But blacks and whites in poverty are in the same boat, because once you reach poverty, the chances of economic recovery are poor -- for anyone. It's just very hard to rebuild a life after you have been ratcheted down. For instance, well educated people who commit crimes and go to prison, usually have a very difficult time gaining employment (any job, not just the kind of job they used to have) once they leave prison. Felony convictions and prison are the kiss of economic death.

Blacks and Whites may be suffering some of the same economic inequities and anti-poor government policies, but they are not in the same boat. Rice wasn't just killed because of poor police strategy; he was also killed because he was a black child whose death would never cause the same local and national uproar as that of a slain white child. That's because Black poor have to suffer police racism and institutional racism that white poor do not have to endure. Also, whites still have an easier time getting hired than blacks at all levels, including fast food restaurants and other lower end jobs. And when they get the jobs, blacks are much less considered for management and higher positions than white poor.

So, no, black poor and white poor are not in the "same boat." The white poor are in a terrible "boat;" the black poor are in an even worse one.

All right, but the very act of challenging foundational assumptions takes place in the present by someone in particular, — Bitter Crank

One thing I would challenge is land ownership and ownership in general and the notions of countries and borders. In the Israel/Arab conflict a lot of time is spent on saying who owned what land and who has what rights. It is a microcosm of the issue of what constitutes a country and borders. Countries are made by brute force and there have been lots of conflicts over borders.

My challenging ownership I am not advocating a free for all of acquiring things but a reasonable reflective stance and a cooperative approach.

I also think we need to challenge the considered right to have children and make the process of having children harder and more reflective and not a free for all. I also think crude moral notions pervade societies that need attacking vigorously.

This sounds a lot like Leftist Post-structuralist philosophy like you find in:

Gilles Deleuze
Jacques Derrida
Michel Foucault
Julia Kristeva
Judith Butler
Edward Said
Jean-Francois Lyotard
Louis Althusser. — Thanatos Sand

You have just given a list of names can you give some indication of what they were saying and doing? I think academic philosophers have a cosy Job and salary and can be provocative but without really campaigning for change.

I thought Sartre was someone who was seen more with the public living amongst the issues.

In the UK the most prominent philosophers are the most bland and they can make a lot of money out of it. Richard Dawkins isn't a philosopher but he has stirred up controversy but his main target has been religion. Jeremy Corbyn is quite radical and has made an impact but I think they are still working with in the current framework of dichotomies. The lack of philosophy of politicians in general is dire.

The lack of philosophy of politicians in general is dire. — Andrew4Handel

Agreed. In fact, the situation is so bad that I feel sure that a good humanist philosopher with some PR savvy determined to change the world could do so.

I still think it is dead wrong to organize production for profit. — Bitter Crank

Profit can be a side-effect rather than raison d'etre, if the economy is managed. The fact is nobody is going to efficiently organize the development sale and distribution of say, roofing materials, unless there is an incentive to do so. Private enterprise and fair competition is a pretty efficient mechanism of delivering many types of product. Of course, without proper governmental/national international management it can easily become bloated, exploitative and overall inefficient.

I thought Sartre was someone who was seen more with the public living amongst the issues.

Sartre was someone who made sure he was seen among the public living among the issues. His actual societal contributions were less impressive as he spent an extended period of time with his female students and is believed to have taken a job many others refused because it was vacated by a fired (and likely camped) Jewish professor during Vichy France.

You have just given a list of names can you give some indication of what they were saying and doing? I think academic philosophers have a cosy Job and salary and can be provocative but without really campaigning for change.

Academic philosophers hardly have a cosy job or salary. Most of them, like most humanities professors, greatly live paycheck-to-paycheck and fight hard for tenure that is more easily denied them out of bias than science or math professors.

As to the philosophers I mentioned:

Jacques Derrida--During his life he was always politically active, working with anti-Apartheid movements in France and South Africa and helped publish a Leftist magazine, Tel Quel. His Post-Marxist, Post-Freudian, Post-Nietzschean philosophies emphasized that our ethical, aesthetic, ideological and power structures were--in connection with and mitigating material reality--constructed around a myriad of binaries both buttressing and drawing from strong central beliefs such as God, America, Manifest Destiny, or Laissez-Faire Capitalism, and these binaries and central beliefs continually deconstruct and reformulate and deconstruct and reformulate throughout history.

Gilles Deleuze--I'm not sure of Deleuze's political activity, but his and the psychoanalyst Felix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus did a landmark job of splicing Marx and Freud into their "code-deciphering schizo" model seeing humans in Capitalist societies as seeing a myriad of interrelated value codes--not too dissimilar from Wittgenstein's Language Games--that continually fetishize or de-fetishize objects, values, and ideologies in our systems. The "schizo" who can process the most codes effectively succeeds as opposed to the good, well-informed person of the enlightenment. This is not political activity, but a very strong analysis and indictment of the de-emphasis of legitimate ethics in the Capitalist world.

Michel Foucault--Again, I have little knowledge of Foucault's political activity, except he was greatly involved in Gay rights movements and a de-vilification of BDSM movements and activities, and he was a participant in both. As most people know, Foucault's most significant theory was his one of Power as a synchronous and diachronous matrix that is/was predominantly top-down in directions but also moves in multiple fractal-like directions like Derrida's deconstruction. This is similar to Gramsci's Hegemony, but is less regimented in a Marxist manner, so the Marxist model it more takes from is Althusser's ideology.

Julia Kristeva--A psychoanalyst and philosopher, Kristeva was greatly involved in feminism, but kept a skeptical distance from feminist "movements" as she had a general Foucauldian distrust of all power-centered organizations. She was one of the main editors of Tel Quel with Derrida as well. Kristeva's greatest theory was the post-Lacanian "Semiotic." Lacan had moved Oedipal Freudianism out of the bedroom and into language and culture by saying that people's growth wasn't dictated by their parents, but by how they were able to fit into language and culture and how the dominant ideas and linguistic structures--the Symbolic--allowed them to do so. Kristeva believed this structure opened up the un-recognized and even vilified spaces usually occupied by the artist, the marginalized, and the ones who think "outside the box" in their realm--The Semiotic. This idea was a huge one to understanding the value of Modernist Art and how the marginalized or misfits could assert their value, or even superiority

The lack of philosophy of politicians in general is dire. — Andrew4Handel

Agreed. In fact, the situation is so bad that I feel sure that a good humanist philosopher with some PR savvy determined to change the world could do so. — Jake Tarragon

Politicians reflect their constituents.

And your premise that people in power being more philosophically sharp would lead to greater good is highly questionable. David Smail sums it up this way:


"Global society constitutes a system of inexpressible complexity. It is like a huge central nervous system in which ‘social neurons’ (i.e. people) interact with each other via an infinity of interconnecting and overlapping subsystems. The fundamental dynamic of the system is power, that is the ability of a social group or individual to influence others in accordance with its/his/her interests. Interest is thus the principal, and most effective, means through which power is transmitted.

Here, already, is the starkest possible contrast with our conventional psychology: what animates us is not rational appraisal and considered choice of action, but the push and pull of social power as it manipulates our interest. It is not argument and demonstration of truth which move us to action but the impress of influences of which we may be entirely unaware.

Reason, then, is a tool of power, not a power in itself. Just like moral right, rational right is not of itself compelling and, when it is in nobody's interest to regard it, will be disregarded. Those who - like Thomas Paine for example - seem successful advocates of Reason in its purest form, may fail even themselves to see that it is in fact not reason alone that makes their words persuasive, but the causes (interests) to which reason becomes attached. No doubt Mein Kampf was as persuasive to those already sold on its premises as The Rights of Man was to 18th century revolutionaries in America and France. This does not mean, to those who value reason, that Paine's writing is not worth infinitely more than Hitler's; it means simply, and sadly, that Reason alone is impotent. What really matters is power itself.

In her mordantly compelling Lugano Report2, Susan George vividly draws attention to the inadequacy of rational argument as a means of influencing people. In starting to consider alternatives to the potentially disastrous practices of global capitalism, she writes:-

"This section has to start on a personal note because frankly, power relations being what they are, I feel at once moralistic and silly proposing alternatives. More times than I care to count I have attended events ending with a rousing declaration about what ‘should’ or ‘must’ occur. So many well-meaning efforts so totally neglect the crucial dimension of power that I try to avoid them now unless I think I can introduce an element of realism that might otherwise be absent.

…because I am constantly being asked ‘what to do’, I begin with some negative suggestions. The first is not to be trapped by the ‘should’, the ‘must’ and the ‘forehead-slapping school’. Assuming that any change, because it would contribute to justice, equity and peace, need only to be explained to be adopted is the saddest and most irritating kind of naivety. Many good, otherwise intelligent people seem to believe that once powerful individuals and institutions have actually understood the gravity of the crisis (any crisis) and the urgent need for its remedy, they will smack their brows, admit they have been wrong all along and, in a flash of revelation, instantly redirect their behaviour by 180 degrees.

While ignorance and stupidity must be given their due, most things come out the way they do because the powerful want them to come out that way..." -- David Smail,Power, Responsibility and Freedom

Cont'd

Judith Butler--A traditional philosopher and Hegel and Kant scholar, Butler was one of the first to use Lacan and Derrida's ideas to show the constructed notions of gender and to break down the notion that sexuality was purely biological and gender was purely cultural, showing how each are both. She also emphasized how out gender's and sexualities always involve performance and performativity. The former being a conscious expression, such as "I'm a man, I better not cry," the latter being a man's unconscious decision not to cry because his culture and other external surroundings have shaped him not to do so. Butler is extremely politically active in LBGT movements and has been a recent proponent of the Trans communities and movements, as not only idiot conservatives like Trump discriminate against Trans people, so do some people who consider themselves "liberal" or 'enlightened.

Edward Said--A classically trained pianist and classically trained Palestinian literary scholar who was involved in the Palestinian and other POC-oriented movements and even formed a Palestinian-Israeli orchestra with the renowned Israeli conductor Daniel Berenboim. Said's main concept and book Orientalism showed how Western literature/culture, and particularly Victorian literature/culture (his specialty), not only shaped its characters on the exoticizing and dehumanizing of non-White/non Western people, but very often depended on such activity. He ran through diverse texts as The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym, and Jane Austen's Persuasion. This book pretty much started the Post-Colonial discipline in the Humanities.

Jean Francois Lyotard--Lyotard was a pretty private person, and I have no idea of any of his political activity, but he was a huge thinker in Postmodern philosophy and Humanities, as he focused on Postmodernism reflecting the inevitable human rejection of the constructed Meta-narratives--huge narratives encompassing many others--such as the Enlightenment, Hegelian Marxism, Christian Eschatology, Manifest Destiny, or the American Dream.

Louis Althusser. Again, I know little of Althusser's political activity, but his ideas had great political impact on politically-oriented Marxist thinkers, as it freed Marxism from its substantial threads of extreme materialism and neo-religious notions of Hegelian eschatology and dialectics of Spirit. Althusser rejected the late Marx' Manichean binary of the material Real and false Ideology--so prevalent in The Matrix--replacing it with an ideology model that depicts ideology as our ideological engagement with ideology's engagement with it's non-binary opposition, the material. Thus, as in Derrida's deconstruction, which this notion greatly influenced, we are always in a field of partially-constructed, partially real elements of ideology and material that are meant to be worked through, not solved.

Another key idea of his was, building on Lacan's structure of the Symbolic, that ideology wasn't just top down, but was filtered in a dispersal mode so it could be--in an individual moment--spread in areas of little power and by people of little power, just as it could by areas or people of great power. This idea had a huge influence on Foucault's Power theories.

Thanks Thanatos Sand. :o

I was aware of Foucault's power structures ideas which I think in the form I was taught it,are very compelling, in conjunction with discursive psychology. I think narratives are weak in the media and public life and need a discourse analysis by a philosopher cum Journalist.

I think people get caught up in discourse and power relations and are busy situating themselves somewhere in preexisting dichotomies and subject positions.

I suppose you could call me left wing but I never label myself because then you get dragged into a shallow debate of stereotypes. I think some of the aforementioned philosophers etc are too abstract and technical to make a quick impact.

To me philosophy should be focused around logic so that any position can be attacked for it's logical coherency. That way there shouldn't be a dogmatic philosophy but a constant scrutiny of claims.

I think some of the most problematic structures are norms. The idea then is that it is just politicians who are in the wrong or lawyers or businessmen etc. Change must have to come from each individual (I think Jordan Peterson advocates this) but norms allow complacency or helplessness imo.

I think some of the aforementioned philosophers etc are too abstract and technical to make a quick impact.

You're welcome, and my pleasure.

I think I've pretty much shown they're not too abstract at all and are very well steeped in the classical philosophical tradition, and they have already made a huge impact in the Feminist, post-colonial, and LBGT movements as they have greatly used their ideas in their modes of challenging the power structures oppressing them and labelling them "deviant" or inferior."

To me philosophy should be focused around logic so that any position can be attacked for it's logical coherency. That way there shouldn't be a dogmatic philosophy but a constant scrutiny of claims.]

I hope you realize your own predilection for what philosophy should be can't be what it should actually be. That would be a bit solipsistic. Philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to the Post-Structuralists--and both those groups have a lot in common with each other as well as with Medieval Theologianx--has done much more than just attacking logical coherency, and that is a concept that needs unpacking an analysic in itself. If you limit it to that, you cut off philosophy's expansive and artistic potential, something great philosophers from St. Augustine to Kierkegaard to Walter Benjamin embraced and never excluded.

But if you want a philosopher who breaks down logical consistencies in current structures, you won't fine one better at doing that than Jacques Derrida.

your premise that people in power being more philosophically sharp would lead to greater good is highly questionable. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

While it is true that people are unlikely to be persuaded through rationality alone, I feel sure that people are reachable through a combination of rational argument and emotional appeal. Or just emotional appeal of course. The extra "trick" that any politician wishing to implement rational humanist policies must pull off is to have emotional appeal, charisma and PR skill. I think the scientific community, concerned at how rational argument has failed in many spheres of social and economic activity to result in the adoption of good policies are now recognizing that argument alone is not enough, and they are expressing the need to be able to reach people through emotional appeal. There seems to be a surge of interest in some science magazines about social psychology and what makes people tick, and an understanding that this scientific knowledge should be put to good use by campaigners.

Judith Butler was famously awarded a bad writing prize and other criticism for this piece of writing.

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Butler#Reception

To me a radical philosopher should say things that are logical and coherent and approachable to be of real value or motivation.

Life is complex, but there are easily criticised or examined values and claims. Also as they say actions speak louder than words. Peter Singer defends the idea we should give away all our excess wealth but says he isn't doing because other people aren't (or something like that.) I feel apathetic myself, infected by an atmosphere of apathy and fatalism and entrenched prejudices.

Why is the world so dysfunctional? I think bad individual and social philosophy is a big cause

Judith Butler was famously awarded a bad writing prize and other criticism for this piece of writing.

There are few things less intellectual or philosophical than judging a thinker, particularly a brilliant one, on one paragraph...even if you did get the punctuation right.

To me a radical philosopher should say things that are logical and coherent and approachable to be of real value or motivation.

The radical philosopher Butler does the first two all the time. But "approachable" is a subjective term, and philosophers shouldn't dumb down for those unable to approach their works because of poor education, poor reading skills, or slow thinking.

Why is the world so dysfunctional? I think bad individual and social philosophy is a big cause

Judith Butler is an excellent individual and social philosopher. If you read her actual work, you would see that.

This is from the page you pinned:

Darin Barney of McGill University writes that:
“
"Butler's work on gender, sex, sexuality, queerness, feminism, bodies, political speech and ethics has changed the way scholars all over the world think, talk and write about identity, subjectivity, power and politics. It has also changed the lives of countless people whose bodies, genders, sexualities and desires have made them subject to violence, exclusion and oppression."[48]

There are few things less intellectual or philosophical than judging a thinker, particularly a brilliant one, on one paragraph. — Thanatos Sand

I was not judging her whole output I was just highlighting the problem of the inaccessibility of ideas deemed radical (or otherwise). Continental philosophers have sometimes deliberately written in a convoluted manner as a stylistic choice.

If someone is starving in a poor country or struggling on the breadline in affluent country or behaving stupidly and damaging the environment and other lives how much time have we got to decipher this prose?

I am not saying these philosophers have nothing to offer or that they cannot be be profitably adapted and adopted but that doesn't mean you can't have campaigning and immediately accessible philosophy.

Moral philosophers never fail to disappoint me. I think moral nihilism should be the default position. Instead we get convoluted or simply weak attempts to cling onto norms and intuitions.

It seems non philosophers have been more powerful than philosophers at causing moral change. They simply demanded change and highlighted cruelty. It is easier to ignore or dismiss a position if it is presented in an elongated over analytic style.

There are few things less intellectual or philosophical than judging a thinker, particularly a brilliant one, on one paragraph.
— Thanatos Sand

I was not judging her whole output I was just highlighting the problem of the inaccessibility of ideas deemed radical (or otherwise). Continental philosophers have sometimes deliberately written in a convoluted manner as a stylistic choice.

And again, that's a mistake to claim inaccessibility of ideas based on one paragraph. It's intellectually and scholastically lazy, the opposite of radical thought. And no continental philosophers have purposely written in a convoluted manner. That's what people who have difficulty reading their work erroneously say.

If someone is starving in a poor country or struggling on the breadline in affluent country or behaving stupidly and damaging the environment and other lives how much time have we got to decipher this prose?

Sorry, many people including myself read it very well and teach it very well. You only say it needs to be deciphered because you have difficulty reading it and haven't even really read it. Again, that's lazy scholarship that is counter to radical thinking.

I am not saying these philosophers have nothing to offer or that they cannot be be profitably adapted and adopted but that doesn't mean you can't have campaigning and immediately accessible philosophy.

Most philosophers aren't immediately accessible. I guess you want to get rid of Kant, Hume, Aquinas, Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx and most other philosophers. .

It seems non philosophers have been more powerful than philosophers at causing moral change. They simply demanded change and highlighted cruelty. It is easier to ignore or dismiss a position if it is presented in an elongated over analytic style.

Sorry, no non-philosophers accomplish anything without keen thought and solid theories, and the best, like Martin Luther King, are always well-read on some philosophy, and usually high philosophy. And you call it elongated because it is elongated to you. To say it actually is, when you've barely read any of it, is pretty solipsistic. You clearly don't think much of philosophy and philosophers. So, why are you here?

You have proved my point Thanatos Sand.

And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life.
Aristotle, Politics

You have proved my point Thanatos Sand.

I have proven nothing but what I wrote in my last post, Andrew4Handel.

And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life.
Aristotle, Politics

Fascinating....

It would be helpful Thanatos, if you could present an argument from one the thinkers you mentioned and show how it will or could improve life.

I appreciate some of what I have read concerning Foucault but Has he been applied in a radical way?

I am not keen on what I have read from Butler Which seems to be typical left wing bias and word games.

It would be helpful Thanatos, if you could present an argument from one the thinkers you mentioned and show how it will or could improve life.

It would be helpful, Andy, if you realize that many people have many different definitions of "improve life." I've already shown how people have used the ideas of those philosophers for human and social progress. So your question is just trolling.

I appreciate some of what I have read concerning Foucault but Has he been applied in a radical way?

Many times by many marginalized groups.

I am not keen on what I have read from Butler Which seems to be typical left wing bias and word games.

You haven't taken the time to actually read her stuff beyond a paragraph, so I don't care what you're keen on concerning Butler.

In the evolution thread I was challenging whether we needed the word animal at all and you were defending it's indispensability as a classification. Yet Judith Butler seems happy to dispose of the biology of gender or sex for viewing gender as a performance.

Do you support this stance in contradiction of your advocacy for a concrete definition of animal?

I defended the idea of words as power tools and constructs.

In the evolution thread I was challenging whether we needed the word animal at all and you were defending it's indispensability as a classification. Yet Judith Butler seems happy to dispose of the biology of gender or sex for viewing gender as a performance.

So? Animal is an indisputed classification. I'm sorry you never took biology in high school. Sex and gender are openly-debated terms in the scientific community. I'm sorry you don't grasp the difference.

Do you support this stance in contradiction of your advocacy for a concrete definition of animal?

That's an erroneous loaded question. Not impressive.

I defended the idea of words as power tools and constructs.

You defended your incorrect usage of words. Apparently, you never took English class either.

Sex and gender are openly-debated terms in the scientific community — Thanatos Sand

So do you have a problem with the notion of a genetic male and female or that human reproduction requires males and females to exist? Sex has a stronger genetic physical basis then the category animal which is broad and abstract.

I think questioning the reality of sex and gender is very unhelpful and arguably harmful.

How can tell the history of women and the oppression of women in the light this selective oppression if we have no agreed on definition of a woman?

It seems selective what people are willing to call a social construction.

Goodbye, Andrew. Your last post, like most of your posts, display a decided lack of education in both biology and contemporary scientific and human scientific studies in human sexuality.

Since I have no interest in teaching you further, I will no longer read any more of your posts.

How many scientific studies does Judith Butler cite in "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution"?