Pseudophilosophy

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The orthodox understanding of pseudophilosophy is any idea or system that masquerades itself as philosophy while significantly failing to meet the high intellectual standards of philosophy. The term is frequently used pejoratively, and most applications of it are quite contentious. Pseudophilosophy bears the same relationship to philosophy that pseudoscience bears to science.

Nicholas Rescher, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, defines pseudo-philosophy as "deliberations that masquerade as philosophical but are inept, incompetent, deficient in intellectual seriousness, and reflective of an insufficient commitment to the pursuit of truth." Rescher adds that the term is particularly appropriate when applied to "those who use the resources of reason to substantiate the claim that rationality is unachievable in matters of inquiry."

Other terms used are non-philosophy and cod philosophy (from codswallop).[1]

Contents

[edit] Accusations of pseudophilosophy in academia

[edit] Hegel

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote the following about Hegel:

If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudophilosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right.

– Arthur Schopenhauer, 'On the Basis of Morality', trans. E.F.J.Payne (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), pp.15-16.

Schopenhauer's critiques of Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte are informed by his view that their works use deliberately impressive but ultimately vacuous jargon and neologisms, and that they contain castles of abstraction that sound impressive but ultimately include no verifiable content. Søren Kierkegaard attacked Hegel in a similar manner, writing that it was pretentious for Hegel to title one of his books "Reality." To Kierkegaard, this indicated an attempt to quash critics even before criticism was voiced.

Despite these attacks, Hegel is widely considered one of the most influential writers in world history: the rigor of his philosophy notwithstanding, Hegel had a significant effect on the writings of subsequent philosophers, such as Kierkegaard, Marx, and Heidegger. The philosopher Walter Kaufmann contended that Schopenhauer's attacks actually tell us more about Schopenhauer than about Hegel.

[edit] Postmodernism

More recently, accusations of pseudophilosophy have been made against postmodernists, Martin Heidegger, and certain late twentieth century French thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Luc Nancy by numerous philosophers in the tradition of analytic philosophy and some 'hard scientists' such as Alan Sokal (see the Sokal affair) who claim that these thinkers use of scientific concepts is lacking in rigor.

The biologist Richard Dawkins has claimed that postmodernists are generally intellectual charlatans who deliberately obscure weak or nonsensical ideas with ostentatious and difficult to understand verbiage.[1] W.V.O. Quine, along with Barry Smith, Hugh Mellor (then Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge), and various other academic philosophers, once wrote to protest Cambridge University's award of an honorary degree to Jacques Derrida, claiming that Derrida's work "does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigor" and that it is made of "tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists".[2] Such attacks are usually considered as a sign of the breach between analytical and continental philosophy.

Furthermore, while French reception (of Foucault, Althusser, Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida, etc.) considers their work to be within widely different fields and intellectual traditions, American critics have frequently responded to them as a homogenous body. The label of "structuralism" was denied by almost all of the so-called structuralists thinkers (Claude Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Althusser, early Foucault), and the label of post-modernism was adopted by few of the movement's "founding fathers". Derrida would warn several times that the "deconstruction" of metaphysics didn't mean that "we didn't need metaphysics"; but we need to do something else, beside it: the deconstruction of metaphysics is not an abandonment of metaphysics.

Likewise, numerous philosophers in the tradition of analytic philosophy have been dismissed as pseudophilosophical by their peers in continental philosophy. For example, In "Signature, Event, Context", Jacques Derrida refers to John Searle's theory of speech acts as having "inherited from a certain Continental tradition [..] numerous gestures and a logic I try to deconstruct". He claims that Searle's ignorance of the history of philosophy in general and continental philosophy in particular has led to his "repeating its most problematic gesture, falling short of the most elementary critical questions..."[3] Similarly, Alain Badiou refers to analytic philosophy as "Anglo-American linguistic sophistry", and claims that analytic philosophy of science relies wholly on untenable metaphysical presuppositions.[4]

[edit] Mysticism

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Excursions into mysticism are generally frowned upon by academic philosophers. A notable example is the nonacceptance by academics of Robert M. Pirsig's metaphysics of quality, an experience described in his two books Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila: An inquiry into morals. The mystical explanation, the academic philosopher laments, invariably is to accept at the same time p as true and not-p also as true. Interestingly, the later philosophy of both Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger, each the most prominent figure in his philosophical tradition, was criticized for devolving into mysticism.

[edit] Popular philosophy

Alfred Korzybski's theory of General Semantics has been given this appellation (also by Quine). The works of Albert Camus, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, have also been so named, in particular by Jean-Paul Sartre who claimed it was "philosophy for classe de terminale" (last class in high school before the Baccalauréat). Camus' works are generally considered as literature and not as philosophy, although they definitely posed some philosophical questions.

Ayn Rand's Objectivism has been referred to as a pseudophilosophy, with varying justifications.[5] Many of her views are presented in her romantic realist-style novels, rather than in scholarly publications. In addition, Rand was self-taught, and consequently the philosophical issues that she discussed were out of sync with the research programs of mainstream academic philosophy during the years she was active. Her grasp of the historical problems of philosophy is considered idiosyncratic in many ways – her proposed resolution of the problem of universals, for example, treated it as a question of epistemology although it has usually been taken as a question of metaphysics (though Rand notes this fact in her treatment of the problem).

Finally, she and some of her followers are often perceived as being dogmatic.[6] This is in part because some of her readers, imagined to be "adolescents and far right", are excited by her novels and by "reading them from their own perspectives" outside of their ideological context.[7] These readers, Nora Ephram says, are "missing the point."[8] Furthermore, many of her supporters would not permit modifications or additions to her system of ideas, leading some to label Rand as a cult leader.[9] There have been few published reactions to Objectivism in academic journals. The most comprehensive academic criticism to date is "With Charity Towards None" by William F. O'Neill, published in 1971. However, academic work on Objectivism has grown in recent years, within and beyond the Objectivist Movement.

Furthermore, the New Philosophers (Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkielkraut etc.) have been also accused to be a form of pseudophilosophy, although some of their early work was academic. Gilles Deleuze particularly criticized the movement. Some have criticized them for reversing the classical model of the intellectual: while the classical intellectual uses the influence gained in their field for moral or political purposes, and thus goes from their scientific field to the public space, New Philosophers invert this by capitalizing on their appearances on TV talk shows to derive their scientific legitimacy. They are not studied by philosophy students.[citation needed]

So-called integral thought is an example of new-age ideology, written for a popular audience, that at least strives for the appearance of philosophical rigour. For example, the promotional material printed on the back of Ken Wilber's Sex, Ecology, and Spirituality (Second Edition) claims, "Ken Wilber is one of the most widely read and influential American philosophers of our time," even though Wilber is at best a fringe figure in contemporary philosophy.[citation needed]

Best-selling British author Alain de Botton has been criticized by academic philosophers Jonathan Lear and Mary Margaret McCabe for abandoning the Socratic pursuit of truth for its own sake which, they assume, is central to genuine philosophy.[10] De Botton, McCabe claims, "popularize[s] philosophy...precisely on the basis that philosophers can provide us with useful tips...." Lear concludes, "...let's face it, this isn't philosophy."

Best-selling American author Christopher Phillips, who uses Socrates' name to describe his own methods, has been similarly criticized for neglecting the Socratic search for truth: although she does not describe Phillips as a pseudo-philosopher, academic philospoher Janet Sisson does claim that "the background for [Phillips' popular Socrates Café project] is very different from that for the conversations of Socrates. Plato uses the figure of Socrates as a way of introducing the idea of intellectual discussion in order to promote the pursuit of truth, not as a path for personal discovery. ...To treat opportunities for dialogue as a means of self-discovery is a modern attitude, not the aim of Socrates own original dialectic. American scholars have sometimes encouraged this reading of Socratic endeavors; Phillips' fondness for this line of argument perhaps owes more to idealist or existentialist thinking than to Socrates himself."[11]

Since the publication of academic philosopher William Irwin's Seinfeld and Philosophy in 1999, there has been an influx of books that mix themes of pop culture with philosophical themes, most notably perhaps Open Court Publishing's "Popular Culture and Philosophy Series"[12] and Blackwell Publishing's "Philosophy and Pop Culture Series".[13] Many of these books have been criticized for watering down philosophical content while making tenuous connections with popular themes in order to maximize appeal to consumers. Australian journalist Steve Carroll, for example, says, "During the past 10 years there has been a spate of books intent, not so much on taking philosophy to streets, as taking it to the dinner parties. And they're a mixed bag. Many are just crass attempts to cash in on the movement - the worst kind of arranged marriage between publishing and opportunistic editors. ... The Sopranos and Philosophy: I Kill Therefore I Am, is part of a series that also includes The Simpsons and Philosophy, Seinfeld and Philosophy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy and so on. It is basically cultural studies with bits of philosophy thrown in. But if you're not into The Sopranos, Seinfeld, Buffy or that whole other reality of cult US TV - and this series, which is aimed at the American market (and got a thumping from some US reviewers), assumes you most definitely are - then it is of distinctly limited value."[14]

[edit] Other self-described philosophers

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Frederick II of Prussia considered himself to be a philosopher in his own right, a claim not recognised by academic philosophers. Due to his influence on European political, economic and cultural history his opinions and ideas on philosophy were, and are, read.

Other works that have been labeled as "pseudophilosophy" include the material in Richard Bach's fable Jonathan Livingston Seagull, The Satanic Bible, James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy and the novella The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Other New Age works are generally considered speculative or unanalytical by philosophers. Here, the label of pseudophilosophy is used to criticise these works as being conventional, sentimental, or platitudinous; and of lacking rigour, system, or analytical content.

A special type of pseudophilosophy is mock philosophy, proposed as a mystification, just for fun, such as externism by Jára Cimrman in the Czech theatre play Akt (English: The Nude).

[edit] References

  1. ^ Topological Redheads and Cod Philosophy. Retrieved August 4, 2006.]]
  2. ^ Letter to The Times, Saturday, May 9, 1992.
  3. ^ Derrida, Jacques "Signature, Event, Context" Northwestern University Press
  4. ^ Badiou, Alain "Being and Event" Continuum Press 2005 pp. 3-7
  5. ^ Clark, Leslie. "The philosophical art of looking out number one", Sunday Herald. Retrieved on 2007-04-30. 
  6. ^ David Kelly (2000). Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand. Transaction Publishers Press. ISBN 0765808633. 
  7. ^ Mimi Reisel Gladstein (1999). The New Ayn Rand Companion. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313303215. 
  8. ^ Mimi Reisel Gladstein (1999). The New Ayn Rand Companion. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313303215. 
  9. ^ See, for example, Michael Shermer, Ayn Rand: The Unlikeliest Cult in History, originally appearing in Skeptic, vol. 2, no. 2, 1993, pp. 74-81
  10. ^ Lear, "The Socratic Method", New York Times, 14 May 2000, accessed 29 May 2008; McCabe, "Who wants to be a millionaire?", Times Literary Supplement, 23 June 2000.
  11. ^ Review of Socrates Café, Metapsychology, Vol. 7 No. 21, 25 May 2003, accessed 29 May 2008.
  12. ^ Open Court's "Popular Culture and Philosophy Series", accessed 31 May 2008.
  13. ^ Blackwell's "Philosophy and Pop Culture Series", accessed 31 May 2008.
  14. ^ Steve Carroll, "You ain't nothin' but an existential hound dog", The Age, 4 Sept 2004, accessed 31 May 2008; see also Brian Ott's satirical "The 'Popular Culture and Philosophy' Books and Philosophy: Philosophy, You’ve Officially Been Pimped", Flow, Vol. 3 No. 3, 7 Oct 2005, accessed 1 June 2008.

[edit] See also


[edit] External links

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