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Show Chapter XIII. Baier's Hume 562 already seen that Baier explicitly rejects at least some of the traditional standards of philosophical analysis, and that she means to experiment with replacing extended impersonal analysis with a more personal, anecdotal style in a Humean spirit. When she flatly declines to say what she means by the word "cruel" at the beginning of her inquiry into whether Kant's ethics is more cruel than Hume's, she thereby rejects absolute adherence to the injunction that we try to instill in introductory philosophy courses to define one's key terms. Similarly, when she simply leaves in the text inconsistent statements, such as suggesting that trust in sustained trust may be a "supreme virtue" at MP 185 and denying that she intends to suggest this at MP 188, or suggesting at MP 168 that foundational trust can be spelled out in a moral principle, and at MP 182 that it cannot be, it is the principle of consistency itself - or perhaps merely Kant's injunction to synthesize that manifold under rule-governed concepts! - that she challenges. Here and elsewhere her stylistic experiment calls into question many of the most traditional and familiar standards that philosophers have taken for granted. In this respect she transgresses the rationalistic limits of Socratic metaethics that Hume himself so scrupulously observes. I close this chapter by describing what I see as the dangerous consequences of Baier's stylistic experiment, by connecting it to her substantive project of putting the analysis and reparation of power imbalances at the center of normative ethics.24 One characteristic of the discipline of philosophy in which we all can take pride is that there are identifiable professional standards of competence to which we are trained to adhere - standards we have inherited from Socrates himself. I spelled out these standards in Chapter I, but it does no harm to review them here. We are all, regardless of professional power or status, trained to discern when an argument is good or bad, consistent or inconsistent, superficial or searching, original or derivative, rigorous or sloppy, accurate or misleading, all regardless of the power or status of the individual who makes it. Most philosophers have a personal commitment to these standards independent of 24 An earlier version of this chapter expressed my animadversions toward Baier's stylistic experiment much more vehemently and subjectively, in an attempt to convey how personally offensive and threatening I found her rejection of traditional philosophical standards. In part this was inspired by some sympathy with her challenge to the impersonal style - specifically, when it is exploited passive-aggressively to mask such personal animadversions under the guise of objectivity. This would be a legitimate criticism; and it may well be that to this brand of intellectual prevarication voicing one's biases openly and candidly, as Baier does, is the only antidote. Nevertheless, if one believes one's personal animadversions to be objectively warranted, then one ultimately undermines their objective force by framing them merely as personal prejudices. Whether or not Baier believes her philosophical views to be anything more than prejudices is at issue, as is what she effects by so often asserting them as matters of fact. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
