From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: She's baaaaack.....Camille Paglia
Date: 30 Sep 92 16:18:51 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Sep30.121852.15971
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <12553@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:

CC:
>I have not a clue how most of my history professors vote.  They manage
>to keep their own political beliefs sufficiently hidden, in spite of
>the relevance of the topics covered, that I can't tell if they are
>conservatives, radicals, liberals, libertarians, etc.  On the other
>hand, in the "sloppy sciences" (philosophy, English), it's real
>easy.  Pretenses of objectivity and balance at Sonoma State seem to
>have been utterly dropped by professors in some departments.  Let
>me give you one recent example.

Without wishing to challenge the validity of the esteemed Mr Cramer's
poignant personal observations, I'll venture a reason against generalizing
them to a universal rule.  Most historians, as practicioners of the
idiographic arts, are committed to the description of the particular, and
so find it impossible to separate their own political sensibilities from
their professional goal of evaluating the past events.  Accordingly, their
political position may be readily discerned each time their narrative
passes from the descriptive to the normative.  (For more on this subject,
the gentle reader would be well advised to consult Herbert Butterfield's
_The Whig Interpretation of History_, and, in the opposite corner, Max
Weber's _Science as a Vocation_.)  On the other hand, most philosophers
specializing in the nomothetic aspects of their discipline will profess to
eschew value judgments altogether, and in any case will direct their
attention to the timeless abstract universals having little to do with
mundane political positions.  Hence their writings will not generally lend
themselves to a facile classification of this sort.

CC:
>This semester, I'm taking a class called "Media Ethics," taught 
>in the Philosophy Dept.  As part of discussions, the great "Murphy
>Brown" flap came up.  The professor insisted that it was utterly
>clear that the Bush Administration had Quayle make the speech about
>Murphy Brown just to set up the "family values" issue for the
>convention, so as to distract attention from the economy.  Now,
>it's certainly a possibility.  It would be good politics to do so.
>But it's hardly the only explanation.  But there was no attempt at
>even seriously considering any possibility but the most cynical
>and negative interpretation of this whole incident -- and it was
>made clear that there wasn't even any interest in considering
>alternative explanations, BECAUSE of the professor's antipathy
>to the Bush Administration.

Perhaps Mr Cramer's professor might be more charitably interpreted as
adhering to a sound methodological principle of supposing that *all*
politicians, regardless of their party affiliation, in the absence of all
evidence to the contrary, are best assumed to possess the moral integrity
of scum-sucking pigs.

CC:
>Perhaps one reason I felt no need to finish reading Roger Kimball's
>_Tenured Radicals_ is that there wasn't anything terribly surprising
>to me in it.

Something tells me that Mr Cramer is unlikely to be terribly surprised by
anything he might find in a book.  Based on his past record, I conjecture
that he would either accept it wholesale as gospel of all right-thinking
individuals, or reject it out of hand as pernicious liberal propaganda.

>-- 
>Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
>Bush: War on Drugs, tax cut->bigger deficit.  Clinton: War on Drugs, spending
>increase->bigger deficit.  What a great choice.

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Nous donnons la mort, nous saurons la subir."
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,misc.writing