• About me
  • About this blog
  • Comment rules
  • Other writings

Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: academia

The scattershot application of “neoliberalism”

27 Sunday Mar 2022

Posted by Amod Lele in Economics, Greek and Roman Tradition, Politics, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, Virtue, Work

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

academia, Aristotle, David Brooks, technology, Wendy Brown, Yoga Sūtras

In my previous post I agreed with Wendy Brown and other critics of “neoliberalism” that something was genuinely new, and disturbing, about the attempt to treat education as producing “human capital”, a narrow economic value. I do think, however, that such critics greatly overplay their hand. That is, they extend the critique of “neoliberalism” to phenomena that are not even liberal, let alone neo – to longstanding, deeply human concerns that predate capitalism and its ideology.

In Brown’s case, the problem comes across most clearly in a footnote attacking David Brooks. Some years ago in the New York Times, Brooks had written a moving defence of traditional humanistic education:

Continue reading →

How neo is neoliberalism?

13 Sunday Mar 2022

Posted by Amod Lele in Economics, Pleasure, Politics, Work

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

20th century, academia, David Harvey, Friedrich Hayek, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Ronald Reagan, utilitarianism, Wendy Brown

The terms neoliberal and neoliberalism have become ubiquitous in left-wing discourse of the past few years, ranging from discussions of government policy to critiques of mindfulness meditation. They merit a closer look.

Credit for the terms usually goes back to Michel Foucault, in his lectures collected as The Birth of Biopolitics. What is extraordinary about these lectures is that they took place in early 1979 – before Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher would take office and implement the sweeping right-wing libertarian-capitalist economic reforms to which the term “neoliberal” is now most often applied. So while 21st-century writing about neoliberalism aims to describe an ideology that shapes the actions of government and social institutions, Foucault was merely writing about an ideology found in the writings of mid-20th-century German and American economists (most notably Friedrich Hayek). For this reason, Foucault now comes to look prescient – but his writing on the subject takes on a very different cast from 21st-century writers, since he is only describing a theory, and they aim to describe a practice.

There are many things to be said about the concept of neoliberalism. First off, it is an unfortunately confusing term, in the North American context at least. It probably makes sense in Australia, where the Liberal Party is the right-wing party. And the ideas and practices described as “neoliberal” do occur on both sides of the political spectrum. But the opposition to neoliberalism comes largely from people on the political left, people whom the vast majority of ordinary Americans and Canadians would still describe as – liberal.

Still, the term is in widespread use on the left now, and however confusing the term is, the bigger question is the phenomenon the term claims to describe: a phenomenon which is supposedly a new (neo) transformation of the market-oriented political ideas that have in the past gone under the name “liberal”. So we may ask of neoliberalism: is it liberal – at least in the broad sense in which Reaganite right-wingers are liberal? And is it neo – what about it is new?

Continue reading →

Should undergraduate classics require Latin and Greek?

04 Sunday Jul 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Economics, Greek and Roman Tradition, M.T.S.R., Work

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

academia, pedagogy, Princeton University, United States

The discipline of classics has made headlines recently with Princeton University’s decision to no longer require majors to take Greek or Latin. This is a fairly momentous decision: aren’t Greek and Latin what Classics is all about?

I have mixed feelings about the decision. I think there is a lot of value in learning Greek and Latin. Certainly for philosophers: we need to understand philosophy’s history, and in our world that history is inescapably Western even for those of us who do not focus on it. I am broadly Aristotelian and wish I knew more Greek to understand him better. As for Latin, it remains important for lawyers and biologists, and knowing the very many Latin roots of English words gives us a much deeper understanding of those words’ meaning. A world where even fewer people know Greek or Latin does not seem to me a good thing, overall.

Continue reading →

History and the love of literature

14 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Analytic Tradition, German Tradition, Hermeneutics, Politics, Reading and Recitation

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

academia, Ashley Barnes, Benedict Anderson, Benjamin C. Kinney, Bryan Van Norden, COVID-19, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Johann Gottfried Herder, Jon Baskin, Matt Wilkens, Sumana Roy, William Shakespeare

Many years ago, as a master’s student in development sociology, I took a course on nationalism with the late Benedict Anderson, renowned for his idea that the nation is an imagined community. The topic and the professor attracted a cross-disciplinary audience; about half of us students were in programs of sociology and political science, the other half in programs of literature. The distinction between the two, as I recall, became apparent when, from theorists and philosophers of nationalism, our reading turned to a work of literature, the sentimental anti-slavery novel Sab by Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. We wrote brief papers articulating our reactions to and thoughts about the work. The social scientists were moved by it; one fellow sociologist said she cried while reading it. But the literary theorists, as I remember, all thought it was (in Anderson’s words) a “dreadful” novel, worthy of study merely as something symptomatic of its historical period, at best. I had taken other classes with several of them, and become friends with some, and it occurred to me that I had never heard one of these literature students express love for any work of literature, with the sole exception of Joyce’s Ulysses.

Continue reading →

Literature as representation and rasa

21 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Emotion, Hermeneutics, Metaphilosophy, Place, Politics, Reading and Recitation, South Asia

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

academia, APA, Bryan Van Norden, Jay Garfield, Matt Wilkens, rasa, Sumana Roy, United States

Sumana Roy, a professor of literature at Ashoka University near Delhi, wrote a wonderful recent essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education identifying significant problems with the way Indian literature is taught, in both American and Indian universities. In American universities Indian literature is expected to represent India, to provide a moral or political message about the country and its political life – and, Roy thinks, this American understanding has then been imported into India itself. When Indian universities teach English-language Indian literature, they are asked questions like “Analyze Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines as a critique of the nation-state” and “Write a note on Velutha as a Dalit character in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things”. Yet in the same departments John Donne is studied as “a metaphysical poet”, Virginia Woolf as “a stream-of-consciousness novelist” and so on. European and American writers, Roy thinks, can be appreciated and enjoyed for their aesthetic qualities; Indian writers are supposed to send a message.

Continue reading →

On “philosophy of religion”

06 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Analytic Tradition, Christianity, God, Judaism, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

AAR, academia, APA, Bryan Van Norden, Jay Garfield, Maimonides, Rāmānuja, religion, Speculative Realism

A while ago I was contacted by an academic publisher asking me to review a new introductory textbook on philosophy of religion. I didn’t do so, even though the publisher offered me a stipend. The main reason was just that I didn’t have the time for it. But the more interesting reason was my objections to the work’s entire project.

The book’s proposed table of contents spoke of a work devoted entirely to God: the concept of God, and arguments for and against his existence. That is not an idiosyncratic approach; there are many existing textbooks in “philosophy of religion” that take the same approach. So there was nothing especially or unusually outrageous about this textbook and its other. And that is exactly the problem.

Continue reading →

From snark to smarm

10 Sunday May 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Happiness, Leadership, Metaphilosophy, Politics, Work

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

academia, autobiography, Canada, Chrystia Freeland, conferences, gender, niceness, race

Back in 2013, the Canadian journalist Chrystia Freeland decided to make a major career move: she left journalism to become an elected politician. (She now serves as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, in the Liberal cabinet under Justin Trudeau.) The move horrified a number of people close to her: according to a New York editor she admired, “if I entered politics I would never again be able to tell the truth—and that even if I tried, people wouldn’t listen to me, on the grounds that I was a politician, and therefore a liar.”

Soon after she was elected, Freeland wrote about her career transition in an excellent piece considering the larger implications of the move and the suspicion it evoked. Freeland frames the issue at hand in terms of a distinction between snark and smarm. She doesn’t specifically define either term, but evokes a common cluster of meanings of them: the fight between snark and smarm is a “fight between the cynics and the true believers, the pessimists and the optimists, the naysayers and the cheerleaders.” Politicians present themselves as smarmy true believers, optimists, cheerleaders; journalists present themselves as snarky cynics, pessimists, naysayers.

Continue reading →

Don’t give a paper

01 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, Metaphilosophy, Reading and Recitation, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on Don’t give a paper

Tags

academia, conferences, Martha Nussbaum, pedagogy, technology

Studies of Indian philosophy often rightly call attention to the varied genres in which they are composed: the sparse pith of the Yoga Sūtras, Śaṅkara’s expositing his own views as commentary on someone else’s, the Milindapañhā’s dialogue evocative of Plato’s Socrates. Such differences call to mind Martha Nussbaum’s famous claim in Love’s Knowledge that “Style itself makes its claims, expresses its own sense of what matters.”

As is far too often the case, though, the gaze that modern Western academics apply to distant places and times is one they steadfastly avoid turning on themselves. We are far too reluctant to think about differences of genre in our own composition.

Most notably: the venues of scholarly productivity come in at least two completely different genres. There is the written article or book, subjected to peer review and editorship, with its hypertextual infrastructure of footnotes and its bibliography. And there is the oral presentation, at a conference or workshop, of a work-in-progress with that citation infrastructure omitted, delivered to a room at a single time and place who can then begin a Socratic and dialogical back-and-forth.

So why do we insist on acting as if these two venues are the same? Continue reading →

Podcast interview on qualitative individualism

06 Monday May 2019

Posted by Amod Lele in Early and Theravāda, Economics, Foundations of Ethics, Health, Human Nature, Politics, Psychology, Self, Virtue, Work

≈ Comments Off on Podcast interview on qualitative individualism

Tags

20th century, academia, Catharine MacKinnon, Friedrich Nietzsche, gender, generations, Georg Simmel, Hans-Georg Gadamer, identity, Immanuel Kant, interview, John Locke, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, Monty Python, music, qualitative individualism, race, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Romanticism, Stefani Ruper, United States, virtue ethics

Stefani Ruper interviewed me for her video podcast a while ago, and the interview is now live. It focuses on the topic of qualitative individualism, elaborating on ideas from my earlier series of posts. It gets into some topics that are a bit more intense than I’ve covered on the blog in recent years, but I’m pleased with it. Thanks to Stefani for this opportunity.

I’ve embedded the video above, so you can watch it here, and I also highly recommend you check out Stefani’s excellent philosophy podcast in general:

iTunes: http://stefaniruper.com/listen

Spotify: http://stefaniruper.com/listenspotify

Youtube: http://stefaniruper.com/watch

Stream & other outlets: http://stefaniruper.com/podcast

 

 

Making the case for non-Western philosophy

27 Sunday May 2018

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Confucianism, East Asia, External Goods, Hermeneutics, Metaphilosophy, Stoicism

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

academia, Bryan Van Norden, Epictetus, Fazang, James Stockdale, Jay Garfield, Mencius, Milindapañhā, Paul Ricoeur

If you are the sort of person who reads comparative philosophy blogs, you probably remember the widely read New York Times article that Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden wrote two years ago, calling for the study of non-Western philosophies in philosophy departments. I agreed with their overall point, surprising nobody that I can imagine, but had strong reservations about their underlying reasoning, then as now: in urging the study of non-Western thought they said nothing about anything valuable it actually would have to teach us, treating geographical diversity as sufficient.

Van Norden has now expanded the article’s point into a book, Taking Back Philosophy. (He invited Garfield to join in writing the book, but Garfield was too busy with other projects.) Columbia University Press sent me a free copy of the book in the hope I would review it on Love of All Wisdom and/or the Indian Philosophy Blog; I mention that as a disclaimer of sorts, though there were no specifications on the content of the review. I offer my thoughts here. Continue reading →

← Older posts

Welcome to Love of All Wisdom.

I invite you to leave comments on my blog, even - or especially - if I have no idea who you are. Philosophy is a conversation, and I invite you to join it with me; I welcome all comers (provided they follow a few basic rules). I typically make a new post every other Sunday. If you'd like to be notified when a new post is posted, you can get email notifications whenever I add something new via the link further down in this sidebar. You can also follow this blog on Facebook or Twitter. Or if you use RSS, you can get updates through the RSS feed.

Recent Comments

  • Nathan on Does the Sigālovāda Sutta prohibit attending the theatre?
  • Amod Lele on Does the Sigālovāda Sutta prohibit attending the theatre?
  • Nathan on Does the Sigālovāda Sutta prohibit attending the theatre?
  • Amod Lele on Does the Sigālovāda Sutta prohibit attending the theatre?
  • Amod Lele on Does the Sigālovāda Sutta prohibit attending the theatre?

Subscribe by Email

Post Tags

20th century academia Alasdair MacIntyre Aristotle ascent/descent Augustine autobiography Buddhaghosa Canada conferences Confucius conservatism Disengaged Buddhism Engaged Buddhism Evan Thompson Four Noble Truths Friedrich Nietzsche G.W.F. Hegel gender Hebrew Bible identity Immanuel Kant intimacy/integrity justice Karl Marx Ken Wilber Martha Nussbaum Mencius modernity Pali suttas pedagogy Plato qualitative individualism race rebirth religion Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha) T.R. (Thill) Raghunath technology theodicy Thomas Kuhn United States utilitarianism Śaṅkara Śāntideva

Categories

  • African Thought (12)
  • Applied Phil (269)
    • Death (36)
    • Family (40)
    • Food (17)
    • Friends (13)
    • Health (23)
    • Place (25)
    • Play (11)
    • Politics (152)
    • Sex (20)
    • Work (36)
  • Asian Thought (392)
    • Buddhism (282)
      • Early and Theravāda (118)
      • Mahāyāna (116)
      • Modernized Buddhism (82)
    • East Asia (82)
      • Confucianism (52)
      • Daoism (13)
      • Shinto (1)
    • South Asia (128)
      • Bhakti Poets (3)
      • Cārvāka-Lokāyata (5)
      • Epics (15)
      • Jainism (23)
      • Modern Hinduism (35)
      • Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (6)
      • Sāṃkhya-Yoga (14)
      • Vedānta (35)
      • Vedas and Mīmāṃsā (7)
  • Blog Admin (26)
  • Indigenous American Thought (3)
  • Method (233)
    • M.T.S.R. (131)
    • Metaphilosophy (156)
  • Practical Philosophy (347)
    • Action (11)
    • Aesthetics (41)
    • Emotion (150)
      • Anger (31)
      • Attachment and Craving (26)
      • Compassion (5)
      • Despair (3)
      • Disgust (3)
      • Faith (19)
      • Fear (7)
      • Grief (5)
      • Happiness (46)
      • Hope (15)
      • Pleasure (31)
      • Shame and Guilt (6)
    • External Goods (48)
    • Flourishing (81)
    • Foundations of Ethics (105)
    • Karma (42)
    • Morality (61)
    • Virtue (146)
      • Courage (5)
      • Generosity (12)
      • Gentleness (5)
      • Gratitude (10)
      • Honesty (13)
      • Humility (22)
      • Leadership (4)
      • Mindfulness (14)
      • Patient Endurance (28)
      • Self-Discipline (8)
      • Serenity (27)
      • Zest (6)
  • Practice (114)
    • Karmic Redirection (5)
    • Meditation (31)
    • Monasticism (41)
    • Physical Exercise (3)
    • Prayer (14)
    • Reading and Recitation (12)
    • Rites (19)
    • Therapy (10)
  • Theoretical Philosophy (325)
    • Consciousness (14)
    • Epistemology (105)
      • Certainty and Doubt (14)
      • Prejudices and "Intuitions" (27)
    • Free Will (17)
    • God (62)
    • Hermeneutics (54)
    • Human Nature (29)
    • Logic (27)
      • Dialectic (15)
    • Metaphysics (90)
    • Philosophy of Language (18)
    • Self (63)
    • Supernatural (48)
    • Truth (59)
    • Unconscious Mind (14)
  • Western Thought (415)
    • Analytic Tradition (90)
    • Christianity (137)
      • Early Factions (8)
      • Protestantism (21)
      • Roman Catholicism (46)
    • French Tradition (47)
    • German Tradition (84)
    • Greek and Roman Tradition (110)
      • Epicureanism (24)
      • Neoplatonism (2)
      • Pre-Socratics (6)
      • Skepticism (2)
      • Sophists (7)
      • Stoicism (18)
    • Islam (37)
      • Mu'tazila (2)
      • Salafi (3)
      • Sufism (9)
    • Judaism (33)
    • Natural Science (86)
      • Biology (22)
      • Philosophy of Science (47)
    • Social Science (144)
      • Economics (30)
      • Psychology (59)

Recent Posts

  • Does the Sigālovāda Sutta prohibit attending the theatre?
  • Of mental health and medical models
  • Of perpetually vulnerable subjects
  • The scattershot application of “neoliberalism”
  • How neo is neoliberalism?

Popular posts

  • One and a half noble truths?
  • Wishing George W. Bush well
  • Do Speculative Realists want us to be Chinese?
  • Why I am not a right-winger
  • On faith in tooth relics

Basic concepts

  • Ascent and Descent
  • Intimacy and integrity
  • Ascent-descent and intimacy-integrity together
  • Perennial questions?
  • Virtuous and vicious means
  • Dialectical and demonstrative argument
  • Chastened intellectualism and practice
  • Yavanayāna Buddhism: what it is
  • Why worry about contradictions?
  • The first philosophy blogger

Personal favourites

  • Can philosophy be a way of life? Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)
  • James Doull and the history of ethical motivation
  • Praying to something you don't believe in
  • What does postmodernism perform?
  • Why I'm getting married

Archives

Search this site

All posts, pages and metadata copyright 2020 Amod Lele. Comments copyright 2020 their comment authors. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) licence.

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.