Monday, 9 July 2018

Tasty bits to chew on

What I read

According to "Meating the Challenge: French vegans are tormenting France’s butchers" (2018). French vegans, while upset with the meat-heavy traditional French diet that they would like to to change, insist that they are not represented by activists who have been attacking butchers' shops over recent months. The attackers often use fake blood to paint slogans such as "Stop speciesism," which has led the head of France's butchers association to describe their ideas as an ideology they want to force on everyone. 

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My response 

Since my weekend class has just started reading Stephen Law's persuasive essay "Carving the Roast Beast" (2003), when I saw this in The Economist a couple of days ago, it was irresistible: I had to blog it. As I told my class on Saturday, I agree with the majority opinion from our Classroom survey that philosopher Stephen Law is wrong in his essay, whose main idea is that "It's morally wrong to eat meat." But I like it because it's a great example of a persuasive essay. Law makes a very strong case for his thesis, and his academic training is obvious in his ideas and their organization, which I like my students to see. That Law also gives very strong support for an idea that most of us disagree with, and that does touch our lives, is a bonus. As I told one of my students after our Saturday class, I was going to buy kai yang from the stall next to my condo for lunch. And if you've read some of my other recent blog posts, you'll know that meat is an important part of my daily diet; I'm definitely not an ideologue trying to "Stop speciesism" by using my classes for propaganda. If you are in my weekday class and would like an extra essay, one that is also fun (I think), to read, you might like to follow the link to that source. 

 But I don't want to spoil the fun for my students by saying why I disagree with Law. Like much of the best philosophy, Law pushes us to reconsider assumptions about things, especially how we live our lives and the beliefs behind our actions, that might not be so obviously true as we tend to assume that they are. And this is a good thing I think. It is healthy to take a critical examination of things that have always been accepted as true. Often, we discover that they might not be as true as we thought: when I was born, everyone "knew" that women were weaker than men in many ways, they couldn't be trusted with the sort of responsibility that men had, and so on. This sexism was wrong and the laws it led to were morally bad. Similarly, until the 1950s, the law allowed morally indefensible discrimination against African Americans because everyone "knew" they were not as intelligent, as clean, as law abiding or whatever as white people. And today in some blind countries everyone "knows" that atheists are not as moral as religious people, although the statistics show the opposite: the countries with the lowest rates of crime are generally developed Western countries that are also the least religious — the US is an anomaly: it is developed, but remains fairly religious, although increasingly less so this century. 

 But philosophy can be a dangerous career even today. Socrates was executed by a court of law in democratic Athens on the charge of corrupting the young; in other words, he was teaching them to think, which the traditionalists hated because many of their traditions were silly or morally rotten. And when he took up a professorship at Princeton, the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, probably the most influential moral philosopher now writing, got death threats from fanatics, most likely Christian conservatives, because of his ideas that develop the ideas related to speciesism that Stephen Law introduces. Thankfully, US law has some immunity to religion. 
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My question

Should philosophy be taught in schools?
It took me a bit longer than usual to think of my question here. A few more obvious ones occurred to me first, but I think this one is interesting.  
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Reference

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8 comments:

  1. Peter AUA9 July 2018 at 06:29

    As you can see, the URL of this blog post is https://academicaua.blogspot.com/2018/07/anti-speciesist-ideologues.html.

    This is because my original title was "Anti-speciesist Ideologues," but after publishing and reviewing it, I decided that the new one might better reflect the ideas in my response, and perhaps also be more interesting for readers. The URL did not change when I revised the title.

    Which one do you prefer: my original title, or the one I finally decided on?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Peter AUA9 July 2018 at 06:30

      Yes, if you have later ideas, it's perfectly OK, and common on academic discussion boards, to comment on your own post.

      And your own comments.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous10 July 2018 at 00:45

    I think philosophy is a field that is interesting in terms of leading learners to understand some sophisticated things that is not easy to comprehend without having been though difficulties in real life. This is because those things are written from real experiences or life lessons that hardly everyone has undergone. Due to meaningful massages hidden in the field, it is worth to be tough in school.

    In my law school, there is also a subject named "Legal Philosophy" included in the curriculum that shape law students to understand jusification of the laws which is a qualification of a good lawer.

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    Replies
    1. Peter AUA10 July 2018 at 08:41

      When I was studying my major in philosophy at Sydney University, I took a couple of classes in philosophy of law, which I enjoyed. I agree with Minnie that it's important for students in law to think about what makes a law good or bad, and how law should be made. These are questions that matter for society. Another important question seems to me to be whether the law must, or should, always be obeyed. For example, was Rosa Parks doing something wrong when she sat in a white person's seat on a bus in the US on December 1, 1955, knowing that she was breaking the law? She was a criminal, but should we say she did something wrong in breaking the racist laws of the US state of Alabama, or should we say that she was a moral hero for taking a stand and suffering the punishment of breaking a morally corrupt law?

      Delete
  3. Anonymous10 July 2018 at 11:33

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Anonymous10 July 2018 at 11:37

    My first time experience on philosophy is when I was a freshman in law school, I attended the class of legal logic as a free elective subject because the seniors told me that I can get good grade from this subject. From the bottom of my heart, I really didn't know why we have to study things that difficult to understand and then this mindset made me feel purposeless when I have to study legal philosophy as a compulsory subject.

    After finished legal philosophy class, I changed my mind suddenly. I know that there are plenty of Vexed Questions which no one can judge whether it's right or wrong, good or bad by applying just only one theory. For example, the question "Is death penalty effect in preventing serious crime?", "How much does it cost for the compensation of tort for mental distress?.

    In sum up, If I had studied philosophy when I was a high school student, I would have been a well-qualified law student. In addition, philosophy is useful for students and professional careers in terms of helping to develop the way of thinking and the way we see the world.

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  5. Anonymous11 July 2018 at 18:53

    I was actually stressful when I read The Xmas Files. Every time Law added an exclamation mark at the end of a quote, I thought they were starting to raise their voices against each other for I think people usually tolerate less with family members and easily develop to an argument. I was afraid that they might shout and the situation would be messy. However, they were unnaturally calm and spoke with logical reason.

    I then had a thought about it and reached a conclusion that it might be just Thais, and most Asian families, that adults are usually win an argument. It is widely known that children shouldn't argue with adults since they know better and unreasonably tell youngers to believe or do as told. This belief is wrong though; children could have better education and know more than grown-ups do.

    Personally, I think, theoretically, killing animal is not a good thing. But, I don't think I'm gonna stop eating meat anyway. I don't know how to define me or my attitude. I might be the worst person in the world to do things I know is wrong, but, as the discussion under the post about Instagram removing kissing men photo went, I, too, should have freedom to do what I like, right?

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  6. Unknown13 July 2018 at 23:34

    I think to know about philosophy would be good. We will know what other people’s points of view are, the reasons and supports under those ideas, whether we would agree them or not. It’s interesting when same topic could be explained or argued in many different aspects. Even what morality is still being discussed. It’s a thing shaped or defined by people’s thoughts which the thoughts could be anything. Anyways, philosophy is kind of abstract for me. I know that I would exactly feel tense and have a headache studying philosophy.

    ReplyDelete

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