Thus proclaimed Cicero, decrying the threat to order and the degradation of society represented by the Conspiracy of Catiline.
Dr. David Justice, with no less fervor and in a philosophical context no less serious, is throwing down the gauntlet against the vapid musings of Derek Parfit as recently celebrated by no less than the New Yorker.
Justice provocatively calls this sad tendency in modern thought Philosophy Porn.
Thank you very much indeed for this post, Dr. Massey. I actually had forgotten the provenience of “O tempora, o mores” -- a key concept nonetheless, and which I have added, at your reminder, as a Label to the referenced post. Readers can click on that label and see a whole suite of Ciceronian philippics.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally -- the term “philosophy porn” may indeed apply to the musings of Professor Parfit; but that is not, strictly, the way I use the term. The term is exactly parallel to that of “physics porn”, featured for instance here,
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/08/more-physics-porn-updated.html
It refers rather to the journalistic *presentation* of serious content -- whether of philosophers or of physicists, or theologians for that matter -- in a tawdry way that skips the actual reasoning and appeals to the baser or more frivolous instincts of the readership. It is very rare for The New Yorker to do this, and the article here savaged is a disturbing development.