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eldemiror posted:I think there are great continental authors and that they are in general more thought provoking than analytical philosophers If that thought is "what a bunch of terrible horseshit" ya continental philosophy is really thought provoking.
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Jul 15, 2015 23:13
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Just for the record glowing-fish I think it's cool that you're thinking through all these ides and I don't even disagree with everything you've said, but I feel like there's no point having a debate like this if you're not being pushed hard to actually justify what you've written. I would want other people to challenge me in the same way I'm challenging you if our positions were reversed.glowing-fish posted:I don't think I was "Making sweeping claims about the nature of everything". You seem to be claiming that the motivations behind a wide range of behaviours operate very differently than most people commonly think that they do. For instance, you said that the bourgeoisie seek out education not for it's economic utility but rather as a strategy for identity formation. Some of your comments about medical treatment even make it sound like you're suggesting that the only real appeal of doctors is that they are culturally sanctioned and that they'd otherwise be no functionally different than a faith healer. If these don't count as sweeping claims then I can't imagine what would. quote:Taking away the continental language, most of what I talked about is just based on my own experience of how people's backgrounds in early life affects how comfortable they are navigating through society. There are a number of number of concrete situations where this background is incredibly important. Say someone has a loud neighbor: do they know how to call the police and make a noise complaint? Or are they so afraid of involving the police that they will confront their neighbor directly? Say someone wants to go to Canada, do they feel confident going through that border crossing and answering the questions, even if they are temporarily unemployed? Someone is renting an apartment, and is unclear what type of responsibilities their landlord has for repairs. Would they feel comfortable going to a local library and asking the library staff for information on renter's rights? I don't think it's controversial to suggest that people in dominant cultural groups enjoy various privileges - many of which are invisible to the in-group - when it comes to accessing resources. This is often referred to as "cultural capital" or "privilege" depending on who you ask. Here's an essay written in 1990 that outlines exactly the sort of invisible but pervasive advantages enjoyed by white people that you're assigned to the 'bourgeoisie'. But I have two responses to your argument. First: the stuff you're saying in this post seems totally different than the claims you made upthread about the bourgeoisie using doctors and educators as tools for identity formation rather than because of their actual use value (at the moment it's not even clear whether you think these institutions have any objective value outside their social roles in identity formation). I can see how these could be two pieces of an over arching meta-theory of society, but right now they seem like two distinct and separate claims that each need to be justified on their own terms. Second: as far as the stuff about invisible privileges enjoyed by society's dominant groups. I don't exactly disagree with what you're saying here but I'm a bit confused about how you're approaching this. You seem, at least in the OP, to be suggesting that there are two big groups in society: bourgeois and not-bourgeois. The bourgeois are the people who are comfortable navigating their social reality, the none-bourgeois are everybody who is not comfortable. But, as most advocates of privilege theory would quickly point out, this isn't how things actually work. This is exactly why questions of intersectionality have become such a fixation for certain segments of the political left. Because depending on your exact positionality you're going to be more or less comfortable with certain institutions. In some cases a black man will have certain advantages because he's a man, while in other situations a white woman might be more advantaged because of her skin colour. A trans-person faces all kinds of difficulties, but Caitlyn Jenner was, you'd probably agree, privileged in ways that Travyon Martin wasn't. These calculations of exactly how you are or are not privileged can get hopelessly complicated. So given how nearly impossible it is to sort out exactly where everyone falls, and given how some people might be more comfortable with certain institutions than others (perhaps I have no trouble calling the police on my neighbours party but I'm deathly afraid of doctors and hospitals, to the point that I'll avoid necessary medical treatments) what exactly is the use of trying to reduce everyone to being either 'bourgeois' or 'not-bourgeois'? In what way would this designation help us to navigate these murky debates? Basically, other people already went down the road you're starting upon, and they mostly gave up on it in favour of an approach that emphasizes the intersectional nature of social privilege.
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Jul 15, 2015 23:52
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Helsing posted:I would want other people to challenge me Sounds good: fist-fight by the local chic-fil-a alright?
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Jul 15, 2015 23:56
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'Bourgeois': The state of being possessed of a particular kind of privilege most envied by SA Forums Poster glowing-fish. Also, call this classist, but if you can't figure out when to use 'bourgeois' (the adjective and occasional noun referring to individual people) and 'the bourgeoisie' (the noun referring to the stratum itself) you probably don't have any business expounding institutional theories of either.
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Jul 16, 2015 00:13
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