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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 13 them may set off a further volcanic eruption of speech in the Bulldozer, a shower of philosophical associations that must be pursued at that moment and to the fullest extent, relentlessly, wherever they may lead. There is something alarmingly aimless and indiscriminate behind the compulsiveness of this performance, as though it were a senate filibuster without a motion on the floor; as though the Bulldozer's greatest defeat would be to cede even the tiniest corner of verbal territory to someone else. Of course the experience of "conversing with" a Bulldozer is extremely irritating and oppressive, since one is being continually stymied in one's efforts to join the issues under scrutiny and make intellectual contact with one's discussant. But I think it is not difficult for any of us to imagine how it feels to be a Bulldozer, to feel compelled to surround oneself stereophonically with the ongoing verbal demonstration of one's knowledge; to blanket every single square inch of the conceptual terrain, up to the horizon and beyond, with one's view of things; to fend off alien doubts, questions, and interjections of data into one's conceptual system by erecting around oneself a permanent screen of words and sounds so dense and wide that nothing and no one can penetrate it. Of course the Bulldozer himself may not think he is thwarting philosophical contact with others but instead enabling it; and may believe, even more tragically, that if he just says enough, he will surely command agreement in the end. Those many philosophers who reject the temptation to bulldoze create the necessary conditions for philosophical contact, and may even inspire agape - if not agreement - in their discussants. Whereas the Bulldozer performs primarily for the sake of self-defense, the Bully performs more aggressively, in order to compel others' silent acquiescence; and thereby betrays her anticipation that they will speak up against her. She may deploy familiar locutions designed to forestall objections or questions before they are raised: "Surely it is obvious that ..." or "It is perfectly clear that ..." or "Well, I take it that ..." The message here is that anyone who would display such ignorance and lack of insight as to call these self-evident truths into question is too philosophically challenged to take seriously; and the intended effect is to intimidate the misguided into silence. For example, I resorted to some of these bullying techniques earlier, in my discussion of Kant. "Kant's account of reason in the first Critique MAKES QUITE CLEAR that the moral law is not separate from the workings of theoretical reason more generally," I claimed; and "in the Groundwork Kant MAKES IT EQUALLY CLEAR that he is not diverging from an important common, vernacular meaning of the term Achtung." In both of these cases, I tried to double the barrage of intimidation, by brazenly combining claims of self-evidence with an appeal to authority. Why? Because even though I know these views to be controversial, I wanted you to swallow them on faith, for the moment, without questioning me, so I could go on and build on those assumptions the further points I wanted to make. Elsewhere I do argue that a © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
