What is the most memorable event in your life?
It is hard to categorize events as “most memorable” or
not. One of the reasons for this is that
you remember different things at different times. If by “most memorable” is meant the thing
that one ought most to remember, that’s one thing. If it means the one thing you remember the
most, that is another matter. Besides,
when people ask this question they usually just want an amusing anecdote.
One thing I remember distinctly and think about from time to
time is the day Prof. Brock informed me that I had been awarded a tenure-track
position as San Jose state. I had been
teaching here as a temporary full-time lecturer and there was pretty tough
competition for this tenure-track position.
Just yesterday I ran into one of the leading contenders for that position
at an aesthetics conference. I was so
glad that the department chose me over him.
What is the most noteworthy event you experienced while
working at SJSU?
One wants to ask “noteworthy for whom, and under what
circumstances?” Sometimes we think of
noteworthiness as equivalent to newsworthy.
I was in the news quite dramatically twice in my life.
There was the time that a tree fell on me while walking to
my office. It broke my right leg in
two. I was evacuated to the Valley
Medical Center. Thankfully no one else
was under the tree at the time. There is
an article about the event in the campus paper archives.
Another time I appeared in the news was when I was
interviewed by the New York Times about our department’s famous stand against
problematic use of MOOCS (massive online classes) in higher education. This was a very important event in the
history of the department. We all
contributed to a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education criticizing the
use of such courses. It was a great moment
for the department. A number of the
other faculty were also interviewed in the national media. Recently we co-wrote an article incorporating
our further thoughts on the issue. This
is the only time I have collaboratively written a paper with anyone.
Who was your idol in philosophy when you grew up, and how
have you tried to be like them?
In our society we have no really clear idea of what is meant
by “when you grew up.” I assume you mean
something like the period leading up to my 21st birthday, with
greater emphasis placed on the later part of that period. I had many heroes then. I wouldn’t say they were “idols” since I
never worshiped them as gods or god-like beings, but I certainly admired them. You can look at my web page for a short autobiography
in which I list the philosophers who influenced me at certain times in my life.
Under the age of 21? Well Thoreau and Nietzsche were two
philosophers who particularly affected me.
But I also read and was influenced by Descartes, Pascal, Bertrand
Russell, Plato, Hume, Kant and towards the end of that period, Wittgenstein. I was also much taken by some eastern
philosophers including Krishnamurti and Lin Yutang.
“Growing up” implies the process of coming to maturity and
one can say that there is no clear cutoff point here. Am I still “growing”? Do I still have maturing to do? I am not sure I know the answers to those
questions.
I have been totally immersed in Plato, Kant, Hume, Ricoeur,
Dewey and a number of others at different times in my life. But when it comes to philosophy of life I
think I probably draw more from the Stoics.
During the period before I was 21 (I became 21 in 1970) it
was not popular to pay much attention to women philosophers. However, later in my life a number of women
were added to my pantheon of heroes, both living and dead. My advisor for my M.A. in Humanities was
Sandra Luft, who I greatly admired and still do. On my blog Aesthetics Today I have a list of
the women aestheticians who have influenced me in my life.
What belief or doctrine of philosophy had the most
influence on you?
I am not much for accepting doctrines or even “beliefs” if,
by that, is meant something someone accepts without questioning. I have always been taken by skepticism and
see doubt as central to philosophy. “Influence” is also a funny word since the
relationship between writings one reads, classes, teachers, thoughts, and
writings one writes is much more dynamic than can be described by the
relatively passive concept of “influence.”
My initial response to this question was “Probably the American
Pragmatist tradition had the strongest influence. However I have also been much affected by
both the phenomenological and the analytic traditions.” But now I think that the strongest influence
(assuming, for the moment, that I set aside my reservations about the word) was
the dialectic of Christianity of Philosophy.
Christianity, which was an important part of my youth, really did
present a doctrine and a set of beliefs that one was required to accept: but I reacted against all of that. I first began to think of myself as an
atheist around the age of 15 and that was largely because of philosophy. By the way, an important influence in this
was a book I read by John Fowler called Aristos, which was based on the sayings
of Heraclitus.
How have the books you have favored changed throughout your
life?
It may seem too obvious to say this but the books that I
favored under the age of ten were children’s books often involving adventure. In my teens I was eager to read the great
classics. My grandfather gave me a list
of such books and I was happy to work my way through that. I was a big reader of novels and history
books in my teens, but later in my life I focused more on philosophy. I still read about twelve novels a year,
mostly in connection with a literary fiction reading group that I have belonged
to for over thirty years, although sometimes I read mystery and science
fiction.
As for individual books, Brother's
Karamazov was one of the reasons I became an atheist. I loved reading the great classics including
such works as The Magic Mountain by
Thomas Mann and of course the plays of Shakespeare and the Greek plays. However during my professional life I have
pretty much focused on whatever books I have been teaching. This semester it has mainly been books on the
aesthetics of film, but also, just this week, Suzanne Langer's Feeling and Form.
What time and place would you like to live in?
It seems like a silly pastime to imagine living in another
time and place. But perhaps an indicator
of the choice I would make would be what sorts of novels I like to read,
including historical fiction, as well as the history books I like to read and
the historical sites I like to visit.
Perhaps my choice of novels and history books and sites reflects
whatever time I would like to live in (if I had a choice) since to read a novel
or to visit a historical museum is to vicariously live in another time. In this regard I have always favored the 19th
century. It was a time of great
possibility and we had not yet discovered that we were about to destroy the
planet. I prefer Sherlock Holmes stories
when they are placed in the 19th century, and I love Jane
Austin. Growing up in California,
history was mainly the 19th century.
My second choice would be the 18th century. In both cases life would only be acceptable
if in a major city and if one were comfortably well off. My third choice would be Athens during the
time of Plato.
If you have a chance to meet someone, who might that be?
If dead people are included I would certainly like to meet
Socrates. But I probably would not do
very well in the debate. I don’t really
have a list of living people I would like to meet. It is not so much meeting people that would
be interesting but talking with them at length.
But it is hard to know who you would really enjoy talking to at
length. Most great men and women I have
known are egocentric and to talk with them you have to be pretty tolerant of
that.
What is your most proud achievement in philosophy?
Pride involves positive feelings of accomplishment. I have that mainly towards my career as a
philosophy teacher at SJSU. A great
source of pride is the accomplishments of my past students. Another source of pride is my
publications…the academic part of my professional career. I was one of the founders of a new
sub-discipline of philosophical aesthetics called Everyday Aesthetics. My book The
Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The
Aesthetics of Everyday Life was published in 2012 and I am proud of that
book. Yesterday I attended a talk in
which my work in this field was referred to positively, and that made me feel
proud.
Do you consider your work unique?
Uniqueness is a pretty common property. Everything is different in some respect. On the other hand, usually when people use
the word “unique” they mean particularly unusual. So, let’s assume that we are talking about
this sense of “unique.” People often
associate the word with something positive:
it is considered a complement to say that someone’s work is unique. But it can be used as a put-down, i.e.
uniquely stupid or uniquely incompetent.
My philosophical writings (“my work”) reflect a distinctive voice that
is my own. Whether or not it is unique,
in the sense of particularly unusual in a positive way, I might not be the best
to say. If someone other than me decided
to read all of my writings and then compared them with the writings of someone
considered to be more typical perhaps it could be determined how unique my work
is. But I suspect that the conclusion would be
that we were both unique.
There are some philosophers who simply accept a doctrine and
apply a standard method without trying to think very deeply about
assumptions. Such people, and people who
are followers of one philosopher, might be less deserving of the accolade
“unique.” I am not that sort of
philosopher. I have tried in my career
to derive inspiration from every philosopher I read and I would never say that
X is true because philosopher Y believes it is true. However, that, in itself, does not make me
particularly unique.
What would you change about yourself?
In a way this is a very strange question. What is the point of talking about changing
oneself? I am not sure I can answer
this. If the question is something like
“If you could retroactively modify your DNA or your history what would you
change?” how could I possibly answer that?
If I changed myself in this sort of way then I would not be myself. There is a paradox here.
Nietzsche argues for saying “yes” to your life including
your entire past, and presumably your genetic makeup too. He sees this as the basis of the only
worthwhile optimism. You should strive
to say “I will it thus.” I agree with
this. So, in a way, I wouldn’t change
anything. There is a paradox here
too: if I try to follow Nietzsche’s
advice more often, then perhaps I am not saying yes to a part of myself that
says no to myself. But that paradox
does not bother me.
Change is about the future.
One always makes plans and all plans are about change. Usually this question is directed, however,
to what personal habits one wants to modify, for example “do you want to eat
more vegetables and fewer saturated fats?”
I do not want to talk about those kinds of projects since that kind of
thing is not appropriate for public discourse.
What philosopher's writings have you agreed with the most?
My initial response to this question was “Richard Rorty's
writings constantly gave me that sense, although I probably have agreed even
more with the writings of Joseph Margolis.”
Thinking about it more I imagine that among my
contemporaries I have usually agreed with Yuriko Saito the most. However, I am not sure how important it is to
agree with someone or how important this category really is. I sometimes have written “I agree” with
regards to some claim by some philosopher:
but who cares how often I do this?
In philosophy it is often much more interesting to disagree with someone
than to agree with them. I suspect that
I have also disagreed the most with Saito.
If you could change one period or stage in philosophy, what
might that be?
"I would let Descartes disappear: he did not really do any good for
philosophy. The value of his work is
mainly to provide something to argue against, although I admire his dedication
to truth.” This is what I initially
wrote in response to this question. But, thinking again about Nietzsche’s
idea of saying yes to life, I would say that I would not change anything about
the history of philosophy: why would I
want to? Even Descartes has value for
me. The debates between Descartes and
his contemporaries are particularly fascinating.
A second possibility would be to have had Heraclitus and
Parmenides travel to India or China and have some serious discussions with the
philosophers there. Or Plato.. Or
Aristotle: definitely Aristotle.
Do you believe philosophy is a subject-matter capable of
being understood only by a few?
My initial response was “Not at all: anyone who cares to learn can sink into the
world of ideas created by a philosopher.”
I am not sure that philosophy is one subject-matter. There is philosophy as a practice and
philosophy as a collection of writings and talks. Also some people argue that there is
philosophy in literature and film, maybe even in painting and music. One should not forget the philosophy in
one-to-one dialogues such as those described by Plato. Each work of philosophy presents its own
challenges. If you are reading
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra
you need to learn how to read it. It is
a different think to learn how to read John Dewey’s Art as Experience. That is
why we have seminars and professors.
“Understand” usually means being able to appreciate and
explain. Only a small number can
currently appreciate and explain Nietzsche’s great books. But potentially almost anyone can do so if
you are willing to put in the work. Of
course there is a distinction between superficial and deep explanation. Perhaps the deepest form of explanation (and
the deepest form of appreciation) is when someone creates his or her own
philosophical work in response to the work in question. Plato was possibly the deepest reader of
Socrates, as Aristotle was of Plato. As
a practical matter, not everyone can read and understand on that level. There are also multiple possible equally good
understandings of a philosophical writing.
There are many other readings of Plato than that offered by
Aristotle. Yet some really good
philosophers are not very good readers:
they are perhaps best as coming up with their own theories and may even
be engaged in creative misreadings of others.
Do you think philosophers are wrongfully viewed and
represented by most people?
“Yes. But we
philosophy teachers are constantly trying to correct that.” That would be my initial reply. A better way to answer this would be to
survey adults on the question “How do you value philosophy?” That is, this would be a good question if, by
“philosophers rightly viewed,” one means “philosophers rightly
appreciated.” Maybe, however, it means “philosophers
rightly appreciated and understood.” OK,
so we generate some questions, ask them of a representative sample of most
people and then analyze the responses. But how would you determine the
representative sample?
Since most people have not read a lot of philosophy we
already know that most people will not have much understanding of philosophy
and hence will not view philosophy rightly, if by “rightly” is meant “with
understanding.” One way to answer this
question would be to look at popular sayings about philosophers and philosophy. It might be popularly agreed that “Atheism
necessarily implies immorality.” That
would be a wrong view of atheism. To
check this, one would have to read most of the great atheist philosophers and
most of the great works defending atheism.
Some people rightly view some philosophers largely because they have read
them and understood what they have said.
Some people can do this simply by listening to lectures about the
philosopher or reading secondary sources.
Most people wrongly view most philosophers simply because any partial
understanding of a philosopher is an incorrect understanding. I am not entirely comfortable, however, with
the dichotomy “right view” vs. “wrong view.” Maybe we should speak instead of better and
worse views of philosophers.
Shawn Chong was a student in my Introduction to Aesthetics class and he uses these questions to write an interview for another class. I want to offer my thanks to Mr. Chong for posing these questions and getting me to elaborate on my original responses.
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