I dunno what about this discussion is making smart people say stupid things. Miles, you know perfectly well that no one, neither Brian no mere, nor Wittgenstein, Winch, Geertz, Collingwood, Dray, Dilthey (I left him off my original list), nor Weber said anything about empathetic understanding involving some sort of effortless intuition. It's a theme of this entire tradition of writing about "thick" interpretation (Geertz's term) that it's really hard. (Empathy in general is really hard because it involves paying close analytical and sympathetic attention to others. As you and the other people who are blowing off Brian are showing -- I mean, that empathy is hard.) So why are you throwing up these straw men when you know better?
--- Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > Miles, the technocratic arrogance that oozes from
> > every letter of your recent compositions about
> them
> > goes a long way to illustrating why people
> fighting
> > oppression often include knowitall professors as a
> > group among their oppressors and want to smash
> their
> > glasses and send them to the countryside to learn
> > something. I'd a rad prof with too many advanced
> > degrees myself and reading what you have written
> makes
> > me wish I had a crowbar, Brian's patience
> throughout
> > these recent discussions as been positively
> Buddhist.
> > Let apologists for the existing regime take this
> tone;
> > it's our job to respectfully offer assistance.
> That
> > doesn't mean, no criticism, it means,
> respectfully.
>
> Assuming that people can intuitively understand the
> complex social
> relations that make possible various forms of
> oppression is about as
> plausible as claiming that people can intuitively
> understand cosmology
> with no training in physics ("sure, I can tell that
> the earth must be
> circling the sun! It's obvious!"). --Or to use an
> example that may hit
> a little closer to home, as plausible as a person
> with no formal
> training in law conducting an effective self-defense
> in a federal
> courtroom.
>
> It seems obvious to me that certain forms of
> knowledge and practice
> require rigorous education and a lot of hard work.
> I know you think
> that's true of the law; why should it be any
> different for the study of
> society?
>
> Miles
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