I got into a great conversation about “being” with a couple of middle age guys at work. I never would have suspected they even thought about stuff, but they were both well versed. The son of one of the guys was taking what sounded to be like a very good class on epistemology at a public high school in Hillsboro. The conversation was a welcome relief from the goofiness of Kelly’s doctoral level Sociology class up at University of Washington.
Kelly’s professor made the statement in class that “Modern intellectuals are not concerned with the origins of the categories of understanding. It is not a relevant debate anymore.”
“Categories of Understanding” is a subject engaged by Aristotle (at least the categories part) and Kant. It well may be true that this subject is not of a great amount of relevance to the subject at hand, but to state as a fact something that “modern intellectuals” do in general is pompous posturing to the extreme. Is the professor so ignorant as to think she can speak for modern intellectuals. That kind of statement is hard to take coming from a real intellectual, but it was made by, of all things, a Sociology professor. There might be a few true intellectuals out there who are Sociology professors (Rodney Stark comes to mind), but they have to be few and far between. Maybe the “modern” modifier puts it into a different category where “modern” intellectuals really are not intellectuals at all. I guess I should give them the benefit of a doubt.
Betty Blonde #429 – 03/09/2010
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