, and regular listeners know, we typically start with the first segment called Know Thyself.

Weber:  Know Thyself.

Cashio:  We’ve done that in Episode 5 of the show, so go back, listeners, and check that out if you’re like, who is this mysterious John, John Lachs. When we have return guests on, we generally change things up in some way. We can ask people about some other aspect of themselves or about new, fun questions about philosophy and so on, but in this case we have a very special opportunity.

Weber:  That’s right. Listeners may remember that Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America, SOPHIA, which I talked a little bit about in Episode 44 of the show when Anthony interviewed me about philosophy leadership and SOPHIA. Go check out that episode.

Weber:  But on top of being an author, a professor and a mentor to many philosophers, John is also the chairman of SOPHIA’s Board of Trustees, so given that, we thought it might be a great idea to invite John in this first segment to tell people about what SOPHIA is, where it came from, what it was trying to do early on, and what it’s all about today as you see it, John. How does that sound? Is that a reasonable way to introduce you and this episode, John? That sound good?

Lachs:  Sure. It’s a good way. It’s a good way to talk about what philosophy is all about for a couple hours, maybe three.

Weber:  All right.

Lachs:  But we won’t do that. I promise not to do that. Philosophy went through difficult years, difficult decades back in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s. The problem was that the field had become unintelligible toward many people. Philosophy was something that philosophers did, and they did it within the university. The more technical it was, the better it suited everybody, everybody who was a philosopher. The result was that philosophy books became rare. They were not printed because they would be sure losers.

Lachs:  Unfortunately, this went on for so long, and it made it so difficult for us in the university trying to teach and show the relevance of philosophy to life. It became so difficult that it put us on the defensive. It looked like we weren’t precise. It looked like we were not exactly doing what physicists do. The ideal always was look at the results that physicists are able to reach, and philosophers need to be as precise as that and reach results like that. Well, that’s a hopeless task because that’s not what philosophy is all about.

Lachs:  What philosophy is all about is really its ancient purpose, and that is to help people lead better lives. It’s not a question of knock-down, drag out truths that we come up with. It’s not a matter of what we can prove in any important sense of proof. It has to do with what, if you apply it to your life, it does for you. It’s a matter of doing. That was the struggle inside the American Philosophical Association back all the way to 1978. The trouble with the association was that it became an organ of humiliation, because somebody would-

Cashio:  How do you mean?

Lachs:  Well, let me tell you. Somebody would go ahead and read a paper, and it was always reading a paper and full of logical symbols. An audience would go after him or her and literally savage the person so as to make the individual look like a fool, because this was wrong and that was wrong and this wasn’t precise enough and that wasn’t right.

Weber:  Fun environment, very encouraging.

Lachs:  It was really awful. I have seen people, whose name I won’t mention, they’re distinguished philosophers, leave after their paper and the discussion in tears because they couldn’t defend themselves. With sharp critics, it’s impossible to defend yourself. Everything is up for grabs. That was essentially the starting point of SOPHIA.

Weber:  John, what kinds of things did people argue about back then? What were the topics of papers that people would give? If you say they were not so obviously applicable to real life, what did people talk about if they were being philosophical in those ways?

Lachs:  The attempt was made to state everything in the language of Principia Mathematica. This, we don’t even know what it is anymore. This is a very elaborate set of volumes actually where everything is propositional, so everything begins will all or some, or some not and all not or none. Everything has to be stated in a proper way that would be acceptable in the language of Principia Mathematica.

Weber:  So that’s what you mean by mathematica. It’s got this all or some categorical statement like all mammals are animals and Socrates is a man, or some of these or those. Is that what you’re talking about? That’s the sense in which it’s mathematical?

Lachs:  That’s right. It was an attempt to ground mathematics by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, two unquestionably excellent philosophers, but they were mathematicians also. They wanted to be sure that there’s a philosophical foundation to mathematics and in the process made available to philosophers a language, and not a very happy language, in which everything had to be, first of all, squeezed into knowledge or something like knowledge. More than that, everything had to be presented in an acceptable fashion. If your language was not translatable into Principia Mathematica sort of language, the likelihood was, or at least the supposition was, that it really doesn’t say anything.

Weber:  So, part of this mathematical language as you framed it is in a sense trying to make philosophy more like physics, more like these other quantitative fields, because people were emphasizing that way of knowing. Is that correct?

Lachs:  First of all, people were emphasizing knowing, and secondly, as you say, the knowing had to take a certain form.

Cashio:  It didn’t count as knowing if it wasn’t in that form.

Lachs:  It was meaningless unless it could be stated in that language.

Weber:  So, what was the effect of using this kind of approach to philosophy?

Lachs:  Crushing boredom.

Weber:  Why is that?

Lachs:  Crushing boredom, believe me. I lived through it. I was trained an analytic philosopher, and there were things I was interested in. I was interested in what makes life better, whether there’s a god, questions like that. Those questions were not exactly welcomed.

Weber:  In this milieu, SOPHIA seemed necessary?

Lachs:  SOPHIA was a salvation because it enabled people to feel justified in dealing with the kinds of philosophical topics in the language that they preferred. That meant that precision was not the highest. That meant that people had to actually say things that were interesting and important.

Weber:  What makes that difference?

Lachs:  Well, first of all, the subject matter was different. It was not the formalization of metaethics. It was not the formalization of Kant’s first critique.

Weber:  And what’s metaethics?

Lachs:  Metaethics is not thinking about any ethical problem but thinking about how one thinks about ethical problems.

Cashio:  That is very meta.

Weber:  That’s pretty meta.

Lachs:  It can be interesting. I remember as a young graduate student it was fascinating to me what the nature of a fact was. We argued in graduate school about what is a fact. Our teacher said, “You don’t need to know any facts. The important thing is to understand what a fact is if there were such things.”

Cashio:  Oh, my goodness. Well, philosophy’s kind of changed its trajectory quite a bit, at least in some parts, since then.

Lachs:  Part of the reason why it’s changed is because there was a reaction, and part of the reaction and close to the heart of the reaction was this organization, SOPHIA, the Society of Philosophers in America, and the heaviest emphasis is on philosophers, not people who are logic choppers, not people who had abandoned the ultimate purpose of philosophy but people who actually settled in and were willing to say things that were significant to other people. Those are the people, some of them were philosophers, but many of them were just ordinary people who wanted to appropriate the good things out of philosophy. A lot of people went back to Plato, because there are all kinds of good things in Plato.

Cashio:  Always good things in Plato.

Lachs:  Always good stuff. Then after a while there was a serious effort made to do what we could to enlighten and contribute to fields of endeavor other than philosophy and kind of an outreach program. The most important outreach was medical ethics, where there were so many difficult moral problems, not metaethical problems but actual immediate moral problems as to what you do with people who had been in a coma for 30 years. By the way, I love to quote the fact that the world’s record of being in a coma is 36 years.

Weber:  Wow.

Lachs:  That is a woman who got hit in the head by an intruder. You ask yourself, what is it that this person is experiencing? Maybe nothing, and what is it that we can do to decide whether to allow her to die or not? Now, those are serious questions, and they’re not statable in metaethical form, or they’re not statable in Principia Mathematica form.

Weber:  And those are examples of the kinds of things that SOHPIA has been focused upon?

Lachs:  Exactly.

Weber:  Very nice. Well, unfortunately, we’re out of time for this segment, but we can return to these subjects in one of the three following segments that we have with John. Thank you, everybody, for listening to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Eric Weber. My co-host is Anthony Cashio, and we’ll be right back.

Cashio:  Hey, everybody. Eric and I are joining up with Alejandro Strong and Apeiron Expeditions to lead a philosophical canoe trip on the waterways of Maine from July 29th through August 1st of 2018.

Weber:  After comfortable canoeing easy enough for any fitness level, we’ll enjoy tasty meals and some tasty philosophy talking about John Lachs’s book, In Love with Life.

Cashio:  Guys, if you enjoy the podcast, I think you’re going to love this trip. Eric, how can people sign up?

Weber:  Head over to Apeiron Expeditions’ website and click on Trip Catalog.

Cashio:  That’s apeironexpeditions.com.

Weber:  Also, Apeiron has a really cool pay-what-you-will pricing system, so definitely check it out.

Cashio:  It’s really cool and innovative. I like it. Join us and have a good time thinking about the good life.

Cashio:  Welcome back, everyone, to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber here talking today with Dr. John Lachs about loving life. In this second segment we’ll ask John about his book, In Love with Life, as it first appeared in its initial release in 1998. Then in the next segment we’ll ask John about what more he thought an updated version of the book should cover. I should point out the subtitle for the book In Love with Life is Reflections on the Joy of Living and Why We Hate to Die. That’s a very nice subtitle. I like it.

Cashio:  Let’s start with the big picture, John. What motivated you to write In Love with Life? What purpose did you mean to serve in writing it?

Lachs:  The same that we talked about earlier. The idea is to open up the possibility of philosophical reflection on important topics. I remember driving the Pennsylvania turnpike, and it occurred to me as that turnpike turns and twists and beautiful, beautiful land, it occurred to me how wonderful life was and started thinking about it, started taking notes, and eventually produced this book. The point of the book is to celebrate life, but more than celebrate life, enable people to have their attention called to the fact that life is wonderful. It’s not that we don’t know it, but there’s so much stress and tension, so much unhappiness, so many problems in the world that we forget, and we shouldn’t.

Lachs:  I have an interesting experience that I want to report. There’s an azalea bush that grows in the back of my house. It’s a beautiful fuchsia color. It’s a huge bush. I have a guy who comes and cuts the grass. He cuts the grass, then I said, “I hope you didn’t cut that bush.” He said, “What bush?”

Weber:  Uh-oh.

Lachs:  I said, “The bush that’s living pink color.” He said, “I didn’t see anything like that.”

Cashio:  Oh no.

Lachs:  He didn’t see it. He cut around it. This is almost impossible to believe, but it’s true. He actually didn’t see it. Well, that’s how we are with much of life.

Cashio:  He really cut around it and didn’t pay attention? That’s impressive.

Lachs:  He never went back. When I said, “Well, it’s in the back of the house.” He said, “Okay.” Just, okay.

Weber:  So at least he didn’t cut it down, but your point is that he didn’t even recognize it. He didn’t take a minute to appreciate it.

Lachs:  He didn’t appreciate it. He didn’t recognize it. He actually, I believe, actually did not see it.

Weber:  Wow.

Lachs:  I don’t know how it’s possible for a person not to see something that’s in plain view, but it obviously is possible because he did it. This is, I’d say, a late-30s kind of guy, very decent, very good, not very perceptive, and not very perceptive is what we are with respect to life.

Lachs:  How wonderful is it not to be pain? You only know that when you’re in pain, and you wish to God that you weren’t. It might sound crazy, but isn’t it reason to celebrate that we’re not in pain, that we’re able to do things? I think that’s absolutely wonderful. Now, the objection is that this is simpleminded. Sure, I like it.

Weber:  You like what?

Lachs:  The simplemindedness of it.

Cashio:  So you accept the objection and say, yes, you’re right, it is simpleminded.

Lachs:  Yes. Simpleminded people are on the whole happier than complex-minded persons. At least in my experience, the more complex your life, the more complex your mind, the less likely it is that you’re going to be able to satisfy it.

Weber:  Interesting. Well, John, I want to come back to this point, but in the background of what we’re hearing, I’m noticing a point about appreciating beauty, what we philosophers call aesthetic appreciation, right?

Lachs:  Right.

Weber:  We mentioned in Episode 5 of this show that you won an award as a young man for poetry, and you had your poetry published in the book The Tides of Time. My question for you about that and about In Love with Life is basically, what role did poetry play, if any, in your thinking, in your delivery of In Love with Life or both, and to challenge that, didn’t Plato call for banning the poets from society? Don’t poets create misleading shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave?

Lachs:  That’s what he thought. This is a complicated matter. It needn’t be complicated, but it is. In a time that I was writing poetry, I was using poetry to enable me to write the wrongs that were happening, to make it possible for me to objectify my pain. As Goethe used to say, you’ve got to objectify your pain. That was not the kind of aesthetic appreciation that I managed to or fell into later on in life.

Lachs:  Let me try to explain what I have in mind. When I’m able to write about something, it makes me feel better. If I understand something that I didn’t understand before, it’s a banner day. I used poetry for that purpose, the poetry that came out in the book form. That’s not the aesthetic appreciation that I came to love.

Lachs:  I’ll tell you what the aesthetic appreciation is. I get up in the morning. I live on a hill, and I go immediately to the windows and look over what’s happening in the faraway mountains. What’s happening in the mountains might be that there’s fog enshrouding them. I live with two cats, and the two cats and I stand there in awe. Then I go about my life. It’s the immediacy of the aesthetic experience. It’s the immediate beauty of it that appeals to me.

Weber:  That’s beautiful.

Lachs:  I’m lucky enough not to be in position where I have to objectify my pain, because I don’t live in pain.

Cashio:  John, I have a question, and it has to do with the subtitle of your book. In Love with Life, it’s almost a response to a question. If you get to read the book, for the listeners, he starts out with this, that the question is why do we hate to die?

Lachs:  Because we love to do the things that we love to do.

Cashio:  You think it’s as simple as that?

Lachs:  It’s as simple as that, in my opinion. There is obviously in some people some worry about what’s on the other side, if there is another side, but I think we love what we do, absolutely love what we do. Even people who hate doing things that they have to do, even those people still somehow, strangely enough, come to love their lives.

Lachs:  I have another experience that was meaningful to me. I used to take my laundry down when I taught at William & Mary, laundry down to the laundry people on campus. They were there 50 weeks of the year, and for 50 weeks of the year they complained as to how terrible things were. The pay wasn’t enough, that it was too hot or it was too cold; the manager was a nasty so-and-so and so on, all the usual complaints that we all get. Well, for two weeks they went off during the summer, and when they came back they were regaling each other with stories about how they missed their work, how they missed the people that they worked with. I couldn’t believe it, but they were very serious about it.

Lachs:  What is this all about? We hate things, and then we love them. You love them especially after you lose them. They were anxious to come back. Some of them came back after 10 days instead of two weeks.

Cashio:  They wouldn’t take the whole time?

Lachs:  They didn’t take the whole time. They were used to doing things, the predictability of it, the value of it, the pride that goes into doing something right. It was a wonderful lesson to me.

Weber:  John, in what you’ve said already, one point you’ve raised that’s an important theme of the book has to do with not being wrapped in worry about the future or feeling guilty about the past but being able to appreciate the present, which may be the problem for this lawnmower man who didn’t notice your bush. I wanted to highlight that as one of the themes that I’ve always enjoyed thinking about from the book.

Weber:  There’s another very important theme though. We’ve got a few minutes left in this segment. I want to make sure we ask you about it. Both you and Aristotle highlight the importance of activity in happiness. For those who aren’t initiated, what do you mean by activity, and what insights do you have, if any, about how to choose the activities that are most likely to make us happy?

Lachs:  That’s a difficult set of questions, but I can talk to you about activity. Aristotle drew this remarkable and wonderful distinction between things that we do for their own sake and things that we do for the sake of something else. For instance, I might go walking just because I like walking. On the other hand, I might go walking because my car broke down and I got to get home.

Weber:  I like the former a whole lot better than the latter.

Lachs:  Exactly, exactly. Much of our existence consists of just that kind of process of having to do this in order to get that, having to do the kinds of things that we wouldn’t normally be caught dead doing, but you got to do it because that’s your purpose. That is what you have to do in order to eat. That’s what you have to do in order to whatever, fill in the blank.

Lachs:  That distinction has always stayed with me from Aristotle. I love the idea of doing things for their own sake, absolutely wonderful thing. It’s a version of freedom, and I love freedom, where you’re not told what to do. Nobody meddles with you in your life. You simply go ahead and do what you want to do and enjoy it.

Lachs:  Just one more thought about it, the wonderful thing about it is it makes you lose your sense of time. Eternity is not everlasting long life. Eternity is the enjoyment of the moment, because there is no time when you enjoy that moment.

Cashio:  Oh, wow. Wow.

Weber:  I’ve thought about that insight from Aristotle many times for a long time, and I’ve never quite seen it that way. Interesting.

Lachs:  It’s one of my favorite more contemporary philosophers, not exactly contemporary, is George Santayana, who was, although Spanish in origin, lived in this country. This is what he thinks life is all about. This is what he thinks spirituality is about.

Weber:  Is about getting lost in the …

Lachs:  In the moment.

Weber:  In the moment.

Cashio:  Getting lost in the moment and finding eternity here in the present.

Weber:  That’s pretty beautiful. Well, I think that’s a fantastic place to say that, unfortunately, we have to stop and take a short break, but we’re going to come back with two more segments with John Lachs. This is Eric Weber. My co-host is Anthony Cashio. Thank you, everyone, for listening to Philosophy Bakes Bread. We’ll be right back.

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Cashio:  Welcome back, everyone, to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber talking today with John Lachs about loving life. In the last segment we asked John about his book In Love with Life and some of the major themes in it as it originally appeared in 1998. We have a few more questions for John about that, but in this segment we also want to ask him about the new chapters that he has written for an extended version of the book.

Weber:  John, what Anthony and I thought we’d do is to just give you an opportunity at the beginning of this segment to tell us the big picture kind of major points in terms of takeaways that are insights about how to live a happy life given the challenges you note in the book. Let’s start there and then let that transition into, well, what did you think the 1998 book still needed such that you added new chapters recently? Why don’t we start there, so what do you think are major insights that are important for us to consider in order to have a happy life as you describe them in In Love with Life in the first version?

Lachs:  Well, I think for one, we’ve got to admit the fact that we love life. We obfuscate, beat about the bush. We love to complain. We absolutely love to complain.

Cashio:  It’s fun. It’s my favorite part of winter is complaining about the weather.

Lachs:  It’s essentially a way of shifting the burden of misery on somebody else. I know a number of people who are big complainers, and they’re so happy to be able to complain. Well, if that’s what it takes, that’s fine, but it’s better to be more positive, to say it’s going to work out. I was just discussing this with somebody yesterday, is it an annoying thing to say that it’ll work out? The function of this idea of it’ll work out, the function of it is not to make a prediction. The function of it is to give encouragement. Because if it seems like it’s going to work out, then I better get shoulder to wheel and help it come into existence.

Lachs:  I like the idea of taking on a task and helping reality to improve itself, but the best way to do that is simply to be energetic and to admit the fact that you like what you’re doing. A lot of people don’t like what they’re doing, or so they say, but in reality if they’re denied whatever their work is, you can’t do it anymore, they hate it.

Cashio:  You think this applies for everyone? I mean, there’s some people who just genuinely don’t like their job or parts of their work they do. I’ve got a pile of papers here that need to be graded. It wouldn’t hurt to pass that off.

Lachs:  Don’t pass it this way.

Cashio:  So, you wouldn’t take it either.

Lachs:  No. Nothing applies to everyone. I’ve come to believe that. Human nature is multiple. There’s so many ways in which we approach reality. There’s so many ways in which we suffer. There’s so many ways in which we take delight, but suffering we don’t mind sharing with others. Delight we don’t even share with ourselves.

Cashio:  Wow.

Weber:  That’s interesting. I think one way of saying what you’re saying is that if we’re really going to appreciate life, we have to realize that we do, that you can’t appreciate it if you don’t recognize that it ought to be appreciated. Is that part of the message?

Lachs:  It’s full of azalea bushes, and we don’t see them.

Weber:  Well-

Lachs:  You have to go out of your way not to see them, but boy, we know how to do it.

Weber:  Yup. Well, John, so you’ve written two new chapters for the book. One is called Ambush, and the other one is called Quality of Life. What did you think was needed for the earlier version of the book, and what were you aiming to do with these new chapters?

Lachs:  Well, the difficulty with ambush is, as everything that I do in philosophy, it grows out of a personal experience. This is part of the chapter. A woman who’s a dear friend of ours somehow comes down with breast cancer, and she struggles to understand it. She wants to know why herself, not somebody else. It’s not enough for her to hear from me that there’s no answer to that as to why you, because the same question arises if it’s anybody else. It’s anybody else, it’s still why that person. There’s just absolutely nothing that I can tell her, absolutely nothing I can tell you that’s enlightening, absolutely nothing that would put you in a position of understanding why you’ve been selected out for this.

Lachs:  Eventually, she dies and what remains is the enigma of life. You go to the cemetery and you see people 35 years old interred. At the same time, you see people 90 years old who are frisky as all get out. There’s basically, when you’re ambushed by life or you’re ambushed by death actually, it’s something that just happens. It’s awful to admit that it just happens, but that’s the truth of it. We don’t have an insight into the plan, if there is a plan. That’s one chapter, the Ambush chapter.

Lachs:  The second chapter is Quality of Life, which is really happiness. I’ve been struggling with the questions about what it is that makes people happy and what it takes. That’s my latest version of that.

Weber:  I see.

Lachs:  If we have time, I can summarize that very quickly.

Cashio:  We have time.

Weber:  Sure, we do.

Cashio:  I was about to ask you to do just that. What is going on with quality of life?

Lachs:  Let’s call it quality of life or call it happiness. The upshot of it is this. We are happy when we’re successful in doing things and we have the prospect of more things like that that we’ll be able to do. It’s all doing. It’s all doing, and we do all kinds of things, and we love doing those things. When there’s the power, the freedom to do, the power to achieve, it’s just delicious.

Cashio:  And so, you think that the key, at least to a good quality of life, that happiness, is to have that freedom and that power?

Lachs:  Yup.

Cashio:  All together. As we lose some of those freedoms, do you think the quality of life goes away, that we can lose happiness, or do we need to change and adapt in different ways? For instance, my grandmother is older now, and she can’t drive as much as she used to. That is a major loss of freedom and power in her life. She still seems quite happy.

Lachs:  Sometimes I think the reason people who are restricted in their freedom are happy is because they tend to forget what it was like when they had full power and full freedom. We focus upon the things that we want to focus on, and it’s done subconsciously so many things that we do. A friend of mine said the following. He’s getting old. He’s having trouble buttoning buttons, and he’s reached a stage that he doesn’t really remember the time when he did it easily. He puts up with it. It’s one of those things.

Weber:  Is it a good thing that we adapt in that way to forget easier times and greater powers?

Lachs:  If you don’t forget, you’ll be suffering.

Cashio:  So, forgetting in this case is a great gift.

Lachs:  It is. It’s bemoaning youth, and I would say if you’re going to be happy as an older person, don’t bemoan your youth because it’s not going to come back. Adjust, be sensible, go after achievable things like small victories.

Lachs:  My mother before she died would have hopes. My students have hopes for 30, 40, 50 years of life, all kinds of purposes, all kinds of good things. Okay, my mother had small hopes. Hopes come in sizes. Her hopes were it’s not going to hurt this morning. “I love the coffee,” she said. If we keep in mind that there are sizes of hopes, life becomes easier.

Weber:  Interesting, and thus, quality of life better.

Lachs:  Much better.

Weber:  So, John, I’ve had the honor to have the chance to read your two new chapters. There’s something about the title of the chapter called Ambush which I really loved, and it brought to mind for me the warning that we get from the Stoic, Seneca, that the world is a storm, and it’s coming for you. In that sense, if you’re not prepared, which he tells you to do, it’ll seem like you’ve been ambushed, but we choose to be ambushed when we don’t prepare for our difficulties in life. Is that a right way to see your intentions with that title, or is there a different aim for the chapter than something like Seneca’s warning?

Lachs:  Well, Seneca’s warning is part of the story. I love the Stoics, as you know, but I don’t like being stoic or stoical all my life. I subscribe to the idea of making life better through a number of ways. If you make life better, you may have to be ready for the storm that’ll take you away, but you don’t have to remember that all the time. I like the idea of being able to successfully defeat some of the problems of life. I absolutely love that.

Weber:  Yeah. That presents an interesting difference between you and the Stoics that I hadn’t thought of before. Because the Stoics might always be telling you to prepare for the future, prepare for the storm, but if you only ever worry about the future, you won’t notice the azaleas.

Lachs:  Exactly.

Cashio:  May cut down the azaleas. They’re not practical. May plant something else.

Lachs:  Yeah.

Cashio:  I like that.

Lachs:  No. I was very happy that he didn’t see it but didn’t cut it.

Weber:  Right, the azalea bush.

Lachs:  Yeah. Because some idiot might come along and not see it and simply roll over it, cut it down.

Weber:  Right.

Cashio:  In Episode 5 of the show, John, we talked about Stoic Pragmatism, so this seems like a nice sort of segue into talking about this. In that episode and in that book, you present an outlook about how to balance the optimism of what we call the pragmatist outlook in everyday activities with the accepting stoic attitude in the big picture about the fact that our efforts will always be limited by things beyond our control. Someone we don’t know might just come cut down our azalea bush.

Cashio:  In Love with Life was published long before Stoic Pragmatism. Would you say there’s early influences or threads of Stoic Pragmatism in this earlier book?

Lachs:  It’s really interesting, the Stoic Pragmatism book begins with the recognition that I’ve been a stoic pragmatist all my life, but I never focused on it as an attitude, as something that I want to foster. It just was the way I comported myself. It was the way that I saw that life was made better. I was always in the business of trying to make life better, but I’m also in the business of not fighting when the odds are overwhelming.

Weber:  Very interesting. Well, that I think is a terrific place to say that we need to take a break yet again before one last segment with John about loving life. This is Eric Weber and Anthony Cashio talking with Dr. John Lachs of Vanderbilt University, and you’ve been listening to Philosophy Bakes Bread. Thanks, everybody, for listening, and we’ll be right back.

Cashio:  Welcome back, everyone, to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber, and today we’ve been having a really wonderful and enlightening conversation with John Lachs about loving life. In the last two segments we talked to John about his book, In Love with Life. In this last segment we’re going to end with a big picture question for John, and we’re going to break some bread. We’re going to have some hopefully lighthearted moment of levity, revel in that, and then we’ll end with a question for our listeners to think about as we go about our day’s business.

Weber:  Indeed. John, there’s a common outlook in the United States that people should keep a positive attitude. Some authors like Barbara Ehrenreich in her book Bright-Sided have argued that we take that attitude way too far and that people are worse off for it. When we ask each other, “How you doing,” the answer is supposed to be, “Fine,” or “Well, thanks.” If we launch into our difficulties, people who asked us about how we’re doing typically react in a way that lets us know they weren’t really interested in hearing about our woes.

Weber:  One potential criticism of your outlook would be to say that it’s too focused on happiness and positivity. Maybe we’re being blissfully ignorant about our problems, as we noted earlier, problems in the world when we follow your advice. What would you say to that line of criticism?

Lachs:  Well, life is full of difficulties. From time to time you’re able to be victorious, from time to time for a time. I think that supporting each other in that quest is good, is productive. Nobody likes people and the effect of those people on us who say, when you ask them, how are you, you say, “Oh, terrible, absolutely. My kidneys hurt, and my nose is twitching.” Who wants to deal with people like that? Now, you also don’t want to deal with people who are hail-fellow-well-met, pound you on the back and says, “All right, you’re a good guy. Everything is okay.”

Lachs:  I think a measure, suitable measure, is so much better than overdoing it. I don’t think we overdo too much in terms of seeking out the bit of happiness that we can seek and get in life. When I say there’s a bit of happiness, I mean there’s so many things that are tragic. There’s so many things that are difficult. There’s so many reasons in our society for tension and misery.

Lachs:  My daughter has just been helping a friend of hers in an effort to make it possible for her to be a judge. The tension that goes into such a set of activities is really astonishing. I didn’t realize what it took for somebody, one person to take on all the problems of people whom they want to put on you because you’re going to be a judge. It’s astonishing to me how much stress was involved in this activity that lasted two months.

Lachs:  I would say it’s not so much that we make ourselves miserable by taking on a happy attitude. I think that we make ourselves happy by taking on an attitude that is worth taking, that has some sunshine in it; that’s what I’m trying to say, some sunshine. I’m a great friend of sun.

Weber:  This goes along with what you said earlier about how in a sense you’re not predicting that we ought to feel happy or that our lives our easy but saying that when you affirm life, you do those things that are more in line with making yourself happy. Is that right?

Lachs:  Exactly, exactly.

Cashio:  I really, really like this point. In our first segment of almost every show we have a segment called Know Thyself. Because it’s a really important process of philosophy to become more self-aware, and as you become more self-aware, you can live a better life and act upon it. Self-deception is a big difficulty. We lie to ourselves about the problems we have. We lie to ourselves about that.

Cashio:  I think really, like what you’re pointing out here, is that one of the lies that we tell to ourselves is that we actually like life. If we stop deceiving ourselves by the sort of joy of life and the times we’re happy and stop lying to ourselves about that, we can bring a little sunshine in.

Lachs:  Yeah. That’s exactly right.

Cashio:  All right. I like that.

Weber:  Very nice.

Cashio:  Usually, when you hear people talk about self-deception, you’re like, well, you need to be more honest with yourself about your problems, but sometimes you also need to be more honest with yourselves about the good, the bounties of life. I think that’s a really important lesson.

Lachs:  Yeah. There’s much to be grateful for. I enjoy the folks who started up the idea of positive psychology. You can be too positive maybe, I don’t know, but certainly some positivity actually is enabling. It puts you in a position where you can reach into a pool of energy because you believe.

Weber:  So in a sense, there’s a middle ground between being a total naysayer and being this person who sees the sunny side in everything and ignores our problems in life. There’s a middle ground, and we should fall in the middle, maybe leaning towards the joyous side.

Lachs:  Well put. I like leaning toward the joyous side.

Cashio:  That’s good. All right. Well, John, this is the part of the show where we usually ask our guest if they think philosophy bakes bread. It is actually the name of the show after all, but we’ve already asked you this. We had you on for Episode 5, and we already asked you if you think philosophy bakes bread. You gave a wonderfully beautiful answer, so this time maybe we’re going to ask you for maybe an example of bread baking as it’s related to your book.

Cashio:  Is there maybe a part of your book or something about your book or what you’re arguing in it that you think is a great example of philosophy baking bread?

Lachs:  Well, the best place to start baking bread is in your own oven. A year and a half ago my wife died. We lived together very happily for 49 years, very happily. It was a reasonable question for me as to what attitude to take to this. First, one says denial. She is going to come back. She is not going to be permanently absent. Then after a while you realize that that’s bull. That’s not adult thinking.

Lachs:  So you put yourself in a situation where you act like the person who you claim to be. I claim to be a pragmatist. I claim to be a stoic. As a stoic pragmatist, I have to take a certain attitude to the kind of momentous loss that I experienced. If I were only a stoic, I would probably commit suicide. They were big on that.

Weber:  Wow.

Lachs:  If I’m only a pragmatist, then I would be a bloody fool smiling along and saying, “Oh, we’ll rejoin each other somewhere.” Where? You have to face up to the facts and make the best of it. My point is only you have to enact what you believe, and I’m working on it.

Weber:  But it’s hard, isn’t it? Honestly, John, I had the chance to teach stoicism this semester, and there’s a very difficult passage in Epictetus, in his handbook, where he says, “Not only do we need to accept things, the real stoic is someone who wants things to happen as they happen.” As I’ve said before, I had a daughter who suffered a stroke on her first day of life. The idea of wanting that to have happened is absurd.

Lachs:  Of course.

Weber:  But I try to justify it by saying, well, being able to accept, but that’s not the same thing as wanting it, right?

Lachs:  I think you just had the exactly right distinction to make.

Weber:  That’s good.

Lachs:  It’s one thing for us to want something, it’s another thing to acquiesce in it. My stoicism is only acquiescence. When it’s clear that life has all the weapons and you don’t have any defense, as when your loved one dies, is it not stoical to say, “I have to make the best of it because this is how life fell out for us”? That’s stoic. I think the idea of wanting it to have happened this way is overdoing it. It’s even foolish.

Weber:  Yeah. So maybe that was just a passage of overstatement for Epictetus.

Lachs:  Epictetus loves to overstate.

Weber:  Thank you.

Cashio:  It’s kind of his mark, isn’t it?

Weber:  I feel like so much fun to read.

Lachs:  Well, he had to overstate. He was a slave, and his life was pretty miserable. He also had all kinds of physical ailments. He was a clubfoot, and he talked to himself, and he said, “This is exactly the way I want.” My story about that, let me take a second.

Weber: Sure.

Lachs: My story about that is that I wake up in the middle of the night, which is very rare, and I’m hungry. So I go to the refrigerator and look for some apple pie. Well, there’s no apple pie, so okay, I keep on looking because now I have the idea of maybe some muffins. There are no muffins, but I find a half-eaten slice of bread, and I say to myself, “That’s what I wanted all along.” There’s an element of madness here, because you want something that, left alone, you wouldn’t have wanted to save your life. I don’t want an old piece of bread, half hard.

Cashio: Half pieces of bread are not the same thing as a tasty, warm apple pie.

Weber: No.

Lachs: But Epictetus would say, “Hey, this is the good stuff,” and I don’t see it.

Weber: Well, good, because that passage always bothered me. Well, actually, that’s a pretty good example of a philosofunny story or joke actually, and that’s what we were going to transition to, John. As you know, in every episode we want to make sure people see the serious side of philosophy as well as the lighter side, so we have this bit we call Philosofunnies.

Weber: Say philosofunnies.

Sam: Philosofunnies.

Weber: Say Philosofunnies.

Sam: Philosofunnies.

Weber: That was Sam at three years old, and it’s amazing that was a year ago now. We want to invite you if you have a funny story or a joke to tell or, honestly, I think that was a pretty good one, John, but do you have a funny joke or a story to tell us about philosophy or about your book or about anything?

Lachs: No, not right now, but I know you do.

Weber: We do, actually. I like your story about Epictetus and the piece of bread. I think that works for me, but as usual, Anthony and I do gather some.

Cashio: Yes, we have. This is our attempt to, how do we put it, lean towards the good.

Weber: Yeah, and lean toward the joy, joyful and sunshine.

Cashio: All right. Do you want to go first, Eric, or you want me to go?

Weber: Sure. My tennis opponent was not happy with my serve. He kept returning it. It’s not great, but it’s okay.

Lachs: That’s good. I like that.

Cashio: This one comes from someone named Max Coffin. We’ll give a citation here. I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. By then, it was just too late.

Weber: Ouch. Zing.

Cashio: I love my wife.

Weber: Caveat.

Lachs: Don’t go home tonight.

Weber: Right. Be careful. Here’s a line from Elbert Hubbard. He said, “Do not take life too seriously, you’ll never get out of it alive.”

Lachs: I heard that one.

Cashio: It’s a great one. Well, guys, my boss told me to have a good day, so I got up and went home.

Weber: Oh, boy.

Cashio: Got a rim shot on that one. All right, well, last but not least, we want to take advantage of the fact that today we have our powerful social media. We can connect to people and communicate with people, and this works even for programs like radio shows. We want to invite our listeners to send us their thoughts about big questions that we’ve raised on the show.

Weber: That’s right. Given that, John, we’d love to hear your thoughts about what question we should ask everyone for the segments that we call You Tell Me! Have you got a question to pose for our listeners?

Lachs: My questions is, do you find it difficult to engage in activity and not in process? What I mean by activity, as you’ll recall, is doing something for its own sake, standing there and being able to enjoy the moment, absorbed in the moment. Is that difficult? Some friends of mine told me it was not only difficult but impossible for them.

Weber: Wow. That’s kind of sad.

Lachs: I don’t find it impossible. Yeah. I don’t find it impossible at all. All you got to do is suppress your purposes or focus your purpose in what you’re doing.

Weber: Anyone, I think, who plays a musical instrument has a sense of being able to do something for its own sake or could anyway. I don’t play guitar for the increase in mathematical aptitude you gain from playing music. That’s a good question. Is it hard to do things for their own sake? Very interesting.

Lachs: I think for some people how are totally in love with their purposes, it’s very difficult. Maybe the guy who cut my grass was so intent on cutting grass and getting out of there that he just didn’t see the color, didn’t see the bush.

Weber: I would think cutting the lawn for its own sake, you would appreciate the garden and the environment.

Lachs: Yeah, but I think he was cutting it for the money.

Weber: Right.

Cashio: You get caught up. So, you’re trying to get to that yard, so then you can get to the next yard. The more yards you can do in a day, the more money you make.

Weber: Right.

Lachs: Next time I’ll remind him that he is to appreciate the bush, and that should be enough payment.

Cashio: Part of your job.

Weber: Smell the flowers.

Cashio: Smell the flowers.

Lachs: That should be enough payment.

Cashio: That should be enough payment. Tell us how that goes.

Weber: Yeah. How will that go over?

Cashio: All right. Well, Eric, let’s plug our trip one more time.

Weber: All right.

Cashio: I hope you guys have enjoyed this conversation with John Lachs about In Love with Life. Just a reminder that Eric and I will be talking about the book with a small group of canoers in Maine this summer. It’s an easy trip. It’s a wonderful trip, and if you’ve enjoyed what we’ve been talking about so far, we’ll be definitely diving in deeper into some of the themes and attitudes. It will be late July, early August, and for more information head onto apeironexpeditions.com. That’s apeironexpeditions.com. You can click on Trip Catalog there to find a lot more about how to join me and Eric, and I guess John will be there in spirit.

Weber: In spirit.

Cashio: He is definitely our spirit guide on this trip.

Weber: That’s right.

Lachs: Yeah.

Weber: Yeah. I hope you all will join us. It’s going to be a lot of fun, and don’t worry, it doesn’t take a significant fitness level. You know that because I’m going to be on the trip.

Cashio: We’ll be leaning towards the good the whole time we’re there, a lot of sunshine.

Weber: That’s right, leaning towards joy.

Cashio: Towards joy. I love it. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening to Philosophy Bakes Bread. Your hosts, Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber, are really grateful to have been joined by John Lachs. Thank you, John. This has been a really wonderful conversation.

Weber: Thank you, John.

Cashio: I think you might be one of the most quotable people that we ever have on here. I’ve got quotes all written down from things you said, so thank you for joining us.

Lachs: Been a pleasure.

Cashio: We hope you listeners will also join us again soon. Consider sending your thoughts about anything you’ve heard today, that you’d like to hear about in the future or about the specific questions we’ve raised for you.

Weber: Yeah. Is it hard to do something for its own sake? I love that question. Well, everybody, catch us on Twitter, Facebook or on our website at philosophybakesbread.com, where we’ve got transcripts for this show thanks to Drake Boling and Steven Barrera, students at the University of Kentucky.

Cashio: Thank you, Steven. Thank you, Drake.

Weber: Also, if you want to support the show and to be more involved in the work of the Society of Philosophers of America, head to philosophersinamerica.com and consider joining the society.

Cashio: If you’re enjoying the show, and we hope that you are, maybe take a second to review us on iTunes or wherever you’re finding this show. A good review will help us reach more people, bake more bread, and spread the word about SOPHIA-

Weber: That’s right.

Cashio: … and about the show. You can of course email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com, and you can also call us and leave a short, recorded message with a question or a comment we may be able to play on the show at 859-257-1849. That’s 859-257-1849. Join us again next time on Philosophy Bakes Bread, food for thought about life and leadership.

Radio announcer: Hi there. If you’re enjoying this podcast from WRFL Lexington, you may enjoy our live radio stream at http://wrfl.fm and of course via radio at 88.1 FM in the Central Kentucky area. We have a wide variety of programs you’re sure to enjoy. Just go to http://wrfl.fm/schedule and see what programs appeal most to you. Thanks again for listening to this podcast from WRFL Lexington.

In this fifty-third episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, we interview Dr. Arnold Farr about “Kneeling and Civil Protest,” concerning the conflicts that have arisen in the last few months about football star Colin Kaepernick and many others who followed his example.

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Arnold is a professor of philosophy at The University of Kentucky. He authored Critical Theory and Democratic Vision: Herbert Marcuse and Recent Liberation Philosophies. He is currently writing a new book on The New White Supremacy. He is focusing on race and African Philosophy. In addition to these works, Arnold has written numerous articles and book chapters on subjects like German idealism, Marxism, critical theory, and philosophy of race. In addition to his writings, Arnold is the founder of the International Herbert Marcuse Society.

Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

(1 hr 4 mins)

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Notes

1. John Branch, “The Awakening of Colin Kaepernick,” The New York Times, September 7, 2017.
2. The Editors of GQ, “Colin Kaepernick Is GQ‘s 2017 Citizen of the Year,” and “Colin Kaepernick Will Not Be Silenced,” GQ, November 13, 2017.
3. The International Herbert Marcuse Society.

You Tell Me!

For our future “You Tell Me!” segments, Arnold posed the following question in this episode:

“What is democracy and how can we achieve it?”

Let us know what you think! Via Twitter, Facebook, Email, or by commenting here below.

Transcript

Transcript in Adobe PDF.

Transcript by Drake Boling, February 12, 2018.

For those interested, here’s how to cite this transcript or episode for academic or professional purposes (for pagination, see the printable, Adobe PDF version of this transcript):

Weber, Eric Thomas, Anthony Cashio, and Arnold Farr, “Kneeling and Civil Protest,” Philosophy Bakes Bread, Episode 53, Transcribed by Drake Boling, WRFL Lexington 88.1 FM, Lexington, KY, November 6, 2017.

[Intro music]

Announcer: This podcast is brought to you by WRFL: Radio Free Lexington. Find us online at wrfl.fm. Catch us on your FM radio while you’re in central Kentucky at 88.1 FM, all the way to the left. Thank you for listening, and please be sure to subscribe.

[Theme music]

Dr. Cashio: Hello and welcome to Philosophy Bakes Bread: food for thought about life and leadership.

Weber: Philosophy Bakes Bread is a product of the Society of Philosophers in America, AKA SOPHIA.  I’m Dr. Eric Thomas Weber.

Cashio: And I am Dr. Anthony Cashio. A famous phrase says that philosophy bakes no bread, that it’s not practical. We in SOPHIA, and on this show, aim to correct that misperception.

Dr. Weber: Philosophy Bakes Bread airs on WRFL Lexington 88.1 FM, and is distributed as a podcast next. Listeners can find us online at philosophybakesbread.com We hope you’ll reach out to us on Twitter @PhilosophyBB, on Facebook @Philosophy Bakes Bread, or by email at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com

Dr. Cashio: Last but not least, you can leave us a short, recorded message with a question, or a comment, or the some bountiful praise that Eric thrives on. He loves it. We may be able to play it on the show at 859-257-1849. That’s 859-257-1849. On today’s show, we are very excited to be joined by Arnold Farr. Thanks for joining us this afternoon Arnold. How are you doing today?

Farr: You’re welcome. I’m doing very well. Thank you for inviting me.

Weber: Our pleasure.

Cashio: It really is. Today we are going to talk about kneeling and civil protest, for his insight on the recent kneeling protests in the NFL. I don’t know the proper title to give the kerfuffle, and what philosophy has to say about the relevant conflicts of such protests.

Weber: Kneeling and civil protest.

Cashio: I didn’t know if the news had a tagline for it. Kneeling-gate or something.

Weber: Not to my knowledge. Arnold is a professor of philosophy at the University of Kentucky. He authored Critical Theory and Democratic Vision: Herbert Marcuse and Recent Liberation Philosophies. He is currently writing a new book on the new white supremacy. He is focusing on race and African philosophy. In addition to these works, Arnold has written numerous articles and book chapters on subjects like German idealism, Marxism, Critical Theory, and philosophy of race. In addition to his writings, Arnold is the founder of the international Herbert Marcuse society. Very cool. Busy guy.

Cashio: Sounds busy. And You’re in Kentucky, a local boy for the listeners on the radio. Arnold, we begin our show with an opening segment we like to call “Know Thyself”. We invite you for a few minutes to tell us about yourself. We want to see if you know thyself. A little test right off the bat. Tell us about your background, what about your background shaped who you are. How and why? We want to get to know you, Arnold Farr. Tell us about yourself.

Farr: Here’s a fraction of my story. I am from the south. I was raised in Union, South Carolina. I was raised in a religious family, Christian. We spent a lot of time in the church. It was in the church where I learned to sing with my brothers and sing with the choir and that kind of thing. I still try to sing a bit to this day. I went to college on a wrestling scholarship and my first major was theater. I was walking in the footsteps of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was a bodybuilder and did other kinds of sports. I was an actor. All kinds of crazy things were going on then. Then I changed course in college. To make a long story short, I ended up majoring in religion, philosophy and psychology. After college I went to seminary for two years, and interestingly, my first semester in seminary, I became an atheist. I’m an agnostic now, but that didn’t go over so well in seminary.

Cashio: It tends to not.

Farr: A lot of sermons from seminary are officials in my family. In terms of what led me to where I am now, a couple things: one is, when I was studying theology in college and seminary, I gravitated towards various interesting German theologians who were steeped in the German idealist tradition. They taught me to see things in a very different way. At the same time, I began reading Erich Fromm, who at one point was a member of the Frankfurt school. I read some Freud and Marx in college and fell in love with that stuff. Something about the kind of theology and kind of philosophy I was reading felt liberating. I literally felt my mind expanding, and I fell in love with that. It‘s almost like catching a cold. I caught it and still have it to this day.

Weber: Philosophy as an illness.

Farr: As I studied theology, I became aware and was sensitive to various contradictions in my own religious tradition, which led me to think more seriously about various contradictions in our society at large. I guess it was time to come to terms with various contradictions that I experienced. It put me on the critical path, and led me to where I am now. To this day, my way of putting things is still struggling to resolve certain social contradictions.

Weber: Interesting. I want to come back to this notion of contradictions, but the first thing I want to ask you about is this experience that you had when you were in seminary, you were in a place learning to be a leader in the religious realm, and that is when you came to agnostic and atheistic beliefs? What prompted that? Did you have a particular experience? Some insight? What led to that transformation?

Farr: It may have been certain insights, but it didn’t seem to happen all at once. It seemed to develop over a period of time. Even right before I left college. I’m beginning to think differently, and I am beginning to see that religion as I knew it was somewhat oppressive for me. I couldn’t really make sense of a lot I had been taught anymore. An interesting thing though, is that I had to go through this moment of removing myself from it and thinking fresh. The position I have now, I said I am an agnostic now, I take religion seriously, and people who are religious seriously, but at the same time what bothers me is religious conviction can be so easily manipulated.

I have a friend who teaches at DePaul University, he teaches political science, and he says that you can’t understand American politics without understanding religion. His research project is looking at the two of those and how they intersect with each other. When Marx said religion is opiate for the masses, my position is that it doesn’t have to be, but unfortunately it does become such depending on the kind of society that you are in, and the kind of society that we have. Religion does become something of an opiate because it is used to manipulate people.

Weber: That’s very interesting. I have long been concerned and worried about the fact that in my study of Mississippi, the interesting thing to me, is that when there are so many divides of rich and poor, white and black and so forth, there is a unifying feature of so many people living in that state, which is that they all say they believe in these things in common. The most important beliefs. Theoretically, that could bring them all together. “We are all children of God,” they might even all say. Yet, as MLK would say, the most segregated hour in America is on Sunday morning.

Farr: It should be something that unifies, but…

Weber: But it can be just as easily a tool of division, as you are pointing out.

Farr: Absolutely.

Cashio: I grew up in Alabama, and I always said, “You want to understand Alabama, you have to understand that politics is done from the pulpit.” The preacher’s pulpit.

Weber: You mentioned a little bit about how you got into philosophy. Marx and Freud, those are atheist thinkers. Were they some of the thinkers who pulled you over, so to speak? Or did they come later in your transformation?

Farr: They may be responsible for pulling me over to some extent. I read both of them when I started in college prior to going to seminary. In seminary I continued to read them. We can lay some blame on them.

Cashio: I want to know what led you to leave your Schwarzenegger aspirations behind. Was it a class you took, where you were like, “This is far more interesting?”

Weber: You are both named Arnold.

Farr: Probably two or three things. Some of it is because of a class I took. My first philosophy class, which blew me away. This is where I literally felt my mind expanding. I was really impressed and wanted to pursue that. Two other things. One is that bodybuilders have to follow a strict diet. I have trouble with that. (laughter).

Weber: You are not alone there.

Farr: I love good food. I competed for a while, but the competition I was in, it was really hard to get well-defined and also along with that, as I was saying for bodybuilding, I was invited to be a professional wrestler once, and I turned that down for two reasons. One is that by that time I had already gotten involved in philosophy and theology, and also because when it comes to stunts in the ring, I didn’t trust other people to throw me and catch me properly. I didn’t want to break my neck.

Weber: We like to ask each guest. What was it about philosophy? You mentioned this liberating experience. Maybe that’s what it was. We like to ask. What attracted you to philosophy? What made you love it? Was it this liberating feeling, or was it something else? How did that come about? Was there something in particular that you read that was liberating? What hooked you for philosophy?

Farr: I think it was the liberating feeling, but I can say a little more about how that came about. We are all from the deep south, and you get conditioned to think within certain boxes. The first class that I took, the textbook was an anthology with readings from the entire history of western philosophy from Greek to medieval period, through modern and contemporary. We had a wide range of stuff. I remember specifically, we read some stuff from William James, I don’t remember exactly what from James now, but I do remember William James stood out, among the others. Reading through that text and learning that I could think outside of the box that I was conditioned to live in, that there were many other ways of thinking and approaching life, intellectually meant a lot to me and inspired me. I found that I couldn’t go back to my mental framework prior to having taken that class.

Cashio: It’s hard to do. It’s hard to go back, right? Like you said, it’s a sickness and you can’t get cured.

Farr: Almost like coming out of Plato’s cave. Once you come out of the cave, you don’t really want to go back.

Cashio: You left your acting aspirations behind, you came out of the cave. I like that a lot. You got the philosophy bug. When someone asks you, “What is it you do? You’re doing philosophy? What is it?” What is philosophy? What do you tell them? What we’re asking is, what is philosophy to you?

Farr: That’s a hard question to answer, but I have to answer it a lot. One of the definitions of philosophy that I really like is Merleau-Ponty, who said philosophy is a form of interrogation. I try to explain to people that on a day-to-day basis, we take various things for granted. Things appear to us to be true because they are familiar to us. Certain ideas, or beliefs, or belief systems appear to be true because they are familiar. With philosophy, it teaches you to read between the lines, it teaches you how to interrogate and it teaches you how to dig beneath the surface, beneath that which is immediate, and discover what’s really going on. I try to give people examples in terms of using philosophy on a daily basis, in everyday life. We get snowed a lot by political figures and people in the media because we haven’t cultivated that capacity to read between the lines or to interrogate and figure out what’s really going on, how the language is working to maintain a particular idea or system or practice. I won’t say that they get it when I put it that way, but maybe half a light goes on.

Cashio: A dim bulb.

Farr: Yeah, flickering.

Weber: This is nice. I like the extent to which you are emphasizing the fact that philosophy is something connected with our everyday lives, which is one of the premises or one of the companion value belief that inspires the show Philosophy Bakes Bread. I’m delighted to hear that. Everybody, thank you so much for listening to this first segment of Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Eric Weber. My co-host is Anthony Cashio. We have been delighted to be talking with Dr. Arnold Farr of the University of Kentucky. We’ll come back after a short break.

Cashio: Welcome back to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber here talking today with Arnold Farr on kneeling and civil protest. In this segment, first let’s talk about recent NFL protests, and what they are protesting in America. We’re going to talk about that in this segment, and then in the next segment we’ll ask you about philosophy and what you think it could teach us about the protests and relevant concerns. Arnold, you gave us this beautiful definition drawing from Merleau-Ponty about philosophy as interrogation. We’re going to put that to the test. We’re going to do some philosophy about American events. It’ll be fun. A lot of our listeners are probably familiar with the NFL protests, generally speaking. Maybe you could help us review what has been going on with them. What are the specifics about what happened, and the story of what was going on? We can use that as a springboard into the conversation.

Farr: The movement started, the kneeling during the national anthem, more than a year ago, maybe almost 15 months ago now, when Colin Kaepernick first sat on the bench during the national anthem, and was pulled aside by a former military person. Interestingly enough, the military person, I forgot his name, understood the nature of the protest and said it would be more respectful to kneel as opposed to sitting on the bench. Kaepernick took his advice and began to kneel, then a few others joined him. Now we see that he doesn’t have a job. No team in the NFL will hire him, and other NFL players have joined the protest.

One of the things that is most problematic is that at this moment, it seems the most people have forgotten what the initial protest is about, and they made it about something else. They have shifted the narrative away from the real issue, to make it about disrespecting the flag or disrespecting the military, or the country. It has nothing to do with that. They are protesting the way in which a particular group of people, let’s say black people, are grossly disrespected in the United States. Disrespected in terms of, I could give you a long list, but primarily the protest began as a protest against police brutality. The news has been replete over the years with incidents where on their own, black people were killed or brutalized by policemen, and quite often policemen would get off the hook. There was George Zimmerman and the killing of Trayvon Martin. George Zimmerman wasn’t a policeman, he was a citizen who killed an unarmed black youth.

There are cases we have heard about, but there are many incidents that we don’t hear about. If you live in the black community, especially in larger cities like Chicago or New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, where I lived for 12 years, you know that these are only a few cases of many that we ever hear about. This practice has been around ever since blacks have been in this country. It never stopped. If you are my age and you are from the south, you know stories you have heard from your grandparents and parents about a relative who went to the grocery store one day and ended up missing. It’s the Emmett Till story all over again. Almost every black family of a particular generation from the south has some kind of Emmett Till story that didn’t make the news.

There’s an experience of black skin or dark skin being a mark of disrespect. This is when a protest begins. It’s kind of hard to expect people who, if they are not liable to be victimized, then they have cousins or relatives or friends that look like them, who are not going to be victimized by policemen, law, or a citizen like Zimmerman, and the perpetrator gets off the hook…if you aren’t living under those kinds of conditions, it would be morally irresponsible to not do whatever you can in your power to bring attention to those kinds of conditions. This is precisely what the NFL players are doing. It’s not about them.

I have to remind people because I have seen so many people, whether it be on the news or via social media, criticize NFL players and call them spoiled brats because, “What’s wrong with them? They are making 11 million dollars a year. They are living a nice…what are they protesting?” It’s not about them. It’s about others. It’s about others. All of those guys, they might be making the millions, but they have got some cousins in the hood somewhere who aren’t making those millions, and they are living in the projects somewhere. It’s about that cousin over there of mine that hasn’t done anything wrong but might be shot down at any moment. Actually, their protest is based on altruism. I went on a long diatribe. I always…

Weber: Oh no, that’s good. We asked you to paint a picture for us of how you’re seeing what’s been going on, and people have been attending primarily to the act of protest, and not the motivation of protest. I think that’s clear. Next question does a little bit of that. Not to ignore the cause, but you brought it up. Something about kneeling as something recommended by a veteran.  The question is, in your eyes, why kneeling? What is it about that? What is connoted by kneeling versus maybe sitting that makes a difference that would convince Kaepernick to do that instead of sitting?

Farr: Two things. One is that someone in this whole conversation some time back mentioned the way in which, say you were on the field playing football, and my son plays soccer so I see it all the time when he is out on the soccer field playing a game, someone gets hurt, they all take a knee. It’s out of respect for the fallen player. Take a knee until the player is up and able to go to the sidelines or whatever. This is a sign of respect and solidarity for the fallen player. Also I think that one of the arguments a soldier made is that soldiers often, and I can’t remember the context exactly when they kneel to show respect for their fallen peers in the military. There is sort of a history of kneeling to represent solidarity and respect for those who are injured or harmed, or who have fallen.

Weber: Nice point. Let’s not forget that Tim Tebow kneels. He’s not doing it to disrespect his religious beliefs, but the opposite. Kneeling is a sign of deference and love.

Farr: That’s an important move from this part.

Weber: I appreciate those additional thoughts about that. That’s really helpful.

Cashio: Why do you think the protests have angered so many people? It seems like such a small gesture. Just a kneeling, not really calling attention to yourself too much. There’s no shouting, there is no waving a flag. It’s a small, arguably respectful way of protesting, yet it has caused us vehement anger in certain parts of the country. What has triggered that so much?

Farr: That is a very good question. I have a lot to say about that, I’ll try to limit myself. A couple of things. The Black Lives Matter movement in this country, that movement grows out of the recognition by black people that the practices in America suggest that black lives do not matter. The attitude in America suggests that black lives do not matter. When blacks can be killed at random and there are no consequences, that is a statement that black lives do not matter. Since we are in a situation where black lives do not matter, for many Americans, it’s very easy to ignore blacks when they are trying to highlight or point out or call attention to their suffering.

Also, we have bought into a kind of patriotic narrative in this country that has become almost like a religion of sort. This has been a reification of the flag and the military and things like that. We bought into a kind of narrative that conditions us to not be able to see the suffering of others. There is this blind glorification of the flag and what it means and what it stands for. There is a disconnect between what the flag originally stands for and the social reality in which people live. It’s kind of difficult to claim that the flag represents freedom when quite a number of citizens in the US have never been free.

People have a gross misunderstanding of the very concept of freedom and what that means. Really, it’s interesting. People say this is a free country as if all of the individuals in the country are free. That’s not the case. They have confused freedom in terms of individuals being free and freedom in terms of being your own sovereign nation-state. When the United States won its independence from Britain in 1776, that didn’t mean…there were slaves then. Not all people were free. But the United States as a sovereign state was free. A free sovereign state with slaves inside. That narrative, and the misunderstanding of freedom, this narrative that you have to be patriotic at all costs, this willingness to look away from the suffering of fellow citizens, all of that is a part of the rejection of the protests. There may be more, but at least that much.

Cashio: I’m worried, and this is my own personal concern, but with the backlash against the protesters and the conversations about patriotism and the flag, that the protesters aren’t actually being heard.

Farr: I think that’s correct. This is what is so problematic. The protest itself is being silenced. In a lot of my work on race I talk about ways in which the black voice is always put under erasure. As soon as a black voice begins to speak, there are mechanisms in place to put it under erasure. What has happened is the protest began as an attempt to draw attention to unnecessary suffering that blacks endure. You get this particular narrative about black suffering. Then it gets covered over, put under erasure or silenced by another narrative—all of this disrespecting the flag or disrespecting the troops.

You switch narratives to avoid paying attention to the one you ought to be paying attention to. To pay attention to that first narrative means to really respond to the protests appropriately. That calls for radical social change. That’s what a lot of people aren’t willing to participate in. If we had them really engage in a moment of deep, deep self-reflection, people don’t want to do that because it is painful. One of these has to happen where you move from the position from oppressor to liberator. There is this necessary moment of radical deconstruction, deconstruction of the self. I was raised to be sexist and homophobic. In order to remedy that problem, I have got to engage in a process of radical self-deconstruction whereby i, like a snake shedding its skin, I shed or peel away like layers of an onion. I peel away those layers of sexism and homophobia. It’s not like there is nothing there. At the same as I’m deconstructing, I’m reconstructing. This transformative moment where you really have to become a new person. Marcuse uses the term ‘new sensibility’. He literally claims that for us to have a new emancipatory society, we have to become different people.

For me to be in solidarity with people who suffer, whatever social group, means I can’t be the same person that I was prior to entering solidarity with them. That is painful for a lot of people. This unraveling of the self, to put oneself in the place of solidarity with those who suffer. Some people stand to lose something. You stand to lose perhaps friends. You put yourself in a position to be ridiculed by members of your family who still hold onto certain prejudices or whatever. I have said this for years, that to really understand what is going on in our country, and how to properly deal with it, it doesn’t require a lot of intelligence. I’m a poor old grandson of sharecroppers from South Carolina. I’m not that smart. I just worked hard, but I’m not that smart.

Weber: I disagree with some of that assessment, but I get your point.

Farr: (laughter) It requires a courage. The most important ingredient is courage, and that’s where I think a lot of people are lacking.

Weber: I see a close connection between our first segment and now, which is this notion of coming out of Plato’s cave and you need a new sensibility. We have one sensibility inside the cave, where we can see in the darkness, but someone is flashing a light, trying to get us out of there from the brightness, and it’s irritating. Plato said they are going to want to kill you for trying to liberate them, right?

Farr: Watch your tongue My students [were talking] this morning about that.

Weber: People aren’t going to be grateful, but they need a new sensibility, and a new sight. Thank you so much everybody to listening to another segment of Philosophy Bakes Bread. We are talking with Dr. Arnold Farr. This is Eric Weber. My co-host is Anthony Cashio. We are going to come back after a short break to ask about what philosophy can teach us about the kneeling civil protests. We’ll be right back.

Cashio: Welcome back to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber talking this nice fall afternoon with Arnold Farr. We are talking about the kneeling that is going on in the NFL during the national anthem, and the kerfuffle that has followed from that. In the last segment we were getting more of the details about what was happening, and we had begun the process of radical self-deconstruction, beginning to think about what that might mean. In this segment we are going to do a little more of that, continue with our philosophical investigation, thinking about this. What does philosophy have to say about these protests, Arnold? You have hinted a few things, but you can be more explicit about it.

Farr: That’s an interesting question, it’s a very hard question. A couple of ways to approach it. One is that it depends on what kind of philosophy you are talking about. By and large, philosophy, the way that it has been done in the academy, almost has nothing to say because philosophers tend to extrapolate themselves from social reality and engage in abstract metaphysical kinds of questions, which there is nothing with that. The problem is when philosophers say that is the only way to do philosophy. In recent decades, there have been attempts to remedy that problem in philosophy by people from oppressed groups. I’m thinking about feminist philosophy, Africana philosophy, philosophy of race, even some native-American philosophy.

What philosophers forget, even thought philosophy requires a moment of abstraction, we don’t abstract from nowhere. We always abstract from a particular place. The kind of questions that we raise, the kind of questions that we take to be important are often features of that place from which we abstract, that social world in which we live, move and have our being. A couple of things I want to mention, in terms of working my way toward how philosophy can now say something about this issue, is that there has to be—another term by Marcuse—a great refusal. A great refusal by some of us who are philosophers, we have to refuse ourselves to be duped into thinking we have to do philosophy just like it has always been traditionally done, by those who are in a place of comfort.

I’ll give you two examples that have been very influential to me. She is not a philosopher, she is a sociologist, but still she is doing theory, is Patricia Hill-Collins, in a book from years ago, Black Feminist Thought. The introduction is beautiful. She talks in the introduction about how she is going to violate all of the rules of sociological research. She is writing about black women, and black women like the women she grew up with, her mother, her aunts, and black women in her neighborhood. She wants to do sociology from the perspective of those women and the way in which they are situated in our society. The way sociology is traditionally done would not allow her to raise some of the questions that she wants to raise. Another example is Charles Mills, who is a friend of mine. His book Blackness Visible is challenging the traditional ways we do philosophy and opening the door to doing what we call philosophy of race. He talks about the nature of philosophical questioning.

Most philosophers are raising questions from a place of comfort. He talks about how much ink has been spilled over whether or not other minds exist or other people…and he says that to raise a question like that you have to come from a place of privilege. If you are black, you can’t raise that kind of question. If you are black, you know that other people exist, because they have got their foot on your throat. The only meaningful question you can raise with someone’s foot on your throat is, “Why don’t you get your foot off my throat?” Philosophy begins with trying to figure out how to get this foot off your throat. That’s going to give birth to a very different kind of philosophy, yet it is philosophical, it is a form of interrogation. “Why is his foot on my throat? How do I get it off? What are the conditions that produce a situation where somebody can put his foot on my throat and think it’s okay?”

You often limited with the kind of interrogation. Another example too, is that there have been several volumes published over the years, and Charles talks about one of them, volumes that are supposed to be the discussions about the most important political movements of the 20^th century, and quite often the Civil Rights movement, a movement involved with blacks are not included. They are just excluded. There is a practice of exclusion in political science, in philosophy. The question is always: Who is being excluded? What’s being excluded? Why? That requires some type of philosophical investigation too, right? When you read anthologies of philosophy, and all of the authors look the same, that leads you to some kind of questioning, interrogation about why this is the case. The kind of questions they raise—even the talk of social contract theory, who is entering the contract? Who is left out of the contract? What are the conditions for including certain people in the contract and excluding others? At the same time having the audacity to talk about a general will.

Weber: That’s true. There is a nice book by Martha Nussbaum, On the Frontiers of Justice, where she highlights the fact that the notion of a social contract theory leaves out obviously people with cognitive impairments who can’t possibly negotiate and deliberate with you and talk with you about their circumstances. We totally leave that group of people out entirely.  Animals, the environment. Of course this has so many different implications. The social contract theory for our listeners, in a nutshell, what is social contract theory for listeners who haven’t heard of that term before?

Farr: There are several versions of it. The more popular ones are Rousseau, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes. The Hobbesian version might be the easiest to understand.  There are other twists on that. The Hobbesian version is that at some point human beings live in a state of nature, just like other animals out there living, and at this point there is no such thing as morality, no law, no rules. We are just animals in the state of nature. This state of nature, he calls it a state of war also. Even if we are not at war at the moment, there is always preparedness for war.

Cashio: Nasty, brutish, and short.

Farr: We imagine the state of nature as nasty, brutish, and short. In a state of nature, let’s imagine the three of us in the state of nature. Any one of us, one of us picks food to eat, we are hungry. The other comes along and hits him over the head and takes the fruit. The one who does the taking can’t sleep at night, because he has to worry about a retaliation. This is back and forth. Hobbes argues that at some point that we can’t continue to live this way, so we need to figure out how to protect ourselves from each other. We come to an agreement about certain laws, principles or rules that we are going to live by in order to protect each other, and protect us from ourselves.

To make sure those laws are enforced, we elect a sovereign, this would be the government or governing body or king, to enforce the laws so that now each of us know that if someone is collecting the fruit, mixing his labor with nature, that is his property. If you come along and hit him over the head and take it, you are going to be punished. The idea that we enter into a contract together, there is a consensus among us about these rules by which we are going to live and who the sovereign should be. Of course it’s a hypothetical, but it becomes a way of justifying the idea of government in the first place. The question is: Who is left out of that contract?

Cashio: That’s kind of what the protests are about, right?

Farr: Exactly. If we talk about social contract in the US, even hypothetically, we can talk about why a range of things, in terms of our identity documents, which King used all the time during the civil rights movement. He would make reference to things like the Declaration of Independence, a document where we say, “This is who we are. Here is what we believe”. Then you will say these identity documents identify you as a people who believe XYZ, but the social reality says otherwise. Look at what’s happening here on the street. Look at how we are dealing with each other on the street. It is contrary to the way in which we identify ourselves. If we use the language of ‘the American people’, people will use that and run off about what the American people are like, what the American people believe. But it really means nothing for a large segment of the population, because they are not experiencing whatever it is that we say we believe. If we say we believe in equality, we believe in justice, we believe in fairness, a lot of people are not experiencing that. Those people, if there is a contract where we come together and say “We as American people believe XYZ,” there are many people who are excluded, and they are not protected. They are not protected by law. They are not protected by their citizenship.

Weber: Arnold, in the field of philosophy, one of these social contract thinkers, John Rawls, has written about civil disobedience, and justifying civil disobedience. In general, civil disobedience has to do with the violation of laws for just cause, and done in a way that doesn’t necessarily hurt other people. At the same time, it’s hard to draw from that kind of theory to think about the protests because there is nothing unlawful that Kaepernick is doing. It’s civil. Is it disobedience? Or just civil protest? If it’s civil protest, we need even less justification, it would seem like. Is that a fair assessment? If there is a charge that some people will raise, it’s that it’s unpatriotic. Would you agree with that kind of criticism? If you want to talk about Rawls feel free, otherwise just kind of, what do you think about the criticisms that people raise? Is it disobedience? As protest, is it unpatriotic? Do you think it’s unpatriotic? What do you think?

Farr: It’s not disobedience, because there is no law they are violating. In terms of being unpatriotic, there is two things here…It’s patriotic because they are taking a stand on behalf of American citizens. People talk about the military fighting for our freedom and protecting us, and we are not protected within our own borders. It is patriotic to bring attention to that and to say, “Hey, these Americans over here are suffering.” It’s very patriotic in that respect. On the other hand, even if that argument doesn’t convince people, and people will say to me that if I take a knee I am being unpatriotic. My response is, “Really? You’re going to ask me to be patriotic, when my black son could just, walking home from school one day from basketball practice, could get shot by a cop or a random citizen like George Zimmerman because he looks funny?”

I live in a predominantly white neighborhood. It’s a very nice neighborhood. My son can be walking home one day, and his dark skin makes him look out of place. I pay to live in that neighborhood. He could be pulled over or shot, or anything could happen to him. I have to think about that when he’s out. If a person wants me to be patriotic, then they have got to address issues where other people with sons and daughters like mine are losing their sons and daughters unjustifiably. I get the argument that it is patriotic and I can make another argument that if it’s not, whoop-dee-doo. Do something about our racism and then I’d be more inclined to be patriotic.

Weber: There you have it.

Farr: I think a lot of the stuff about patriotism is asking us to buy into a lie. It’s asking us to accept a narrative about the country that is not true. It’s asking us to simply deny our own experience and go ahead and stand and pledge and talk about the land of the free when some of us are not. That’s really hypocritical. I don’t think anyone should ask that of anybody. I’ll stop there for a minute.

Weber: This has been another very powerful, and for me, inspirational and moving segment of Philosophy Bakes Bread. Thank you everybody for listening to me, this is Eric Weber, my co-host Anthony Cashio, and the great Arnold Farr, talking about what philosophy can think about and tell us about civil kneeling protests. We are going to come back with one concluding segment after a short break. Thanks everybody for listening.

Cashio: Welcome back everyone, to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber, and today we have been having a very powerful, and I’m finding it an extremely insightful conversation with Arnold Farr. We have been talking about civil protest, especially as it has been playing out recently in the NFL with players kneeling during the national anthem. In this last segment we are going to ask a few big-picture questions, maybe do a philosophunny, tell a joke or two, and we will end with a question for you guys, our listeners.

Weber: That’s right. Arnold, we have talked some about the causes that motivate the NFL kneeling protests. We have talked about justifications, we have talked some about what philosophy has to say. My question for you now, in terms of the big picture is: What do you think might be the kinds of changes that such protests would call for? What kinds of changes would we ideally need to see to say we have alleviated the forces motivating the protests?

Farr: I remember reading, I’m actually teaching it this semester, a book by Iris young called Inclusion and Democracy. She talks about when she lived in Pittsburg they would have problems with police brutality. She and some of the citizens got together and formed a committee, and they made demand they presented to the city. They formed a committee of citizens that would hold policemen accountable. These citizens would have the opportunity to investigate actions by the cops. They had to get so many signatures for this to pass, and they got out in the streets and they got the signatures needed, and formed this body of citizens who would police the policemen.

That’s a possibility, in a practical way. People need to come together and unify and put pressure on the local politicians so that something like that might happen. That’s the first thing. The second thing is education. We need to really be aggressive in trying to educate people and increase awareness and help people become more and more sensitive to violence and things like that. That, the whole education piece, we could talk about that for a long time because there are a lot of details and things that have to be put in place. That’s a step in the right direction.

Cashio: Very nice. I’m about to ask you a question that might be hard to answer. It’s about hope. I’m wondering if you are hopeful about the prospect for change for the better, with regard to these problems in the United States. Do you suspect that we can reasonably approach the wishes and aims of the protesters in our lifetimes through education?

Farr: I’m hopeful but not naive.

Weber: Hopeful but not naïve. I like it.

Farr: I think we have made some progress in terms of race relations, but this is to be expected, that when there is progress made, there is going to be some backlash. We must prepare oneself for it and continue the fight. I do think that the problem with race can be isolated from other problems and other forms of oppression. I’m very influenced by the black feminist notion of intersectionality. That is looking at various problems of oppression and how, although hey have their separate distinct narratives or logic, they do intersect, overlap in particular kinds of ways. If we are going to properly address the race issue, we are going to have to properly address the problem of economic class exploitation. Unless you are doing that…

I have two companion books. I’m working on one, The New White Supremacy, the other is The New Slavery. The New Slavery has nothing to do with race. That book is all about economic exploitation. There are other forms of oppression too, but for those two volumes, those two things I am trying to work on and work out. That’s the way to go. I do feel hopeful, but I also think right now, this present moment, we are in for a long fight. I think we have some difficult days ahead. It may get uglier before it gets better, but it depends on how we play our cards right now. We can make things better, but it’s going to get maybe a little uglier at first. That’s the downside.

Cashio: It strikes me, and we didn’t have a chance to get to it this episode, one of the problems is that the protesters are talking about police brutality, and ‘get your foot off our throat’, and then those who are so upset about the protests are worried about patriotism and respect for the flag, and respect for the military. It seems that one side is so willing to reject what the other side has said…I won’t say which side specifically I’m talking about… just because the other side said it. How do you begin to have a conversation going forward? It’s a problem of understanding each other and conversing. Is there any way that philosophy can begin to heal that division, return us back to inquiry?

Farr: I tell my students all the time about democratic discourse. We talk all the time in my classes about democratic discourse and what that’s like. We had this moment, maybe a year ago, two years ago maybe, where we had a town hall meeting in the library, in the big auditorium in the library. It was about confederate symbols. We knew that there were going to be coming from every possible position, so we laid the groundwork for the rules of civil discourse, and part of what happened there was that people expressed themselves civilly about their position and why they held the position that they held. It helped us understand each other and where each one was coming from.

In another example, when I give lectures on race in a big public forum, I quite often walk up to the podium and I will say ‘forgive me.’ And I will tell the audience I forgive them. By this time, they are looking at me funny, because it’s like “What are you doing? We are forgiving each other for what?” Then I explain. We are about to talk about race, and it’s a topic in my country we have really avoided and we have had conversations about it, but they never go beyond the superficial because people start seeming uncomfortable with that. We are going to have to have a conversation where we are going to be uncomfortable, and since we haven’t been taught how to talk about race, it is inevitable that you are going to say something or have a question that you think is stupid or offensive. The pre-emptive forgiveness opens a space where we can have this deep, serious conversation and not have to worry about somebody thinking we are stupid, or in a negative way.

People are free to talk and try to get to the bottom of the issue. Also, when I have these conversations, I bring in other issues too, because I don’t want the audience to think that I am just pointing fingers at you. I talk about my own struggle to overcome sexism and homophobia, so fingers are pointing back at me too. I let them know that I am engaged in the same kind of process of self-deconstruction and reconstruction that I am asking you to engage in. Those kind of things, I have had personal success in those kind of approaches. Maybe that can happen on a wider scale or something. People get in a combative mode, and I have been talking with progressive friends about how to move forward politically. I talk to them about the importance of being able to talk to Trump supporters, for example. Quite often you hear them say, “You can’t talk to those people. You can’t talk to them. They are racist” or whatever.

I say that some of them you probably can’t talk to. But I bet you there are some you can, and some of them made the decisions that they made because they themselves are in pain. You better figure out what that pain is, and be willing to not worry so much about the theoretically correct, but go to the pain, and talk to them about that pain. That way you can move them along and pull them into a more civil conversation about other issues and problems. You have to take their pain seriously. That’s where I am right now. These are ideas I am trying to develop right now. Don’t know where they will go, but that is my project.

Weber: That’s powerful. Very nice. An extension of what we have been talking about, I think, relates the inspiration of the shown that we are holding right now, Arnold. The question is, would you say, as the old saying goes, that philosophy bakes no bread? Or would you say that it does? If you would say that it does, what would you say to people who deny that philosophy bakes bread? Let us know what you think? What would you say, does philosophy bake bread?

Farr: There are many many philosophers, I would say quite a number of philosophers in the tradition try to avoid baking bread. (laughter). But philosophy can bake bread.

Cashio: Bodybuilders can’t eat too much bread.

Farr: That’s right. I love bread. It can bake bread. There are some philosophers who are baking bread. There are examples of philosophers. Angela Davis, Cornell West, Herbert Marcuse himself. He developed his theory in terms of his engagement with activists. He didn’t sit in the ivory tower and just construct theory. He was actually learning from students who were involved in protests in the ‘60s and modifying his theory according to what he was learning. Philosophy was very practical for him. There has to be a unity of theoretical and practical reason. Karl Marx comes to mind here, that philosophy has to be able to address the material conditions in which we live. I think you find a number of people, feminist philosophers and people doing philosophy of race, to all of them, philosophy must be able to address the material conditions in which we live and ways in which we are embodied and the ways in which certain forms of embodiment might make you more susceptible to certain kinds of treatment. There are quite a number of philosophers who are baking bread. That’s kind of a new thing for philosophy, though.

(laughter)

Cashio: We’re getting better at it, hopefully.

Weber: On the show, and in SOPHIA we want to encourage it, and highlight when people are doing it. I’m glad you pointed us to, in addition to the idea, you pointed us to some examples. I love that. That’s great. Excellent.

Cashio: As you know, Arnold, in addition to baking bread, we want people to know that there is both a serious side, we have had a very serious conversation today, we want people to know that there is a lighter side to philosophy. That philosophers can have fun, and that we are also human and not so abstract. Part of that coming from the concrete lived world is the joy of laughter. To that extent, we have a short segment we call philosophunnies. We want to invite you to tell us if you have a joke or a funny fact about philosophy or about protesting, or about really anything.

Dr. Weber: Say ‘philosophunnies’

Sam: Philosophunnies!

(laughter)

Dr. Weber: Say ‘philosophunnies’

Sam: Philosophunnies!

(child’s laughter)

Weber: Arnold, we want to know if you have a funny story or a joke to tell us.

Farr: I’ve got plenty, but I’ll give you one. I have mentioned Herbert Marcuse a few times. He is one of my heroes in philosophy. I do a lot of work on him and his work. He is sort of a rock star of philosophy in the 60’s and 70’s. Tremendously popular all over the world.

Cashio: Back when philosophers could be rock stars.

Farr: Back when philosophers could be rock stars. Right. The writers for Playboy approached him and asked if he would give them an interview, and he puzzled over it for a bit and finally responded. His response was that he would give them an interview if they would allow him to be the centerfold. (laughter). They refused to.

Cashio: They missed out a real…

Farr: Could you imagine if they allowed Marcuse to be the centerfold? (laughter) Could have changed the course of the magazine forever.

Weber: A 70-year-old man. Sounds great.

Farr: Part of what he was trying to do was to disrupt their notion of beauty and sexuality, which I think could have been really disruptive.

Weber: And objectification. If you are going to objectify someone and have my interview next to…do it to me. Pretty funny. I don’t understand, why didn’t they take him up on it? Anthony and I always gather a couple jokes in addition, because it’s fun. You want to tell this first one, Anthony?

Cashio: What do you call someone in the white house who is honest, caring, and well read? A tourist.

(laughter)

Weber: This is a silly joke about protesting by Mark Cohen. He says, “I’m relaxing on the beach and all of the sudden, all these women start gathering around me. They have got these signs saying ‘fur is murder! Fur is murder!’ I said ‘lady, that’s my back, now get off it.’ (laughter) Not a pretty picture, maybe. We have got two jokes by Jason Mack, who is a comedian and veteran who has spoken up about Kaepernick in particular. Anthony, you want to tell this first one?

Cashio: This is Jason Mack speaking. Hopefully he forgives me. “I sat in 1,500 combat flight hours for Cap’s right to sit and protest. I have the hemorrhoids to prove it.” I didn’t deliver it as well as he could. Sorry, Jason.

Weber: #VeteransforKaepernick. He’s got another one, also Jason Mack. He says, “Kaepernick afro is the answer to preventing quarterback concussions.”

Cashio: It is a beautiful head of hair.

Farr: More padding.

[rimshot, applause, laughter]

Cashio: Last but not least, we want to take advantage of the fact that today we have powerful social media that allow for two-way communications even for programs like radio shows. . We want to invite our listeners to send us their thoughts about big questions that we have raised on the show.

Weber: Given that, Arnold, we would love to hear your thoughts, if you have any for us, about what question we should pose to our listeners for a segment we call “You Tell Me!” Have you got a question to propose for our listeners?

Farr: I do. My question is: What is democracy and how do we achieve it?

Weber: Woo. What is democracy and how do we achieve it? That’s a good one.

Cashio: Brought out the big ones.

Weber: We are one, and we have already achieved it in this country, right? I like the implication of the question, that we are not there yet. In fact, John Dewey, a big philosopher of democracy, would say we have never achieved democracy anywhere in the world. We have only tried and gotten a little closer to it, he said. We want to know what you all think. Thank you everybody. Send us your thoughts. Thank you, Arnold, for the great question.

Cashio: I want to thank everyone for listening to Philosophy Bakes Bread: food for thought about life and leadership. Your host, Dr. Anthony Cashio and Dr. Eric Weber are very grateful today to have been joined by Dr. Arnold Farr. It has been a fantastic conversation, Arnold. Thank you again for joining us.

Weber: Indeed. Thank you.

Cashio: We want to encourage our listeners to consider sending us your thoughts about anything you’ve heard today, that you would like to hear about in the future, or about specific question we have raised for you. What is democracy and how do we achieve it? That’s a big question. I would love to hear what you guys think.

Dr. Weber: Remember everyone. You can catch us on Twitter, Facebook and on our website at philosophybakesbread.com. There you will find transcripts for many of our episodes thanks to Drake Boling, an undergraduate student at the University of Kentucky. Thank you, Drake.

Cashio: Thanks, Drake.

Weber: I also want to give a shout-out and thanks to Stephen Berrera, who is an undergraduate student here as well, who did some work helping us in preparation for this episode and some other ones. Thanks, Stephen. One more thing folks. If you want to support the show and be more involved in the work of the Society of Philosophers in America, SOPHIA, the easiest thing to do is to go join as a member at philosophersinamerica.com.

Cashio: If you are enjoying this show, we hope you will take a few seconds to rate and review us on iTunes, the podcast app, or wherever you are finding us this day. You can of course, email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com, and you can also call us and leave a short recorded message with a question or a comment that we may be able to play on the show. You can reach us at 859-257-1849. That’s 859-257-1849. I hope you’ll join us again next time on Philosophy Bakes Bread: food for thought about life and leadership.

[Outro music]

In this fifty-second episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, we interview Dr. Nicholas Tampio, author of Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy.

Nicholas is Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University. In addition to his forthcoming book, he has also authored a book titled Kantian Courage, and another titled Deleuze’s Political Vision. More recently, he has authored a number of essays for popular audiences for such venues as the Huffington Post, Aeon, and CNN.com.

Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

(1 hr 5 mins)

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Notes

1. Nicholas Tampio, Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), available for pre-order.
2. Nicholas Tampio, “In Praise of Dewey,” Aeon, July 28, 2016.
3. Nicholas Tampio, “Why Common Core Tests Are Bad,” CNN.com, April 24, 2014.
4. Lindsay Layden, “How Bill Gates Pulled Off the Swift Common Core Revolution,” The Washington Post, June 7, 2014.

You Tell Me!

For our future “You Tell Me!” segments, Nicholas posed the following question in this episode:

“Should America have national education standards, and why or why not?”

Let us know what you think! Via Twitter, Facebook, Email, or by commenting here below.

Trancript

Printable transcript in Adobe PDF.

Transcribed by Patricia M. of Rev.com, October 6, 2018. 

For those interested, here’s how to cite this transcript or episode for academic or professional purposes (for pagination, see the Adobe PDF version of the transcript):

Weber, Eric Thomas, Anthony Cashio, and Nicholas Tampio, “Against the Common Core,” Philosophy Bakes Bread, Episode 52, Transcribed by Patricia M. of Rev.com, WRFL Lexington 88.1 FM, Lexington, KY, October 30, 2017.

Radio announcer: This broadcast is brought to you by WRFL, radio free Lexington. Find us on-line at WRFL.fm. Catch us on your FM Radio while you’re in Central Kentucky at 88.1 FM all the way to the left. Thank you for listening and please be sure to subscribe.

Cashio: Hello and welcome to Philosophy Bakes Bread, Food for Thought about Life and Leadership.

Weber: Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America aka SOPHIA. I’m Dr. Eric Thomas Weber.

Cashio: And I’m Dr. Anthony Cashio. A famous phrase says that philosophy bakes no bread, that it’s not practical. But we in SOPHIA and on this show aim to correct that misperception.

Weber: Philosophy Bakes Bread airs on WRFL Lexington 88.1 FM and is distributed as a podcast net. Listeners can find us online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and we hope that you’ll reach out to us on Twitter at PhilosophyBB; on Facebook at PhilosophyBakesBread; or by email at PhilosophyBakesBread@gmailcom.

Cashio: Last but not least you can leave us a short recorded message with a question or a comment or even bountiful praise.

Weber: We like that.

Cashio: We’ll accept praise even if it’s not bountiful. Does that sound right Eric? Does that work?

Weber: Yeah, but we prefer bountiful.

Cashio: Prefer bountiful. All right. You can reach us at 859-257-1849. That’s 859-257-1849.

On today’s show we’re very excited to ask Nicholas Tampio about his arguments against National Education Standards. He is the author of the forthcoming 2018 book, Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy, coming out with Johns Hopkins University Press. That is awesome, Nick. Congratulations. I’m really excited about this book.

Tampio: Oh wonderful. Thank you.

Cashio: Yeah.

Weber: Nick is Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University. In addition to his forthcoming book, Nick also authored: Kantian Courage, Advancing the Enlightenment in Contemporary Political Theory, as well as book titled: DeLeuze’s Political Vision.

Cashio: Before coming out with his latest book, Nick has written quite a few pieces on topics like Politics, Religion, and Education for general audiences. He’s published pieces in The Huffington Post, for example, and has released a very nice essay called: In Praise of Dewey, among other pieces in Aeon Philosophical online publication. It’s been fantastic.

Weber: That’s a great piece Nick.

Weber: We start of this show in this first segment with a moment of we call, Know Thy Self. So we ask you to tell us about yourself. Do you know thy self? Tell us about your background? What about your background shaped who you are perhaps? How and why. Let’s get to know Nicholas Tampio.

Cashio: Test first and let’s see how it goes.

Tampio: Okay great. So my name is Nicholas Tampio. I grew up outside of Washington, D.C. I grew up in a family that was very interested in politics. So my Mom worked in the Senate for some time, my Step-father was a Federal Judge, my Dad worked in Close Up Foundation, a group that brought students to Washington, D.C., to see how the government works, my Step-mother was very interested in politics, so I just grew up talking about politics and in fact I was a Washington Post paperboy, so I grew up reading about National, International news.

Tampio: But then I kept asking, “Why?” Why are things the way that they are? My grandfather once told me a story that, he said, “Nick if you read the newspaper head line from a hundred years ago the stories will be kind of similar, almost the same.” And it really stuck with me. I said, “Gosh, what’s the reason for that? Why are people debating the same issues?” It’s easy to get consumed by the day to day, but sometimes you want to step back and think about the big questions. For years I kept trying to get deeper and deeper and so I would do Political Science and the other Social Sciences and then I realized that there’s a deeper level of politics. About things like human nature and the nature of reality and questions about how we know what we know. For Graduate School my studies took me in a very philosophical direction. I read a lot of Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche. But always in the back of my mind I had a promise to myself that someday I’d come back to politics.

Weber: Interesting.

Tampio: Yeah. Thank you. Basically, when my kids were in school they were affected by the Common Core and all of a sudden, training was over. It was now time to have a real political debate and it’s been a really excellent opportunity for me to apply some of the big philosophical things that I’ve been thinking about between College until I got tenure at Fordham. That was very philosophical but now all of a sudden I have a real test case and it’s been exciting and actually very satisfying on some levels.

Weber: Very interesting, Nick. So you explained your interest in sort of the why question. Why are people this way? Why are people thinking that way? Well, some people approach those kids of questions thinking about psychology. Thinking about the emotions, thinking about stimulus and response and environment and our backgrounds. So what pulled you, what attracted you more to the political and philosophical, rather than something like examining your dreams with Freud or something like that?

Tampio: Yeah, well I think I realized at a pretty early age that my well being is dependent on what’s happening in the broader society and so much, much later I learned about C. Wright Mills’s phrase, The Sociological Imagination. But I think from a pretty early age I had something like that, where I realized you know what, what the President does matters to me. Who’s in Congress matters to me. How we fund elections matters to me. From a very early age I’ve been doing what I subsequently learned was political theory. Why is society structured the way it is? Why are these certain policies affecting people’s capacity to exercise meaningful freedom? For me, I think that ethics and psychology are interesting but I consider those small circles. The fact is that small circles are always embedded within bigger circles which is politics. So that’s why I do political philosophy.

Weber: Nice.

Tampio: I’m concerned about the social political conditions that enable individual well being.

Weber: For someone who has never heard of Mills could you give us just a thirty second or one minute explanation of this idea you’ve introduced?

Tampio: Okay, sure. He was a famous sociologist and in the 1950’s he wrote two very important books. One was The Power Elite, which said that there are maybe about five thousand really powerful people in a country and they exercise a lot of power. It’s an interesting thesis. Another book he wrote was The Sociological Imagination and what his argument was that the purpose of sociology, but I would really say any social, political philosophy, is to help you see how what’s happening in the broader world affects you. Just for example, I meet with a lot of parents and if their unhappy they’re like, “My child’s teacher is doing a bad job or the Principal is a real jerk or Oh, the Principals not providing a well-rounded education, they’re just concerned about test scores.” And I say, “Yes, it’s totally fine to consider the behavior of the teacher and the principal, but you also need to look at the State Education Department. You also need to look at the laws that Congress is passing. You also need to look at the US Department of Education. Actually, you need to think about what’s happening on a global level with International organizations, with the United Nations Education Agenda.”

So, for me that’s one thing I try do with a lot of my academic and popular publications, is say, “Listen parents, you and your family are getting hammered from lots of different angles and you don’t know where the blows are coming from. You want to punch back against the people who are close to you and actually what you need to do is start thinking about some of these bigger issues, some of these distant threats to your child’s well-being at least in school.”

Weber: Interesting.

Cashio: Oh, that’s quite a challenge.

Tampio: Yeah, well it’s really … I don’t know how to say this modestly … but it really requires a lot of practice. I need good editors to help me figure out how do you explain Legislation to parents. I had one editor, I hope I’m not throwing this person under the bus, I had one editor who said, “Nick could you write and op-ed about Betsy DeVos and talk about her character. No, that’s not my style. I don’t want to … for me people are a part of politics but I don’t want to go after people I want to go after ideas. I want to go after laws. I want to go after policies. Those are the main things that make a difference not the personalities of the people who come and go.

Weber: Nice. That sounds very civil.

Tampio: The lines not always clear. I’ve written some pieces that can seem like I’m really attacking people, right? So for example I wrote an article for Al Jazeera America called David Coleman’s Plan to Destroy Education. By the way an editor choose that title, but it’s fine. Basically what I do, if you read the piece, is that I go after the guy who wrote the Common Core English Language Arts Standards and say, “Listen this is his philosophy of education and it’s atrocious.” I’m going after a real life person but the thing is, is that in my own mind what I’m doing is going after the best articulation of an idea that I’m challenging and it’s an articulation by David Coleman. So I’m not going personal. I’m not doing a cheap shot. I quote the person. I give them a presentation of their view that I think is fair and then I raise problems with it.

Weber: Good.

Cashio: Beautiful. You’ve kind of given us this nice vision of, I like the circles within circles I really like that illustration, of sort of the powerful relationship between philosophical thinking and political theory and how it comes in, you know, ` next thing you know you’re doing homework with your kid and you’re like this is driving me crazy. It’s really a philosophical problem if we trace it back far enough.

Cashio: This is a question we ask all of our guests: What is philosophy to you? How would you understand it? How would you define it for someone who is curious about why they should be interested?

Tampio: Okay, great. I think of philosophy as the really big questions and one of the ways I talk about things with my students is I use an image of the ocean. I say listen, “The news, news stories are like the waves on top of the ocean. They’re just constantly coming in and rolling out.” Right? Every day there’s going to be a whole new wave of news stories about things the President has done or about movies that are popular or about wars in other parts of the world. Those are the kind of day to day ephemeral news. It’s new. So it’s new things. Then in the ocean there’ll be tides and currents and they’re a little bit deeper and I think of these as like the social sciences.

These are things like what a lot of my colleagues do in Political Science here they’re trying to figure out, rather than just study a particular president, they study the Presidency. Rather than study a particular piece of legislation they study Congress. I think of Social Science as one layer deeper. But in oceans there’s one … the deepest level is the flows; the ocean’s flows. And the ocean flows are what have the water circulate all across the planet or the globe. I thought about this image when I first learned about that boat that sank with all the inflatable duckies.

Cashio: Wait, wait, wait. I don’t know this. What, what happened?

Tampio: There was a boat going from America with England filled with inflatable rubber duckies and it sank and all the rubber duckies came to the surface-

Weber: I heard about that.

Tampio: … one, it’s a funny image but two it’s actually interesting because you could follow the duckies as they went all around the globe.

Cashio: Wow! This is amazing.

Tampio: Yeah, it takes about six years.

Weber: I shouldn’t laugh so much [inaudible 00:12:52] an environmental issue and all. But it’s kind of a hilariously looking one, right?

Cashio: So then right now as we’re speaking there’s some duckies on their journey.

Tampio: Well, yeah, I would love one of those duckies. I’d pay good money for one of those duckies. If any listener wants to give me a good gift That would be wonderful like [crosstalk 00:13:12] one of these duckies.

What I tell students is political philosophy or philosophy is the flows. It’s what we study. You can’t see the flows directly. You can’t see freedom. You can’t see justice. You can’t see human nature directly with your eyes. Right? For that you have to have a different skill set and philosophy is similar to theology and different other humanities and social sciences have different approaches to get to the big big questions. I love that level of philosophy, but with my current research I’m tried to ascend back to the surface and engage with questions that people right here and now care about.

Cashio: That’s a beautiful image.

Weber: It is.

Cashio: Can I borrow that? Can I share that with my students? I really like this.

Weber: We’ll quote you.

Cashio: I think it explains nicely the relationship between politics and philosophy.

Weber: While things will seem far under the surface, at the same time there’s no doubt that the waters connected. Right? These things are related and influence each other obviously.

Tampio: That’s why I like to be in a … I tell people I do philosophy in a political science department and one of the … there’s down sides. The downside is that I don’t teach logic. I don’t teach aesthetics. I don’t converse with other philosophers. But the plus side is that there’s always somebody there whose like, “Nick, what’s the meaning of what you’re doing? Why does this matter? What’s the relevance?” I like that challenge.

Weber: It’s a good one and it’s an important one and it’s very much what this show is about. So I want to thank Nicholas Tampio for being on the show with us today, on Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Eric Weber and my cohost is Anthony Cashio. We’re going to come back after a short break and talk about National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy. We’ll be right back.

Cashio: Welcome back everyone to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber and we are having a wonderful conversation today with Nicholas Tampio about National Education Standards and the threat he believes they pose for Democracy. No small threat at all. In the second segment, Nick we’ll focus on what has prompted the National Education Standards Movement. So we’ll talk about the movement. And in the next segment we’ll ask you about why you think it’s been a problem and what you think we should do about it.

Cashio: So Nicholas let’s just start with the big, easy big picture question. That’s always a nice way to start off and get into things. What is the National Education Standards Movement and what prompted it?

Tampio: Excellent.

Let me start off by telling you something that you might not know or your listeners might not know if they don’t have kids in public school. Across the country you have lots of kids studying the same things or learning similar skill sets. The famous story about France is that if you know at any one particular time what assignment every single student in the French School System is doing. I don’t know if that stories are true or not, but at least in Education Policy Literature that’s the one extreme. There’s one National Curriculum that everybody uses.

That’s not what the Common Core is. The Common Core identifies as a set of performance expectations of what kids are supposed to be able to do by the end of each grade in mathematics and english language arts. But what you’re seeing though is that there is much more uniformity in the Country’s educational system than there used to be even 20, 30 years ago. Right? So the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, it said that each State had to come up with its own standards and test those standards and have accountability mechanisms to make sure that all the students were learning those particular standards. But at least in theory you could have had lots and lots of different sets of education standards and lots of different aligned curricula. But what the Common Core does, is that it was part of the Race to the Top Program that said that the Federal Government would have this competitive grant program where States could apply for a Race to the Top Grant and there were different pillars to it, or different aspects that would get you points and one of those was that you would adopt the Common Core Standards and aligned assessments.

In 40 some States nearly every State adopted the Common Core. There were a couple of hold outs: Virginia didn’t; Minnesota adopted one of standards; Texas did not adopt the standards but had standards that were similar to the Common Core. Even then certain cities within Texas have adopted the Common Core. So really within the last seven, six years you’ve just seen this incredible convergence of standards across the country and a much narrower range of curricula.

I first learned about the Common Core in 2012 when my older son was in Kindergarten and my son’s Kindergarten teacher was trained as Montessori. And Montessori, the notion is, is that you have kids do jobs and then teacher sits back and takes notes and figures out what kids are doing well and what they’re not doing well and then very subtly puts children in situations where they can work on skills that they need develop. So lots of elite private schools use Montessori Method. For the early grades it’s the gold standard.

Cashio: Right.

Tampio: But what the Common Core does is it sets performance expectations for Kindergartners so one of them could be that they read Emergent Reader Texts with purpose and understanding. That’s very famous, notorious, one of the Common Core Standards. So now what it means is by the end Kindergarten kids need to be able to read Emergent Reader Texts with purpose and understanding. Now all of a sudden there’s this incredible pressure on teachers to make sure that every single kid in the class can meet this standard. Now all of a sudden school administrators and districts and leaders are under pressure to get curriculum that are aligned to the standards that make sure that every child is reading Emergent Reader Texts with purpose and understanding. So now there’s no longer the same freedom for Kindergartner teachers to use Montessori Methods.

To go back to the first segment, talk about The Sociological Imagination, you could blame this particular teacher, you could blame this particular principal, but I think you need to look at the broader picture and in 2012 I wrote a piece for the Huffington Post explaining my concerns. All of a sudden then I heard from parents all across the country making similar type objections. Right, that now all of a sudden they had to use these aligned curricula that narrowed the curriculum to reading and writing and everything that didn’t fit within those categories was being expunged from the system. So that’s where we are right now.

I’m one of many, many parents who are just frankly disgusted by what education has become. My hands are wide now and I’m saying this is what the curriculum is at a really good school. This is Sidwell Friends where the Obama’s sent their children. This is the Lab School of Chicago where Arnie Duncan, former Secretary of Education, this is where he sends his own children right now. You can keep multiplying examples of powerful people who send their kids to schools that have a really wide curriculum. Now I’m going to put my hands real close together and say, “This is what happens in schools that use the Common Core.” So, things that are not aligned to the Common Core are getting excised. And it’s even worse than that because kids are not learning math, they’re learning Common Core Math. They’re not learning English Language Arts, they’re learning Common Core English Language Arts.

Weber: Well, so, so Nick, let me be the devil’s advocate for a little bit. Standardization-

Tampio: Please.

Weber: … gets a bad rep partly because of excess testing and I think a lot of people are aware of that. But aren’t there some things we need all kids to learn? Is 2 + 2 irrelevant in some States? Aren’t standards tools for ensuring that kids will learn certain basics?

Tampio: Yeah, no it’s fine to play Devil’s advocate and I’d rather people raise their strongest concerns and so actually my first Chapter of my book lays out the strongest arguments I can find for National Education Standards. What I say in the Chapter is that, “If you don’t address the strongest arguments, you’re not going to win. You have to find the strongest arguments.” Right?

So, the fact is, is that there is a part of the … where did this National Education Standards Movement come from? On the Republican side it primarily came from business groups and the Business Roundtable, US Chamber of Commerce, a couple of other major type organizations that said, “Listen we need to prepare all workers for the 21st Century and all these humanist Deweyan types have destroyed Public Education. They’ve made it all about feelings and Arts & Crafts, so we need to get back to basics, literacy, numeracy, hard work ethic.”

But then from the Left side one of the main groups was the Civil Rights Organizations and they said, “Listen. Our kids are graduating from Urban High Schools not being able to read or do math. So, let’s figure out how to get these standards and make sure that our kids are learning basics and we’re going to hold these actually white teacher’s feet to the fire and make sure they’re teaching our children how to read and do math.” Then you know you can also make the argument that children with special needs, need focus too. That school shouldn’t be warehousing them that you should be making sure that they can learn to read and write. So hopefully I’ve presented that side fairly.

I guess the question that I would say is, “It’s a one size fits all.” What this means is that kids who do not fit … who it doesn’t fit are going to be greatly disserviced. Right? Kids who are excellent at math, when you’re in grades K through 8 in Common Core Math, it is very, very little differentiation. I mean, I had exchange with a Math Professor who defends the Common Core and they said, “Well, the more gifted students in math can tutor the students who are not so good at math.” That is what my son was doing. The teacher would assign my son to tutor the kids who are not good at math. How do you think that worked out? Right? Do you think the kids who are bad at math liked being taught by the other students? I mean it was a terrib-

Cashio: No, they don’t like it and your son doesn’t get a chance to go and challenge himself and further explore his interests.

Tampio: Right. So that’s one side. But then there’s the other side because it’s saying that like listen the students who are not so good at math or not so good at reading, they’re going to be branded as failures from a very early age. Right? People on Social Media share horror stories of kids whose confidence is totally being crushed by this regime. There’s a great line from John Dewey in The Public and it’s Problems where it says: You have to ask the person wearing the shoe if it fits or not.

Weber: Right.

Tampio: Part of his point is that if you go to the Common Core Home Page they’ll tell you all these great things about preparing all kids for college and careers but my argument is you got to listen to parents who are speaking for their kids and they’ll tell you if the shoe fits or pinches. For a lot of parents it pinches.

Cashio: Let’s go back to No Child Left Behind just for half a second. It’s often attributed to Bush and the Bush Administration but it really was a bipartisan Bill and it included support from the now late Senator Ted Kennedy. These folks were not generally on the same page politically but they were worried about kids who kept getting passed along from grade to grade. You just mentioned people who getting crushed because the Common Core leaves them behind, but what about people who are getting left behind already because of the system. They weren’t taking time for the kids who needed extra help coming up.

Tampio: Yes, so I-

Cashio: Was that not a problem or would you propose a different solution in there? How would you approach this? It seems like there was a genuine problem that they were trying address and maybe if we give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they don’t deserve it, but we’ll give it to them anyway, maybe if we were to give them the benefit of the doubt maybe they were trying their best and this was the solution they came up with. Would you have proposed a different solution from theirs?

Tampio: Okay, yes. I would have proposed a different solution. I’m very mad at Ted Kennedy for supporting … and George Miller and George Miller of California he was another one of the major Democrats in Congress who supported No Child Left Behind. Right? Because they brought the Texas miracle to National stage and I don’t know why Ted Kennedy thought that George W. Bush would be the right guy to revolutionize American Education System. I think that’s crazy.

In education policy debates there’s two main paradigms. There’s the equity paradigm and the excellence paradigm. The equity paradigm says look at what they’re providing kids in good private schools or wealthy suburban public schools and figure out how to make this available to everybody. So something like small class sizes, well trained teachers, field trips, drama programs, sports clubs, debate teams. So that’s where I am. I think that John Dewey is one of the patron saints of the equity paradigm.

The other paradigm is the excellence paradigm. I don’t love these terms, but that’s just the terms they use. The excellence paradigm says we focus too much on inputs now we need to start focusing on outputs. The prime output that people use is test scores. So what they say is alright we’re going to come up with these National Education Standards, we’re going to come up with these National Tests, and we are going to punish people in schools, in States, in School Districts that do not perform well on these standardized tests. What that does is that it’s high stakes testing. Now students in some places can’t graduate or go to the next grade level unless they pass these tests. Teachers can get fired if their student don’t score either high enough proficiency, where a bit of minium baseline, or if there’s not high enough test score growth, which is where your percentage of test score growth from the beginning of the school year to the end of the school year, and so what it does is that it incredibly narrows the curriculum.

I’m with John Dewey which says that we need to place the child at the center of the educational apparatus. We need to figure out what each individual needs to get a satisfying education. There’s a part of me that’s tempted to get rid of the US Department of Education and to scrap the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, but I think that the position I believe in is that original Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 was categorical grants that said we’re going to give money to States to administer their educational programs and at least there was a chance of States using it for equity purposes. There was a chance that they could use it for Deweyan ends of providing more opportunities for children. That’s what I want.

What I think our country needs to do is move away from this National Standards, National Testing. Right now it’s still a State accountability system, but still structured within a Federal Law that Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. I think we need to scrap this paradigm and try to figure out how to give the grass roots power to tailor education to each individual child.

Weber: Well I sure we both, Anthony and I, have questions about what you just said Nicholas. But we’re going to come back and bring those questions to you, rake you over the coals in the next segment of Philosophy Bakes Bread. Thanks everybody for listening. This is Eric Weber. My cohost is Anthony Cashio with Nicholas Tampio and we will be right back.

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Cashio: Welcome back everyone to Philosophy Bakes Bread. This is Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber having an amazing conversation with Nicholas Tampio, author of Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy. In this third segment we will be talking about the threat to Democracy that Nick believes the National Education Standards Movement poses. During the last segment we talked about what it was and kind of how Common Core came about. But it is insidious apparently to Democracy.

Weber: The first question in this segment Nicholas, Nick, I want to ask you about where we ended the last segment and that had to do with this notion where we’re worried about what standards do and it’s nice to have freedom and I’m a big fan of John Dewey as well. At the same time I and Anthony both have lived in Mississippi and Alabama respectively and those are States which are notorious for having very low standards and even not meeting those. And then when people want to raise standards Mississippi fights to keep it’s standards low and then say, “Look we’re not failing that badly. See all we had to do was lower are standards.” Right?

Lots of people put their kids in private white academies. Thousands of those were created throughout the South after Brown v. Board of Education and then all kinds of people who are in power their kids aren’t affected when the schools are crappy. And so they don’t try to improve them; they don’t fund them enough. Then we have troubled schools and folks have reason to wish that there were higher expectations for their kids because they believe in their kids and that might actually mean we need to fund education properly and so forth. This Standards Movement, you kind of touched on it already, but isn’t this really freedom for diversity and education sometimes a tool to lower expectations on disadvantaged kids?

Tampio: Okay great. Yeah, I would have been much more sympathetic to that argument in 2008, before my kids … At the beginning of the Obama Administration before my kids were in school, I think I would have been sympathetic to that. And I grew up outside of Washington, D.C., my parents worked in Washington, D.C., and I tended to trust the Federal Government. At least since Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and then with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and there’s IDEA which is the Disability Education Act, so we liberal progressive Democrat types tend to view the Federal government as the good guys who are going to save kids from the corrupt and racist and abusive educational authorities in the States.

But part of what I’ve come to realize is that we need to change our references. It’s 1954 anymore and the issues are not the exact same. It’s not the Warren Supreme Court or JFK or LBJ versus racist southerners. That’s not the dynamic anymore right now. What’s basically happened is that the Bill and Melinda Gates, their Foundation, but these two people, they met with David Coleman and Jean Wilhoit in 2008, there was a Washington Post Article about this called: Bill Gates Pulled Off the Swift Common Core Revolution and basically David Coleman said, “Listen I want to write these National Education Standards. I need to it be bank rolled. I need to be banked rolled for the writing of the standards because there are Federal Laws against the Federal Government making curriculum. So, we need somebody private to pay for the standards. We also need to get the support of a lot of groups to get on board with these standards.” So, depending on how you count, a very conservative estimate is two hundred million, but it could easily be over a billion dollars that the Gates Foundation have poured into the Common Core Initiative.

Cashio: Okay. Whoa.

Weber: Wow.

Tampio: David Coleman-

Cashio: I did not know about this.

Tampio: Yeah, well it’s a great article you should read it. It’s the classic article. If you want to read just one article read this Washington Post article by Lindsay Layden.

Weber: We’ll put a link to it in the notes for the Episode when it comes out on the-

Tampio: That would be great. So, David Coleman earned the confidence of Bill and Melinda Gates. He’s a confidence man. Right? And he pulled the confidence game. He’s a con artist. Well, maybe I’m going too far. So, the point is, is that somebody’s coming along and saying, “We’ve got these brand-new educational standards.” They’ve never been tested. They’ve never been a trial run. But we want them to all across the country and now it’s going to prepare all children for college and careers. I’d want to say, “Listen, could you offer any evidence that this is the case?” Is there any-

Weber: You mean that it’s effective or any good?

Tampio: … or it’s any good, yeah. Right? The fact is it’s … this is Diane Ravitch’s main point. She said, “We are a Nation guinea pigs. FDA would never approve medicine that had never been given a trial run and now we’ve adopted National Education Standards.” So part of what I do in my popular article’s, my academic articles, and my book, is I get to the nitty gritty and I show what the standards are and what kind of assignments they lead to and that’s what really shocks people. Then all of a sudden they realize, well wait a minute that’s … this advertising is false. This is not college and career ready standards. These are standards that make possible standardized testing.

Weber: I had never heard about the point about it not having been tested before in experimental small settings. [inaudible 00:36:12]

Cashio: Yes. That’s a good point.

Weber: I didn’t realize that. That’s terrifying actually, now that you tell me that.

Tampio: Yeah, Diane Ravitch has a Huffington Post piece called: The One Fatal Flaw of the Common Core, that really specifies how they basically violated the International Protocol for getting Standards.

Weber: I see the total connection now-

Cashio: Oh wow.

Weber: … because I remember a great piece she wrote about how we’re not thinking about evidence anymore.

Tampio: Yes.

Weber: I didn’t know that was about Common Core. That was a great piece she wrote.

Tampio: Yeah, absolutely.

Weber: Okay, wow.

Tampio: But to your question about what do we do about low educational qualities in different parts of the country and I guess the question is: Do you try to empower the people in the communities to make things better or do you think that bureaucrats and the wealthy are the ones who should decide for other people how to educate their children? My view is, make education as local as you possibly can. What I do in my book is I describe different communities that are trying to make that argument because it’s … here’s just the politics of the debate, people are often pointing to historically disadvantaged communities and the fact is, is that what my book does is show they’re people in Baltimore and Detroit and Chicago who don’t want these kind of reforms. So who are Bill and Melinda Gates? What role does the Federal Government have to put this scheme on the entire country?

Cashio: I like something you said earlier. It seems that liberals have their own concern with the Common Core but I’ve got a lot of relatives and some of them are very conservative and some of us are very liberal and but one thing almost all agree on is a concern for the Common Core. The concern is almost always when we see our children doing their homework and we’re like, “Why are they doing it this way or why do we have to do it this way?” But you seem to think it definitely goes beyond just what their learning and how their learning and how their being assigned, but it is a threat to Democracy. Which is sort of a large [inaudible 00:38:18]. When you say “what do you mean by this? How are these National Education Standards a threat to Democracy?

Tampio: Sure. To the question of how is this a threat to democracy? This is what I would say. I would say that the best way for children to learn about democracy is to grow up in an environment where they have a voice and the adults around them have a voice. This is one of the principles of John Dewey and progressive education, is that the way to learn democracy is to grow up in a democratic environment. When you are a young age all throughout your educational system you’re seeing adults negotiate with each other about how to come up with good educational aims for children. You see an educational system that gives children lots of opportunities to have a say about their education. About what their research papers are going to be. About what their internships are going to be. About what their extra curriculars are going to be. So what happens is you grow up to be somebody who says, “Hey listen, my voice matters in this world. My actions matter in this world. That I participate in the system that educates me and that controls a lot of what I do during my waking hours.” That’s how you learn about Democracy.

What the Common Core does is it says, from Kindergarten to twelfth grade these are the performance expectations that you are to match. If you are advanced, if you’re behind, if you’re bored, if you’ve got other ideas, you’re not allowed to change the sequencing. And actually, the standards themselves, part of what I do I have a forthcoming article in Democracy in Education, is I actually go straight to the Common Core English Language Arts Anchor Standards. And so the Anchor Standards are the basis for Common Core Close Reading. And what Common Core Close Reading does is that it gives you an assignment of an essay on a sheet of paper and it asks you questions about that reading passage. The first ELA Anchor Standard expects you to cite specific evidence from the text when answering questions about the text. And then Anchor Standards two through nine specify what kinds of evidence they might be looking for as far as the context, the characters, the plot, the main idea. The tenth Anchor Standard is about the Lexile Level the kid should be doing at their particular grade level.

Tampio: But what Common Core Close Reading does is it expects you to use textural specific and textual dependent evidence from the text. Which is a very fancy way of saying regurgitate. Part of what my book does is that I look at SAT that are aligned to the Common Core, I look at the Advanced Placement Curriculum Frame Works that are aligned to the Common Core, I look at all sorts of … the New York State, Engaged New York Modules that are aligned to the Common Core, so what they do is they say, “You must use the exact words from the text to answer questions about the text.” And so what that means is from the time you’re in Kindergarten to the time you graduate from High School you do not have many opportunities within the Common Core to say what you think or feel, which is the exact opposite of John Dewey’s Copernican Revolution in Pedagogy. Right? There is no allowances made for the particular child, there’s no opportunities or few opportunities for originality, creativity, rebellion. No. And the fact is that Close Reading makes possible online standardized testing because you can click the exact word or you can write the exact words to answer the question.

Weber: This is very nice.

Cashio: Very good explanation. Yeah.

Tampio: Thank you. All of of sudden now your saying parents in a community have no say about their children’s education, at least on the most important question. They have a choice about what color the flyer is going to be, what kind of cupcakes they’re going to serve at the PTA meeting, totally peripheral questions to the main questions of education because the Common Core has a huge effect on the curriculum. Again, it’s not a curriculum, but it’s a curriculum framework that has profound consequences for the school day. So, parents are disempowered, community members are disempowered, Superintendents, State Officials are disempowered and then also students are learning undemocratic pedagogy. So yes, I don’t want to be dramatic, but I do think that the Common Core has incredible anti-democratic consequences.

Weber: That’s a very interesting characterization of the matter. Yeah and so I think that it’s important for our listeners to get a little bit of background in the Philosophy of Education about something important and at work here because the old school way of thinking and education would think about human beings, kids, persons, whatever as tabula rasas, which means this blank slate or like an empty vessel and you’re going to pour education into it. Dewey by contrast was someone who saw that the learner, the person, the individual brings something to the educational experience and therefore what Nick is talking about is the extent to which Dewey would worry about a system in which it’s always only pouring into the vessel and not seeing what the child brings to education and thus writing, learning to express yourself, thinking about what might be your own reasons rather than the text’s reason for something. It’s very important in this background. Would you say this Educational Philosophy from Dewey is at the heart of what you’re saying or am I-

Tampio: Yes, yes I mean let me just back up. I do alliances with conservatives. If they want to have a more traditionalist curriculum where they are, that’s okay. Just keep in mind that in New York I would advocate progressive education. I think that States and localities should be given maximum freedom that ironically there could be more democratic benefits of communities arguing and deciding to go a more traditionalist route than a more Deweyan route. So that’s that. But part of what I was arguing in my Aeon Essay on John Dewey was his great fear was that you would have a pyramid where the wealthy children would get a liberal arts education that would encourage them to have freedom and you’d have three R’s mechanically treated for the masses. That issue is exactly our issue. That the Common Core is the three R’s mechanically treated.

Weber: One more time just for everybody who’s not so familiar what are the three R’s?

Tampio: Reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Weber: That’s right.

Cashio: We got to make good workers to go to the factories-

Weber: You have to skip the A in arithmetic.

Cashio: … and businesses and …

Weber: To get the third R right.

Tampio: Yeah, it’s a lesson in civility. Literally the Common Core is: Do not tell us your thoughts, follow instructions, do what you’re told. And that’s unacceptable for my kids and it’s unacceptable for your kids.

Weber: You heard it folks this is Nicholas Tampio-

Tampio: Oh boy.

Weber: … telling it like it is on Philosophy Bakes Bread. Thank you so much for yet another segment. We’re going to come back with some final hard-hitting questions for this guy. This is me, Eric Weber and my co-host is Anthony Cashio. Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll be right back.

Weber: Hey everybody this is Eric Weber here live in the studio and I wanted to make one last point towards the end of that segment I was explaining, in my own moment when I was speaking talking about John Dewey’s philosophy, I was explaining something and didn’t make clear reference to the fact that what I was talking about was, the words Nick used, the Copernican Revolution in education. And if anyone didn’t quite catch that what he was talking about was something he mentioned earlier about this notion of putting the child at the center of the education because Copernicus in his revolution changed the world’s views on, not just on the universe, but really where the place of the earth is in the universe. When Ptolemy thought everything went around the earth, well, Copernicus said, “No, no, no, really everything goes around the sun and our planets move around the sun and that’s really the way to think about this.”

Well, what John Dewey did in terms of a revolutionary change in thinking was to move from the authority figures of the teacher and so forth to placing at the center of the educational universe the child. That is what I was trying to get out as I was saying a little bit more trying to flesh out… because we always try to make sure we explain the technical lingo we use in an episode and I wanted to just jump into say what Copernican Revolution in Education refers to though I think Nick explained it very well, over the course of this episode, he really covers that material well.

In just a second, we’re going to come back for segment four of Philosophy Bakes Bread. Thanks for listening.

Cashio: Welcome back everyone to Philosophy Bakes Bread it’s your privilege today to be listening to Anthony Cashio, that would be me and my co-host Eric Thomas Weber and today it is our privilege to be talking with Nicholas Tampio about National Education Standards and problems for Democracy. So in this final segment, as always, we’ll wrap up with a final big picture question or two, some light hearted jokes that we hope you enjoy, we enjoy them, and a question for us all to ponder.

Weber: That’s right. So Nick, we’ve heard about the National Education Standards Movement as well as why you think it’s a problem for democracy. If you can sum up … we’ve heard a little bit about this but if you can sum up tell us what do you think education should look like ideally if not standardized.

Tampio: Well I think that schools should come up with aims and aims are plans about what you’re going to learn and study. But I would like aims to be as close to the local level as possible. I want to make sure that the people who are impacted by the educational aims have a chance to speak about the educational aims and I also want them to be flexible as communities change or as historical circumstances change. Right? So, if there is an election going on I think you can make the Social Studies curriculum to address what’s going on with the election. I live in a school district that’s right next to the John Jay Estate. I think it would be perfectly fine to dedicate some historical lessons to the founding father’s including or the founding generation including John Jay. But if you live in California and you live next to other historical monuments you should be able to adopt your curriculum to these other types of places. I would like to see teachers and schools empowered to have much more of a say over what students are learning. I believe in local control as much as possible.

To go back to one of the questions from the first segment Eric, is that you say, “Can’t we just set minimum standards in English or Math?” The fact of the matter is, is that there are very heated debates about how kids learn to read and do math. And actually, there are very heated debates about what a good English curriculum looks like or what a good Math curriculum looks like. And so, part of what my book does is show that they’re actually really heated debates about what’s the best way for kids to read. A lot of people say that the Common Core’s expectations of when kids start to read is … there’s no scientific basis for it. There’s no research basis. Right? It’s David Coleman writing these English Standards without having any scholarly knowledge or practitioner background.

The fact is, is that let’s let communities where parents and teachers and community members have a voice in what their education looks like. I’m nervous about saying specifics for different places. Like if a school in Detroit wants to have a certain view of education let’s give them freedom to decide. Let’s really figure out a way to give them … let’s empower parents to advocate for their children to get a good education, rather than sayings lets trust Washington, D.C., and letting people in Detroit, Baltimore, New York just sit back and be consumers or passive witnesses to how their kids are being educated. That’s not democracy.

Weber: Interesting. Interesting.

Cashio: Right. Oh, that’s good.

Weber: Just one little comment about that. Just earlier when you answered that we’re not in the Civil Rights Movement anymore kind of thing, we just had a school in Mississippi, I say we I’m to there anymore, but there’s school in Mississippi that just changed it’s name from something about Nathan Bedford Forrest to Barack Obama. Right? Part of that of course does have to do with local control but at the same time sometimes local control can be oppressive to certain communities and how to prepare your kid for the potential to be a doctor when your community doesn’t have any doctors you may foreclose opportunities for some people is one of the attitudes people have expressed I’ve seen.

Tampio: It’s a question of Federalism. The bread and butter question of Political Science. Do we put all of our eggs in one basket and what if it’s a bad basket?

Cashio: Yeah, yeah.

Tampio: One of the exercises I do with my students is say imagine all these different States have different levels of educational quality or education standards where should we draw the line for the country?

Cashio: Yeah.

Tampio: People are assuming that we’re going to set high educational standards and all of this miracle is going to happen now, that Mississippi’s going to rise to New York because they’ve adopted these new standards.

Cashio: Yeah, no.

Tampio: No. That’s not how it works.

Cashio: No.

Tampio: I don’t know why parents should accept a second-rate education for their children. You know? Let’s empower parents to be good advocates for their community schools.

Cashio: All right. Nicholas, I have a question and it’s going to kind of, I hope I don’t take us too far off topic and I’m worried it might be too big, so standardized test is big business.

Tampio: Right.

Cashio: Not just the production of the test but you get all the study materials for the test and you’ve got all the stuff for the Common Core and then you have the computer programs to run it, and I’m sure you’ve probably thought about it so it’s just not a political wheel to change the system, but there’s going to be economic pushback from the lobbyist in this group. Have you thought about ways or do you have any suggestions about how to grapple with these difficulties? So moving forward say you want to decentralize or get rid of standardized testing, or move away from standardized testing. Is there any thought about the economic push backs going to be?

Tampio: Yes, there’s two parts to the question: economics and the politics. The economics is that the Nation had an article a couple year ago and they said that America spends about 780 billion dollars a year educating children between the ages of 5 and 18. It’s a huge market. So very powerful people want a bigger slice of that pie, right?

Cashio: Right.

Tampio: So Pearson, McGraw-Hill, College Board, all of these very powerful economic agents want a bigger slice of the pie and politicians want to have more control and teachers sometimes can be more liberal, so if you can dedicate money to testing rather than teachers well powerful people like that type of arrangement. Yeah, it’s the fight of our lives and I had no idea that I’d be committing to this battle when I started to protest the Common Core.

The plus is that I’m meeting wonderful people all around the country who are working as hard as they can to advocate for sensible education policies. One of the actually really wonderful experiences has been is how different, how diverse this movement is. Right? There a lot of conservatives, there are a lot of Republicans, there are a lot of liberals, there are a lot of Democrats, there’s every hue, religion, ethnicity, we’re all trying to say hey listen this Common Core shoe does not fit our children. We have got to take this shoe off of our children. It pinches. It’s been an exciting moment; it’s democracy. Right? Its been this democratic movement, the test refusal movement in New York has been wonderful to be a part of, it’s been this very diverse constituency that’s saying nobody asked us in New York about the Common Core, nobody asked us about the tests, nobody asked us about the accountability mechanisms. We’re fighting because we’re defending our children and let’s figure out a way to work together to stop this madness.

Weber: Wow, that’s powerful and I like how you came back to refrain of the shoe pinching. That’s a great metaphor that Dewey brought up and it came from Aristotle originally. Anyway very nice.

Weber: Well, we ask everybody in this last segment Nick, we ask everybody who comes on this show whether you would say, as the old saying goes, that philosophy bakes no bread? Or would you say that it does? Explain. Show your work. We’re talking about school here so show your work.

Tampio: Yeah, no I think philosophy does bake bread and actually one point John Dewey used to say it that he was not an educator that he was a philosopher grappling with real questions in the classroom. As somebody who’s trained in philosophy I hesitate to describe myself as a philosopher. I think people should generally be careful to describing themselves as a philosopher by title.

Cashio: Why’s that?

Tampio: Well because it’s a kind of honorific title and maybe be a little bit-

Cashio: Can you name yourself a philosopher or does someone have to do it?

Tampio: Yeah, I don’t know.

Cashio: That was the question.

Tampio: So any how I had a professor who did that and I thought that seemed like a good attitude. But the fact is that there’s all sorts of interesting questions about standards. There’s this platonic notion of the one good form, this one good blueprint, this one good idea of what in this instance education looks like and John Dewey spent a lot of his career trying to challenge this Platonism and saying that actually standards are important but they have to be this organic process that evolves for the circumstances. So that after Darwin you can’t have the same notion of standards that you have to look at them as provisional road maps that human beings create to survive in their environment.

Cashio: Nice.

Tampio: Now you and I could have that conversation or all three of us could have this conversation about the philosophical nature of standards and we could get a couple dozen hundred, a couple hundred people to be interested. But then we say we’re going to talk about the standards that educate children, all of sudden you’re going to have millions. Literally millions, hundreds of thousands, of people saying listen I’m going to participate in this conversation. I might not have the philosophical training, I might not have the background, but I want to talk with you. So this has been for me a very satisfying occasion. It’s dissatisfying in that I don’t like to see my children hurt. But it’s satisfying in that I’m saying listen actually now I can speak to a big audience about philosophical concerns.

Weber: That’s right and where the rubber meets the road you’re not … on this show we try and make sure people know what philosophy is but in the real world you’re getting people to think about the issues and their concreteness and how and why it matters and really dealing with these issues together. But at the same time, for our purposes of this show, it’s a great illustration of what philosophy means when it’s put to use.

Tampio: Absolutely.

Weber: Very nice.

Cashio: Beautiful. I like it.

Cashio: Well as you know Nicholas we want people to know both the serious side of philosophy and the lighter side of philosophy. I have a short little segment here we like to call Philosophunnies.

Weber: Say: Philosophunnies.

3-year-old Sam: Philosophunnies.

Weber: Say: Philosophunnies.

3-year-old Sam: Philosophunnies.

Cashio: Eric’s son is stupid cute.       So Nicholas, we’d love to hear if you have a favorite joke or a funniest fact or a story about philosophy or politics or anything [inaudible 00:58:34]. A nice dessert at the end of meal.

Tampio: When I got involved in the Common Core dispute, I contacted parents at my kids school and they all sent me their stories about what they were seeing happen as a result of the Common Core. I wrote a letter to the principal saying, “We understand your piloting this new program. Here’s some of our concerns. Please stop.” And then anyhow I got called into the principal’s office. And so yeah that was a like a very funny moment early in this fight because I was sitting there and I was thinking, “My gosh I’m a grown man and here I am in the principal’s office in trouble.”

Weber: That’s pretty funny. Well that’s a pretty good example. Well, Anthony and I always make sure to gather a few jokes partly just in case our guest doesn’t want to tell any story or joke or whatever. But also because it’s fun to add a few anyway. So we have a few just educational related jokes.

Cashio: Education related.

Cashio: What can you tell about teacher’s who take attendance?

Tampio: I don’t know.

Cashio: They’re absent minded.

I got the cricket on that one.

Tampio: I got the rib shot that’ funny.

Weber: When is an English teacher like a judge?

Tampio: I don’t know. When?

Weber: When she hands out long sentences.

Tampio: Oh, my gosh.

Weber: I think we got crickets twice in a row. I promise these next ones are better.

 All right so these are test questions where students answered quite literally and cleverly. You’ve got this one Anthony?

Cashio: These would not pass the Common Core standards.

What ended in 1896?

Weber: I don’t know. What ended in 1896?

Cashio: O bviously 1895.

Tampio: Oh my goodness.

Weber: I like that one.

Weber: Question: How do you change centimeters to meters?

Cashio: I don’t know. How?

Weber: You take out centi.

Tampio: Oh my goodness.

Weber: We have a low batting average this time. The last one is good though.

Cashio: All right. All right, a math problem. You ready?

John has 32 candy bars. He eats 28. What does he have now?

Weber: I don’t know.

Tampio: A stomach ache, a stomach ache. I can get this one.

Cashio: Diabetes.

Weber: I think that one might deserve the rim shot.

Cashio: Last but not least we do want to take advantage of the fact that today we have powerful social media that allow for two way communications even for programs like radio shows. We like to keep it democratic here, right? Nice. Talk to us, we’ll talk to you, or work things out. So we want to invite our listeners to send their thoughts about big questions that we raise on the show.

Weber: That’s right. Given that Nicholas we’d love to hear your thoughts about what question we should ask everyone whose listening for a segment that we call: You tell me. Have you got a question to pose our listeners?

Tampio: Yes. So my question is: Should America have National Education Standards?

Cashio: Should we add-

Weber: Sweet. To the point.

Cashio: … and why or why not?

Tampio: Yeah. We could ask why or why not.

Weber: All right.

Cashio: Well thank you everyone for listening to Philosophy Bakes Bread, Food for Thought about Life and Leadership. Your host Anthony Cashio and Eric Weber are really grateful to have been joined today by Nicholas Tampio. Thanks again Nicholas for joining us. This has been an awesome conversation. Maybe we can have you back on when your book comes back out and have some more conversation.

Weber: Real fun. Really fun.

Cashio: I think this is a talk we’re going to Nationally keep having for hopefully maybe not too much longer.

Weber: Well, everybody you can pre-order Nicks’ book now and it will be out in the Spring, I believe of 2018.

Tampio: Yes.

Weber: But you can pre-order it now.

Tampio: Oh, there are so many more topics. So yeah, no, we could have other ones. So let’s stay in touch.

Weber: I think that would be delightful.

Cashio: Awesome. Let’s do that. I hope the listeners will consider sending us your thoughts about anything you’ve heard today, that you’d like to hear about in the future, or about this specific question that we raised for you. Should we have National Education Standards and if so why? What would they look like? What is your vision here?

Weber: Or if not, why not. Right?

Cashio: Yeah, indeed.

Weber: So remember everyone you can catch us on Twitter, Facebook, and on our website at philosophybakesbread.com and there you’ll find transcripts for our many episodes, thanks to Drake Bowling, an undergraduate philosophy student at the University of Kentucky. Thank you Drake!

Cashio: Yes, thanks Dra … these are really great. Helpful tools

Tampio: Indeed.

Cashio: I started using them. It’s nice.

Weber: Awesome.

Cashio: I did say that. I sounded smart.

Weber: One more thing folks, if you want to support the show and be more involved in the work of the Society of Philosophers in America, SOPHIA, the easiest thing to do is to go learn about us and consider joining as member at philosophersinamerica.com.

Cashio: And if you’re enjoying the show we hope you’ll take a quick second to rate us and review us on iTunes or wherever you get our podcast or are listening to us. Good reviews help us on the algorithm and help us reach more people and help us bake more bread.

Weber: That’s right.

Cashio: And as always if you want to reach to us you can email us at PhilosophyBakesBread@gmail.com and you can also call us and leave a short recorded message with a question or a comment that we may be able to play on the show. We’ll probably play it on the show guys.

Weber: Probably.

Cashio: You can reach us at 859-257-1849. That’s 859-257-1849. Join us again next time on Philosophy Bakes Bread, Food for Thought About Life and Leadership.

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