[lbo-talk] NYTIMES's political philosophert

[andie_nachgeborenen]

Last time I checked Gutting was a specialist in recent French philosophy -- Foucault, Derrida, that sort of thing. (Which makes him a little less than an official philosopher even if he does teach at Notre Dame. Manly men do analytical metaphysics and epistemology; if you have to do political philosophy you do Rawls and Nozick. I have written at least three papers on Rawls and/or Nozick, which makes me sort of a semi manly man, but then I have spoiled the effect by writing a bunch of papers about Marx, which makes me a whacko weenie. If you can do decision theory you are more of a manly man. I can, some, so maybe that brings me a bit back towards the manly man side.). Anyway, with Gutting, I'd  say political philosophy was a little out of his area. Moreover, I noticed when I was in the biz how stupid really smart people were about politics, even if it was their business to teach and write about it. Let a hot political issue arise in a semi real context, the quality of discussion would take a nose dive. 

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On Nov 2, 2012, at 3:06 PM, ken hanly <northsunm at yahoo.com> wrote:


>  Official philosophers must confine their responses within the appropriate frame even though Gutting is supposed to give a shocking answer. The appropriate frame is the two party system. Jill Stein has been arrested three times but this does not even register in the mainstream media because they obey the framing rules.
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> Cheers, ken
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> Blog:  http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html
> Blog:  http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html
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> ________________________________
> From: Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org 
> Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2012 3:37:36 PM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] NYTIMES's political philosophert
> 
> The NYT has just put online a column by its house philosopher, a Professor named Gary Gutting, explaining that "conservatives" should vote for Obama and "radicals" should vote for Romney.  This is my response:
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> It is nothing short of scandalous to treat your vote as a choice between O and R, when everywhere there are multiple candidates.  Why vote for O or R instead of Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or Rocky Anderson (to name only the three whose electors are on enough ballots to win the election)? A philosopher worthy of the name would at least examine the arguments for an alternative vote as opposed to Lesser of Two Evils behavior.  Nearly as bad is to ignore what is known to literally everyone--that only the voters in the "Swing States" have even the seeming option of a choice between O and R.  For everybody else, and that means nearly all of us, a vote for O or R can have absolutely no effect on the election, and so is meaningless.  Which, for a big majority of voters, means that a vote for the Green, Libertarian, or Justice party is the only meaningful option to express their real political choice.  Let me add that I believe that, even in "Swing States"
> informed voters should vote for their real choice rather than for whomever they cast as the lesser evil. I stand with the best candidate never elected president--Eugene Victor Debs--that "It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it."
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> Shane Mage
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> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures.
> 
> Herakleitos of Ephesos
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