Click on the image here for a printable, Adobe PDF of our One-Sheet on “Clutter.”
SOPHIA has created our journal, Civil American, and our radio show and podcast, Philosophy Bakes Bread, in part to offer content for conversations among our local chapters. The Chairman of SOPHIA’s Board of Trustees John Lachs published his short essay, “Clutter,” in the 2017 edition of Civil American not very long after his wife passed away. The objects in our lives can seem mundane, but they can also bear great emotional weight for us. The leaders of the Lexington SOPHIA Chapter selected his essay as the focus of one of our “One-Sheet” documents, which will serve as the topic and guiding document for an upcoming chapter meeting. You can click on the thumbnail image of the one-sheet on the right hand side or you can open it by clicking here for a printable version of the “One Sheet” document on “Clutter.”
SOPHIA is grateful both to Dr. Lachs for his essay a well as to the leaders of the Lexington SOPHIA Chapter for drafting the questions that groups can use to jump easily into fun philosophical conversation. Thanks to Caroline A. Buchanan, Derek Daskalakes, Erik Jarvis, James William Lincoln, and Eric Thomas Weber. If any groups choose to make use of this one-sheet also, we encourage them to let us know how the conversation went as well as what thoughts their group has for possible improvement of this one-sheet or for future pieces.
John Lachs of Vanderbilt University
This piece includes the full content of Lachs’s short essay, thanks to Civil American Editor Shane Courtland. The author, John Lachs, is Centennial Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.
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 29th through August 1st, 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.
In this sixtieth episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, the first that aired in 2018, co-hosts Eric Thomas Weber and Anthony Cashio interview Dr. Skye Cleary on “Existentialism and Romantic Love,” the theme and title of her 2015 book.
Dr. Cleary not only has her PhD in philosophy, but also a Master’s degree in Business Administration. She teaches at Columbia University, Barnard College, and The City College of New York, and she has taught at the New York Public Library. She also is the managing editor for the American Philosophical Association’s APA Blog, as well as an Advisory Board Member to the global executive learning firm, “Strategy of Mind.” She has published numerous articles for popular media outlets like Aeon, The Huffington Post, and Business Insider. She is also a lieutenant in the Australian Army Reserves. Last but not least, Dr. Cleary was Awarded The New Philosophers Writers Award in July of 2017.
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.
I’d like to thank Shane Courtland for his reply to my response to his original posting, “Faith and Betrayal of the Philosophical Method.” I’m eager to continue this conversation about an important and timely subject: free speech in the classroom, and perhaps more broadly within public discourse. As such, it is also connected to other current debates about the appropriateness of trigger warnings, perceived over-sensitivity of some students and fellow citizens, explicit and implicit censorship, and political correctness. (Editor’s note: Check out SOPHIA’s online symposium on trigger warnings here!).
At the end of his reply, Courtland wrote, “It is for the sake of progress, not in spite of it, therefore, that I champion first and foremost the philosophical method over and above any particular view that has come from it.” I agree that philosophical method should be used as a means for progress, but I don’t believe the method itself is value-free or neutral. On the contrary, I think that philosophical method and the subjects we choose to examine with the method are already biased, even if for good reason.
Most of us who teach philosophy, I would venture to guess, have adopted classroom discussion guidelines that are similar to the ones described by Courtland. Most of us, I trust, have been trained to emphasize the role of reasoning over opining in the construction of arguments, to temporarily suspend judgment to weigh evidence, and to have a basic requirement of civility. I do this because I share John Stuart Mill’s optimistic attitude that “wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument.” Also like Mill, I don’t believe that the argumentative methods of philosophy alone can prompt us to revise our erroneous thinking, but rather “discussion and experience” and further discussion “to show how experience is to be interpreted” are all added together in a complex recipe of genuine and lasting persuasion. Argumentation is but one ingredient along with human relationships, values, identities, our historical circumstances and systems, and our understanding of these things.
These guidelines we choose for classroom discussion are not value neutral since they reflect pre-established commitments such as the view that unsupported, purely emotional and anecdotal responses are not as good as ones that rely on evidence or other more stable forms of justification. The method itself discriminates against and excludes certain kinds of response- and this discrimination goes way beyond the exclusion of hate speech, no matter how narrowly defined. By laying out formal rules of engagement, we indicate correct classroom speech while suppressing and discouraging other kinds of speech. These value laden guidelines are part of what it means for philosophers to be gatekeepers of integrity (from my earlier post).
The central and difficult issue Courtland presents in his response to me has to do with our freedom and responsibility to examine all views. The position Courtland presents, via Mill, is two-fold: 1) if someone holds the correct view and it goes unchallenged, then the view is in danger of becoming dead dogma, and 2) if someone holds the wrong view and it goes unchallenged, then the view cannot be revised. I am certainly not opposed to challenging views, since I agree that is the business of philosophy. However, I am opposed to challenging views just for the sake of challenging them alone without the exercise of proper judgment and an understanding of people and their intentions for participating in discussion in the first place.