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Seems like this post has been killed, but here's another perspective anyway. I'm a former student at a school functionally identical (and in many, many ways culturally similar) to Columbia. Aside from my professional-focused studies related to topics many HN readers would be familiar with, I'm a serious philosophy student. I've taken classes in both of these academic categories within philosophy that the author seems to be outlining. For what it's worth, I do not fit the political or demographic mold of a person who would stereotypically pursue the "progressive" branches of philosophy being discussed and in many cases criticized here. There are many classes with different teaching styles. Some present material as dogma without affording critique, as in the feminist theory class the author described. This is bad teaching, it is possibly even more common in classes on feminist and similar theory. It's there in other areas of philosophy, including mind-focused and analytic topics, but harder to encounter until you're already deep in academia. I promise that there are Plato scholars who act just as the professor in the article did. There are those here that feel feminist, queer, and race-driven theory is not serious "philosophy" or who will reduce it to cultural marxist or similar terms. This is intellectually dishonest, and probably driven by odious people you've met that espouse beliefs along the lines of Foucault or the Frankfurt School. Yes, Foucault's supporters can be extremely annoying and unreasonable. But there are real insights in many progressive philosophical works, some of them evoking striking and existential moments of reflection, and proposing new ways to live and see the world. I urge readers here to attempt to look past the frustrations they might have with feminists or progressives and try to find something valuable in these works, because it really is there. I.e., when you hear people talk about things like abolishing the police or that all women or people of colour are violently oppressed, try not to react immediately to these phrases and see what is really being said. Philosophy is often about getting to the very root meaning of a term, or making subtle distinctions, or creating technical terms out of everyday language. You may find that the people who have annoyed you have bastardized the philosophers they espouse, or have at least failed to communicate the meat of their work. |