As a consequence of the development of writing, first in the ancient Near East and soon after in Greece, old habits of thought began to die out, and certain other, previously latent, mental faculties began to express themselves. Words were now anchored and, though spellings could change from one generation to another, or one region to another, there were now physical traces that endured, which could be transmitted, consulted and pointed to in settling questions about the use or authority of spoken language.
Writing rapidly turned customs into laws, agreements into contracts, genealogical lore into history. In each case, what had once been fundamentally temporal and singular was transformed into something eternal (as in, ‘outside of time’) and general. Even the simple act of making everyday lists of common objects – an act impossible in a primary oral culture – was already a triumph of abstraction and systematisation. From here it was just one small step to what we now call ‘philosophy’.
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The freezing in text of dialectical reasoning, with a heavy admixture (however impure or problematic) of poetry, aphorism and myth, became the model for what, in the European tradition, was thought of as ‘philosophy’ for the next few millennia.
Why are these historical reflections important today? Because what is at stake is nothing less than our understanding of the scope and nature of philosophical enquiry.
The Italian philosopher of history Giambattista Vico wrote in his Scienza Nuova (1725): ‘the order of ideas must follow the order of institutions’. This order was, namely: ‘First the woods, then cultivated fields and huts, next little houses and villages, thence cities, finally academies and philosophers.’ It is implicit for Vico that the philosophers in these academies are not illiterate. The order of ideas is the order of the emergence of the technology of writing.
Within academic philosophy today, there is significant concern arising from how to make philosophy more ‘inclusive’, but no interest at all in questioning Vico’s order, in going back and recuperating what forms of thought might have been left behind in the woods and fields.
The groups ordinarily targeted by philosophy’s ‘inclusivity drive’ already dwell in the cities and share in literacy, even if discriminatory measures often block their full cultivation of it. No arguments are being made for the inclusion of people belonging to cultures that value other forms of knowledge: there are no efforts to recruit philosophers from among Inuit hunters or Hmong peasants.
The practical obstacles to such recruitment from a true cross-section of humanity are obvious. Were it to happen, the simple process of moving from traditional ways of life into academic institutions would at the same time dilute and transform the perspectives that are deserving of more attention. Irrespective of such unhappy outcomes, there is already substantial scholarship on these forms of thought accumulated in philosophy’s neighbouring disciplines – notably history, anthropology, and world literatures – to which philosophers already have access. It’s a literature that could serve as a corrective to the foundational bias, present since the emergence of philosophy as a distinct activity. How philosophy came to disdain the wisdom of oral cultures
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Philosophers still tend to disdain, or at least to conceive as categorically different from their own speciality, the use of language deployed by bards and poets, whether from Siberia or the South Bronx. Again, this disdain leaves out the bulk of human experience. Until it is eradicated, the present talk of the ideal of inclusion will remain mere lip-service.--Justin E H Smith "How philosophy came to disdain the wisdom of oral cultures"Aeon.
Justin Smith is one of our most creative philosophical essayists and he always stimulates reflection on my part (recall). One of the initial oddities of Justin Smith's essay that I quoted above* is that he offers no particular examples of 'disdain;' nor does it name anybody that disdains. He also does not discuss any individuals who are trying to make 'academic philosophy' more 'inclusive.' Rather, Smith is interested in essences; he wishes to make a point about the 'scope and nature of philosophical enquiry.' This surprised me because often when people point to significance of non-standardized philosophy it is accompanied with healthy skepticism of essentialized claims to universality. Not so Smith, and in what follows, we need to keep this aspiration in mind.
For, Smith's piece is a thinly-disguised polemic against an idea of inclusiveness that focuses on cultivating members of (once or still) actively discriminated groups. ("The groups ordinarily targeted by philosophy’s ‘inclusivity drive’ already dwell in the cities and share in literacy, even if discriminatory measures often block their full cultivation of it.") Smith's underlying insight is that this kind of inclusiveness ultimately has (what I will call) a cultural status quo bias built into it (Smith's "foundational bias"). This is an urbane and literate culture. (To be sure: it also involves people that grow up in the countryside educated in state-sponsored schools in modern states.) As Smith's narrative suggests this cultural bias is an endemic feature of the self-conception of philosophy. So, for example, two years ago, I wrote a post about the rejection of rustic wisdom in Plato and the Stoics in a manner that reverberates through the ages in ways also described by Smith. In fact, in my conception of methodological, analytical egalitarianism it is the task of philosophy to make available neglected and overlooked experience.
Smith does not deny the reality of past discrimination nor does he deny the justness of the cultivation of members of groups that (face(d)) discrimination. Yet, he clearly thinks that the ideal of inclusion that underwrites it is merely symbolic ("lip-service"). Even if one accepts Smith's ultimate position, this is a mistake on his part for two reasons: (i) one should not underestimate the significance of symbolism; (ii) improving the status quo morally and epistemically is still an improvement. Now, Smith claims without argument that there are "perspectives that are deserving of more attention." But he has offered no reason for the comparative claim (about desert).
This is not to deny that Smith has arguments for his position that there is an urbane and literate bias in philosophical culture and that it would be important to rectify this bias--even if Smith were wrong about the empirical assertion that the status quo "leaves out the bulk of human experience." (Population is growing so rapidly during the last two centuries we are fast approaching the stage where most human beings that have ever lived were born some time (say) after 1700.) But let's stipulate that the bias leaves out significant numbers of human experience--this is a kind of egalitarian commitment on Smith's part; all human experience can give rise to "forms of knowledge" worth prompting philosophy. In particular, Smith suggests that the alternative(s) to the culturally biased one is/are all based in 'oral culture.'
Smith does not say much about the characteristics of 'oral culture.' Perhaps there is nothing what such cultures (ranging from the depths of stone-age pre-history to existing societies) have in common. But Smith suggests that the absence of writing prevents "abstraction" and a certain form of "systematisation." I am skeptical about this claim and the tacit philosophy of mind he relies on. It reminds me a bit too much of early modern, neo-Lockean views about the distinctness of the savage mind where abstraction is lacking. (It is peculiar that Smith fails to note this because he invites us explicitly to reject Vico's schema!)
Moreover, "metrical exigencies" can facilitate abstract thought; Smith confidently asserts that there are no arguments in Lyric poetry. This is odd because the Iliad starts with an argumentative exchange between Agamemnon and Achilles. (One of the underlying issues is the search for an explanation for their lack of success in war.) One may even suggest (but that's for another day) that any systematic constraints generates the means toward abstraction.
There is another reason to be skeptical of Smith's argument. He implies that the philosophical tradition rejects oral culture and sides with "written language" that can settle "questions about the use or authority of spoken language." Now, Smith recognizes this is a problematic claim. As he writes, "It is not orality that philosophy rejects, necessarily: Socrates himself rejected writing, identifying instead with a form of oral culture." One need only have a cursory knowledge of Derrida, to recognize that for much of Platonizing tradition, written traces are thought inferior to the unwritten ideal/form (etc.).
So, in a bold move, Smith suggests spoken urbane/literate philosophy piggy-backs on written language: "the structured, working-through of a question towards an end that has not been predetermined" is the consequence of a written culture ("this practice emerged indirectly from forms of reasoning only actualised with the advent of writing.") Let's grant this point for the sake of argument. It implies, it seems, that in traditional philosophy there is a bias against ways of knowing that do not rely on structured, working-through of a question towards an end that has not been predetermined. It would be nice if Smith had offered a positive characterization of what has been left out and of which knowledge is "accumulated in philosophy’s neighbouring disciplines." (Here's a suggestion he does not consider: proverbial wisdom as codified by enduring sayings and maxims.)
Here's the bottom line: Smith offers a bold program of ways of knowing that are distinct from the (broad tent) tradition we have inherited. He intimates that including these -- broadening the scope of philosophy genuinely -- will change the essential character of philosophy. This is radical in spirit. But he sells the program in a way that affiliates him with reactionaries within the status quo. But of course, most of our professional peers that reject the idea of inclusiveness will also not follow Smith in his explorations of history, anthropology, and world literatures. For some reason I doubt that Smith is bothered by being a solitary walker in these paths. But his path holds the promise of transforming philosophy.
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